august

2025 Reading Club

A few things for me this year are reading more than last year. Another promise I'm going to keep is cutting down everything that isn't useful to me. QED by Feynman is a book I really want to read, but it does nothing for my career at this point. You might argue neither does "Rome and Persia". You're incorrect, it helps me work on my fictional book. Last year, I had the resolution of reading 3 books a month. These books were relatively easy reads, though I didn't log it anywhere (despite my attempts). In the following article, I aim to pre-emptively log it. That never works, if I am being honest, but I'll try.

Another thing is I generally dislike short reads, I prefer long, winding books, and 8-hour long audio books. However, I am changing that. Along side whatever I'm reading here, I'll also be following and hopefully attending Short Story Symposium in SF.

January and February will be months to wrap up previous reading. This is tricky because I have War of Kings here - and I think it'll be my last Sanderson book for a while. Excellent author, but I want to focus on tougher literature. I may keep Stormlight Archives on the backburner.

January and February -

  1. Beowulf - I finished a rendition of it called "Eaters of the dead" by my favorite author Crichton, so this is a must.
  2. Klandestine Relationships - excellent book by Daryl Davis.
  3. Kitchen Confidential by Bourdain - may DNF though it changed my life
  4. The consolation of philosophy
  5. Cathedral and the Bazaar
  6. World War Z
  7. Persia and Rome (this is tough)
  8. Lost Battles

March

  1. "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" - Nagel (22 pages)
  2. "Poor Economics" - Banerjee & Duflo (260 pages)
  3. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" - Quine (64 pages)
  4. "On Bullshit" (<100 pages) by Harry Frankfurt

April

While I (like many other 20-something Men during the pandemic) have dabbled in Stoicism, it has been from a completely incorrect perspective. You could argue there are no incorrect perspectives when examining philosophy, but I was too biased, too full of ideas, too arrogant. Graduate school humbled me, so I begin on this journey again with less opinions and an open mind. This month will be dedicated to foundational classic Western philosophy. Shorter reads since I may be busy.

  1. "Apology" by Plato - Socrates' compelling defense speech before his execution

  2. "The Enchiridion" by Epictetus - A concise handbook of Stoic wisdom

  3. "Meno" by Plato - Classic exploration of virtue and knowledge
  4. "On the Shortness of Life" by Seneca - Meditation on time and meaning
  5. "Crito" by Plato - Discussion of justice and civic duty
  6. "The Last Question" by Asimov - a bit different, and I may burn through this earlier.

May

  1. "Language, Truth and Logic" - Ayer (160 pages)

  2. "Roadside Picnic" - Strugatsky Brothers (145 pages)

  3. "An Introduction to Utilitarianism" by Richard Yetter Chappell, Darius Meissner, and William MacAskill

June

  1. "Personal Identity" - Parfit (80 pages)

  2. "Solaris" - Lem (204 pages)

  3. "The Strategy of Conflict" - Schelling (260 pages)

  4. "Night" - Wiesel (120 pages)

July

  1. "The Crying of Lot 49" - Pynchon (183 pages)

  2. "Reasons and Persons" by Derek Parfi (~500 pages)

  3. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" - MLK (9 pages)

September

  1. "Your Inner Fish" - Shubin (229 pages)

  2. "The View from Nowhere" - Nagel (180 pages)

  3. "The Economic Consequences of Peace" - Keynes (196 pages)

October

  1. "Society Must Be Defended" - Foucault (178 pages)

  2. "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus

  3. "Does God Exist" by Moody

  4. "Abortion" by Bringsjord

November

  1. "Notes from Underground" - Dostoevsky (136 pages)

  2. "Life Ascending" - Nick Lane (196 pages)

  3. "The Stranger" - Camus (123 pages)

  4. "The Use of Knowledge in Society" - Hayek (48 pages)

December

  1. "The Death of the Author" - Barthes (12 pages)

  2. "Contact" by Carl Sagan

  3. "Weapons of the Weak" - Scott (188 pages)

I'll leave out the rest for now. There are books such as Flowers for Algernon and Canticle for Leibowitz that may make their way in here.

There are also other excellent works by Baldwin, Hume and Kant that I may also switch to at some point.