Perhaps Im first entering into Wilde‘s works at an odd time, reading his famous prison prose De Profundis, written at the nadir of his career, before encountering any of the dramatic works that first made him a literary giant. But Im happy to get to know an older, more subdued Wilde who writes w/ humility but also (I think) no apology, acknowledging any past vices only so that they are swept aside to accommodate his spiritual awakening.

A highly interesting read (at least for one who did her physiology project on Tummo and hangs with people who write their theses on free divers diving by the Golden Gate Bridge) and one with immediate real-life applications and permanent, life-changing benefits. Nestor surveys how mouth-breathing can be killing us and nose-breathing can save us, what wonders breath-holds and box-breathing can do for asthma, sleep apnea and nasal congestion, etc.

A socialite leaves her bright urban life in 1950s Mexico City to check on her newly-wed cousin, who has sent an ominous message regarding her husband and his family‘s rotting (and haunted?) mansion she is sequestered in, off in the mountainous countryside. A good effort to infuse the Gothic novel with new blood, but the book still misses its mark.

My first book by Thompson, dubbed by a critic as the “Dimestore Dostoyevsky.” And very fitting too: this paperback reads like a Central Texan “Crime and Punishment” where deputy sheriff Lou Ford is our killer, and an incredibly psychopathic one at that. As narrator, Ford lets us wade through the swamp of his dark psyche as he struggles to keep up innocent appearances in his small hometown, recently the scene of several coldblooded murders…

Even if the style and writing of this nonfiction book is so-so, the story behind it is gripping. Grann investigates the Osage Indian Murders at their height in 1920s northern Oklahoma, where the Osage have become the rich owners of mineral rights in a land that has just struck an oil boom. Human vultures soon come to prey upon this new wealth, introducing an onslaught of corruption and killing gone unpunished due to their victims being non-white.

Written by a brilliant children‘s book author, scholar, history professor and Connecticut sheepherder, this concise, eloquent lecture of a book was meant to instill values in high schoolers that would steer them toward writing succinctly, testing fluidly, learning avidly and thinking well. But as the popularity of this work attests to, adults who read Armstrong are all the better equipped too, in facing life‘s demands after academia.

A rich historical portrait of a dying Sicilian aristocracy, hastened by Garibaldi‘s armies sweeping through Italy in the name of national unification. di Lampedusa writes of the dazzling luxuriance of the Salina family and its patriarch, the Prince (based on di Lampedusa‘s own great-grandfather) who is all too aware of the impending forces of change, relegating him and his class to the dusty corners of history. Burt Lancaster; 1963 film version.

A Jon Kabat-Zinn book from 1994. Not that that should be seen as any sign of outdated-ness: I‘ve been meditating for a while now and sometimes you can lose track of the “why” ~> this book, full of tips/tricks for looking at the everyday as anything but mundane, puts the “mindful” back into my mindfulness meditation. Watch “Healing and the Mind,” an old TV series that spotlights his breathing classes for patients w/ chronic pain = really inspiring.

For anyone toddling into beginning philosophy, this book is pure enlightenment. Took me months to get through this, but what a pleasurable few months it was! You‘re chewing over and rereading each page, from the Presocratics to Continental Philosophy, a selection of the most eminent Western thinkers (emphasis on “Western”). Adding my own revered philosopher here to the mix, background record “My Philosophy” by Boogie Down Productions (KRS-ONE).

A richly polished and moving portrait, written without one speck of superfluous sentimentality. We follow Mr. Mohun Biswas, from his humble birth to a humble death on the island of mid-20th century Trinidad, as he moves amongst a vast myriad of houses, all occupied by an equally vast and comic cast of characters, seeking a house of his own. Background record: “Hits of the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band: Trinidadian Reggae Style Music” (1973).

In an attempt to ford the loneliness of wanting an otherwise occupied lover and missing her young son away on a camping trip, divorcee Ellen embarks on a retreat to coastal France in search of sun, sex and other forms of self-obliterating hedonism in the high heat of late summer. As many “wicked” books often end, tragedy strikes.

Trying to venture back into high fantasy {I‘ve only read Harry Potter and LOTR}, with the encouragement of a friend who loves this author. Fun read, but a few stumbling blocks for me: one being the protagonist is an imprisoned assassin trying to win her freedom back under a regime responsible for bloody conquest and enslavement across half a continent…yet she still has time for boys and gads about her guarded castle room in a “too-short nighty.”

