Reading Roundup: January 2025

Hello everyone, and a special welcome to the handful of new subscribers who've joined us this month. Everyone find your virtual wingback chair of the mind; we have plenty. Sip the beverage of your choice while I share what I finished reading to start 2025.

The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch. I'd never read any Murdoch at all, not a novel, not a philosophy book, maybe not even an essay? I came across a quote from this book in another newsletter last fall, but I cannot for the life of me remember where. It seemed like as good a place as any to start, and I was not disappointed. It's philosophy, and it builds an argument in the way philosophers do, but it's very readable, which is not always the way philosophers do.

I copied down passage after passage in my notebook, since I borrowed this ebook from the library. Here, for example, is a bit I chewed on over several walks with the dog, since I am not always a very decisive person:

That I decided to do X will be true if I said sincerely that I was going to and did it, even if nothing introspectable occurred at all. And equally something introspectable might occur, but if the outward context is entirely lacking, the something cannot be called a decision. As Wittgenstein puts it, "A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism."

I think my good intentions and lack of follow through often leave me outside the mechanism. I'm trying to change that.

Here's another bit that seems relevant for the Wingback Workshop:

The consumer of art has an analogous task to its producer: to be disciplined enough to see as much reality in the work as the artist has succeeded in putting into it, and not to "use it as magic."

There's more, so maybe I'll get around to an essay about this book. In any case, it has made me a fan of Murdoch, so I'll see what other books I can pick up.

The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar. A new book coming in early March by an author I love. This is a fantasy faerie novella, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Full review is coming.

Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham. This is no one's idea of a comfort read, but I love a deeply reported long-form explainer. I meant to watch the Chernobyl series on Max before we cancelled our subscription and never got around to it; I think I'm glad I listened to this audiobook (another library loan) instead. I have one (1) friend who I thought I could recommend it to, and he was indeed happy for the rec.

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, Anne de Marcken. I've got notes for an essay on this book, which is a stunning novel about grief. The narrator is a zombie, which sounds weird but it makes perfect sense. The embodiment of emotion is laid out plainly. I'm not sure what else to say; it's beautifully written, and not too long, and I think you all would like it.

Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem, Michael Schmidt. I read this, along with September 1, 1939 by Ian Sansom (loved it!) and The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis (did not care for it!) as background for my thesis, which is a biography of Ancrene Wisse, and early thirteenth-century text. I started Gilgamesh in the fall and put it down when thesis writing got very intense. I picked it back up after receiving feedback from my director that I needed to lean more into the biography aspect of my argument. Contrasting my work, my style, and my aims with Schmidt's work was exactly what I needed. He had even less to work with than I did, given the age and provenance of the Gilgamesh tablets, which was enlightening.

I just checked my Pocket account to see if I saved anything particularly good recently. I thought the contrary take on "the attention crisis" by Daniel Immerwahr in the New Yorker was good food for thought. And Deborah Williams's celebration on Literary Hub of Edith Wharton's menopause-era novels was super fun to read.

I am trying my hand at keeping a publishing calendar; we'll see how long it lasts. But it tells me you can expect a review of There's No Turning Back, a century-old Italian novel that is surprisingly modern in its feminism, an essay on reading literature, and some publishing news for my translation of Celeste Mogador's memoirs.