Thoughts

On my latest book list

Alright, we got a playlist THANK YOU! Now could we please have a book list?

 

Yes, yes. I know what time of year it is. Fair warning, though. I’ve spent the last long while coming out of my own personal dark night of the soul, so this year’s book list is pretty intense. It’s all about nature and art and death and resurrection. There’s some old-school wisdom and some new-school wisdom. Some of it is candy, and some of it is just plain weird. All of it has helped me gain perspective on who I am and what I believe to be true about the universe.

So, without further ado, here is my latest book list:

 

Religion Without God by Ronald Dworkin

Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung

The Gift by Hafiz

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell

Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell

On Having No Head by D.E. Harding

Letters From A Stoic by Seneca

Metamorphoses by Ovid

The Republic by Plato

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

The Dark Half by Stephen King

The Omen by David Seltzer

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Tinkers by Paul Harding

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

M Train by Patti Smith

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

Loving & Hating Charles Bukowski by Linda King

I Knew Jim Knew by Jim Walrod

How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art by David Salle

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren

Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky

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24 thoughts on “On my latest book list

  1. GG says:

    Thank you, Coquette! I want you to know I thought about your upcoming September book list at a dark time earlier this year and it kept me going. I love this tradition.

  2. Underpaid-professor says:

    Dworkin is NOT a philosopher, although he masquerades as one, and Bertrand Russel was mostly a good narcissist and bad philosopher. Witty sometimes. His history of western philosophy is hilarious.

    The Republic is good shit. So is Jung.

    • The Coquette says:

      Anybody is a philosopher who wants to be, and Dworkin is brilliant whether or not you feel like giving him the title. Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher. You only think he’s bad because he’s accessible.

      • UnderpaidProfessor says:

        Nah dude. I think Bertrand Russell is bad because logical atomism doesn’t result in helpful truths and pulls us further away from the kind of meaning that human beings find most helpful. I think a lot of accessible philosophers are good. Example: William James.

        And the first requirement of philosophical work is that one want it, but I think you know that you can’t slap the label on any collection of ideas and call it “philosophy.” That’s how we get fucks like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson running around selling sugared, repackaged ideas to the masses as “wisdom.” Dworkin is an interesting legal scholar. Moral philosophy is a different area and he confused them.

        Philosophy is a worthy thing to read and I’m very glad you included it on your list, but we should be careful about confusing the careful, timeless thoughts of great minds, the easy canned stuff, and the insightful but temporary work meant to critique a specific current phenomenon.

  3. Chris says:

    If I may make another suggestion, a book that helped me with my own dark night of the soul is What It Is by Lynda Barry.

    Also, what is it with discovering spirituality and color theory? I’ve been obsessed with it lately, so thanks for a book rec concerning it.

  4. TeamSalamander says:

    The Golden Ass of Apuleius for a reminder of how deeply humor heals.
    The Spy by Coelho, I haven’t read it yet but I would love to hear what Cq thinks about it.

  5. Mono says:

    Wassily Kandinsky!!!

    Also Jung – why is he so often picked up by mysogynistic fuckboys? (That’s not shitting on anyone else who likes him.)

  6. March says:

    Stephen King is candy (but always the ‘insect in a lollipop’ kind), but it’s good for the soul and never harmful to the teeth. The Outsider (which I think is still his newest) complements nicely with The Dark Half.

  7. Tatty says:

    Out of curiosity, are there any books fellow commenters could recommend about philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology or neurolinguistics? I’ve taken a peek on Amazon and Goodreads and the selection is quite overwhelming!

    Thanks!

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