A historian‘s selection of photographs, taken of the small town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin and its inhabitants between the years of 1885 and 1900. Lesy pairs the photos with articles taken from the town newspaper, chronicling countless accounts of the eerie, dismal and shocking. This is a photo essay/compendium that shows the malaise of rural America entering modernity, a book garnering a cult-like following ever since its 1973 publication.

Read this in time for the release of Christopher Nolan‘s movie “Oppenheimer.” As far as non-fiction graphic books are concerned, “Trinity” is grimly excellent: portraying the science, history, war-time politics and immense moral quandary behind the construction of a weapon that has ushered us into the Atomic Age. Background record “Loving Explosion” is by The Eliminators, a 1970s funk-soul band from the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina.

A dark ode to the powerful bonds of sisterhood. Practical Korede must look out for her baby sister Ayoola, a spoiled beauty who attracts many men, only to end up killing them when she loses interest. Complicating things further, Ayoola soon catches the interest of Korede‘s crush: a handsome Lagos doctor. A fun setting for some sibling rivalry; otherwise, the breezy plot doesn‘t bite very deep. Poolside w/ coffee from Naked Lounge in Sacramento!

Poet and essayist Abdurraqib interweaves the contributions of major Black artists (Wu-Tang Clan, Aretha Franklin, Don Cornelius of Soul Train, Merry Clayton, FUPU, Joe Tex, Josephine Baker and a host of others) into the shaping of American entertainment, as well as his own upbringing and his own understanding of Black love, creativity, friendship, anger, and resilience. A little too much poetic sentimentality for me…more history!

A really unique read - Labatut seamlessly meshes historical fact and some fiction into a riveting set of stories, each detailing a particular troubled genius who contributed to the golden age (and its dark consequences) of quantum mechanics, with side forays into chemistry, mathematics, religion, and psychology. Eg, what to think of Fritz Haber, who harnessed nitrogen to fertilize/feed the world but also introduced poison gas to modern warfare?

I wanted to like this book - what with a young female protagonist who reads everything (from old Hollywood biographies to anarchic texts to physics tomes), and uses her vast stores of bookish knowledge to set about investigating the mysterious suicide of her favorite teacher on a camping trip. But….it‘s perhaps this same abundance of literary reference dotting every other sentence that made this novel feel a bit too heavy-handed and over-the-top.

This book was devastating for the fact that its largely autobiographical: the author‘s account of abysmal poverty as he grows up within a family attempting to make ends meet as itinerant workers/serfs, his older sisters sold into servitude for cruel landowners, his parents trying to fend off the miseries of locust swarms, dysentery and starvation, all while Syria navigates the end of the French Mandate and its wobbly first years of independence.

An immensely sad book (hence the “tragedy”) based on a real crime that took place in 1906, a young man drowning his pregnant girlfriend in a secluded Adirondack lake. Dreiser takes a long hard look at the unforgiving cultural and religious machinations demarcating social class and the lure of material wealth that eventually destroys these two young people‘s lives (the young man is eventually sent to the electric chair).

A young black man is imprisoned for allegations of rape of a white woman in apartheid South Africa. As he sits in his prison cell awaiting execution, he recollects to a Swiss psychoanalyst his boyhood, his parents, his ambitions to become his country's preeminent writer: a life disrupted by an infatuation he develops for a woman suntanning on a segregated beach.

A beautifully written book, full of one man‘s journal entries narrating his obsessive search for, and observations of, wintering peregrines in the marshy fenland of eastern England. Baker‘s keen eye teaches us patience and discernment, where we slowly learn to pick apart the beautiful patterns that underlie every wildlife scene: an activity so meditative and captivating, its hard to wrench yourself away as dusk falls at the end of each entry.

Everyone knows “I think, therefore I am” but after a full read-through of Descartes‘s Meditations in philosophy class, I wanted to know more about his work and life. I am fascinated by his emphasis that we should doubt our sensory views of the world for they are only a semblance of what he believes is the “true form” of the universe: a mathematical one, invisible initially, but eventually graspable by the rational human mind.

A 1986 autobiography spanning the life/career of the Father of Rock n‘ Roll, Chuck Berry‘s prose is true to form in that it‘s more half poetry-half song lyric. Berry relates his St. Louis upbringing, early blues inspirations and first recordings at Chicago‘s Chess Records before the newly minted rock n‘ roll really picks up. Even racism, his infidelities and several prison stints don‘t break his stride: “I would sing the blues if I had the blues.”

I elect this required reading. WNP Barbellion was the pseudonym of Bruce Frederick Cummings, an avid English naturalist and diarist. Sadly, Cummings did not have very long to live (we now know he had multiple sclerosis). It‘s his written ruminations on death, on scientific ambitions cut short, and a great love for Literature, Nature and his wife/child that make this one of the greatest journals published. He died in 1919 at the age of 30.

