2025 Reading - The Rest
January 17, 2026 at 1:15 PM
Classics
Moby Dick - Herman Melville: Reading this book I kept thinking to myself, “how is it possible that a human mind managed to put all of these words together? How does that sentence come into a person’s head? I could spend a year and not produce one paragraph like this, and he’s come up with 500 pages!” The opening chapter of Moby Dick is one of my all-time favorite bits of prose. This is by no means a ‘can’t-put-it-down’ book in terms of the plot, and is probably one where I’ll revisit specific chapters, rather than reread it from start to finish. Not that I didn't enjoy the plot, and the symbolism of the white whale and Ahab and the voyage will stick with me, but this is a book you read first and foremost for the words.
Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick and chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
…
there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius: I enjoyed reading this - I read most of it at the gym during the breaks between sets. It’s a collection of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’s personal journals and is composed of many short entries (a few sentences to a few paragraphs), without any narrative or overarching theme, so it lends itself to being read in little bits. There are some great nuggets of wisdom throughout, but beyond that I just found it fascinating to see how the most powerful person in the world 2,000 years ago was thinking about essentially the same existential questions we all grapple with today.
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway: This was the first selection of my new ‘classics’ book club, which I intend to continue throughout this year. It was the second Hemingway novel I’ve read, the first being The Old Man and the Sea which I listened to as an audiobook all in one go. I loved this book. It takes a little while to get going, but then builds and builds all the way to the end. The Roberto-Maria storyline felt rushed and unnecessary, and Maria in particular wasn’t really given any agency, but the rest of the characters and relationships were compelling. El Sordo on the hill was an unforgettable scene.
Other
The Familiar - Leigh Bardugo: A contemporary historical fantasy novel. Wasn’t for me.
The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley: A contemporary sci-fi novel. Also wasn’t for me.
The City and the City - China Miéville: A 2009 sci-fi novel winner of the Hugo prize. I liked this one significantly more than the other contemporary fiction I read last year. The premise was unique and thought-provoking, and while I didn’t love the ending, the bulk of the book was good enough that I’d still recommend it.
The Deep Places - Ross Douthat: This book captures, better than anything else I’ve read, the experience of living with chronic illness/pain. Douthat recounts how he went from being an ordinary, thriving adult, to having his life up-ended by [what he believes was] chronic lyme disease, and the extreme lengths he went to in an effort to make the pain stop. I had a similar experience after college (things were never as bad for me as what Douthat describes) where chronic pain dominated my life for a few years, and it was cathartic to see many of my own thought patterns mirrored by Douthat.
In the same way that “we filter for people who are like us intellectually and politically,” he [Scott Alexander] wrote, “we also filter for misery,” so that the suffering around us passes unheard and unseen.
To get sick and fail to get better is to realize the harsh truth of this insight. Human beings have a great capacity for kindness, empathy, and help, but we are more likely to rise to the occasion when it is clearly an occasion—a moment of crisis, a time-bound period of stress. In the aftermath of a hurricane, society doesn’t usually fragment; it comes together in solidarity and support. Likewise with families and individuals facing suffering in the moment that it descends, or when a terrible arc finally bottoms out: Not always, but very often, people behave well, with great generosity, in the face of a mortal diagnosis, a mental collapse, an addict’s nadir. Not least because in those circumstances there are things you can clearly do, from the prosaic—making frozen dinners for a suffering family—to the more dramatic and extreme, like flying across the country to help drag a friend into rehab.
But when the crisis simply continues without resolution, when the illness grinds on and on—well, then a curtain tends to fall, because there isn’t an obvious way to integrate that kind of struggle into the realm of everyday life. It’s not clear what the healthy person is supposed to give to a friend or family member who isn’t dying, who doesn’t have some need that you can fill with a discrete act of generosity, but who just has the same problems—terrible but also, let’s be frank, a little boring—day after depressing day.
“Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him,” the nineteenth-century French writer Alphonse Daudet wrote” … “Everyone will get used to it except me.”
I’m dubious of his theories about what was really going on with his body, and extremely dubious of some of the treatments he pursued (though I absolutely relate to the desperation that led him to pursue those treatments), but those aren’t the reasons to read this book. The reason to read the book is to understand what it’s like for a person to be in pain all of the time and not know how to make it stop.
The Way Out - Alan Gordon: A very different book about chronic pain, this one by a doctor who has helped many patients recover from chronic back pain by (in my opinion correctly) treating it as dysfunction of the nervous system rather than solely, or even primarily, as a structural problem. I had not read this book during my earlier run-in with chronic pain, but the ideas Gordon explains are consistent with the things that eventually worked for me. If you’ve been dealing with chronic pain (pain that’s continued long beyond an initial injury or has no clear cause, and occupies a lot of space in your mind), I’d recommend this book.
Feel Good Productivity - Ali Abdaal: I bought this one because I’ve watched many of Ali’s YouTube videos on productivity, motivation, and business and think he usually has good advice. The book was fine, it’s got plenty of good ideas and experiments to try, but it does feel like it’s written by a YouTuber. I don’t think there was anything in it that you wouldn’t find on his YouTube channel and I think he’s more effective in that medium. You could read this one in a day or two if you wanted though, so if you’re just looking for a quick infusion of ideas to get out of a rut or something, it might be helpful for you.