Bibliotherapy for troubled times: some pandemic but mainly pandemic-free reading

I figured this is as good a time as any to kick off my latest little ‘project.’ It’s been in the works for a few months but I’ve been putting it off. It was prompted by a student who asked me, quite some time ago, what else I read besides books. I think I was complaining when I said that I ‘only’ read 40-50 books a year and if I gave up reading articles (news, business, sport), I could probably double that. She then asked ‘what the hell do you read and where do you find it?’ and I sort of rambled off a few websites and sources of inspiration.

Here we are, many months later, and I’m finally getting round to it. If social media is anything to go by, seems like people need something to keep them occupied at the moment, and reading is always a good idea – right? – so I am more than happy to oblige.

(So much for my ‘try to be more social’ resolution for 2020!)

Loyal and devoted readers will know that I’m forever making empty promises that I have little chance of keeping. Was it last year or the year before where I said I was going to post one 1,000 word post a week? As if that ever had a chance.

That means no promises now, but I did vow that once I started this, I would try to provide more links to articles on a [fairly] regular basis. Once a day? Obviously not? Once a month? Doesn’t seem often enough. Once a week? Um, we’ve been down this road before.

Let’s see how it goes and I will refrain from any promises for now.

A few ground ‘rules’ and aims:

1 Unless it’s absolutely necessary, nothing sport-related

2 No politics (though one link I’m going to share today may appear to be political…)

3 I’m aiming for eclecticism – a variety of websites, a vast range of themes, a real smorgasbord of different stuff

4 Ideally future-proof – things that can comfort and soothe the soul for years and decades to come; nothing that will date too quickly

And yes, I do realise that ‘bibliotherapy’ refers to books, and not magazines, newspapers or other articles. But I’m stretching the word a bit and just to satisfy my band of hard-core book readers, I will naturally share some of this year’s reading list.

And I will also share my two biggest fears with this current crisis – what terrifies me the most.

In today’s links edition:

1 Want to save money? Drop your deuces at work!

Like many others, I can’t stand it when financial ‘advisers’ say things like ‘save more money for your retirement by cutting out the daily cup of coffee!’. Screw you. That cup of coffee is one of life’s unadulterated joys.

But it truly is unbelievable how much you can save over a lifetime if you take your dumps at the office. This is mind-blowing, life-altering stuff. Great shit, check it out:

Flushing Money Down The Toilet (Ramp Capital)

2 How headphones are making us into horrible, anti-social misanthropes (sort of). And a different type of social isolation.

‘Doctors worry that headphones are damaging people’s hearing. I worry about the epidemic of social isolation. Headphones proclaim to the world that you’re more interested in the inside of your head than you are in what’s going on in your immediate vicinity…[h]ow can we even dream of a common purpose when everyone is absorbed in their own soundtrack?’

Headphones have destroyed our sense of common purpose (1843)

3 Why pessimism is so seductive

As an unrepentant pessimist, I truly believe that being an optimist – or at least too much of an optimist – is dangerous and perhaps even irresponsible. You don’t want to blind yourself to the risks of potential dangers. Best to be prepared for the worst.

This is from one of my favourite financial bloggers, Morgan Housel. One of the wisest, sanest heads out there (and he’s been a blessing during our current troubled financial times).

The Seduction of Pessimism (Collaborative Fund)

4 The art of tsundoku: the joy of surrounding yourself with loads of unread books

Have you ever worried about having way too many unread books on your shelf? Are you, like me, the kind of person who keeps on buying more and more books despite not having read many of the ones already on your shelves? Well, maybe not, but either way, but there’s much to be said about having an ‘antilibrary’.

The value of owning more books than you can read

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my tsundoku (Big Think)

5 Why I want my daughter to look at the world with wonder, not fear. Or at least wonder first, and then fear later.

Being a parent in today’s world isn’t easy, especially if you’re the anxiety-ridden fatherly type like me. I’ve never been the predicting sort, except in the classroom. What I mean is, I don’t ever make predictions about the future in real life, but merely for the purposes of teaching – ‘it’s highly likely that it will almost certainly get hotter in the future and we very well may have to move to the Arctic.’ I’m talking about teaching grammar here. Future tenses and all that stuff. I throw lots of examples at my students, some I might believe, others designed to be thought-provoking (and provocative) and others probably just a load of rubbish.

This is from my go-to source for news and everything pandemic-related, The Atlantic. This post is pandemic-free, however, fear not.

