2023 Readings

by Peter Saint-Andre

2023-12-27

In a typical year I read about 80 books, but this year I made it through less than 60. Granted, several of them were big, such as Ron Chernow's biography of Washington and Victor Hugo's wondrous novel Les Misérables; but others were short and easy. The ones that made the greatest impression on me were Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley, The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Free to Learn by Peter Gray, Grief by Michael Cholbi, the aforementioned biography of Washington, and the Poetical Works of 17th-century English poet Thomas Traherne. (The linked titles below point to texts in the public domain available at my Monadnock site, and the blog posts at the bottom contain reflections on several of the books that impressed me most.)

My book goals for 2024 include re-reading the Iliad and the Odyssey (likely in Richard Lattimore's translation) and acquainting myself with more of Shakespeare's plays (since I've recently read both The Tempest and Two Gentlemen of Verona, perhaps I'll read the rest of the plays set in Italy). I might also tackle Jonathan Israel's massive new biography of Spinoza. But who knows? One of the delights of reading is not necessarily achieving your goals but instead following your varied interests wherever they may lead. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring (another book I might re-read before long): not all those who wander are lost.

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