Reading

Books: on balance, I'm for them. These are most of the ones I've read since 2007 or so. The star ratings correspond more closely to "how worth my time this felt" than "how good this is."

Years | Authors

2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007

Beloved
Morrison Toni

Beloved is every bit as heart-rending, beautiful, and erudite as I expected. It’s incredibly brilliant from a technical, writerly standpoint. I also appreciated its weaponization of the gothic novel genre for racial justice and black feminist purposes. In the gothic novel of the 18th/19th centuries, we often see captured women... more >>

19 Nov 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Haraway Donna

Haraway is someone I turn to to remind me what reality is like. In this book she continues her journey from feminist cyborg to Significant Otherness to compost-human ecologies, and it does not disappoint! more >>

06 Nov 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

A History of Bangladesh
William van Schendel

I appreciated the thoughtful and de-colonizing approach the author took to Bangladesh’s complex cultural and geopolitical histories. more >>

05 Nov 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

The Issue At Hand: Essays On Buddhist Mindfulness Practice
Gil Fronsdal

A thoughtful and practical guide to American Buddhist mindfulness and meditation practices more >>

21 Oct 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir
Haruki Murakami

I don’t often re-read books, but this was a good choice. Murakami’s “running novelist” memoir turns out to also be a meditation on aging. This is not something I picked up on when I first read it, even though it wasn’t all that long ago. Murakami discusses his simultaneous growth... more >>

21 Oct 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu, Ursula K. Le Guin

As a foundational text of human spirituality, philosophy, and politics, The Tao Te Ching is obviously worth reading on its own merits. Let alone that it’s beautiful and succinct. One thing I found especially interesting in reading this translation by noted badass Ursula K. Le Guin is that, as she... more >>

Made me think about:
- The Meditations: A New Translation (Revised)
- Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis
- Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

12 Oct 2023
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