Currently Reading: Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity in Its Christological Context by Peter Hooton 📚
I am beyond excited for this. As I wrote here, Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity”—though mostly undefined and unfortunately titled—is pretty much where I’m at, but few seem to write faithfully about it. I have a good feeling about this one.
Quit reading (2021): The Will to See by Bernard-Henri Levy 📚
Couldn’t make it past the second chapter. It’s a shame that such a great title and subject is wasted, wasted, wasted on such self-absorbed rambling. If you want to know the most egotistical way to care about what goes on in the world, then I highly recommend this book.
Finished reading (2021): Light Perpetual: A Novel by Francis Spufford 📚
In many ways a very simple novel, though its grander picture is anything but. Some thoughts, here.
Finished reading (2002): A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries by Isabel Colegate 📚
A fascinating exploration of solitude, written, I think, in something quite close to the historical-travelogue voice of Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
An excerpt, and an example of that voice in Colegate, can be read here. And for one of the best, but lengthy, examples of West, here.
Currently Reading: Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan 📚
Snagged a copy at Country Bookshelf in Bozeman.
“…sly rhymes and syncopations lend an off-foot musicality to unnerving wisdom.” If that is not a perfect definition of poetry…
Finished reading (2021): The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 📚
Sobering, resonant, finite.
Finished reading (2021): Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman 📚
A very helpful book to start the year. Overarchingly good, even great; final chapters are a bit contradictory and dissatisfying, though the tools in the appendix are solid.
On the “attention economy” of social media et al.: “It’s essentially a giant machine for persuading you to make the wrong decisions about what to do with your attention, and therefore with your finite life…”
Yup.
Finished reading (2021): The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa 📚
“There is something about this mountain, this painting, this tree, we tend to say, and this something can make demands on us.”
Finished reading (2021): One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle 📚
Simply and purely enjoyable all the way through.
Finished reading (2021): The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber 📚
About as interesting as I’d hoped it would be; more disappointing than I expected. As MacIntyre put it, “Doubting is a more complex activity than some skeptics have realized.”