Final Reading Log of 2020

For about four years now I’ve been tracking my reading. First, I used index cards in a box, which I have since supplemented using an app called Reading List for a digital backup. Normally I use the index cards as bookmarks while reading, but since all my books have been packed up for our move to New Mexico since August, I’ve had to make do with an ereader for longer than I would have liked. I’ll be glad to once again surrounded by my faithful friends in the new year once we’ve made the move.

My general tendency is toward neurosis. I don’t suffer from a compulsive disorder, but sometimes feel such is just around the corner. My wife pokes fun (lovingly) at my “systems,” and I do sometimes go overboard in my desire for systematization, but when I consider the kind of life I want to have, it is a thorough, considered, systematic one (although not one devoid of flights of fancy!) This systematic approach is a source of comfort for me. For example, when I feel bad I clean the house or fold laundry or rearrange my index. But for all its comfort, my “systems” are also sources of (good) stress. When I see my carefully arranged index, I feel spurred to use it. The thing itself calls to me, entreating me to give it a use, a purpose. I feel I would insult it to just let it gather dust. The systems themselves are not the goal, but rather means to the goal. I keep track of my reading because I want to write, and at least for the last few years, this system has served me well.

I see the particular neurosis of logging my reading as an attempt to do two things: first, to serve as a kind of mnemonic. When I flip through the cards, I remember what I was doing when I was reading each book. I don’t always remember specifics, but each card carries with it a kind of encapsulated atmosphere. I’ll remember the chair I was sitting in, or the weather, or maybe how I felt that day. My memory tends toward the visual, and I can “see” the past in each card. Of course, I also remember the plot or topic of the book, which helps me to remember what I know and what I don’t.

The second thing this neurosis does (I find the word “practice” irritatingly overused) is to create a physical, tangible, external trace of myself. I took a course on Martin Heidegger this last semester, and learned that his collected works, or Gesamtausgabe, are still being published in several volumes even decades after the man’s death. I’ve been fascinated by the things that come to light in a person’s “papers” after their death. In my training in history, I often thought of the things that we wouldn’t know had it not been for the survival of a single lucky shred of parchment or paper. In a world where correspondence and more and more of life take place in an ethereal space of ones and zeroes, I like the idea of leaving tangible things behind. Would todays Heidegger (hopefully sans dalliance with the Nazis) leave anything accessible behind? I’m sure archivists and librarians are considering this problem, and no doubt digital files take up less space than reams of paper, but it is still something I wonder about.

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt distinguishes “labor” and “work.” Labor is circular – it’s the “daily grind” that keeps us ticking over. Work, on the other hand, is linear – it’s the way that humans make a lasting mark on their world. The world of the digital, especially now that it is being colonized by the same ruthless market forces destroying the planet and everyone’s minds, feels like a space of labor to me. The physicality of pen and paper, the tangible scent of the stuff on my desk, feels much less like labor to me. For all its demands that I put it to use, such demands feel like the demand to work in Arendt’s sense, that is, to be free.

I don’t have much to say about this year’s reading specifically. Like everyone else, I have basically gone insane since the pandemic and its vicious mismanagement (at least on the part of the US government). My reading this year probably tends more toward escape than it would otherwise – and why not? Ursula LeGuin once made the point that one escapes into freedom. Don’t we all want to be free? Over the next year I plan to make periodic posts ruminating on my current reading. I have set myself the same goal this year as in previous years – 50 books – but in the past I haven’t been using this goal as effectively as I could have, that is, I haven’t taken the time to use it to think. In the Jewish tradition, when one drops a book, one hurriedly picks it back up and kisses it to make it feel better and apologize for hurting it. This particular ritual is a bit theatrical for my taste, but the kernel of truth it contains remains deeply appealing. I don’t make new year’s resolutions usually, but this year I think I might make an exception: to respect my tools by using them to work.

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Below is this year’s reading list. I may post something in January about the most significant or memorable books of the year, but we’ll see. Moving is stressful, and I may not feel like working (but, then, my tools don’t care about that, do they?)

