an eudæmonist › reading

2026

April

Jen Hatmaker. Awake: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2025. [67.d]*

An interesting memoir not so much about divorce as about working one’s way out of a dependence on systems that are no longer serving their purpose. Apparent emotional rawness with a suitably fragmentary structure, but unfortunately has a bit too much a redemptive arc to ring true. It is a sketch of a part of a life, with the dangling threads to other parts, but the lure of unnecessary tidiness was not resisted.

Antigone Kefala. Sydney Journals. Berkeley, CA; Transit Books, 2026 (2008). [66]

Atmospheric presentation of character and the passage of time. More interesting than a novel.

Zoe B. Wallbrook. History Lessons. New York: SohoCrime, 2025. [65.d]*

Read a fun review of this, and it is a cute campus novel, but identity tags are not the same as character development. Kind of reminded me of Pym as well as another campus mystery that I’ve forgotten the title of but didn’t particularly enjoy.

Wanda M. Morris. What You Leave Behind. New York: William Morrow, 2024. [64.d]*

Not sure that the legal real estate thriller is a genre I’m interested in pursuing.

Lady Nijō. A Tale Unasked. trans. Meredith McKinney. New York: Penguin, 2025 (13th C.). [63]

Doesn‘t matter how old autofiction is, I still don’t generally care for it. So many tear-sodden sleeves.

April

Andrea Dworkin. Woman Hating. New York: Picador, 2025 (1974). [62.d]*

‘Catatonia is the good woman’s most winning quality’ (15%). An interesting entry into the use and abuse of history. Perhaps not wrong in its big picture view (‘I wrote this book to find out why I am not free and what I can do to become free’, as the afterword notes), but the interpretation of the details does not bear scrutiny.

Egana Djabbarova. My Dreadful Body. trans. Lisa C. Hayden. New York: New Vessel Press, 2026 (2023). [61.d]*

Autofiction becomes autonomous, unruly fiction. ‘By condemning the bodies of strangers, they consoled their own bodies’ (68%). (NB, could not help but note the complete absence of Armenians; it was not relevant to the novel’s purpose, of course, but given the presence of Georgia as well as Baku, it kind of stood out and echoed the strategy of pretending what one does not approve of doesn’t exist that appears elsewhere in the book.)

Roger E. Backhouse. The Ordinary Business of Life: A History of Economics. Princeton, NJ: PUP, 2002. [60]*

A light overview; about halfway through I thought it seemed more like something from Pelican, and I checked the copyright page, and wouldn’t you know it – originally published by Penguin.

W.H. Auden. The Dyer’s Hand. New York: Knopf, 1989 (1948–1962). [59]

An impressive collection; not one essay was uninteresting, even if I wasn’t interested in the subject.

Susana Moreira Marques. Now and at the Hour of Our Death. trans. Julia Sanches. London: & Other Stories, 2015 (2012). [58]

A thoughtful, melancholy sort of book. Reminds me of the titles published by Fern Books.

Llewelyn Powys, ed. The Life and Times of Anthony à Wood. abridged from Andrew Clark’s edition. Oxford: OUP, 1961 (1632–95; 1891–1900; 1931). [57]

A sort of combined journal/memoir by crankiest man to live in Oxford (allowing that there has been a lot of competition for that title). Gossip, slander, nosiness, and university politics. An abridgement was more than sufficient, as a very little goes a very long way.

Jacques Ferrand. A Treatise on Lovesickness. trans. and ed. Donald A. Beecher & Massimo Ciavolella. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1990 (1610/1646). [56]

Very helpful introduction and notes on a book that’s a source for Burton; helps clarify the context for Burton’s third partition. Also has some peculiar remedies and preventatives for lovesickness, which is nice if you like tepid baths and salads with borage.

Mabel Seeley. The Listening House. New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2021 (1938). [55]

A light re-read. When I first read it I thought it was historical fiction and was impressed at the verisimilitude of the period banter. It is curious when things are like themselves.

Norman Cohn. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. rev. ed. Oxford: OUP, 1970 (1957). [54]*

An odd and interesting book, reacting as much against the Cold War as in response to its sources. An elegant use of juicy stories to shape an argument.

