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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fact that you said “timeless thoughts of great minds” then “easy canned stuff”….
Imagine stanning for The Republic in 2018.
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.
Well now, that was the most relatable list so far.
Thanks so much for the list. I needed this.
Any books on dealing with anxiety and light depression? Thanks!
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
How would you recommend extrapolating the lessons about trauma in that book to anxiety and light depression? That’s one of my absolute favorite books.
Love 6 through 11.
No 12 Rules by Jordan Peterson?
Lel
Coq, you turned me onto Lazenby some time ago. You pick up “Infinity to Dine”?
“It’s all about nature and art and death and resurrection.” – first book I thought of when I read this was this book all about soil, which I read within the last year and absolutely loved. I’ve never felt so positive about my own death.
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.
Hesse ? Ovid ? Kandinsky ? sounds like you had an identity crisis or at least a need for self reinvention. #relatable
Listening to my Madonna playlist each Monday does that for me.
gay guys have Gold : The Greatest Hits for that
“Tinkers” by Paul Harding, not Paul Hardy.
Wassily Kandinsky!!!
Also Jung – why is he so often picked up by mysogynistic fuckboys? (That’s not shitting on anyone else who likes him.)
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.
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!