Summary: Stories of Your Life and Others is the first collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, a man who will surely be remembered as one of this era’s finest writers. Ranging from reimagined biblical fables to ethical examinations of near-future technology, Stories contains a batch of bizarre narratives brimming with emotional poignancy and intellectual depth. With [...]
Summary: Children of Memory is the third volume in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” series. Tchaikovsky continues to build on the evolutionary concepts and thought experiments from the previous two books, this time taking the story in a mysterious and surprising new direction. When an eclectic crew of interstellar adventurers discovers Imir––a partially-terraformed planet colonized by refugees [...]
Summary: Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fictional mélange of philosophy, history, romance, and political commentary. Set in Prague during the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the novel recounts the story of two couples struggling to find peace and connection in turbulent times. In a world where time flows forward and everything happens [...]
Summary: Amor Towels’s The Lincoln Highway is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950s America. It follows a group of young men––and one delightfully-feisty young woman––through an improbable but not entirely unbelievable series of (mis)adventures that take place over ten days. Each character is seeking some version of their personal American Dream; sometimes these visions fit nicely together, [...]
Summary: Anil Seth’s Being You is a new and groundbreaking examination of the nature, science, and ethics of consciousness. Seth presents three theories to contextualize current research and guide future efforts to explain what consciousness is and how it arises. The first theory is the “Real Problem of Consciousness,” an alternative to the traditional “Hard Problem” and [...]
Summary: Lisa Feldman Barrett’s Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is an exceptionally lucid and commendable contribution to popular neuroscience. In this series of concise, highly-accessible essays, Barrett synthesizes a huge field of academic knowledge in a fashion that any literate person can enjoy and benefit from. Her central thesis is that the brain is [...]
Stephen Fry’s Troy is the third and final book I read in preparation for Ada Palmer’s upcoming finale to her magnificent Terra Ignota series. This last stop in my self-education about the Trojan War is by far the most comprehensive source I’ve consulted, but also the least enjoyable. Fry’s obvious wit and passion for Greek Mythology notwithstanding, Troy felt more like [...]
Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library is a whimsical yet heavy journey into the ultra-trendy land of multiverse narratives. The protagonist is Nora Seed, a bedraggled Brit who decides to take her own life after her personal shitcake of bad luck gets iced by a particularly lousy day. Instead of fading to black, Nora finds herself in a [...]
When I decided to pursue a career in counseling, a mentor recommended Carl Rogers as one of the key historical figures in the development of modern psychotherapy. On Becoming a Person is a collection of essays originally published between 1951 and 1961, each presenting a portion of Rogers’s insights from over thirty years of counseling and psychological [...]
In 2020––a year painfully riddled with death, loss, and uncertainty––cultivating our capacities for compassion, love, and flourishing seems both harder and more necessary than ever. In this crucial project, I can think of no better text to guide us than Scott Barry Kaufman‘s Transcend. This enlightening and joyous voyage into humanity’s psychological history, present, and possible futures arrived [...]