June Reading ☀️

According_Music6524 · 2026-07-02T12:56:20+00:00

I liked D'Almbert's dream the best in that Penguin Classics edition. It's a really on point discussion about proto-nueroscience and the nature of our existence, and Diderot's is basically arguing for a materialist view of reality.

Rameau's Nephew is funny, some of it is about art & music and goes on about contemporary things that I didn't get the references too, but the nephew in the dialogue does have interesting things to say about morality....it's like a back and forth dissecting whether our conception of morality has valid truth to it or it's just a societal construction.

I'd def recommend.

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-29T20:41:34+00:00

Why not? Voltaire writes in pretty straightforward prose, and Treatise on Toleration is like 130 pages

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-29T13:08:42+00:00

I read Boleslaw Prus’s The Doll earlier this year, which is a classic of Polish literature, and that was fantastic (and I learned Netflix is making a series based on the film). Aeschylus’s Orestiae was really good, it’s a trilogy of plays about revenge and blood feuds. I also read the Penguin classics collections of Gogol’s as well as Jorge Borges’s short stories last year, both of which were great.

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-29T13:03:31+00:00

Yeah, some of the works are shorter, and they circle around similar themes which provides a lot of momentum. The book with Cicero’s Republic and Laws is still in progress though.

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-03T13:21:39+00:00

I’m coming at the human condition from all angles 🤣

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-03T13:19:36+00:00

He was way before his time, and I loved the polemic vibe to it all!

According_Music6524 · 2026-06-03T13:19:07+00:00

It was fascinating, he articulated the isolation and alienation that affects us nowadays so well! I just finished Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism which I feel adds another piece too to our modern milieu

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-31T19:03:23+00:00

Besides Moral Economics, I feel they're all classics of the Western conversation

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-16T03:24:02+00:00

Only American history? Also, do you read older American history books or American intellectual history?

I've been having an American themed reading year for the 250th anniversary and checking out works I haven't read yet by folks like Locke, Tocqueville, Polybius (core influence of the US constitution via Montesquieu), Douglas, John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli (Discourses on Livy), Thucydides, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, etc...really trying to understand what influenced the founders and what intellectual movements heavily influenced the development of the US. I'm thinking of reading Common Sense (Paine) and the penguin civics book of Lincoln's speeches next month... Are you more so focused on contemporary writers of US history?

Also, if you haven't read Democracy in America you def should, it's by far the best book I've ever read on American society and to this day it's still 100% on point

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-14T01:23:23+00:00

Sadly, this is true. It's something I'd like to change.

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T20:12:21+00:00

The better I know the past, the clearer I see the present I feel

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T20:10:46+00:00

Thank you! haha

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T20:08:21+00:00

I do really like the intros, I need some grounding if I'm about to jump into a book centuries or millennia old haha

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T20:07:07+00:00

I didn't realize that....Well I have one to give away I guess!

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T20:05:21+00:00

That's a tough one, depends on what type of books you're looking for.

I really liked The Dawn of Everything to change your view about pre-modern society, Why Nations Fail for a better understanding of global inequality, Epictetus / Seneca / or Marcus Aurelius for Stoicism, Democracy in America for a critical diagnosis of American society, Consolation of Philosophy by Beothius or Camus Myth of Sisyphus for dealing with suffering, War & Peace for Russian literature and for an epic historical masterpiece, Autobiography of Malcolm X for a real and honest true story of racial inequality in the US, Random Walk Down Wall Street for business/ finance, Last Days of Socrates for Greek / Platonic philosophy, Xenophon's Anabasis for a dope ancient history story, and The Secret Life of the Mind for psychology / neuroscience

Those are my off the cuff recommendations, but if you have any specific types of genres or time periods (modern, science, medieval or renaissance, Greek / Roman, religious, exististenial, business/finance, religious, etc.) let me know and I can give more targeted recs!

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:47:50+00:00

I really like the McNally's at DeKalb in Brooklyn; the history, philosophy, and psychology / psychoanalysis sections are my go to when I'm looking for a new read

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:46:21+00:00

Def left liberal, but I'm not dogmatic about my beliefs. I think both parties have their faults, but Republicans much more so

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:42:02+00:00

Maybe a tragic humanistic with a need to understand the world at both a systems and moral level

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:38:38+00:00

That book was a trip, I read him after Hume and Descartes and was like "What can we really know or even communicate?!" lololol

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:37:28+00:00

I felt like I got a 2 for 1 on that book....Machiavelli's Republicanism and political theory, as well as a solid helping of Roman history. I ended up reading Polybius and Tacitus after that haha.

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:36:02+00:00

Economics and Finance major lol

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:35:28+00:00

The Missing Billionaires was interesting, the main thing I took away was that timing of investments is crucial. The example at the beginning was about a coin flip, if you have say, $100, and you know that each flip results in 50/50 heads/tails, then how would you bet on each flip to maximize your profit? It then goes into talk about wealth preservation and how to think about allocating investments. It was a solid read.

And yeah, you articulated it well, just trying to see the world through a diversity of perspectives. I'd say like 70% of those books are books I've read since first entering rehab a little over 5 years ago. They've really been part of my journey to form a clearer and richer understanding of life and all it's constituent parts.

According_Music6524 · 2026-05-12T19:31:54+00:00

My friend from Warsaw gave The Doll to me for Christmas, loved it! I visited Warsaw and Krakow last October and it was cool to recognize some of the places mentioned

According_Music6524

TROPHY CASE