Recently acquired.

Four of the titles pictured above are selections for the 2026 Philosophical Book Club at Commonplace Philosophy. Speaking of philosophy, my two-person study group will discuss Book IX of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics tomorrow, which means this excellent project draws to a close soon. Next up for us is a deep dive into the novels of E.M. Forster, beginning with Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). We’ve been reading and studying together for a couple of years now, so it is no surprise that we often discover new books that appeal to us both. Most recently, a Guardian review ensured that Rami Kamiski’s The Gift of Not Belonging ended up on our doorsteps and then at the tops of our respective “actively reading” stacks. Ditto John Burnside’s The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century (2021). Both of these are pictured above.

For courses at the University of Chicago Graham School, I’m reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and (re)reading Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Later this semester, I will read his Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend. It may prove aspirational, but I’ve pulled Claire Tomalin’s 2011 biography of Dickens from the shelves. For an upcoming seminar led by the translator, I’m reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Odyssey (2025), and as part of the enrichment experience for Big White Fog at the Court, I’ve pulled down Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), selected by the Community Reads Book Club. (Admittedly, this, too, may be aspirational.) After attending the KINO! Film Salon discussion of the documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, I began reading his 2022 memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is pretty terrific.

As for what I’ve recently finished, that includes the texts associated with courses I took through Roundtable by 92nd Street Y: North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell; 1855), Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things (Joel Christensen; 2025); and Possession: A Romance (A.S. Byatt; 1990). I reread Lionel Shriver’s 2016 novel, The Mandibles, the book my youngest packed for vacation. It holds up — presciently so. What didn’t work for me was Megan Abbott’s latest, El Dorado Drive. Her previous novels have been reliably fun “beach reads,” but this was clumsy and predictable. Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women (1952), on the other hand, which I read with APS Together, was elegant, endlessly surprising, gorgeously written.