JUST READ

The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb

This book by a Harvard primatologist is a sustained and persuasive argument for a more ecological view of the universe and our place in it. I highly recommend it.

Get The Arrogant Ape here: https://a.co/d/01g0LIxc

MARCH 2026 READINGS

Last month's readings ran the gamut, from first-time reads to books I have revisited over and over.

Cassidy's history of capitalism through an exploration of its various critics, from the Luddites to (of course) Marx and Piketty, provides deep perspective for anyone aspiring to be more than a cog in the big wheel of commerce.

Get Capitalism And Its Critics here: https://a.co/d/09sOsDp9

Westover's Educated was a real page-turner, made all the more head-shaking because it's all true. Westover's revelations about her family are leavened by her clear-eyed self-awareness. It's the best kind of memoir.

Get Educated here: https://a.co/d/00KF04ZK

I have had the novel, Fives and Twenty-Fives, on my nightstand for a re-read for a good while now, and it really stands up. Pitre's narrative moves across a swath of characters and viewpoints, all of whom feel very authentic.

Get Fives and Twenty-Fives here: https://a.co/d/0bXi5xCj

Charles Bock's Beautiful Children made a big splash both nationally and here locally when it came out in 2008, and I wondered if it would hold up. I'm happy to report that it really does. It's a sublime work of fiction, the kind of story that rings scarily & heartbreakingly true. Though much of its subject matter & setting seems prurient, Bock wonderfully humanizes even the most traumatic incidents. This is a novel that haunts me, not least because it really nails my hometown.

Get Beautiful Children here: https://a.co/d/07PtKlD3

Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a brilliant, contemporary reworking of the stoic viewpoint. Manson does more than just make a standup routine out of ancient Greek wisdom; he merely uses the punchline of this title to draw readers into a more considered discussion, complete with modern examples. I know far too many people who could take a few lessons from this book, myself included.

Get The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck here: https://a.co/d/00xo9c6A

Harry Fagel's Bellowing At The Volcano is his latest poetry collection, and it's a truly monumental book. Fagel's work is a lyrical autobiography, a kind of secular Pilgrim's Progress, rendered in a unique & passionate voice.

Get Bellowing At The Volcano here: https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/bellowing-at-the-volcano/

Soul Brothers is Rodney Lee's followup to Along These Trails, and it tells the story, from one poem to the next, of Lee's upbringing. Drawing analogies from Greek myth and pop culture, this collection is Rodney Lee's origin story, and it's amazing -- yet another artistic example of the universal shining through the specific.

Get Soul Brothers here: https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/soul-brothers/

FEBRUARY READINGS

 

JANUARY READINGS

 

A Description of Humanity

 They kill.

They breed.

They burn.

They pave.

- a description of humanity by the rest of the Earth.

December Readings

 DECEMBER READINGS

…started with another physics primer, this one by Helen Czerski, a physicist who uses ordinary phenomena like popcorn and coffee and ketchup to explain how the universe works. And, since my understanding of the underlying mathematics is largely metaphorical anyway, I always enjoy books like this.

Next was a revisit to Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, after it was mentioned by a friend. I had appreciated it when I first read it years ago, but, wow, this time it really hit me. What a masterpiece.

Then I dove headlong into the latest thriller by Tod Goldberg. The man knows how to entertain, and here Goldberg imagines a truly novel setup for a caper whose repercussions ripple across entire communities. Sure, there are lives at stake, but Only Way Out is also hilarious. I turned every page either laughing out loud or shaking my head ruefully. Highly recommended.

Michael Harriot’s retelling of American history with a focus on African-American culture is the dirty-mouthed cousin to The 1619 Project, and I consider both books a necessary antidote to the kind of washed-out mythology that permeates American discourse, especially at the street-level, low-info-voter level where I live and work.

