Ten More Hard Books I Want to Read (But It’s Fine If You Don’t) 

These kind words are so helpful to me, thank you. I may soon record my thoughts on some recent reads just like you suggest (this month I've been studying a wide range of material). They may not be popular books, but I hope discussion of them will spur fascination.

I think fractals were on my mind after you mentioned that DFW Bookworm interview in our last conversation (with Silverblatt astutely pointing out the fractal form of Infinite Jest). And just like as mentioned in our last convo, funny how word-concepts transfer between moments, begging for recontextualization.

Sounds fascinating. Thank you!

Thanks! Will do! (These sorts of comments are highly motivating, genuinely.)

Oh, from what I've read I feel you would love it!

Thank you for your kind words and for patiently listening. 🙏

That is high praise for that book coming from you. I read a bit of it for this video and found the author's voice to be what compels me most. Rebecca West can write. Do you think I should read a lot of historical background prior to the book, or does she stay consistent in teaching the reader what matters along the way?

@@ToReadersItMayConcern I haven’t felt completely lost reading so far but that might partially be because I know a lot about the context in this book just by virtue of the fact that I am currently living with Serbians in Croatia for the third time in my life. However, even those times in which I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening or who was the particular historical character she was speaking about, I always found her writing compelling enough to make me continue reading. I do recommend the four hour BBC series though, that might help.

Like you, I also want poetry videos and will likely create some someday soon. And like you, this impulse stems from Bren Booth-Jones who invited me to host his forthcoming book launch (June 29) on his channel. Thus, I've been reading poetry-poetry-poetry all these days between thick reams of prose (you can see the effect in portions of this list). I have to find my way into creating such videos. Poetry is so singular in its effect (and unfortunately not often of interest to many readers, poetry itself being so deeply open in ways that makes one feel the unraveling and panic). I'm glad I will at least have you as a contemplative viewer. One solid view for my esoteric poetry vids is enough.

Oh, man, she has a lot of great stuff! You may especially appreciate Amalgamemnon for its monologue-madness and rage over one's literary-intellectual obsolescence!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm glad to inspire spending for a good cause (never enough books).

Wow, The Tigers' Wife sound fascinating! I love these sorts of recommendations! Thank you! Mrs. Dalloway-or practically any of Virginia Woolf, really-is a must read. I hope you take a trip somewhere lonesome and read it in a sitting.

That is an excellent idea. The BookTube channel @readreadofficial released a video about nine months ago wherein he did exactly what you described: read the Bible cover to cover. What version are you reading? Do you find the translation flows smoothly for you? There's a set of books you may be interested in as a literary follow-up-God: A Biography; Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God; and God in the Qur'an, all by the author Jack Miles. In those books he reads through the Bible and analyzes God as a character across all of the books, treating it like a literary analysis wherein one makes inferences about the psychology of the character and of the arc of the story generally. It's obviously not the only way to interpret the text, but it could be a fun frame to look through for a while since you're now so familiar with the source material. Our book collections are ourselves in many ways. You can learn a lot about a person via their shelves.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern Thanks for the feedback. I'm reading the KJV as I enjoy the King James english. I'll make a note of the books you mentioned. Reminds me of Northrop Frye's The Great Code. Yes agreed, if you want to see a man's soul, look at the books in his bookshelves. What's that saying I once heard 'we are the people we meet and the books we read.'

I believe it was one of the covers sold by OMOTON, but it doesn't seem like they sell them anymore. If you search Kindle Art Covers you might be able to find similar kinds, just not the exact same one as far as I can tell.

Oh, I do! And thank you!

Is that Trotsky bio “The Prophet” good as a source of history? Or is it just communist propaganda? You weren’t clear in your video last time.

From what I've read it's emotionally manipulative in terms of framing a set of heroes and villains and planting Trotsky within a sympathetic lens; the broader events are accurate, but the drive to construct a tragic arc for Trotsky leaves details emphasized that wouldn't have otherwise been (and axes out inconveniences). I would not have this book be the only history book you read on this subject. It is worth having, though, for its writing: it is written beautifully. Its value is literary.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern ... and as an affiliate link... so a few cents for you, etc.