The Concession to Climate Change I Will Not Make

I’ve never thought we should stop having children. But I will have to teach our son to wonder at the world before he learns to fear for it. (The Atlantic)

6 And maybe I’ve been wrong all this time: stop going to work sick, don’t be such a tough [guy].

I’ve always preached the value of not succumbing to your critical thinking biases, especially confirmation bias, perhaps one of the most pernicious and damaging. But this one really gave me pause and has made me think that perhaps I’ve been going about things in the wrong way. I hate calling in sick to work – I’m part of the whole ‘I’ll tough it out and fight through it’ crowd. But probably not anymore.

This, from a Russian-born, mainly American-raised journalist, who I’ve had a journalistic crush on for a long time – isn’t there something endearing about journalistic crushes?

And I’m definitively not sharing this as anything political – this is about sickness, not politics, and this is the closest I’ll come to sharing anything pandemic-related.

Your Rugged American Individualism Is Making You Dangerous (GQ)

And of course, some books to get you through this, both pandemic and non-pandemic related. Here’s some proper bibliotherapy…or not.

Part 1: The pandemic stuff

I really like to be in the moment with my reading. I’ve been devouring news about what’s going on, I can’t shut myself off from it. And as I alluded to earlier, The Atlantic is my go-to source for everything coronavirus.

Outside of that, here’s what I’ve been reading:

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John Barry

The most shocking part of this, and the biggest difference between now and then? The 1918 flu mainly wiped out the young and healthy, primarily the 20-35 years age group.

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio

I mean, you kind of have to read some tales from the Black Death at a time like this, don’t you?

“The pestilence was so powerful that it was transmitted to the healthy by contact with the sick, the way a fire close to dry and oily things will set them aflame. And the evil of the plague went even further: not only did talking to or being around the sick bring infection and a common death, but also touching the clothes of the sick or anything touched or used by them…'

The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding, Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber

If you’re into behavioural economics – things like Thinking, Fast and Slow and Predictably Irrational – then this will be right up your alley. Is this strictly pandemic related? No, not at all, but it’s yet another look at how so many people fail to use reason in today’s world, and how people choose to ignore facts, statistics, science, evidence and much else besides. Books like this frustrate me, but in a good way, if that makes sense. I wish more people would read and take heed. The world just might be a better place. Yes, I’m naïve.

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

I’ve just downloaded this and have yet to start. It promises to be something deep and disturbing with a ‘civilizational collapse’, post-pandemic theme. In other words, some light, fun reading before bedtime.

Part 2: The non-pandemic yearly highlights thus far, and 2020’s reading theme

Long-time readers will know how much I love yearly reading themes and this year’s came around somewhat by default.

Last year was devoted to women, the fiction-side of things anyway.

And I briefly carried the theme over into early 2020 with Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum

What an absolute treat. A bizarre hotel in Berlin, the 1920s, a cast of motley characters with all sorts of shenanigans taking place.

With a big year in American politics – the election – if I have a theme this year, it’s somewhat US-focused.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

From early Depression-era, grim, poverty-laden tales of despair to the high life of late 1930s, end of Depression, martini-guzzling Manhattan, and then circling back to early 1920s middle-class, conformist American culture. Talk about extremes.

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays, Christopher Hitchens

These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Some fiction; essays and polemics with a distinct American slant; a nearly 1,000 page political history epic opus; and a long letter from one of today’s sharpest intellectuals to his teenage son.

Part 3: Everything else

The Logic of Life: Uncovering the New Economics of Everything, Tim Harford

Flights, Olga Tokarczuk

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, Michael Pollan (mesmerizing and transformative – it will really change the way you think about food and might even inspire you to cook more)

The Honjin Murders, Seishi Yokomizo

The Problems of Philosophy, Bertand Russell (the Problem is that I read too much Philosophy)

The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics, Diarmaid Ferriter (there always has to be something Northern Ireland-related)

The Book of Dead Philosophers, Simon Critchley

And finally…my biggest fears in our current troubled times

1 Over the last couple of years, I’ve had food/drink/diet related themes for some months. March is no sweets and no sugar month. April is no alcohol month. There’s no way in hell I’m going to make it through April without alcohol with the way things are going. I’ll have to postpone this to later in the year. I’ve been surviving at home in somewhat of a drunken stupor for the past week, and I see little sign of this abating anytime soon. As Lloyd Bridges says in Airplane!: ‘Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking’ (amongst other things).

2 How the hell am I going to be able to work from home – to somehow teach classes online – with a rambunctious, spoilt, attention-demanding little 2 year old whippersnapper wreaking havoc around me in the flat?