This week was a reading wave as I finished 3 books.
So Many Books was a delightful, short read about, well, books! I loved José Gaos’ quote of how, “Every private library is a reading plan.” It reassures me that, yes, there is a plan somewhere amidst my shelf of 50+ books I want to read.
Wuthering Heights was the second Brontë sister novel I read. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Jane Eyre, but, overall, it’s an enjoyable (yet darker) novel. A goal for 2026 is to read more classic literature.
Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine is one of my favorite books this year. I’m still processing just how much of it I agree with, but that’s what made it so good. Thought-provoking (and challenging of conventional thought) in the best of ways. Perhaps some of its resonance is down to timing, as I’m in the midst of moving to land in rural, western Ireland.
Kingsnorth’s book has nudged me down a rabbit hole of reading Wendell Berry (new to me) and about agriculture in pre-Industrial Revolution Britain. For me, a good gauge of a book’s value is the chain of other reading it spurs me on toward. Against the Machine, by that measure, excels.
This stems from my own ignorance, but I had no idea Dublin (and Ireland in general) sees the kinds of storms we do. Storm Claudia rolled through late this week, with all of its wild wind and rain. That’s two so far as Storm Amy was the prior one, which was strong enough to make the apartment building sway. It makes the dreary and grey winter weather more tolerable, or at least more interesting.
I’ve found blogging to be easier with a dedicated, desktop web app for my site. I also leaned on ChatGPT and wrote a small WordPress plugin that simplifies the WP Admin interface down to its essentials. Now the only easily-available options are Posts and Pages, with all other menus hidden behind a Dashboard widget.
A few other quick reads I enjoyed:
- University education as we know it is over. Educational value comes via deep, independent thought and from applied AI. Don’t get caught in the middle.
- Servitude as a Service. A warning about dependence (and one that reminds me to revisit the Kant I read in college).
- How to end your extremely online era. “Creativity comes from the ability to stare at a wall for extended periods.”
