Your book recommendations reignited my love of reading. Thank you. Will you be posting any more recommendations soon? It is September, after all.

Yes, yes. I love our September booklist tradition, especially in a month when I have a book of my own hitting the shelves. Here’s the latest snapshot of what I’ve been reading lately. As always, it’s a mixed bag. There should be a little something here for everyone:

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein

The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

Change Your Story, Change Your Life by Carl Greer

The Red Book (Liber Novus) by Carl Jung

The Highest State of Consciousness edited by John White

The Divine Within by Aldous Huxley

Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Zen Master Sueng Sahn

The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz

Can you recommend a good book on this “fuck the police” stuff? I want to look deeper into this.

Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko
If you only read one book about police in America, this is the one. It’s well researched, politically balanced, and it will let you decide for yourself whether you wanna say “fuck the police.”

Our Enemies in Blue by Kristain Williams
Again, if you’re only looking to read one book, this is another great one to consider. It’s also well researched and incredibly thorough, but its entire premise is “fuck the police,” and the author makes no excuses for his position.

Police Brutality: An Anthology edited by Jill Nelson
I haven’t read this, but it looks like a decent collection of essays.

Brotherhood of Corruption by Juan Antonio Juarez
Juarez is an unreliable narrator and a poor writer, but there is still a lot of brutal, street-level truth to be found in this book.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
This is a seminal work. A must read. It’s less about police and more about systemic racism, but you need to understand the big picture.

Crook County by Nicole Van Cleve
This hasn’t been published yet, but I got my hands on an advance copy and it’s a groundbreaking indictment of the court system.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This is a personal book about the realities of being black in America, but it’s beautifully written and touches on police violence, so it goes on the list.

Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky edited by Mitchell and Schoeffel
Honestly, you can’t read enough Chomsky. This collection is a great starting point. Focus on his ideas about state power, but by all means, go wherever it takes you.

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
This book is the most difficult, but it’s also the most important. It’s a philosophical masterpiece about society’s relationship with incarceration. It will challenge you. Accept the challenge.

Oh, Coquette. How can one possibly start to understand ISIS, ISIL, the Saudi regime, the Syrian crisis—hell, the entire Middle East as something more than a bewildering source of violence? I read The Grand Chessboard when you recommended it a while ago, but now I need something that helps me gain a little more perspective about that part of the world; I’m thinking about big-picture surveys of the history, political and economic control, and shifts in cultural and religious thought in that region. It’s a tall fuckin’ order, I know, and I recognize that I’ve got an icky Western stance that imagines a huge diverse part of the world as one big blanket mess that can somehow be understood through a few books. But I want to learn—or at least start. Any reading suggestions?

If you just want some general perspective on that part of the world, I’d recommend James Gelvin’s “The Modern Middle East.” (Be sure to get the fourth edition.)

If you want a little less history and a little more “Grand Chessboard” style politics, I’d recommend you go with Karl Yambert’s “The Contemporary Middle East.”

They’re both offer big-picture surveys of the region. With either book, you’ll learn a ton.

Can you post some more book recommendations? You’ve already given me two of my all time favorite books (“Shock Doctrine” and “Veronika decides to die”).

Yep. It’s September, and like clockwork, you guys are asking me for books again. Here’s the latest snapshot of what’s on my bookshelf. As always, it’s a mixed bag. There should be a little something here for everyone:

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Sapiens: A History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations by Jacob Shapiro

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

Bitch Planet #1 by Deconnick & De Landro

A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

“We are surrounded by capitalist tools. The trick is not using them for their intended purpose.” Would you make a reading list based on this, please?

Sure. Here’s a trio of easily accessible books that will give you a broad but critical overview of the current state of American capitalism:

Supercapitalism by Robert Reich

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Profit Over People by Noam Chomsky

If you wanna go a bit further down the rabbit hole:

The Capitalism Papers by Jerry Mander

America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz

And finally, if you’re in the mood for a challenging, interdisciplinary mindfuck, here’s the cherry on top:

The End Of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy by J. K. Gibson-Graham

Breaking Bad has left me feeling a bit over-saturated by men’s crises, so I want to take a month where I exclusively think about things made by women. You’ve got taste, could you recommend me some good books, lectures, films, music?

Off the top of my head, try reading The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Get your daily news from Rachel Maddow. If you can, catch “In A World…” while it’s still in theaters. Binge watch Top of the Lake and Orange Is the New Black on Netflix. Listen to Lorde’s new album on repeat.

That should make for a pretty decent month.

I need some new books, and you are way overdue for another reading list. Pretty please!

Okay, okay. What is it about September? I’ve been getting this question at least once a day for a while now.

I don’t have time at the moment to put together a curated list, but I can give you a quick snapshot of what’s currently on my bookshelf. It’s a mixed bag. A few classics, a bunch of contemporary stuff, and a bit of non-fiction. Some are great. Some aren’t. All are worth reading for one reason or another:

The Easy Hour, Leslie Stella

The Camera My Mother Gave Me, Susanna Kaysen

No Touch Monkey, Ayun Halliday

The Postmortal, Drew Magary

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom Robbins

Lionel Asbo, Martin Amis

The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac

The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

The Drunkard’s Walk, Leonard Mlodinow

Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann

Motley Crue: The Dirt, Nikki Sixx and Neil Strauss

Just Kids, Patti Smith

One Day, David Nicholls

The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Luis Alberto Urrea

Queen of America, Luis Alberto Urrea

Ecstasy, Irvine Welsh

Porno, Irvine Welsh

How To Stop Time, Ann Marlowe

Emergency Public Relations, Cindy Rakowitz

Meditations for Beginners, Jack Kornfield

Mindsight, Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Am I A Monkey?, Francisco J. Ayala

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris