What I read this year

Here’s what I read this year, alphabetized by last name:

Genesis, translated by Robert Alter
Exodus, translated by Robert Alter
Leviticus, translated by Robert Alter
Jonah, translated by Robert Alter
On Revolution by Hanna Arendt (third read)
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson (second read)
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
The Italian Renaissance by Kenneth R. Bartlett (lecture series)
Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
The God We Never Knew by Marcus J. Borg
St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes what We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer l. Eberhardt
Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
Sovereignty: God, State, and Self by Jean Bethke Elshtain
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
The Limits of History by Constantin Fasolt
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner
Radical Prayer: Love in Action by Matthew Fox (lecture series) (second listen)
The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama
Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism by Onur Ulas Ince
The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas by Peter Kreeft (lecture series)
The Platonic Tradition by Peter Kreeft
Change the Story: Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth by David C. Lorten
One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: A History of the Church in the Middle Ages by Thomas F. Madden (lecture series)
The Principles of Representative Government by Bernard Manin
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O’Brian (fifth read)
The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O’Brian (fifth read)
The Thirteen-Gun Salute by Patrick O’Brian (fifth read)
The Letter of Marque by Patrick O’Brian (fifth read)
The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian (fifth read)
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (two reads)
The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker
Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times by David S. Reynolds
God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Pierce by Andrew Robinson
Traces of the Trinity: Signs, Sacraments, and Sharing God’s Life by Andrew Robinson
An Introduction to Greek Philosophy by David Roochnik (lecture series)
College (Un)Bound by Jeffrey J. Selingo
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (fourth and fifth reads)
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit
Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit
Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson
Phenomenology: The Basics by Dan Zahavi

Categories

Passages

IN SOME LANGUAGE (39)

18 April 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for rocking chairalso means wisdom.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Guni-guni*

18 April 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

Memory is always changing the ways we think of things— Slipped into the pages of an obscure book: a ticket from the World's Fair. The picture of a woman wearing Yale padlocks for earrings, another of a white army officer posing in front of a hut, each hand cupping the bare breast of a native girl flanking him on either side. I don’t agree with what the last one insinuates: they aren't smiling with hospitality or pleasure. There is nothing to caption in the manner of a potentiality. The smell of burning lingers in the air long after the carnivals have taken down their tents and flags. * Guni-guni; [noun; reduplicative] hallucination; imagination; illusion; figment; mirage [Read more...]

WE ARE

18 April 2021 - Tom

We are nothing buta darkness between the atomswhich hold us together.That is to say,we are the lightwhich consumes all things.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Traveler

17 April 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up betimes to the office, and there we sat all the morning, at noon home with my clerks, a good dinner, and then to the Office, and wrote my letters, and then abroad to do several things, and pay what little scores I had, and among others to Mrs. Martin’s, and there did give 20s. to Mrs. Cragg, her landlady, who was my Valentine in the house, as well as Doll Lane. Here yo did hazer la cosa with Mrs. Martin backward. So home and to the office, there to end my letters, and so home, where Betty Turner was to see my wife, and she being gone I to my chamber to read a little again, and then after supper to bed. on the road or on a crag who was I in the haze of my letters home Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 21 March 1668 [Read more...]

AIDED EARS

17 April 2021 - Unknown

Coming out of SpecSavers yesterday afternoon wearing my new NHS hearing aids, the paper bag which holds the case and batteries for the ear thingies bumps against my coat as I walk. The sound the crinkled paper makes is Maria Callas struck by lightning on the top of Mount Athos. People pass by talking to each other or to their phones and morsels of their words hit my ears like hailstones. I sit down at a table outside a café...you can do that now.. and chewing a soft slice of lemon cake is like jackboots tramping down an old wooden staircase. Never mind what the coffee sounds like as I swallow it. Back home typing this, the keyboard keys are Fred Astaire tap dancing on a steel drum without rhythm or music. I talk to myself and it’s like a dentist living inside the patient's mouth. Partial hearing loss began several years ago and I've had hearing aids before but never followed audiologists' advice to wear them daily so the brain can gradually get used… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (38)

17 April 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for ten thousandalso means sparrows.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Fools Rush In

17 April 2021 - fred

So I had some text here and saved as draft but the text was lost. Discouraging. At every step I take one increment forward, then two backwards. There remain more than a few bottlenecks, and until I get past them, I’ll … Fools Rush In Read More » [Read more...]

