Stuff I've Been Reading August 2019
Books Read
It has been a few months since I posted on this blog. But I do keep track of my reading and book acquisition privately in a journal and as a google doc, and I do post my reading publicly on goodreads.
Obviously, I read a good amount in audiobook form. And, often, i like to do immersive reading — reading the book in a print form and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I find that I get a lot out of a book that way; I find myself less distracte4d. My mind wanders less. Although I am also less likely to stop and write down notes in my journal. And writing in my journal is the most immersive method of reading I do.
About specific books. I am glad that I read Thompson’s Blood in the Water, although it could have been a little shorter, at least in my opinion.
I was inspired to read When You Reach Me based on Jia Tolentino‘s recommendation in the New York Times. When asked about her favorite book no one has heard of she had this to say about Stead’s novel:
And continuing on with Tolentino’s point that one should pay attention to children’s fiction, I highly recommend The Girl Who Could not Dream. It is a real adventure story with nightmares gone wrong, among other things.
Where The Crawdads Sing was good. It was not quite the phenomenon I though it might be given how it has jumped off the shelves at bookstores. Or at least it has sold well by 2019 standards. I liked the Witch Elm and read it based on a New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Tana French. The trouble with the book, at.least in my opinion, is that the protagonist is not likeable enough. And it takes a long time to get to something you might call page turning. Still I can see why some might love this book.
Aristotle is a lifelong project. His writing is among the list of towering figures of human civilazation that one can spend a lifetime studying with a true sense of satisfaction. But, his ideas are, without a doubt simultaneously profound and difficult. Lear does an excellent job clarifying for the non-specialist.
- The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst (audiobook and library hardcover)
- Blood in the Water: The Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy by Heather Ann Thompson (audiobook)
- The Witch Elm by Tana French (audiobook and ebook)
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (audiobook and ebook)
- Aristotle: the desire to understand by Jonathan Lear
- The Basic Works of Aristotle
- When You Reach My by Rebecca Stead
- The Pentagon’s Brain: An uncensored history of DARPA, America’s top-secret military research agency by Annie Jacobson (audiobook)
- Folsom Untold: The strange story of Johnny Cash’s greatest album by Danny Robbins (audiobook)
- Independence Hall by Sandra Steen and Susan Steen
- The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst (audiobook)
- Delirium by Lauren Oliver (audiobook)
- Solitary:Unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement.My story of transformation and hope by Albert Woodfox (audiobook)
- Truman by David McCullough (audiobook)
- Encounters at the Heart of the World: A history of the Mandan people by Elizabeth A. Fenn (audiobook)
- Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (audiobook)
- Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (audiobook)
- The Geography of Lost Things by Jessica Brody (audiobook)
- The Second Mountain: The quest for a moral life by David Brooks (ebook)
- Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (ebook)
It has been a few months since I posted on this blog. But I do keep track of my reading and book acquisition privately in a journal and as a google doc, and I do post my reading publicly on goodreads.
Obviously, I read a good amount in audiobook form. And, often, i like to do immersive reading — reading the book in a print form and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I find that I get a lot out of a book that way; I find myself less distracte4d. My mind wanders less. Although I am also less likely to stop and write down notes in my journal. And writing in my journal is the most immersive method of reading I do.
About specific books. I am glad that I read Thompson’s Blood in the Water, although it could have been a little shorter, at least in my opinion.
I was inspired to read When You Reach Me based on Jia Tolentino‘s recommendation in the New York Times. When asked about her favorite book no one has heard of she had this to say about Stead’s novel:
Rebecca Stead’s “When You Reach Me” won the Newbery Medal, so it’s certainly not unheralded, but everyone tunes me out when I recommend it, since it was written for kids. Their mistake! A really good middle-grade novel — and this book, a “Wrinkle in Time”-esque mystery set on the Upper West Side in the late 1970s, is a phenomenal one — will supersede a lot of contemporary fiction in terms of economy, lucidity and grace.I like Tolentino’s attitude that one should take the books in the children’s section as just as worthy as those on the other side of the library or bookstore. With that in mind, the book Independence Hall did not win any major awards, but I was thinking about a trip to old Philadelphia and wanted some background knowledge about the first and second continental congress. This book served the need better than the history books in the adult section of the public library. At first I thought I would look at the encyclopedia entry, but my library no longer has print encyclopedias. So much of my childhood I was about to get an answer to my question in my family’s Collier’s Encyclopedia. Is bing or google the same?
And continuing on with Tolentino’s point that one should pay attention to children’s fiction, I highly recommend The Girl Who Could not Dream. It is a real adventure story with nightmares gone wrong, among other things.
Where The Crawdads Sing was good. It was not quite the phenomenon I though it might be given how it has jumped off the shelves at bookstores. Or at least it has sold well by 2019 standards. I liked the Witch Elm and read it based on a New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Tana French. The trouble with the book, at.least in my opinion, is that the protagonist is not likeable enough. And it takes a long time to get to something you might call page turning. Still I can see why some might love this book.
Aristotle is a lifelong project. His writing is among the list of towering figures of human civilazation that one can spend a lifetime studying with a true sense of satisfaction. But, his ideas are, without a doubt simultaneously profound and difficult. Lear does an excellent job clarifying for the non-specialist.
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