Title	Subtitle	Author(s)	Started Reading	Finished Reading
1491	New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus	Mann, Charles C.	12/31/2019	01/02/2020
The Swerve	How the World Became Modern	Greenblatt, Stephen	1/3/2020	01/06/2020
Ruthless	Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me	Miscavige, Ron; Koon, Dan	1/6/2020	01/07/2020
Red Shambhala	Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia	Znamenski, Andrei	1/7/2020	02/29/2020
Blasphemy	A Novel	Preston, Douglas	1/11/2020	01/11/2020
Babel-17		Delany, Samuel R.	1/13/2020	01/19/2020
Broken Angels	A Novel	Morgan, Richard K.	1/19/2020	01/25/2020
Pattern Recognition		Gibson, William	1/26/2020	02/09/2020
The Bloody White Baron	The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia	Palmer, James	2/26/2020	03/04/2020
The Mastermind	Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.	Ratliff, Evan	3/13/2020	03/15/2020
The Secret Token	Obsession, Deceit, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke	Lawler, Andrew	3/15/2020	03/21/2020
Indispensable Goods		Pepper, Tom	4/23/2020	05/06/2020
The Dark Tower I	The Gunslinger	King, Stephen	4/24/2020	04/24/2020
The Dark Tower II	The Drawing of the Three	King, Stephen	4/26/2020	04/28/2020
The Dark Tower III	The Waste Lands	King, Stephen	5/2/2020	05/13/2020
The Origins of Unhappiness	A New Understanding of Personal Distress	Smail, David	5/6/2020	05/27/2020
The Dark Tower IV	Wizard and Glass	King, Stephen	5/14/2020	05/21/2020
The Wind Through the Keyhole	A Dark Tower Novel	King, Stephen	5/21/2020	05/23/2020
The Dark Tower V	Wolves of the Calla	King, Stephen	5/23/2020	05/30/2020
Valis		Dick, Philip K.	5/30/2020	06/01/2020
The Dark Tower VI	Song of Susannah	King, Stephen	6/2/2020	06/05/2020
A Maze of Death		Dick, Philip K.	6/5/2020	06/08/2020
The Dark Tower VII	The Dark Tower	King, Stephen	6/8/2020	06/15/2020
The Divine Invasion		Dick, Philip K.	6/16/2020	06/27/2020
Downward To The Earth		Silverberg, Robert	6/28/2020	06/30/2020
Faking History	Essays on Aliens, Atlantis, Monsters, and More	Colavito, Jason	6/30/2020	07/02/2020
The Quest for Wilhelm Reich		Wilson, Colin	7/2/2020	07/06/2020
Wilhelm Reich	Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist	Corrington, Robert S.	7/6/2020	07/12/2020
The Western Esoteric Traditions	A Historical Introduction	Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas	7/12/2020	07/16/2020
Provenance		Leckie, Ann	7/21/2020	07/22/2020
Kraken	An Anatomy	Miéville, China	7/22/2020	07/26/2020
Woken Furies		Morgan, Richard K.	7/26/2020	07/29/2020
La Balle du néant	Les Futurs mystères de Paris	Wagner, Roland C.	7/30/2020	08/02/2020
Ancillary Justice		Leckie, Ann	8/3/2020	08/05/2020
Ancillary Sword		Leckie, Ann	8/5/2020	08/07/2020
Ancillary Mercy		Leckie, Ann	8/7/2020	08/09/2020
Authority	A Novel	VanderMeer, Jeff	8/11/2020	08/14/2020
Acceptance	A Novel	VanderMeer, Jeff	8/14/2020	08/16/2020
The Forge and the Crucible	The Origins and Structure of Alchemy	Eliade, Mircea	8/18/2020	08/30/2020
Hawksbill Station		Silverberg, Robert	8/18/2020	08/19/2020
Continental Philosophy	A Very Short Introduction	Critchley, Simon	8/19/2020	08/19/2020
Analytic Philosophy	A Very Short Introduction	Beaney, Michael	8/20/2020	08/23/2020
The Medusa Chronicles		Baxter, Stephen; Reynolds, Alastair	8/28/2020	09/01/2020
Consider Phlebas		Banks, Iain M.	9/2/2020	09/18/2020
The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe		Flint, Valerie Irene Jane	9/2/2020	09/16/2020
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism		Scholem, Gershom Gerhard	9/17/2020	09/24/2020
The Player of Games		Banks, Iain M.	9/18/2020	09/20/2020
Use Of Weapons		Banks, Iain M.	9/20/2020	09/25/2020
Starfish		Watts, Peter	9/25/2020	09/27/2020
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes	Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle	Everett, Daniel L.	9/28/2020	09/29/2020
A Parting of the Ways	Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger	Friedman, Michael	10/1/2020	10/05/2020
Jurassic Park	A Novel	Crichton, Michael	10/4/2020	10/05/2020
The Lost World		Crichton, Michael	10/6/2020	10/07/2020
John Dee and the Empire of Angels	Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World	Louv, Jason	10/7/2020	10/22/2020
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age		Yates, Frances Amelia	10/7/2020	10/18/2020
Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy		Karatani, Kojin	10/31/2020	11/14/2020
Pandemic!	COVID-19 Shakes the World	Zizek, Slavoj	11/4/2020	11/04/2020
An Insula Life		Pepper, Tom	11/5/2020	11/06/2020
Time in the Ditch	American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era	McCumber, John	11/13/2020	11/17/2020
Greek Buddha	Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia	Beckwith, Christopher I.	11/14/2020	11/26/2020
Warriors of the Cloisters	The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World	Beckwith, Christopher I.	11/29/2020	12/01/2020
Stranger from Abroad	Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness	Maier-Katkin, Daniel	12/10/2020	12/16/2020
A Corpse in the Koryo		Church, James	12/18/2020	12/19/2020
Bamboo and Blood	An Inspector O Novel	Church, James	12/19/2020	12/20/2020
Hidden Moon	An Inspector O Novel	Church, James	12/19/2020	12/19/2020
The Man with the Baltic Stare	An Inspector O Novel	Church, James	12/21/2020	12/22/2020
A Drop of Chinese Blood	A Mystery	Church, James	12/22/2020	12/23/2020
The Gentleman from Japan	An Inspector O Novel	Church, James	12/28/2020	12/29/2020