From

17 April 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

There are those who say I have no culture or I have no [history] by which they mean [they believe] a lineage [begins] in the aftermath of war and not before It takes centuries for smoke [to clear] enough of an opening Ghosts return as night folds again The fragrance of laurel leaf interposes between one page and another You can barely discern which hand [wrote, erased, revised—] But everyone comes from somewhere Is coughed up from the damp belly of a ship onto shore Count the notches carved into wood One for each [departure or arrival] Lay your palms where children and adults shuffed down a gangplank holding in their hands pictures of their lungs The spore of a potato from the old country hidden in a trouser cuff Salt-smell clinging to each collar Every mouth holding on to syllables that once made the only sense Each one [from] [Read more...]

It Takes Dedication — and Luck

17 April 2021 - Loren

I think amateur photographers are often the biggest fans of great photographs because they, more than anyone else, know what dedication it takes to produce those great photographs. Dedication + Luck. And you have to be dedicated to your art to get lucky. Some people are put off by the high prices the best photographers demand, but if you consider the number of hours they spent learning their craft and the number of hours spent without getting a great shot, you wouldn’t begrudge them their fees —though, if you’re like me, you’re probably not going to have the money to buy those kinds of works because you spent all your ready cash on photo equipment. Bird photography, like fishing, is definitely variable. I’ve gotten a lot of great shots at both Theler Wetlands and Port Orchard marina, but that certainly wasn’t the case on my last visit. Birding was extremely slow except for the Canada Geese which were loud and ever-present. I don’t take many pictures of them anymore except when they first have goslings,… [Read more...]

ALL THE UNIVERSE

17 April 2021 - Tom

All the universebut one bubblein a swirling potbeyond us. So muchmore than we know,those other placeswe cannot reach.All the life and deathand resurrectionof endless others,we think it matters.This universe, too,this moment, matters,until it doesn't.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Hidden treasure and what comes next

17 April 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

Last year at the start of the pandemic, my hevruta partners and I studied a text from the Piaceczyner (the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto) about this week's Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora. His jumping-off point is a verse about houses contracting tzara'at -- some kind of contagion -- and the need to quarantine such a house for a period of time. The commentator Rashi explains that there's treasure hidden in the walls of the afflicted house, and when we knock down the walls, we'll find the treasure. But the Piaceczyner is puzzled: if there's treasure, then why does Torah tell us to wait for seven days before we can knock down the walls and find the treasures hidden therein? His first answer makes me laugh: well, we can't exactly know why Torah says what it says! But then he says, if we look deeply we can recognize that in everything that happens to us, there's a spark of God's intention for goodness. Even if the situation we're in is a difficult one, God intends goodness for… [Read more...]

READY FOR CLOSE-UP?

16 April 2021 - Unknown

Collected my prescription close-up glasses yesterday. Here they are. The frame is a shiny sort of cobalt blue but the photo doesn't show it. I couldn't find any frames that were....what was that word?...sprankzy? I didn't like any of them and don't like this one much. I can read with them but if I look in any direction other than reading distance everything is blurred and dizzy. Are reading glasses always like this? Going back to SpecSavers tomorrow to complain and collect my NHS hearing aids. I can't get used to this "elderly" category. Nobody asked my permission to put me in it. Read the rest at the main Blaugustine: http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/blaugustine.html [Read more...]