There are surely dozens of us idiosyncratic readers roaming about (more likely loafing in chairs)-dozens! Glad to have you here.

Excellent recommendations. Thank you!

But for the moment, I have finished The Master and his Emmisary, and am starting The Matter With Things tomorrow, and I could not be more excited. TMahE has already clarified a major intuition I have been working on devoloping for several years now. Reasons and Persons was great as well, and On What Matters is in my near upcoming.

This channel is where I share my longing, and perhaps enabling it in others-we are in this together, this desire for more time and more books. And you're considering writing? You feel it, that pang for excess and externalizing self?! Please, my friend, allow yourself that portion, whatever portion it might be, that you can muster out into the world. It does not need to reach perfection. It just needs to reach one: that reader far away from you who suddenly feels near.

I mean it is more of there is something I am feeling the edge of, which if I can ever properly comprehend it, I feel I have a duty to write down, and hopefully thus assist someone else in seeing it, perhaps in time that they can continue on to seeing the thing behind it. In truth, if I die before it is published, and am given no credit, that would be ideal. I just need to write it, and first to comprehend it. But that is a towering hubris, I am fully aware. If only I can perform a moral duty to do *something* to improve the future, that is the only meaning I can see in my existance. And therefore I press blindly forth into the various, and often conflicting, philosophies which I am capable of gaining access to, and find great wisdom in all, and gain greater clarity on the world hidden by the horizion hidden by the mountians hidden by the trees hidden by the leaves hidden by the cells hidden by the molecules hidden by... and perhaps one day my eyes shall be elevated above the red dust, to the realm of the stars, and I can understand the thing, or the ephemera of the thing, and in that time find it unsayable, and somehow find something which is sayable which can help to elevate another mind who can then see xor say something greater. - It is not incumbent upon [me] to complete the work, but neither [am I] at liberty to desist from it. And to your previous engagmement with a comment of mine, I am feeling strongly inclined to start a channel per your advice, (you had encouraged me to do so) but the technicalities of it and my horrible voice and persistant anxiety and the nacience of any knowledge or wisdom I may have and my complete lack of any formal education continue to dissuade me at the present. Well, that is an abomination of a wall of text, but I think it says what I desire to say as best I can say it.

You're a dreamer-thinker, and that's of its own worth-familiar in description yet uniquely yours in passion. I love your "wall of text." Reminds me of my own early dreaming. I can tell you there's nothing nice about putting your insular self out there (I am insular, too, and anxious and prefer quiet), but there's nothing learned in sameness either. Here's a secret: I tried to film today and gave up out of nervousness. This has happened a few times. Still, I show up. Sometimes there's a surprise. Sit and sit and write and film and sit and stare and film and try and somehow something emerges. Keep trying. I will be at least one viewer for you.

I read a bit in prep for this video. It's like another mind's meditation lulling you into a trance (if you let it). Poetry in prose-nearest I've seen of that combination remaining consistent-with individual paragraphs carrying the weight, pace, melody, staccato-breaks, and expanse of poetry. With excess of repetition, too, a pattern holding so the break hits. Nearest of a similar style I've seen is from Proust, but this feels more committed to elongation. Feels like one of those books perfect for when the world ends and there's nothing to distract you.

Thank you!

Have you ever done a video on your favorite poets or poems? I want to return to poetry a bit. It was my regular reading back in college but I've since ignored it (mostly). This month I've been reading more poetry for a book launch I'm hosting on Bren Booth-Jones' channel, but I'm curious what I've been missing.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern I haven’t done a favorite poets or poems video, and my reading of poetry mostly stopped at a certain point. If I hear of something that interests me (like recently Charlotte Smith) I’ll dive right in, but otherwise and largely with contemporary stuff I’m out of touch. I can’t recommend enough dipping into a good anthology or anthologies of different stripes, but wouldn’t advise making work out of it if your inclination doesn’t lead you that way. I half expected to see Spenser’s _Faerie Queen_ in this video because Steve Donoghue has talked about it a lot - I’ve never made it through the opus beyond excerpts. Good luck!

Yes, Williams is fantastic! I read his work immediately after finishing Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit. Turns out so many of the thoughts I had while reading Parfit-thoughts that to me at the time felt wholly original-were thought of and expanded upon and articulated clearly by Williams first. His slim book is a gem. Ethics is probably the field of philosophy I read the most, but I haven't covered it much on this channel yet. I intimidate myself by finding the subject so personally significant that I don't want to mess it up. Someday soon-ish I'll do an overview of Parfit (he seems like a nice jumping off point for various ethical issues) and then move to others book by book. At least that's what I'm thinking thus far.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern I taught a research writing class last spring whose central thematic question was-you’ll know why immediately-“how should one live?” I got Gen Z freshmen to read Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Peter Singer, and Michael Tomasello, and Williams was a supplementary text. It took *a lot* of prep, and of course I had to approach it from a critical close reading perspective, rather than from within the discipline (though I have some background in that). Remarkably, they loved it-amazing how getting away from phones and TikTok can drum up interest from in deeper human questions. I had them write papers using any two or three of those writers to analyze the ethical problems in William T. Vollmann’s story “Red Hands.” I was genuinely touched by their engagement. Some members of the course even asked if we could meet outside of class to read the entirety of Kant’s Groundwork together. I say all this to encourage you: these issues can engage people, even people unaccustomed to being engaged. Ethics is my favorite field of philosophy as well; its questions are the ones that feel most urgent to me in my own life. Of course, talking about it is difficult. And of course, non-specialists have to be careful to indicate their non-specialist status. But there is nonetheless real value in speaking as a non-specialist deep reader to others. If specialization were required for entrée, what hope would there be of drawing regular people to think seriously about this aspect of their lives? Besides, it’s a hot topic again because of Sapolsky and his opponents. All this is to say: you’d have to do some prep for sure, but I think a video on this topic from you would be successful and valuable. I will certainly watch with delight. You’re always circumspect about the availability of other perspectives and your own limits, as all good readers are. (We all acquire what Cusanus would call “docta ignorantia.”) But you would turn your audience on to stuff that will enrich their own lives, and what greater gift can you hope to give? Cheers!

I respect your opinions (it follows my disposition in various ways). I'm curious, have you read anything by Owen Flanagan? I just found his book Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism, and I'm wondering if it's worth my time. I've been trying to get into moral psychology generally-beyond the abstract principles and more into the psychology of moral intuitions and their roots. I just purchased the five-volume Moral Psychology series edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Christian B. Miller (and am currently eyeballing the Oxford Handbook on the same subject). Not sure if you've looked into this aspect of ethics much (it's fairly new for me). But if so, I'd love your thoughts on any books worth having (high-level, not too popularly-oriented). In general, beyond this specific question, I'd love to hear about any densely fantastic ethics books you come across in the future. I have a personal fixation on ethics due to my upbringing (something I lightly discuss in the second half of my Thirty Biographies video).

Hi Ruben, sorry for the slow response-I just saw this. As for recent ethical philosophy… so. Beyond Parfit (including some of his vast triptych *On What Matters*-whose methodology he describes as a strange counterpoise of Sidgwick and Kant) and Thomas Scanlon’s What We Owe Each Other, I might mention some other exponents of existing paradigms: Christine Korsgaard for modern Kantianism, for example; for a really interesting recasting of intuitionism (older versions of which Williams dispatches brutally), Michael Huemer’s *Ethical Intuitionism*; if you haven’t explored Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and the like, they are worth your time. But I have been especially intrigued by some studies on more outré topics: Korsgaard and Nussbaum both wrote fascinating books on ethical treatment of animals; I’m disturbed and fascinated and strangely thrilled by the antinatalism of David Benatar (*Better Never to Have Been Born*); Samuel Scheffler has written interestingly about what we the living owe future generations; people like Susan Neiman and Lars Svendsen have written interestingly about evil (Svendsen has also written about boredom and loneliness and other topics from a broadly Heideggerian perspective). I have a great love for Paul Ricoeur, who touched on ethical matters in many oblique ways. However, I think the hotspot of the debate right now where philosophy collides with science, and where ethics collides with neuroscientific assessments of the self and freedom. Robert Sapolsky is a loud voice for neurodeterminism, and can point you to others. One locus classicus is Patricia Churchland's *Neurophilosophy*. I find Michael Tomasello and Raymond Tallis powerful critics of such views. The terrifying question in ethics has often been, and is now again, whether any of our norms make sense given the way we are constituted-whether we can be otherwise than we are, whether moral language is ever more than an ex post facto assessment of how a given act makes us feel. Of course, one can get this from Hume, for example, but the neuroscience adds a new level of scientistic menace to it all. I would be remiss not to mention the recrudescence in what seems to me a cheapened form of Stoicism, especially centered around Marcus Aurelius-I have taken to calling some of it "broicism" wherever it seems to reduce Stoicism to a stiff-upper-lip creed for crushing it in the boardroom. But of course, the appeal of Stoicism in painful and uncertain eras is understabdable. Lastly, let me mention the work people like Jay Garfield have done in showing the relevance of Eastern thought to Western phikosophy, ethically and otherwise. In our occidental arrogance we are prone to ignore the riches of other worldviews. Garfield can make Buddhist ethical thought a very compelling concern-and one pertinent to modern "western" problems. Those are some things that spring to mind. But I know so little of what is out there-there's just too much. Non omnia possumus omnes.

@@michaelmasiello6752 I knew asking you would be worthwhile. Thank you so much for the time and care you placed into your response. If some of these books emerge onto the channel in the future, you will know why.

It's been about ten years of seriously reading consistently 1-3 hours minimum daily (I'm thirty-five), with some all-day reading sessions when I'm fully able to. I'm not a fast reader but a disciplined one, and over time that has accumulated. Worth mentioning: completely worth it. For most of those years progress felt slow and insignificant (and tough). Then without me noticing others saw a difference in my speech and thoughts and disposition. Though internally I feel like the self I've always been, that self has grown off the minds of countless others, and that makes a difference. It's strange to say, but I feel now like the person I hoped I would become. And that is an amazing feeling. I hope you do that for yourself, too.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern Consistency is indeed key. I'm glad you've found such great value in the journey. Back to the video. I don't think I'll read any of these in the near (or not so near) future, but I always appreciate learning from you about new authors and titles. Fun fact about Gertrude Stein, she was a loud and proud scorner of punctuation: commas, question marks, apostrophes, and more...

I'm glad my selection spoke to you. Thank you!

I feel much of what you say here. You may appreciate my videos on my Norton Anthology collection and on Reference Books for a greater sense of my appreciation of the past. This particular video arbitrarily aimed to rectify the weaknesses I felt in my initial version of the video, and it in some ways is a response to the more obvious selections I found in other similar videos by aiming to be less obvious in what's presented. There is something to be said for wisdom over wit: wit itself is such a halt at completion while wisdom lingers long after. Having, like you, read many experimental works to escape the malaise of the predictable, I now feel more the substance hidden away in classic works. Maybe this is part of growing older: in the heft of experience and the calm of time one finds refuge in past minds pondering. Much experimentation is desperate to impress (I admit, I still am sometimes impressed), but desperation is only one mode of creation; some great works seek other drives.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern More thoughtful commentary, thanks. But I may have a different of wisdom. To me, wisdom competes not against wit, but against Intelligence can be flashy & irrelevant (if not worse). Whereas wisdom is always a virtue. Example: An intelligent person can be uninterested in goodness or trying to be good (& more interested in ego & acclaim) but a wise person, to be wise, has to care for goodness & strive for it, always. Who would you prefer as a neighbor? Of course, this is just my 1.5 cents. Peace, MAS P.S. Swell line about the "escap[ing] the malaise of the predictable."

First item I noticed at a glance was Slavery and Social Death and I knew you had a stellar list. Thank you! I hadn't heard of The Essential Child and that seems particularly in line with my interests right now. You're awesome. I hear what you're saying in your final comment. Sometimes, especially with convoluted philosophy, it helps to start with a summary of the overarching point so you know where the logic is intended to lead. That makes the connections easier to grasp, I've noticed. And yet just about every time reading the full book is so much meatier than even the most successful overviews.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern Thanks! I suspected you might be interested in reading about essentialism too since you mentioned you've read The Mismeasure of Man. I suppose the choice between the easy and the hard book depends on your goals and often it may be best to read both.

You have such great recommendations. Is there an ideal starting point for Robbe-Grillet (I don't mind diving into the deep end)?

@@ToReadersItMayConcern Start with THE VOYEUR, then try THE ERASERS or IN THE LABYRINTH. But also get his FOR A NEW NOVEL, one of the seminal works on contemporary fiction. All of his works are relatively short (under 300pp). But also watch Resnais' film LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, with a script by Robbe-Grillet from his novel. Enjoy!

Awesome, thank you!

Oh, absolutely. That is a must read.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern You should do a review of it.

@@christopherjames4486 I haven't read it yet, but when I do I will likely create a multi-part review for it.

Over a thousand, but I don't know the exact number.

Sometimes I feel these experimental novels feed a deep neuroses, a need to attend to detail and structure and in rearticulating both a sense of control. That is so much the satisfaction and dysfunction. I notice this tension in myself. I cannot speak to your experiences entirely-we are strangers slinging text at one another, after all-but that level of meaning-making, mapping, minutiae-attending desire is a gift. All gifts can overextend into pathological need if one allows it. Sometimes I remind myself to practice my gifts elsewhere, beyond the addiction. You and I are both lucky to be neurotic if we can discover its proper place and time. You write well, for instance, variety of syntax and all. Attend time to your words, yours and yours not others. Attend to yourself. Good luck, stranger.

It's certainly not for everyone. From what I've read of it, the bulk of the reading time is in the protagonist's memories, with interludes back onto the details of the bus, then back to memory. It's Proustian in that way of freely associating moments with memories, but it tangents even more than Proust, seemingly. If you need momentum in plot, this is not the book for you. In moment-to-moment description, it's written beautifully, with long meditative stretches. A mindset book: best read when you're equally in an emotionally associative and serene state of mind.

That kind of desperate pretentiousness you describe, wherein the writer is an intellectual with much to say but not much story to say it in, has its own appeal, if only an appeal toward other likeminded neurotic readers. These readers may themselves want to toy with language for toying sake, basking in association for a while, not bumping hard against the scaffolding of plot. I have always preferred writers who sacrifice plot for voice. Not sure why. It might speak to my own similarity to these lost, pretentious, desperate writers. Makes me feel less lonely. You're right that this is terrible for professional and successful writing. Yet there is certainly a readership who longs for precisely this sort of meandering and failure: when you read plenty of successful stories it can be a relief to read something lost in its wandering (and the well-structured tales then feel so constrained in their pruning).