This book had been sitting on my shelf since middle-school…very happy I finally pulled it down to give it a read. A boy (who is described as being on the autism spectrum in publicity surrounding this book, but not explicitly stated by the book itself) sets about attempting to discover who killed his neighbor‘s black poodle. A mystery novel, yes, but one with a brilliant mathematically-minded detective possessing a wholly unique perspective.

Full of dark and twisted humor, very Martin McDonagh-esque! A killer, after losing his hand on a Spokane railroad track, has been searching for years to recover it. His luck may be turning when he agrees to meet up at a small-town motel with a young couple who aver they have the missing hand. Makes me wish I could‘ve seen the actual play in 2010, starring Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell.

According to Helen Scales, the ocean deep is far from the abyssal wasteland we think it is. As sperm whales plunge thousands of feet down to chase giant squid, exquisitely beautiful bioluminescent jellies sift through inky black water as deep sea octopuses, gigantic isopods and hairy-armed yeti crabs trundle along the undulating ocean bottom, inhabiting dark trenches and hydrothermal vents (purported to be the beginnings of all cellular life).

Part memoir, part poetic and historical inquiry into the uneasy relationship humans have had with teaching cadavers, the author writes about her first-year medical school course in gross anatomy, where she is paired with a female cadaver she names “Eve.“ The author's ensuing semester-long dissection of Eve cements her respect and gratitude to Eve as “mentor:“ an apt title for a woman whose donated body has enriched the education of many doctors.

My favorite Pynchon by far: a hilarious, zany L.A. noir about a private investigator investigating a kidnapped real estate mogul at the behest of his ex-girlfriend. Though I am in awe of the writing and sheer breadth of knowledge that makes up Gravity‘s Rainbow, I honestly enjoyed more this light-hearted, cannabis-infused, and unapologetically SoCal romp; “Pynchon Lite” as fans likes to say.

If you can settle in to the lilting patois, spoken by over half of the book‘s 75 characters, in narrating a jumbled retelling of the epic history behind Jamaica‘s troubled years, you‘re in for an extraordinarily rich experience. A Brief History takes fictional freedom in investigating who were, and what became of, the seven mysterious gunmen who attempted to assassinate Bob Marley right before his Smile Jamaica peace concert on Dec. 5, 1976.

I started this book excited, having heard good things about it: a book collector in New York City embarks upon a surreal trip into ancient folklore after his wife disappears following a horrendous event involving their newborn infant. It‘s an ambitious mix of fantasy, urban realism and the psychological trials of new parenthood, but a mix that didn‘t cohere well enough to make a truly good story.

A spectacular cross-study of horror, where Jones considers the various objects/phenomena (both the imagined and the very much real) that've inspired human fright over the centuries before finally given life and color via the novel, the movie reel, television and finally the Internet. If you'd like to know more about the grimness of early fairy tales to Italian mondo/exploitation films to ecological horror and even Freud, I highly recommend this.

Great selection of creepy stories, collected into one volume in 1957 by Don Congdon, more famously known as Ray Bradbury‘s literary agent (I read Bradbury‘s short-story “The Illustrated Man” for the first time in this book). Other favorites include “The Chaser” by John Collier, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen and “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki (H.H. Munro). Background record “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic.

A good collection of short-stories, written by the co-father of verismo, or Italian realism. Frequent breaks are needed, though, from the near-constant depictions of back-breaking poverty, onslaughts of cholera and tuberculosis, and familial health/wealth being made or broken by the capricious weather of the harsh Sicilian countryside. Lust and jealousy are major themes here: someone is either being called a "cuckold" or "tramp" every other page.

One of my all-time favorite books: a cultural celebration of swimming and the centuries of literature inspired by it. It‘s invigorated me enough to go plunge into the frigid San Francisco Bay every morning. Sprawson‘s only book, but it should count as five, it being packed with incredibly erudite dives into the author‘s lifelong fascination with water and “the swimmer” archetype. Background record: “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Done with a crazy school semester, picked up right where I left off on my “real” reading (sorry, not sorry, you fusty ol‘ biology textbooks). I adore this book: Eliot has a way of prying off the lids to all her characters‘ heads and gently examining the contents. Written 150 years ago, Middlemarch offers the humbling realization that you‘re just another chapter in a never-ending human story of vice, virtue and finding that one great love.

