What I'm reading
I kept a list of what I was reading last year, but forgot to update it, so here’s my attempt to do it instead on Substack.
This is a log of what I’m reading. This is as much for my own sanity as it is for anything else.
I’ll bold the highest priority ones, which I’m actually trying to finish.
I’ll move them up as I revisit them, so they should sort into “order of most actively reading.”
I often dip in and out, so books may appear in multiple months as I resume them.
I’ll put a ✅ if I finish a book in that month.
Some books I read 1-2 pages every morning. For those I’ll put (daily) at the end.
Updated 2025-07-24
2025
July
✅ Fara Dabhoiawala: What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2025)
Adrian Desmond & James R. Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (1991)
Janet Browne, Charles Darwin, Vol 1: Voyaging (1995)
A. N. Wilson, Tolstoy (1988)
James A. Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography (2015)
Steve Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Time (2000)
James Marcum, Thomas Kuhn's Revolutions (2015)
Karen Armstrong, Buddha (2002)
David Quammen, The Reluctant Mr Darwin (2006)
Chad Engelland, Ostension (2014)
Natalia Khokhlova, “Understanding of Abstract Nouns in Linguistic Disciplines” (2014)
Jerome S. Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986)
Anton Yasnitsky, Vygotsky (2018)
G. E. M. Anscombe & P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers (1961)
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927)
M. A. Włodarczyk, Pyrrhonian Inquiry (2000)
June
Vygotsky, Thought and Language (1934)
Daniel Dor, The Instruction of Imagination (2015)
P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein (1999)
Koert Debeuf, The Influence of Averroes on European Thought (2024)
Jay Garfield’s translation of Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995)
Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upanisads (1998)
Ziporyn’s translation of the Zhuangzi (2020)
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
✅ Hisashi Kashiwai, The Kamogawa Food Detectives (2024)
May
Melanie Klein, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963
Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics (1856–67)
Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
Marx and Engels, The German Ideology Manuscripts (1846)
Christopher Lloyd, The Structures of History
Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (2015)
Gil Fronsdal, The Buddha Before Buddhism (2016)
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
✅ Sándor Márai, Embers (1942)
April
Rodney Needham, “Polythetic Classification: Convergence and Consequences” (1975
James F. Hamill, Ethno-Logic: The Anthropology of Human Reasoning
Aristotle, Categories, Ackrill translation (1963)
Marx and Engels’s German Ideology Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the Feuerbach Chapter. Trans. T. Carver and Daniel Blank (2014)
Marcel Mauss, “The Techniques of the Body” (1936)
Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God, and Devil (1949)
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements (1997)
Amie McNee, We Need Your Art (2025)
Kenneth W. Holloway, Guodian (2009)
Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics, vol. III (1856–67)
T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (1955)
Zipyorn’s translation of the Zhuangzi (daily)
Nietzsche, Zarathustra (1885) (daily)
✅ Harry Tiebout: The Collected Writings (daily)
March
Nietzsche, Zarathustra (1885) (daily)
Bryan Van Norden, Classical Chinese for Everyone (2019)
Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997)
✅ Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Tiny Experiments (2025)
Von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics, vol. III
Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. (1995)
✅ Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
✅ Thomas Kuhn, The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn, ed. Bojana Mladenović (2022)
W. K. C. Guthrie, “The ‘Nomos’–‘Physis’ Antithesis in Morals and Politics” (2015)
Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Interview with Rei Kawakubo (2013)
Possehl, Gregory L. Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (1982)
Nāgārjuna. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mülamadhyamakakārikā. Jay Garfield (1995)
Westerhoff, Jan. Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction (2009)
Marx and Engels’s German Ideology Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the Feuerbach Chapter. Trans. T. Carver and Daniel Blank (2014)
Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Anguttara Nikaya. (2012)
Cohen, Signe. ‘Schopenhauer and the Upaniṣads’. In The Upaniṣads: A Complete Guide, edited by Signe Cohen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
✅ Alexander Luria, Cognitive Development (1936)
William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909)
Jessica Frazier, “Against Infinite Nothingness” (2024)
Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk
Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation
Alasdair MacIntyre, Marcuse
Zipyorn’s translation of the Zhuangzi (daily)
Translations of the Laozi (daily): Lau, Starr, Ames/Hall, Derek Lin, Addiss/Lombardo, Feng/English, Trapp
Harry Tiebout: The Collected Writings (daily)
Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
February
Wittgenstein, Culture and Values
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, vol I (1818)
✅ Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877)
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature
David Pears, Wittgenstein
Dawid Rogacz (ed.), Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers (2024)
Marcel Mauss, “The Techniques of the Body” (1936)
Zipyorn’s translation of the Zhuangzi
✅ Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
January
Marcel Mauss et al, The Category of the Person
Lev Vygotsky, The Vygotsky Anthology, ed. Myra Barrs (2024)
Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science
Daniel Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination (2015)
Isaiah Berlin, Concepts and Categories
✅ Hannah Arendt, “What Is Existential Philosophy?”
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, vol II (1844)
Jonathan D. Culler, Saussure
Cecilia Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets (2018)
Zipyorn’s translation of the Zhuangzi
To get/start/continue
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (~200 CE)
Gadamer, Truth and Method (1960)
Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets
Daniel Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination (2015)