Sacred hearts club

16 April 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up betimes, and to my Office, where we had a meeting extraordinary to consider of several things, among others the sum of money fit to be demanded ready money, to enable us to set out 27 ships, every body being now in pain for a fleete, and everybody endeavouring to excuse themselves for the not setting out of one, and our true excuse is lack of money. At it all the morning, and so at noon home to dinner with my clerks, my wife and Deb. being busy at work above in her chamber getting things ready and fine for her going into the country a week or two hence. I away by coach to White Hall, where we met to wait on the Duke of York, and, soon as prayers were done, it being Good Friday, he come to us, and we did a little business and presented him with our demand of money, and so broke up, and I thence by coach to Kate Joyce’s, being desirous and in pain to speak with… [Read more...]

Ephemeroptera

16 April 2021 - Dave Bonta

Watch on Vimeo Driving home along the river, I have to turn on the windshield wipers every mile or two because of all the mayflies, the off-white inkblots of their anonymous deaths. Imagine living one’s life in a state of arrested development, and only on your last day undergoing not one, but two radical transformations, one after the other: growing wings, breathing air, and mating just once, having gained reproductive parts in exchange for the loss of a mouth. spring again scheduling my first Covid shot Process notes Placing two things in close proximity: that’s a poem. The shadbush and hepatica footage here came from a single walk down the hollow and back. But if only I’d had a dash cam on that drive home… Will this be the final post in the Pandemic Year series? Probably not, but it feels as if it could be. Pedants may think that COVID should still be written in all caps but that doesn’t seem to be how common usage has gone. In time, even the initial capital… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (37)

16 April 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for windalso means music.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

They Ask What Came First: The Hate Speech or the Attack

16 April 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

A woman walks to church the Monday after Easter. She's wearing a light sweater because at last it feels like it could truly be spring. But who even goes to church anymore on a weekday morning in New York? The immigrant healthcare workers will tell you. The nannies and short- order cooks, the 1 AM custodial workers; grandmothers who spent years polishing other people's floors on their knees as if before a god who only cares that every surface reflects his many countenances. See the figure that approaches her from left of camera, spitting words we know by now have the power to wrench visible what's usually invisible. Say scourge and it becomes scourge, say peril; say it must go or doesn't belong. See her fall beneath the weight of a boot. Imagine the crack of her pelvis on the pavement, a sound muffled by traffic in its banal passage. Tell me how a woman slight of build could save every last penny in a clean pickle jar to put children through college, then copper… [Read more...]

THIS TOO

16 April 2021 - Tom

This too shall pass,this day, this earth,this universe,a dust mote,light and light'sdisappearance.The star we sawlast night, was itthere as we looked,or was it onlyits memory.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Bedtime reading

15 April 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and betimes to the Old Swan, and by water to White Hall, and thence to W. Coventry’s, where stayed but a little to talk with him, and thence by water back again, it being a mighty fine, clear spring morning. Back to the Old Swan, and drank at Michell’s, whose house goes up apace, but I could not see Betty, and thence walked all along Thames Street, which I have not done since it was burned, as far as Billingsgate; and there do see a brave street likely to be, many brave houses being built, and of them a great many by Mr. Jaggard; but the raising of the street will make it mighty fine. So to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon home to dinner, and thence to the office, very busy till five o’clock, and then to ease my eyes I took my wife out and Deb. to the ’Change, and there bought them some things, and so home again and to the office, ended my letters, and so… [Read more...]

Night from the inside (3)

15 April 2021 - Dave Bonta

Dark enough to see in each black space between the stars a haze of light, soft as the fur of a cat. * dark of the moon if anything is going to go bump * Vividly imagining every kind of death has become my mental background noise. It’s not as if I’m even slightly suicidal. So why do I do it? Self-loathing? A deep need to keep my ego in check? This is the kind of everyday, ordinary darkness that fascinates me. Is it even correct to call negative feelings dark? I almost feel they stem from darkness deprivation. * the twilight of animals under my house * night rain on the roof my greed for poems * What if there were an ancient, possibly immortal, protector of the hollow? Or more than one? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to pour out an offering now and then, just to let them know we acknowledge their sovereignty. But otherwise don’t speak or even really think of them. Because that’s doubtless how they would prefer it, should they… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (36)

15 April 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for fatheralso means stranger.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

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