Carlo Ginsburg and Bruce Lincoln. Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf: A Classic Case in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2020 (1691/2, 1980/9, 2017). [53]

A bit of a patchwork book, scholarship as bricolage. Interesting, but not satisfying.

Kerry Greenwood. Cocaine Blues. Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen, 2012 (1989). [52.d]*

A diversion.

Zhuangzi. The Complete Writings. trans. Chris Fraser. Oxford: OUP, 2024 (4th–2nd C BCE). [51]

An odd book. Difficult to attend to directly. Might need to try again later, or try a different translation.

Ida Fink. A Scrap of Time. trans. Madeline Levine and Francine Prose. New York: Schocken Books, 1987. [50]

Absolutely eviscerating.

Maurice Ashley. England in the Seventeenth Century. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1961 (1952). [49]

Naturally covers the long seventeenth century (through 1714), but a chipper account of a busy period. ‘For the well-to-do it was a world well worth living in’ (p. 238).

R.H. Tawney. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1942 (1926, 1937). [48]

‘Infinity is attained by a process of subtraction’ (p. 178).

Sarah Hart Unger. Best Laid Plans. New York: Sourcebooks, 2025. [47]

Props to the editor who ensured that the content of the ebook sample would be interesting, even if the rest of the book kind of wasn’t. More informative about parasocial relationships (with the podcaster and her organizing ‘buddies’) than about planning as such.

March

Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins. The 36-Hour Day. 5th ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2011 (1981). [46]

‘The key to living with a mild cognitive impairment is the same as living with any of the other health problems of later life: do not panic, because for many people the condition will not worsen. Continue to enjoy life’ (p. 47)

[Kate Hamilton]. Mad Wife. Boston: Beacon, 2024. [45.d]*

‘…life has a way of teaching you the things you didn’t know you needed to learn, if you pay attention’ (5%). A difficult read. A memoir with neither a satisfactory hero nor an adequate villain – much like day-to-day life, I suppose.

Carrie M. Lane. More than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn’t Working. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2024. [44.d]*

An interesting avenue for discussing labor and commodities, with a touch of feminism.

William James. On Vital Reserves. New York: Henry Holt, 1911 (1899, 1900). [43]

How can one go wrong with the ‘Gospel of Relaxation’?

Allison Daminger. What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2025. [42.d]*

Chosen after reading one too many contemptuous complaints about the failure of men to take on cognitive labor in the household; surprise! it’s more complicated than that. The sections on the difficulty of measuring work – physical, emotional, and cognitive – were I think the most interesting. The long shadow of behaviorism cast across the household, along with some dubious social history.

S.T. Bindoff. Tudor England. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1950. [41]

An engaging, affectionate overview of a complicated era.

Matthew Bell. Melancholia: The Western Malady. Cambridge: CUP, 2014. [40]*

Links the prevalence of melancholia with prioritization of self-consciousness. A useful corrective to some views, but (even) more cross-cultural comparison is probably needed.

Sarah E. Bond. Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire. New Haven: Yale UP, 2025. [39]

A thought-provoking stroll through Roman history; the BMCR review eloquently summarizes the book’s pleasures and pitfalls. Good to read alongside Radical Antiquity and The Roman Revolution, albeit in different ways.

I.M. Lewis. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1971. [38]

Rather stronger emphasis on shamanism than expected.

Maria Stepanova. The Disappearing Act. trans. Sasha Dugdale. New York: New Directions, 2026 (2024). [37]

Charming and sly.

Christopher Hill. The Century of Revolution: 1603–1714. Ediburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1961. [36]*

A breezy overview of a turbulent century. Less cogently focused than The World Turned Upside Down, but helpful in giving the general picture. The structure (with different sections on key periods, each divided into chapters each focusing on politics, economics, and religion) was somewhat odd and gave an oddly monotonous effect that in some ways concealed the changes it was meant to highlight.

Anthony Grafton. Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2023. [35]

An interesting contrast with Hadass’s book on Richard Napier, as well as an alternative to the views on alchemy and alchemists in some of the books I read last year; a bit easy to lose sight of the historical context for the figures, though, but that could just be the result of my poor attention at the moment.

