I have accomplished very little in the tangible line during my first full calendar year as a pensioner—as I have probably observed here before, it is surprising how little traction has been gained with the addition of ten hours a day yielded over to me from BDS—but I have been catching up on my reading. Here is everything of substance (I omit some ephemera, the sort of thing one reads in-flight on a Kindle, or mediocre courtroom procedurals such as the two I read, in some desperation, from the communal “library” at the condo in Puerto Vallarta last month) that I’ve taken in since the last turning of the year. Asterisks denote second or nth reading:

Roger Crowley, 1453
Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy
James Gleick, Time Travel, A History
Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus
Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
Thorkeld Hansen, Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition, 1761-1767
Walter Kaufman, Critique of Religion and Philosophy*
Walter Kaufman, The Faith of a Heretic
Walter Kaufman, From Shakespeare to Existentialism
Walter Kaufman, Tragedy & Philosophy
Patrick Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries
John McPhee, Irons in the Fire
David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man
Edward Sorel, Mary Astor’s Purple Diary
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
Thucydides, The Pelopponesian War*
———————
Robert Aickman, Compulsory Games (stories)
Paul Auster, Man in the Dark
Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road
Robert Graves, I, Claudius*
Robert Graves, Claudius the God*
Philip Kerr, Greeks Bearing Gifts
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain*
China Miéville, Embassytown
China Miéville, The City & the City
Kenji Miyazawa Once and Forever (stories)
Jean d’Ormesson, The Glory of the Empire
Thomas Pynchon, V.*
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49*
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow*
Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner
Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge
Milorad Pavich, Dictionary of the Khazars
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon*
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash*
Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March*
John Williams, Augustus*

A few minutes review of the subject volumes and calculation of their lengths suggests that this works out to an average intake of almost precisely fifty-five pages per day, although of course the actual reading patterns more closely resembled binge-and-purge.

cordially,

But within its terms, the “purge” might amount to a fortnight without cracking a book.

cordially,

I have a device at home that projects editorial content onto a luminescent panel, and this sustains me between books.

cordially,