To Float In The Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation With the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight, a hard to classify book in which a youngish poet examines the influence of an older poet on his own work, as well as the idea of influence in general, by the youngish (and still living) poet and visual artist [Terrance Hayes And, continuing the theme of "I've owned this book for almost four decades, time to actually read it" . . . . Either/Or, volumes One and Two, by Soren Kierkegaard. Judging by underlines and jottings in the margins, 1) I have started the book at least once, and 2) I did not understand it.
The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope- "He was one of those men whom success never mollified, whose enjoyment of a point gained always demanded some hoarse note of triumph from his own trumpet." A good read for the Age of Trump.
Pachinko ~ Min Jin Lee A multi-generational saga of Korean immigrants' life in 20th C. Japan. I thought this was excellent.
River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey a memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, whose previous memoir, Dead Man Walking was made into a movie and an opera, the latter of which is better IMO because Susan Sarandon is neither a mezzo-soprano nor for that matter an opera singer.
Going through The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque. I've read a lot of this and IMHO this one is not too depressive, though very representative of the hard times in Germany.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club - Charles Dickens "Don’t ask any questions. It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do."
Reading an autographed copy of Phoenixville Rising by Robb Cadigan. Happily, Phoenixville has recovered from the dark days depicted in the novel.
The second book I've read on the idea of the sub 2 hour marathon. I enjoyed Ed Caesar's Two Hours more than this one, as it's more about the various ways individuals are trying to break the barrier, but Maffetone's book has some very interesting insights into modern training techniques and how they might simultaneously be what got us into the 2:02-2:03 range and what is holding us back from getting under 2:00.
Reading Through the Night, an odd but interesting and not particularly scholarly book about book by retired literary scholar Jane Tompkins. Part illness memoir, part literary criticism, the key point of the book is a friend giving her a book, Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux chronicling theroux's friendship with the astonishingly dickish Nobel prize winning writer V.S. Naipaul, with side excursions to Henning Mankell and Ann Pratchett. I knew Tompkins when she joined the faculty at my grad school, earning $50,000 per year to teach one graduate seminar every four semesters. Thus, it was hard for me to like this book but it was better than I expected.
Isaac Asimov -- Foundation I received this Everyman's Library collection of the Foundation Trilogy as a Christmas gift last year and I finally picked it up last weekend. Seems strange that I've never read these. I'm quite enjoying the first book, which I'll finish today.
Exhalation : Stories ~ Ted Chiang Very good collection of SciFi short stories. I think I enjoyed "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" the best, but each story was intriguing.
This Is The Story of A Happy Marriage, which is actually a collection of essays, very few of which revolve around domestic issues but mostly are about writing and writers originally published in sources as diverse as Vogue to The Atlantic (the title essay was initially commissioned by Audible.com) by a novelist whose fiction I haven't read, Ann Patchett. I might have to rectify that.
Reading The Worst Journey in The World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It's a tale of Scott's tragic journey to the South Pole.
Foundation and Earth I just finished re-reading this which is the last Foundation book Asimov wrote chronologically. I think it is one of the weakest Asimov Foundation books but it did not stop me from re-reading it.
Circe ~ Madeline Miller I enjoyed this a lot. It helped I read The Odyssey last year. Miller does a great job working her tale in that classical milieu.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a really good, dense book by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber that originated when he noticed that the story in every single economics textbook about how money emerged out of the barter systems is, in reality, very bad anthropology. Did I mention it was dense? But it was also well written and pretty accessible.
I'm reading two books right now, both very evocative. Albert Murray -- The Seven League Boots Third of Murray's four semi-autobiographical "Scooter" novels. Thomas Hardy -- The Return of the Native
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, my second book by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, dedicated to exploring the rise of pointless labor. Parts of it sound like Mike Judge read this book before he made Office Space, except that movie predates the book by around 17 years. .