Then I read Freaks of a Feather after realizing that I somehow own a copy. I do not remember ever purchasing it, but owning a book that I have not read makes me itch. Turns out that Tellessen’s memoir of his time in the U.S. Marines is both comprehensive and idiosyncratic, with a deeply authentic & ultimately winning voice.

Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff is more than an account of learning how to play competitive poker. It’s also an examination of the ways in which chance rules our lives and how an understanding of this fact can be empowering. I hear she’s working with Goldberg on a TV series based in a Las Vegas casino. I have high hopes.

I leavened my previous 2 readings with another small novel by Denis Johnson. Nobody Move was originally serialized in Playboy magazine, and it’s the best kind of slumming for an artist like Johnson. It’s a raunchy screwball caper that, like Goldberg’s book, is powered by crisp dialogue, and I enjoyed every line.

Power and Progress, along with Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc., are sobering examinations of the ways in which capital once again finds insidious ways to exploit labor, through outright deception and brainwashing. Both books offer solutions to the current stranglehold that billionaire autocrats have on world power, but I’m not all that optimistic that mere votes can overpower money.

It’s just as sobering to ponder the history of tuberculosis that popular novelist John Green has published. Green is an engaging storyteller, expertly moving from a cruising altitude to street-level and back again. TB has been with us since at least the beginnings of what we call civilization. Yet, despite knowing what it would take to eradicate it (and actually possessing the means), our species chooses other priorities instead. If I weren’t already jaded, Everything Is Tuberculosis might push me over the edge.

I ended the month by revisiting two old favorites. The first was Driven, by James Sallis, his sequel to the novel which spawned a really fun movie starring Ryan Gosling. Sallis has always been a kind of guilty pleasure of mine, executing genre tropes with a poet’s sensibility and a serious economy of movement. The second fave was A Confederacy of Dunces, a comic masterpiece whose origin story is every bit as interesting and poignant as the story it actually tells. And the story of Ignatius Reilly is a whopper.

All of these books are recommended, though, again, I must remind you: Your mileage will vary.

NOVEMBER READINGS

...started with more about Gregory Berns's research into animal cognition. And the more I learn, the more I move towards veganism. I'm not there yet, but I'm close.

And Jordan Harper's crime fiction is always both entertaining & disturbing in all the right ways, as is anything by Jason Pargin, whose latest novel is also hilarious, with a plot that does not disappoint. And Pargin writes absolutely hilarious dialogue.

I always return to my patron saint Vonnegut, whose aesthetic & worldview is endlessly rejuvenating in a way that the delusions of religion are not. And God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is Vonnegut's most direct indictment of those who would put property over people.

Finding out there's a streaming series based on it drove me back to Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, which is a satirical novel disguised as a screenplay that also manages to be heartfelt reckoning of generational difference. It’s a masterpiece that deserved the National Book Award.

Then someone told me about the audio version of Hawking's Theory of Everything, which is supposed to be in the author's own voice. But, of course, that voice is actually the computer-generated one developed for Hawking. It's both eerie and appropriate. I'll get into my thoughts on audio versus text at another time. Suffice it to say that I recognize that they are very different ways to experience a text, with very different results. And, yeah, more people need to develop at least an appreciation for cosmology, the real stuff backed by math & observation, not the make-believe stuff.

Eruption is a bit of candy with a cool backstory of one consummate entertainer finishing the work of another. I'm sure there will be a movie adaptation.

Proof is an important exploration of all the different ways we consider something to be proven: scientifically, legalistically, rhetorically and politically. That it was written by a mathematician is only fitting. I learned a lot.

Jill Lepore's book-length investigation into one of the weirdest literary figures of the 20th century is itself exceedingly weird. How could it be otherwise? Joe Gould was a deeply-troubled and troubling man who somehow managed to convince a lot of very accomplished people that he had a secret, unrealized gift. Or did he?

I rounded out November with some classic hardboiled fiction from Dashiell Hammett. It posits a jaded antihero manipulating his way through a dog-eat-dog city, as crimes and bodies start to pile up from the very first page.