Ofer Hadass. Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England: Richard Napier’s Medical Practice. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2018. [34]

Napier’s practice seems to be closer to the religion and magic end of the spectrum, but his approach to developing a case history is certainly interesting.

Robert Burton. The Anatomy of Melancholy. edited by Angus Gowland. London: Penguin, 2021 (1621). [33]

Be not solitary. Be not idle.

Herbert Marcuse. An Essay on Liberation. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1972 (1969). [32]

Builds on One-Dimensional Man; a bit mid-century mod-ish.

February

Michel Foucault. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage, 1994 (1963, 1973). [31]

The combination of sharp detail with history done in broad strokes can be frustrating. My own lack of knowledge means I can neither fully understand nor adequately dispute, but while acute, it doesn’t feel quite right.

Nicholas Orme and Margaret Webster. The English Hospital, 1070–1570. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1995. [30]*

Overview of the history of early English hospitals; notable for the small size, politics involved, and patient bodies (leper houses vs acute care vs essentially long-term care facilities for patrons and/or the poor). The regional study of early hospitals in southwestern England, which takes up the second half of the book, was also quite interesting, but less relevant to my immediate interests.

Natalie Bauer-Lechner. Recollections of Gustav Mahler. trans. Dika Newlin. Cambridge: CUP, 1980 (1923). [29]

A bit naive and strangely charming. Mahler seems unpleasant, but Ms Bauer-Lechner was definitely a fan.

E.J. Hobsbawm. Bandits. 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1985 (1969). [28]

Outlaw heroes and the societies that love them.

Julie Holland. Weekends at Bellevue. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. [27.d]*

‘You can come from the Port Authority bus terminal, or you can come from Trump Tower. Bellevue, like insanity itself, is the great equalizer’ (87%). A breezy book, given the subject matter, but affords room for interpretation.

Sheila Hamilton. All the Things We Never Knew. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2015. [26.d]*

Hard to read, but lures one in. Open to criticism at many levels (style, structure, philosophy, ethics, etc.), but a rare not-quite-caretaker memoir.

Wojciech Tochman. Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry. trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2022 (2019). [25]

Mental health, generational trauma, and genocide. Interesting, but not uplifting.

Alfred Einstein. A Short History of Music. trans. Eric Blom et al. New York: Viking, 1954 (1934, 1954). [24]

An overview that perhaps has too good an opinion of itself and places rather too much importance on ‘manliness’ and ‘virility’ in music; still – amusing.

Jennifer Radden. Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression. Oxford: OUP, 2009. [23]*

Covers historical and contemporary approaches to melancholia, and brings in the DSM, which is interesting. Some chapters more relevant to my interests than others, but that is generally the way with essay collections.

Augusto Monterroso. The Gold Seekers. trans. Jessica Sequeira. Seattle: Sublunary, 2023 (1993). [22]

Memory, meaning, politics, and childhood. Light, but not flimsy.

Ulrich von Hutten et al. On the Eve of the Reformation: “Letters of Obscure Men”. trans. Francis Griffin Stokes. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964 (ca. 1515). [21]

There are some amusing bits, but parody/satire doesn’t always age well.

Andrew Gant. Five Straight Lines: A History of Music. London: Profile Books, 2021. [20]*

A breezy, enjoyable overview of the history of Western music; some parts were breezier than others (notably the last chapter), but overall a good general introduction.

Nicholas Tyacke, ed. The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. IV: Seventeenth-Century Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. [19]*

Picked this up because Tyacke’s chapter was mentioned in Gowland’s book on Burton, and the book as a whole is helpful background; some chapters definitely more interesting than others (the one on medicine was particularly illuminating). Only skimmed the chapters covering post-Burton periods, although they were also helpful in providing background for the political/social atmosphere. Praise be to inter-library loans.

Vivian Conroy. Miss Ashford Investigates. 6 vols. New York: One More Chapter, 2022–2025. [18.d]*

Cute, but the portrayal of the insecurity/uncertainty of the main character is ultimately unconvincing. One must allow a sort of blurred focus in one’s imagining of the narrative.

Sophie Scott. You Are Not Alone in This. London: Watkins, 2025. [17]*

A bit too soothing, but as the purpose seems to be talking down folks from their anxiety, that makes sense.

