These are the books I’ve read since the beginning of lockdown and found sufficiently worthwhile to a) finish and b) reference in at least one conversation since. Psychoanalyze as you will.
General Learning
Why Zebras don’t get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky. An evolutionary biologist I could listen to for days.
Sexual Personnae. Camille Paglia. A dense-but-worth-it review of sexual representation in art since the ancient Egyptians, by the sharp-tongued art historian and social provocateur.
The Vital Question, Nick Lane. A biochemist’s challenge to accepted theories about how life began. A slow read for my non-science brain, but an interesting glimpse into the scientific community’s debates, and how much of its present understanding is built on assumptions.
The Great Courses Series. Audio lectures series taught by college professors. I devour these. In particular:
+ American Religious History, Patrick Allitt
+ Victorian Britain, Patrick Allitt
+ Modern British Drama, Peter Saccio
+ Becoming Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science, Robert Sapolsky
+ Gnosticism: From Nag Hamadi to the Gospel of Judas, David Brakke
+ Great Figures of the New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine
+ The Old Testament, Amy-Jill Levine
+ Maya to Aztec: Mesoamerica revealed, Edwin Barnhart
+ Sacred Texts of the World, Grant Hardy
+ The Agency: A History of the CIA, Hugh Wilford
In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg. A radio series, not book, but divine listening you can find on the BBC or podcast channels. Each is an hour-long discussion of a topic with academics, on Philosophy, Religion, Culture or Science.
Philosophy
Philosophy in 90 minutes series, Paul Strathern. Funny and digestible synopses of various thinkers. There are dozens. I devour them also.
The History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell. He’s kind of a dick and I hate his philosophy and the pretentious exclusion here of modern thinkers he didn’t like, BUT his survey of thinkers’ ideas, particularly his coverage of the Greeks, is unparalleled.
The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir. An interesting attempt to justify existentialism as a moral order that shows the strength of her thinking relative to Sartre.
Cultural History
(These are all so good. This genre is in its prime)
The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman. See also all his old Esquire essays from that decade.
Wagnerism, Alex Ross. European history through the lens of Wagner’s popularity.
Apollo’s Angels, Jennifer Homans; and Modern Bodies, Julia L. Foulkes. The history of ballet and modern American dance, respectively, which have a similar effect to Wagnerism in the way they bring history to life.
The Evangelicals, Francis Fitzgerald. The history of Protestantism in America. Brilliant.
Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee. About LSD and all the culture with which it intersected. Pleasantly un-agenda’d.
Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynne. The rise and fall of the Comanche tribe of Native Americans. Pleasantly objective.
Grace & Power and For Love of Politics, Sally Bedell Smith. About the Kennedys and Clintons, respectively. Both with perspective timely now.
Contemporary Society
War for Eternity, Benjamin Teitelbaum. On the shaping of Steve Bannon’s brain and the rise of the populist right.
Decadence, Ross Douthat. A solid, if a little too Gen X jaded, theory on the current moment in America.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning, Peter Zeihan. A detailed forecast of all the ways humanity is doomed for the next 10-20 years…but then might be okay? Somehow left me feeling relieved, as if somehow had provided reasonable form to a general sense we all sort of kind of have.
The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo. An [at-times-too] detailed account of the Stanford Prison Experiment by the man who oversaw it, with reflections on what it teaches us about human cruelty as in Rwanda and Abu Ghraib.
Too Famous, Michael Wolf and The Palace Papers, Tina Brown. Both are gross and made me hate myself for devouring, but…well…devour-able accounts of various political power players (Wolf) and the British monarchy (Brown).
The Contrarian, Max Chafkin; Super Pumped, Mike Isaac; Elon Musk, Ashlee Vance. Biographies of Peter Theil, Uber, and Elon Musk, respectively. All overreach in their psychoanalysis (particularly Chafkin) resulting in commentary with conclusions that feel too limited, but the information and storytelling bulk of each was great.
Psychology / Spirituality
Jung’s Map of the Soul, Murray Stein. A nice explanation of Carl Jung’s expansive view of the human psyche.
Feminine Consciousness, Archetypes and Addiction to Perfection, Marion Woodman and The Alchemy of Psychology, James Hillman. Collections of lectures by two Jungians that are excellent.
The Gnostic Bible. A translation of all the texts of the Nag Hamadi, a series of manuscripts discovered in 1945 from the religious thinking from 0-300 AD that didn’t make the cut to Christianity. It is fascinating.
The Way of Zen, Alan Watts. A solid explanation of Zen for the western mind, by one of the people who helped launch Eastern thought in the US in the 70s.
Ask and it is Given, Abraham Hicks. Whatever, I’ll own it.
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle. I’ll own this one, too. He’s great, especially if you can’t sleep.
Fiction
Short
“Roman Fever,” Edith Wharton. Female dynamics at their best.
“To Esme, with Love and Squalor,” JD Salinger. The kind of story that makes palpably feel with a character.
“A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner. Juicy southern gothic.
“Hills like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway. Enviable dialogue.
“The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” Nikolai Gogol. Scathingly perfect.
“Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,” Jorge Borges. The most lovable absurdist.
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The little novella about a proper woman going properly mad.
Long
Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, John Berendt. I missed this one when it came out, and never realized it is hilarious.
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell. I know, and I’ll take the heat – the audio version by Linda Stephens is a triumph.
Absalom! Absalom! William Faulkner. So difficult, but so elementally perfect. And interesting to re-read realizing it was written same year as Mitchell’s.
Essays
“A Few Words about Breasts,” Nora Ephron. On, well…breasts.
“As American as Apple Pie,” Christopher Hitchens. On blowjobs, politely.
“Enough of all That,” Joan Didion. On leaving New York.
“Upon this Rock,” John Jeremiah Sullivan. On a Christian tock festival.
“A Supposedly Fun thing I’ll never do again,” David Foster Wallace. On cruises.
“Now we are Five,” David Sedaris. On family dynamics.
The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Philip Lopate. A survey of the personal essay from Seneca to the modern age.
Poetry
Complete Poems, ee cummings.
Selected Poems, Rumi.
“The Thirty-two most iconic Poems in the English Language,” from Literary Hub (literaryhub.com)
Selected Chapters
On First Principles, Origen. An attempt to create a myth to reconcile Christianity with Greek thought.
The Enneads, Plotinus. The teachings behind Neo-Platonism.
The Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt. Regarding lessons on evil from the Nuremberg trials.
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir. I tried the French version. Hence, selections.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche. The one where God dies.
The True Believer, Eric Hoffer. A post-WWII reflection on the underlying drivers of Nazi Germany. I first read it in high school – an experience in itself, to read it with twenty more years of life seen.
Health, Fitness, Cookbooks
Mindful Eating, Jan Chozen. This book is like a warm embrace.
Finding Ultra, Rich Roll. The original plant-based ultra-athlete handbook.
Born to Run, Christopher MacDougall. On ultrarunning and native peoples in other places who defy the mind.
Run Fast, Eat Slow, Elyse Koepecky and Shalane Flanagan. The best cookbook for girl runners, from an Olympic marathoner and her former UNC teammate.
No Meat Athlete, Matt Frazier. A whole foods, plant-based cookbook for exercisers who don’t like cooking with oil.
Jivamukti Yoga, Sharon Gannon and David Life. An overview of a great (if cultish) yoga practice and the teachings behind it.
The Grey’s Anatomy Coloring Book. Because I know my intellectual limits. And now, also, the location of my iliopsoas and gracilis.