an eudæmonist › reading

2025

March

Ayşe Papatya Bucak. The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories. New York: W.W. Norton, 2019. [50]*

I had forgotten that short stories can actually be enjoyable.

Amy Lin. Here After. New York: Zibby Books, 2024. [49.d]*

‘Yet you can love someone in this capacious way and still fail to really see them’ (23%). Moving but still in need of development. One feels rather sorry for the puppy.

Octavia F. Raheem. Rest Is Sacred. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024. [48.d]*

Is it though? Is it not possible that it is just another marketing gimmick targeting folks who know they work too hard but need an excuse to go on a retreat so they can spend money to have someone tell them what they ignore when their common sense says the same thing? Helpful for others, but coming on the heels of the other volume (of essentially the same matter), it rang false. Not wrong, precisely, but not quite what it says on the tin.

Kelley Armstrong. Rockton Novels. 7 vols. New York: Minotaur, 2016–2022. [47]*

A diversion. The overarching narrative (spread over the seven volumes) was fairly well done, if a bit too tidy.

Meg Bogin. The Women Troubadours: An Introduction to the Women Poets of 12th-Century Provence and a Collection of Their Poems. New York: Norton, 1980. [46]

Really fun collection and overview; glad that I randomly picked it up at the bookstore. The delights of happenstance in one’s reading.

Dubravka Ugrešić. The Culture of Lies. trans. Celia Hawkesworth. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2024 (1998). [45]

Unfortunately timely. ‘Nationalism is the ideology of the stupid. There is no more stupid and tedious ideology than nationalism. Nationalism as a religious and therapeutic refuge is the option of those who have nothing else. Blood is only somewhat thicker water’ (p. 328).

V. Propp. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. trans. Laurence Scott. edited by Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson and Louis A. Wagner. Austin, TX: Univ. Texas Press, 1968 (1927, 1958). [44]

Propp’s approach to the folktale (or fairy tale) appears rather like that of a benefactor confronted with a phalanx of unruly orphans, whom he clothes in drab smocks so he can observe that they are all very much alike. It does not seem quite fair to the stories, the reader, or the author, though doubtless it is very convenient for washing up.

M.F.K. Fisher. A Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man & Beast. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981 (1961). [43]

Conceals while appearing to reveal; there is a facility to the language that is very pleasant, but occasionally leaves one a bit uncertain about what one has just confused – very like a meringue.

Brigid Brophy. Don’t Never Forget: Collected Views and Review. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. [42]

Trenchant and humane and often humorous; even when I did not agree with her views, I had to admire how she expressed them.

Octavia F. Raheem. Pause, Rest, Be. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2022. [41.d]*

Mostly commonplaces and common sense, but told in such a way that I felt I was intruding upon a space that was not meant for me. Not that there is no value in it, but that it not something to which I should lay claim.

Mirabai Starr. Caravan of No Despair. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2015. [40.d]*

An interesting contrast with Helmuth’s memoir, which shared too little, as this one shared a bit too much (necessarily, perhaps, but still a lot). Powerful and wrenching and generationally remote; adequate use of name-dropping for contextualization. The solipsism of the therapeutic.

Ken Liu, trans. & ed. Laozi’s Dao De Jing. New York: Scribner, 2024 (ca. 4th C BCE). [39.d]

‘The faithless will be trusted by no one’ (43%).

Tony Medawar, ed. Bodies from the Library. London: Collins Crime Club, 2018. [38.d]*

Fun stuff.

Diana Helmuth. The Witching Year. New York: Simon Element, 2023. [37.d]*

A sort of witchery for TikTok clout (or because it sounded promising in the book proposal) kind of memoir. Visibly constructed, each chapter a magazine piece of somewhat insipid interviews or authorities studded with descriptive verbs of parallel activity (i.e., if the author and interviewee are eating dinner together, the dinner will at times intrude, as though foreshadowing indigestion). Weak on the magickal front.

Jonathan I. Israel. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998 (1995). [36]

Had been meaning to read this for a very long time; it was worth the wait and the effort to find a copy. Magisterial – and fascinating.

Elizabeth David. Italian Food. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969 (1954). [35]

Less assured than French Country Cooking, but equally food for fantasizing.

D.W. Winnicott. Playing and Reality. London: Routledge, 1991 (1971). [34]

Somewhat stilted because stripped of details. Notable is the desire to be the ‘good-enough’ analyst/therapist, rather than the ideal one – the sense that it is work and one can (and likely will) fail at times. Or perhaps ‘fail’ is too strong, when the sense is rather not being ‘good-enough’ than active failing to provide care. An interesting counterpoint to pop-Jungian books.