Just a really difficult book to read (obviously). Beautifully written, but the content makes you want to put the book down very often. It must've taken tremendous courage to relate such painful details about something so taboo. She relates how her being abused leaked into almost every aspect of her psyche, how it split her mind of what was beautiful and desirous, molding her as a teenager and as a young woman forming her own new relationships.

A graphic novel based on the author's experience working on an acute psychiatric ward for several years. Empathetic, educative, and often stark in its realism, it's an introduction to the forces behind a person's particular mental illness and the trials and stigma they often must endure. Depression, dementia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, suicide, and others, are each treated with a compassionate chapter that begs for our better understanding.

I've been on a volcano kick since watching Fire of Love, a 2022 documentary about the volcanologist couple Maurice and Katia Krafft. This slim book is an aesthetic pleasure, chock-full of photos and paintings. Some of the world's most famous volcanoes are described, both in their uneasy sleeps and fiery eruptions, the author connecting such blasts to their impact on humanity's artistic and literary imagination over the centuries.

Let‘s just say the timing was right to crack this open. A critically informative read removed from a purely pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy, Loretta Ross instead reframes women‘s reproductive rights within a human rights framework, a radical re-contextualization that demands not only reproductive health but a total reworking of all social determinants that plague, especially, poor women of color. It's not a right if not ALL women have access to it.

It‘s a credit to the wild and eventful life Langston Hughes had lived, for the poet to be asked to already write an autobiography, still in his thirties. Hughes tells of his early life as a curious young man, taking up work as a seaman on merchant ships to Africa, Havana and Europe, working as a waiter in the Black concert halls of Paris and finding his poetic voice, mingling with the literati and other cultural icons of the Harlem Renaissance.

So glad I finally decided to tackle some of the classics penned by this sci-fi master. I can definitely see, now, how so many elements in current science fiction was built upon his short stories and novels. I‘m curious about PKD‘s life as well: if anyone knows a good biography, let me know. It‘d be interesting to know more of the man behind this golden age of sci-fi. For now, I guess I‘ll finally let myself be convinced to watch “Blade Runner.”

As an SF resident, this sent me into a flurry of note-taking. The authors take pains to steer your attention to the un-touristy, long-forgotten corners of the Bay which make up an unbelievably fascinating human geography and complicated cultural stratigraphy. Must read for anyone wanting to know their city better (psst it‘s a whole series too; I want the NOLA one next). Background jazz record: “San Francisco Scene” by the George Shearing Quintet.

Adele, the titular character of this erotically-tinged little novel, is a wealthy, married Parisian mother trying for years to hide the empty compulsions that have her seeking violent and passionless sex with strange men. Not inquiring as to the “why” behind her character‘s affairs, Slimani simply keeps empathetic tabs on Adele‘s highs and heartbreaks, saying, “[literature] is maybe one of the only experiences where you can stop judging people.”

Through the eyes of a country doctor, this post-WWII story details the collapse of a beautiful manse due to time, a changing economic landscape (down with the landed gentry!) and most insidiously, a ghostly blight. Despite a long, untethered plot, the “ghost” stood out: sometimes the most malicious things out there are nothing but incarnations of our darkest, most possessive wishes. Background record: “Once Upon a Dream” by The Rascals.

The most fun I've had with an audiobook yet; it's narrated by Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey fans, heads up). I've stayed away from any movies based on Agatha Christie books just because I want to pick my way slowly through all her novels, in full suspense. This was well worth the wait: ten strangers are invited to an island by a mysterious owner only to realize it's a trap. One of them is not who they say they are and is intent on killing the rest.

Fun book to read: a broad look-through of witch history and witch symbolism (though mind, it keeps mainly to the European-North American sphere). The author discusses the early persecution of “witches,” witch depictions within various visual arts, and adoption of the witch as a fierce feminist brand (a beloved symbol for Wiccans, pagans, or ppl who plain don‘t want to be part of the mainstream) battling commodification and a patriarchal system.

Picked this book because I loved the title and the book cover (and it got a good word from Murakami). But it‘s a great piece of body lit, with all its female protagonists and their inconsistencies/hesitancies about their desires and goals, which I found true to life and refreshingly genuine. It is about messy women trying to navigate messy lives with messy bodies: it all leads to some incredibly poignant moments. Backdrop LP: Sun Ra‘s Disco 3000.

I hope I‘m not too alone in this but reading a textbook for fun can make a cool informative experience…especially if it‘s all about deciphering bones and their context to figure out who died where and how! Forensic anthropologists are called in to identify a body/answer a legal question when there‘s not enough remaining soft tissue for a medical examiner to come to any satisfying conclusions. Thought it matched well with my bedroom poster. :)