My reading program for the half-year to come

To be clear, I very much like Lex Fridman’s proposed reading list, and I hope to reread many of those books.  Most of them are much deeper than their sometimes reputations, I might add.  (For all the stupid whining about the list, odd that no one is asking why he doesn’t read more in Russian.)

If you are curious, here is what I have planned for the first half of the year to come:

1. Review copies that come my way — considerable numbers of them are great!  And thank you all for sending.

2. Reading or rereading through the works of Jonathan Swift, for a paper I am writing.  The topic is Swift on state-church relations, and as relates to some points from Rene Girard, and Swift on science, as it relates to Peter Thiel.

3. The history of American comedy and stand-up, as relates to a future CWT with Noam Dworman.

4. What is recommended to me by credible others, throughout the course of the year.

5. Many books in Indian history, for the 1600-1800 period, give or take, to prep for a likely CWT with William Dalrymple.

6. Reread and re-study of the New Testament, for CWTs with Tom Holland and David Bentley Hart.  And for its own sake too.

7. More British and Irish history, from all eras.  That will mean reading in clusters, rather than obsessing over particular volumes.  Lately I’ve been reading about British cultural and architectural heritage issues, in part to get a different and more advanced bead on YIMBY-NIMBY conflicts, and also to relearn British history through the history of its major buildings.

8. Haldor Laxness and Jon Fosse are among the classic novels in my queue, neither would be a reread.  And I will start the new Javier Marías that comes out in English, it takes me too long in Spanish.  Twentieth century Polish poetry, and more on the Polish history of ideas and literature.  And I’ve vowed to read more museum catalogs (more picture books!).  In German I will try Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, reread some Rilke, some Tuschel, and maybe some more Herta Müller.

9. Other stuff too, most of all what I buy spontaneously.  Just yesterday Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice arrived at the house.  There is some Eugene Volodazkin on the way.

10. I’ve been reading a good deal lately about neural nets, transformers, and other AI-related topics, but not understanding it very well.  YouTube videos have helped only a little.  We’ll see if I ramp up those efforts or discard them.  I am learning a lot from playing around with GPT, however, and maybe I’ll ask it what else I should read.