Christopher P. Atwood, trans. The Secret History of the Mongols. London: Penguin, 2023 (13th C.). [33]

The substantial introduction and notes are very helpful; the translation itself sounds like it would be fun in grammar-translation class, but has an odd combination of stiffness and silliness that doesn’t quite work on the page (and that does not, from the notes, seem to be characteristic of the original) – perhaps slightly overworked.

Mark Cucuzzella. Run for Your Life. New York: Knopf, 2018. [32.d]

A bit too much focus on the value of running ‘barefoot’; also makes some interesting assumptions about his reader (i.e., that that they are middle-aged, male, and athletic, probably wanting to train for something), as indicated by the separate chapters on ‘special’ populations: children, the aged, and … women.

Georgette Heyer. The Reluctant Widow. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008 (1946). [31.d]

One must keep occupied on the treadmill.

Betty Neels. The ‘Best of’…. ca. 111 vols. Toronto: Harlequin, 2010s (1969–2001). [30.d]*

Reading in bulk, the experience is reduced to patterns, which are simple and consistent, although the surface details (the war, telephones in cars) vary. Despite their immature heroines and emotionally stunted (or horribly manipulative) heroes, they present an odd but somewhat comforting picture of the world. They are like jigsaw puzzles in that way, rather than literature; one wants things to fit, even if the result is rather banal.

February

Julien Benda. The Betrayal of the Intellectuals. trans. Richard Aldington. Boston: Beacon, 1955 (1927, 1928, 1930). [29]

I had thought that I had read this in high school, but I did not find any particular passage familiar. The overall ideas – the contempt for nationalist sentiment, the need for a ‘clerks’ disinterested in practicalities – were familiar, as was the urgency of the tone, but the work itself sparked no memory. The introduction by Herbert Read to this edition was, however, very interesting.

James Belich. The World the Plague Made. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2022. [28]*

Ambitious but unwise. A case study might have been more appropriate (and persuasive) than ‘intensive global history’. The overall editing was also peculiar, and the use of endnotes without a bibliography should be deprecated.

Frieda Fordham. An Introduction to Jung’s Psychology. 3rd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966 (1953). [27]

A helpful introduction to the key points, with a useful glossary and overview of the division of works in the Bollingen edition.

Elizabeth David. French Country Cooking. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966 (1951). [26]

‘Yet the potato can be a lovable vegetable’ (p. 150).

Lynne Segal. Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Ageing. London: Verso, 2013. [25.d]

A clear-headed sort of excursion on the topic, but there was a bit too much name-dropping. Perhaps I no longer know how to read cultural criticism, though, because it was much the same irritation I felt with Cruel Optimism – that the book was right without being itself good.

C.V. Wedgwood. The Thirty Years War. New York: NYRB Classics, 2005 (1938). [24]

A vivid overview of a busy period, somewhat snarky about personalities. Like Syme’s Roman Revolution, as much about the period in which it was written as its ostensible topic.

Steven Nadler. Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction. Camridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. [23]*

A clear, concise overview both of fairly current scholarship on the Ethics and of the tangled bits of the Ethics. Perhaps smooths things over too much, but still a helfpul vade mecum for the novice Spinozist.

Mariane Brooker. Intervals. London: Fitzcarraldo, 2024. [22.d]*

About grief and social/medical justice, using a collage-like approach to honor her subject. Interesting, but also irritating in that the books referenced and quoted seemed so commonplace (i.e., exactly the sort of books someone who is extremely online about ‘literature’ would be reading) that there was less of a chance for personality to come through.

Giordano Bruno. Cause, Principle and Unity, and Essays on Magic. trans. Richard J. Blackwell and Robert de Lucca. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998 (1584, 1588, 1590). [21]

Not at all what I was expecting; not quite as odd, not quite as interesting. But still odd, still interesting.

Philip Wheelwright. Heraclitus. New York: Atheneum, 1968. [20]

A nice little overview, although superseded by Kahn’s The Art and Thought of Heraclitus as an introduction and commentary. Occasionally snarky.

Carlo Ginzburg. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. trans. John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983 (1966). [19]

A bit loosey-goosey on an interesting topic; for the sake of the argument, a greater focus on chronology as such would have been helpful. But much food for thought.

Lauren Markham. Immemorial. Berkeley, CA: Transit Books, 2025. [18]

A vague gesture towards memorializing the climate crisis.

Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner, 1958 (1904–1905, 1920). [17]

More about spiritual parsimony than capitalism.

Benedict Spinoza. Theological–Political Treatise. trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel; edited by Jonathan Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007 (1970). [16]

‘The more one strives to deprive people of freedom of speech, the more obstinately they resist. I do not mean greedy, fawning people who have no moral character – their greatest comfort is to think about the money they have in the bank and fill their fat stomachs – but those whom a good upbringing, moral integrity and virtue have rendered freer’ (Ch. 20, ¶10; p. 255).

