Welp, we are in the home stretch of the summer, and I'm ready for school to start (although our fall activity schedule is a little more chaotic than I would like because Birdie was really set on being in the fall play at school and the boys are running cross country. Oy). Honestly, the summer has been okay. The nasty hot/humid weather really only started last week; there were quite a few days this summer where I had windows open a lot of the day--that never happens! Although I will say it has been a doozy since last week. I guess the weather was saving it all until now.
My kids and husband went to overnight church camp the first week in August and I had seven glorious days all to myself. I read, watched a bunch of independent films, wrote a bit, and generally kept my own schedule for the first time in years. It was a bit of a hard reentry when they returned--why do they need feeding so often?--but we'll get there again, I guess. One possibly fruitful bit of that week was that I think I'm working my way around a writing project, although I'm not sure it will be anything yet. Considering I thought perhaps I only had two books in me, it is nice to have the sense that there might be more to explore. But we'll see. It might fizzle once I figure out what it is I'm working with. I've had enough false starts since finishing All This Without You to be cautious.
I said in my last post I've been reading a lot this year, and decided it might be time to write about some of it. So, on to the reading stack!
From the top down: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman; The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilcrist; Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington; The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer; Clanlands Almanac by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish (not pictured: Way Points by Sam Heughan); Lost in Wonder by Esther DeWaal; The Soviet Century by Karl Schlögel; Dominion by Tom Holland; Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker; The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich; (not pictured) Solovyov and Larionov by Eugene Vodolazkin
There was also a trio of Cold War spy histories by Ben Macintyre on my Kindle; each book read like a novel and was thoroughly enjoyable. Agent Sonya reminded me a lot of the film Red Joan; both stories cover similar histories over a similar time period, so that shouldn't have surprised me. I started a fourth one, In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum but haven't been as gripped by it, even through their narrative styles are similar. I tried to read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (my second attempt!) but gave it up as a bad job about half way through. I was bored out of my skull and the author was only at 1936! I just couldn't see reading another 200 pages.
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| Unrelated, but we got a lot of raspberries from my garden this year! |
The Trueman, McGilcrist, Henrich, and Harrington books all covered similar ground from different perspectives, although I would say the Henrich book really bogged down on specialist material in a lot of places. The book could have been trimmed considerably for a general audience. McGilcrist is a paradigm shifter, and he recently published the two-volume follow up that is twice the length of the first. My husband is reading that one now but I'm not sure I'm going to tackle it. The first one was very meaty and good, but I'm not sure how much more I'd get out of the other two volumes. We'll see. There are lots of interviews with McGilcrist on his work on YouTube, so if you don't have time for an 800 page book, you can get the Cliffs Notes version there.
I gave a lecture on Soviet communism to the seniors at my kids' school during the last week of school in June and revisited Yuri Slezkine to prepare for it, so between that and the nearly 900 page Schlögel, it's felt like a whole lotta USSR here the last few months. I need to set that aside for a while, even if there is a great new Gary Saul Morson book that my husband loved. It will still be there when I'm ready to tackle it. Tom Holland's Persian Fire was a birthday gift last month so I'm looking forward to reading that one. Dominion was a great read. I highly recommend this interview with Paul Kingsnorth if you are interested in the topic. I read the book on the strength of that chat.
Boo wanted me to read Why We Drive aloud for his night time story this month, so it has been fun to revisit that book. Matthew B. Crawford is such an amazing thinker and writer and a keen observer of the times we live in. (He has a Substack now, although I don't have time to read much of it!) I've realized in the past months that I could spend all my time reading excellent Substack authors, but it doesn't feel like a good use of brain space or time. I think differently through physical books and don't retain information as well when I read on a screen, so it is better for me to be mostly analog. What writing I've done this month has been long hand as I find that a better way to start the process.
There were a few forgettable novels along the way as well as some fiction re-reads, but it has been a good reading season. I've got some books on hold at the library that should keep me for the next bit.
