The reading pile

Here.

Like any good creative soul, I have books I have not read yet. (What would it be like to finish reading a book and have to go buy/borrow your next book because there’s not a stack by your bed?)

Technically, I do not have a stack of books by my bed. I have two stacks of books by my bed, plus a smattering of books on a shelf nearby, plus a stack by my chair in the living room. But let’s not talk about those.

Let’s talk about the Main Stack and how it got that way. All of these books have been added in the last three or four months, so they represent current interests or assignments.

The Four-Fold Way and The Tar Baby: a global history come from work I did with Mike Funt in designing his online Sacred Clown class. He suggested both titles. Tar Baby is interesting, but lower on my list. I’m thinking about using Four-Fold Way as a journaling opportunity: a TASK AVOIDANCE strategy.

Piranesi and The Mirror & The Light are both because I’ve read the authors’ previous work (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies, respectively) and am really looking forward to these.

I don’t remember who recommended The Spell of the Sensuous, but I began reading it and really liking it. The problem was that I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass as the same time for an online group discussion, and two sociological/scientific examinations of our relationship to the natural world were hard to keep separate in my head.

Veritas and Land were well-reviewed and are about topics that interest me, viz., the vagaries of systemic religious belief (added bonus: academia!), and the social construct of ‘property,’ which is especially relevant to me after finishing Braiding Sweetgrass. (Also, the author of Land, Simon Winchester, wrote The Professor and the Madman, an excellent book. [Haven’t seen the movie…])

Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices caused a big splash pre-pub, and I haven’t read a lot of artistic soul-baring recently, so that’s why that book is there.

If on a winter’s night a traveler is not new; I pulled it from the shelf after being reminded of it. I need to reread it, and I may need to buy a new copy; this one is coming apart, which is actually a deft metaphor.

Both Pleasure Activism and Emergent Strategy were recommended during the online book thing for Braiding Sweetgrass. I was intrigued enough to order them; we’ll see if they’re relevant to my interests.

And finally, the book I am actually reading next: The Luck of the Bodkins, by the immortal P.G. Wodehouse. If you are not familiar with The Master’s work, you need to change that posthaste. He is a balm to the soul, always good for a laugh, and exactly what you need when you’re between the Serious Works you tend to read.

I’ll report back if any of these have anything to say about MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT.