All the ideas you presented here resonated with me, but #3 had me nodding along eagerly! I love the idea of mastering a subject, something which we relegate to our school and college years, but which we all know, really should be a lifelong endeavor. Thank you for putting your ideas out there! Happy 2025 🙏🏼
For several years I have been collecting and reading the winners of the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. I have about 20 first editions that are the pride of my book collection. The ones from the 1940s are very expensive so I will be buying nice later editions of those. It’s a fun project.
I like all the reading strategies you described. For me, the usefulness and attraction of these strategies vary over time. As I grow older, I find it more and more rewarding and beneficial to reread books that have played an important role in my life. In my case, turns out that most of these books are what we usually call "classics." When I was younger, especially during my graduate school days, I was ambitious and struggled to read as much and as widely as I could. Now that I am older, I am trying to do just the opposite -- to go really in-depth into books, authors, or topics that I was only able to get a superficial understanding of earlier. Books that are worth reading are usually worth rereading and rereading. Here are some writers that I reread repeatedly: Shakespeare's tragedies, Walt Whitman (including his prose), Nietzsche, the Romantic poets, Harold Bloom's literary and religious critical works, T. S. Eliot, Walter Benjamin, and countless others. And I really want to reread "Moby Dick"!
This is an encouraging list of ideas, though I always start with determination to stick to my chosen focus and then I find myself drawn in new directions.
This year however, I feel the need to read about (apparent) opposites - violence and love, joy and depression, independence and connection. I would be grateful if Jared and other members here would have any suggestions for philosophy texts that treat these subjects, ideally in tandem. I can put together a reading list and share it here afterwards.
I'm excited to see what you think of Le Carre's novels. I've read some of his work and about half of the George Smiley series. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is probably my favorite. I've read it a few times and every time I get to the last 100 pages, I can't put it down. But I think The Looking Glass War might be the most realistic of his that I've read in terms of how intelligence officers view their relationships with their assets (I think Le Carre calls them agents instead of assets). There's a nuanced morality system at play in intelligence work and Le Carre captures that nicely and subtly.
I’m eager to really explore his work. If it weren’t for reading Hilary Mantel this year, I’d say Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was my favorite novel of the year.
If you find yourself really enjoying the spy world, there is a pretty cool book called Fair Play that explores the ethics of espionage by going through a lot of different examples of ethical dilemmas. It was written by a former chief of counterintelligence so these are real world examples. We talked a lot about this book in one of the training courses at the CIA. The lack of ethical seriousness from some of the officers was a bit concerning.
Im reading Devils with a couple of friends. Supposedly his most comedic. When he talks about Trofimovich’s scholarship which amounts to a whole lot of nothing and the “brilliant” dissertation on the potential significance of Hanau and why certain peculiarities and obscurities never realized that significance, I think I’m picking up on the satire.
I'm reading an outlier of a series that I have owned for years. This is David Hume, The History of England, in six volumes. The history extends from the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 BCE to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 CE, about 17 centuries. You may ask, why read this series? The answer is that it documents the growth of freedom and prosperity in a country that today bears no resemblance to its primitive beginnings. For example, it explains how Magna Carta (1215 CE) came about, what its defects were, and how the conflict beween King and Baron led to the House of Commons by around 1420 CE. It was no easy transition let me tell you, and there was a lot of bloodshed before freedom was achieved. The House of Commons led directly to the country that we now know as the United Kingdom, and it is considered by Hume to be the most important innovation in the development of good government. It is this story that is very gripping, and there is nothing inevitable about its triumphant conclusion.
Exactly, but his brilliant gifts in philosophy are just as prodigious in the field of history. Hume had gifts of insight that most of the rest of us can only marvel at. He also wrote very well and this sense of style shows up in the History of England as well as his Essays. I probably own most of what he wrote.
All the ideas you presented here resonated with me, but #3 had me nodding along eagerly! I love the idea of mastering a subject, something which we relegate to our school and college years, but which we all know, really should be a lifelong endeavor. Thank you for putting your ideas out there! Happy 2025 🙏🏼
For several years I have been collecting and reading the winners of the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery. I have about 20 first editions that are the pride of my book collection. The ones from the 1940s are very expensive so I will be buying nice later editions of those. It’s a fun project.
I like all the reading strategies you described. For me, the usefulness and attraction of these strategies vary over time. As I grow older, I find it more and more rewarding and beneficial to reread books that have played an important role in my life. In my case, turns out that most of these books are what we usually call "classics." When I was younger, especially during my graduate school days, I was ambitious and struggled to read as much and as widely as I could. Now that I am older, I am trying to do just the opposite -- to go really in-depth into books, authors, or topics that I was only able to get a superficial understanding of earlier. Books that are worth reading are usually worth rereading and rereading. Here are some writers that I reread repeatedly: Shakespeare's tragedies, Walt Whitman (including his prose), Nietzsche, the Romantic poets, Harold Bloom's literary and religious critical works, T. S. Eliot, Walter Benjamin, and countless others. And I really want to reread "Moby Dick"!
This was good, thank you Jared.
This is an encouraging list of ideas, though I always start with determination to stick to my chosen focus and then I find myself drawn in new directions.
This year however, I feel the need to read about (apparent) opposites - violence and love, joy and depression, independence and connection. I would be grateful if Jared and other members here would have any suggestions for philosophy texts that treat these subjects, ideally in tandem. I can put together a reading list and share it here afterwards.
Thank you!
I teach middle schoolers. They need ideas all the time; they need encouragement all the time, too. These ideas are fresh. Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm excited to see what you think of Le Carre's novels. I've read some of his work and about half of the George Smiley series. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is probably my favorite. I've read it a few times and every time I get to the last 100 pages, I can't put it down. But I think The Looking Glass War might be the most realistic of his that I've read in terms of how intelligence officers view their relationships with their assets (I think Le Carre calls them agents instead of assets). There's a nuanced morality system at play in intelligence work and Le Carre captures that nicely and subtly.
I’m eager to really explore his work. If it weren’t for reading Hilary Mantel this year, I’d say Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was my favorite novel of the year.
If you find yourself really enjoying the spy world, there is a pretty cool book called Fair Play that explores the ethics of espionage by going through a lot of different examples of ethical dilemmas. It was written by a former chief of counterintelligence so these are real world examples. We talked a lot about this book in one of the training courses at the CIA. The lack of ethical seriousness from some of the officers was a bit concerning.
Im reading Devils with a couple of friends. Supposedly his most comedic. When he talks about Trofimovich’s scholarship which amounts to a whole lot of nothing and the “brilliant” dissertation on the potential significance of Hanau and why certain peculiarities and obscurities never realized that significance, I think I’m picking up on the satire.
I'm reading an outlier of a series that I have owned for years. This is David Hume, The History of England, in six volumes. The history extends from the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 BCE to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 CE, about 17 centuries. You may ask, why read this series? The answer is that it documents the growth of freedom and prosperity in a country that today bears no resemblance to its primitive beginnings. For example, it explains how Magna Carta (1215 CE) came about, what its defects were, and how the conflict beween King and Baron led to the House of Commons by around 1420 CE. It was no easy transition let me tell you, and there was a lot of bloodshed before freedom was achieved. The House of Commons led directly to the country that we now know as the United Kingdom, and it is considered by Hume to be the most important innovation in the development of good government. It is this story that is very gripping, and there is nothing inevitable about its triumphant conclusion.
I believe this book was also much more widely acclaimed during his life than his philosophical work.
Exactly, but his brilliant gifts in philosophy are just as prodigious in the field of history. Hume had gifts of insight that most of the rest of us can only marvel at. He also wrote very well and this sense of style shows up in the History of England as well as his Essays. I probably own most of what he wrote.