@RagHelen You are absolutely right about how publishers would react to a manuscript like this-but I want to say that it’s a terrible shame that this is so. I would argue this point a little more forwardly than this channel’s immensely gracious host, and speaking as an English professor who is always trying to broaden student horizons in the classroom. Many students don’t read at all outside the classroom. Many who do read have only read, say, Colleen Hoover (no shade on her-there is a place for everything, and I am writing to urge broadening of options and perspectives, not some bonfire of the alleged vanities). I write with two decades’ experience of what happens when students suddenly feel they “get” what difficult literary works-poetic or prose-narrative-are doing. And what they are doing is different from the latest mass-marketed cozy read or what have you. That Miss MacIntosh and works like it wouldn’t sell on today’s market, with its unimaginative genre pigeonholing, trope marketing, and reliance on formula, is, I would submit, an indictment of modern taste and modern capitalism, not an indication of aesthetic inferiority or any just rebuke of “pretentiousness” (too often a bugbear of American anti-intellectualism). Whitman spent his whole life revising Leaves of Grass. It was worth publishing. Langland spent his life revising Piers Plowman. Seven centuries on, it lives. I know agents and editors who would reject Gravity’s Rainbow or Lolita or Absalom, Absalom within a paragraph. That these books have three of the greatest opening paragraphs ever written doesn’t seem to matter. Publishers can and should serve people’s desire for a “fun read.” That has its place. I don’t imagine many people at the airport want to pick up Marguerite Young for their redeye. To everything there is a season. But Victor Hugo said that if he wrote only for his own time, he’d break his pen and throw it away, and that is an aspiration that speaks to the part of our nature that painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and built the pyramids. Pretension doesn’t make art, of course, and bad writing that aspires to the condition of literature is easy to spot (because it has a special way of sucking). But if someone can read the opening pages of Miss MacIntosh and not hear something special, that would truly be their loss-and probably say a lot about our educational system, too. When Kurt Vonnegut says a writer is “certainly a genius,” that should probably tell us something. He knew a thing or two about writing, and he was awed by Young’s door-stopper. There’s no accounting for taste, of course, but I think larger publishers would do well to give readers more choices-choices of voice, register, structure, intellectual density, etc. If this happened enough, we might find that it has real civic consequences. Students rise to the challenges we set them, and when we dumb down the curriculum they reduce their level of effort. They are usually gratified by harder work that rewards them more deeply. Perhaps publishers should try taking more chances on works that offer something more than the usual sequence of grab ‘em opening, inciting incident, reveals, twists and turns, climax, end. I mean: would Blood Meridian even be published today if it were a debut novel? Would Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping make the cut? Would The Poisonwood Bible, even? Does it slam right into the plot fast enough? I wonder, and worry a bit. And it is sad to wonder and worry, since the world would be so much poorer in any of these works’ absence. I am genuinely curious what you think of this. Is all writing with literary aspirations pretentious by definition? And is all pretense equally despicable? I say all this as someone who has many loves. I have recently been reading Joe Abercrombie, Jen Williams and Jim Butcher (unpretentious, right?), but also László Krasznahorkai and António Lobo Antunes. They scratch different itches. But the latter stay with me in a different way, and I wouldn’t sacrifice them for anything. Of course, some writers manage to balance everything. I read Toni Morrison’s Sula again this year and it took my head off-and I thought to myself that it could speak to *anyone* who picked it up. But this was less true of Paradise, and I think that’s a masterpiece too. Not to mention Beloved. You will rightly observe that Krasznahorkai and Lobo Antunes are in print. That’s true, of course. All I mean to say is that they deserve to be marketed better and more broadly, and that if they and so many like them were more widely read, we might have better readers, better thinkers, and better citizens. A teacher’s screed. Apologies for writing at such length.

@@michaelmasiello6752 🙌🙌🙌

Personal collection.

@@ToReadersItMayConcern very nice! #goals

Thanks for the feedback. None of what I say is scripted. I made the mistake of recording while more tired than usual. My next video will mention a bit of what's been keeping me busy this month.

Noted. None of what I said is written. My deadpan eyes and voice have much to do with my struggle with speaking on camera and tiredness generally (I only get about two hours a week to think and record for this channel). But, again, I will keep what you wrote in mind. Thank you.

I would say I disagree entirely and your videos are a breath of fresh air amongst a cacophony of overstimulating videos all desperately trying to grab our attention. It is valuable and refreshing to have videos that are slower paced and have room to breathe, and are clearly coming from your interest in the subject matter rather than trying to shill some product. I think background music would be distracting and not serve a purpose - others would disagree with me. Ultimately it’s important to trust your own taste and make what you want to make, the way you want to make it.

@WhiteNoises Thank you for your encouragement. I am happy to fill a niche and to discover likeminded viewers. This BookTube thing has grown bigger than I expected. I've managed to avoid social media all my life, and now suddenly I have a plethora of opinions about how I look and speak and act. It is certainly strange. But I also feel appreciated, by and large, for the particular person I am. I am so lucky that in spite of my lack of polish and streamlining, there are many people who want to hear what I have to say. Thank you, again, for your encouragement, and thank you for being a viewer.

The speaker is clearly not reading lines. Hard to trust a critique that gets that clear truth wrong. I also don't hear a monotone. A monotone means a voice that lacks intonation. Maybe you meant something regarding volume? (And I won't touch the silly "deadpan eyes" gibe, beyond this.) But I do think this one long video could've been sliced up into shorter ones. There is so much worthy content to ponder in the video that it would've benefitted, in my opinion, from breathing-or pondering-room.

You're especially well-equipped to review that book. It has the grandness of a Tolstoyan epic, and yet the serenity and pace of poetry. It would be worthwhile to compare the differences in feel between the epic of Genji and the epics you have been reading for the past couple years.