Christopher B. Zeichmann. Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings. Las Vegas: Pluto Press, 2025. [16]*

If not as exciting as the subtitle makes it sound, still an enjoyable romp through the ancient anarchist fringe.

Daniele Del Giudice. A Fictional Inquiry (Lo stadio di Wimbledon). trans. Anne Milano Appel. New York: New Vessel Press, 2025 (1983). [15.d]*

‘They speak an unadulterated dialect as a form of resistance’ (10%); the entire book kind of seemed like a form of resistance.

Paul Kingsnorth. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. New York: Thesis, 2025. [14]*

The idiotic gender-essentialist chapter really throws a wrench into his credibility as a thinker. Anxiety and fear should not be mistaken for thinking.

Melody Moezzi. Haldol and Hyacinths. New York: Avery, 2013. [13.d]*

‘Telling someone who is manic that she’s manic is like telling a dictator that he’s a dick. Neither is going to admit it, and both are willing to torture you to prove their points’ (5%).

Donald A. Schön. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books, 1983. [12]

A near-Heideggerian love for the hyphenated, but with a Schumacherian hopefulness about the possibilities of human endeavor – namely, that systems could, conceivably, work towards a questioning, open approach to solving ‘problems’, which in themselves do not necessarily have to boil down to a desire for efficiency and profit (i.e., that people could, perhaps, work together to produce actual, non-destructive human flourishing) – but presented in such a way that the reader could, if desired, focus solely on the efficiencies introduced by ‘reflection-in-action’.

January

Raymond Coppinger and Mark Feinstein. How Dogs Work. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2015. [11]*

An interesting topic (i.e., the traits of working dogs), but an unsatisfactory presentation.

William O. Douglas. Points of Rebellion. New York: Vintage, 1970. [10]

‘If, with its stockpile of arms, it resolves to suppress the dissenters, America will face, I fear, an awful ordeal’ (97). The previous sentence give a fair sense of the book, but it was this note on the copyright page that caught my eye: ‘A portion of this book appeared in Playboy in somewhat different form’. The mind boggles.

Benjamin Farrington. Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1949. [9]

A breezy Marxist overview of the history of Greek scientific thought.

Jacques Derrida. The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret. 2nd ed. trans. David Wills. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2008 (1995, 1999). [8]

Really makes Kierkegaard appealing.

Becky Chambers. Monk and Robot. New York: Tor, 2025 (2021, 2022). [7]

A quietly (perhaps unrealistically) optimistic speculation. Curiously remote, even as it clearly aimed for coziness. Perhaps a television mindset, the coziness viewed through glass and separate from the reader’s life.

Jenny Erpenbeck. The End of Days. trans. Susan Bernofsky. New York: New Directions, 2014 (2012). [6.d]*

Forestalls criticisms by asserting them; structurally playful, but as a serious game. Didn’t much care for it.

Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog). Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2017. [5]

A nice little book at the intersection of history, politics, and science, with cute pictures of foxes. Occasionally hagiographic, but no one is perfect.

[Cicero]. How to Grieve. trans. & ed. Michael Fontaine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2022. [4]

Odd formatting choices (inverted question/exclamation marks, little musical notes [🎵] to indicate poetry, shaded boxes, bullet lists) and anachronistic word choices (bullets and zaps) were interesting in the way they emphasized Fontaine’s thesis about the authorship of the treatise. The oddities of register and tone were perhaps less forgivable – translations that would make a piece come alive in a classroom setting may not be the best approach for print. Still, worth reading, with caution.

Marc Bekoff. Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2018. [3]

A useful overview of canine ethology (with a focus on dog parks), but occasionally a bit glib, as is unfortunately a bit too common from late career researchers addressing a popular audience.

Michael Taussig. Corpse Magic: Echoes Active in the Slayer-Slain Nexus. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2025. [2]

Not at all what I expected, but an engaging personal exploration of cop and gang murders in Colombia and the United States. The inclusion of drawings by the author was an interesting choice.

Jan Struther. Mrs. Miniver. New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1990 (1939). [1]

A soothing book; the vignettes feel more essay-ish than fictional. In the manner of Rose Macaulay’s Personal Pleasures.