Sarah Moss. Ghost Wall. New York: FSG, 2018. [15.d]*

Chilling (timely and prescient).

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2017. [14.d]*

This book could have been timely and prescient, but it wasn’t (although the key issues highlighted haven’t gone away as such). The first two chapters and the final one were promising, but the remainder of the book was pap for the Atlantic Monthly set – lazily thought and poorly edited, with envy-tinged ‘local color’ (e.g., on yoga pants and high-end coffee) that detracted from the thesis of the book (that is, the author did not rise above her own aspirational stance). It needs no scholar come from the towers of academe to cry that ‘The ostensible democratization of consumerism obfuscated inequality and essentially lulled society into thinking everyone had a slice of the pie and would mask real issues of wealth disparity’ (11%) – not least because it is not particularly true (who, exactly, was ‘lulled’ by such nonsense?).

Lavinia Greenlaw. The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further. London: Faber & Faber, 2024. [13]

An interesting, interconnected excursion. Had a good deal of overlap with Laura Cumming’s Thunderclap, such that I wish I had read them with more of a buffer between them. Greenlaw’s book is broader (more expansive), but doubtless I will end up confusing their details.

Sarah Moss. My Good Bright Wolf. New York: FSG, 2024. [12]*

An actually interesting memoir about eating disorders (and negative self-talk). The second half assumes that the reader will have certain views on the author’s characteristics (i.e. will already have a sense of the author’s character/traits and how they should be ‘read’) and as such is weaker, but it is also stronger because more troubling. An imbalanced book that uses its imbalances to great effect.

January

Federico Falco. The Plains. trans. Jennifer Croft. London: Charco Press, 2024 (2020). [11]

Literary romance novel about a breakup; emphasis on the literary, although the psychological sophistication is fairly low. Has a sort of dreary cosmopolitanism to it that I found rather dull; I don’t go to Argentinian fiction to get recommendations to read Annie Dillard (by which I mean, I suppose, that I am clearly not the audience for this book).

Goce Smilevski. Conversation with Spinoza: A Cobweb Novel trans. Filip Korženski. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2006 (2002). [10]

Interesting to reread this after having read some Spinoza (which I had not done the first time I read it).

René Descartes. A Discourse on the Method. trans. Ian Maclean. Oxford: OUP, 2006 (ca. 1633). [9]

Descartes writes such cute books, but the limits of his view of the world can be a bit grating. One wants to urge him to check his privilege, but one senses that he wouldn’t listen anyway.

Steven Nadler. A Book Forged in Hell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2011. [8]

An approachable introduction to Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise and its philosophical and historical context; Nadler is able to break down complex issues into comprehensible terms, and if he sometimes over-simplifies, it is usually apparent when that is happening. A solid and helpful bibliography.

Thomas Hobbes. Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. ed. J.C.A. Gaskin. Oxford: OUP, 1994 (ca. 1640). [7]

‘For he that perceives that he hath perceived, remembers’ (p. 213).

Bruno Snell. The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature. trans. T.G. Rosenmeyer. New York: Dover, 1982 (1939–1945, 1953). [6]

The chapters on archaic Greek thought are the most memorable, while in pretty much everything thereafter 19th-century German thought crouches in any handy corner, ready to leap out and astonish the unwary reader. More concerned, ultimately, with legacies than with discovery, like most heirs.

C.G. Jung. The Undiscovered Self. trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2011 (1950, 1957, 1970, 1990). [5]

The first essay is a sort of Civilization and Its Discontents for Jungians, while the second essay is a nice, clear cut overview of Jungian analysis; rather wish I had found this volume earlier.

Laura Cumming. Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death. New York: Scribner, 2023. [4]*

The impression is one of placidity, but with rather a lot going on beneath the surface. It was always a pleasure to see what the next plate would be.

Stanislaw Lem. The Cyberiad. trans. Michael Kandel. London: Penguin, 2014 (1965, 1972, 1974). [3]

I think I started this two years ago and found it very slow going, perhaps because I expected it to be very serious. It is not (primarily) very serious. It savored of the past rather than the future; the sort of eighteenth-century feel to it – the mechanistic universe – was not something I had expected and took some getting used to.

R.G. Collingwood. The Idea of Nature. Oxford: OUP, 1970 (1945). [2]

Collingwood thinks far more clearly and writes more cogently than I could hope to, but it is peculiar that he takes god as a given, even when advocating a return to first principles.

Torquato Tasso. Tasso’s Dialogues: A Selection. trans. and edited by Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton. Berkeley, CA: Univ. California Press, 1982 (1580–1594). [1]

An unexpectedly charming selection of dialogues, mostly on social matters. Goes some way to redeeming the dialogue as a form.