Trust by Hernan Diaz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Despite it being a Pulitzer Prize Winner, this novel just didn't resonate with me.

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Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you are struggling with all the shit of the world right now, then this is a book I recommend to you.

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Intentional Leadership: In-Between Seasons by Sarah B Drummond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sarah Drummond presented at the professional conference I attended two weeks ago. Yesterday this copy of her last book arrived, and it is a good and quick read. Much that's helpful in it that I will put into application in my work.

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In early December, El Pais, named a list of "the 10 most influential thinkers in the world."  One of my church members sent me the link.  As I read through the article I was excited to discover that I had read nine of the ten thinkers.  And, in an amusing coincidence, the only one I hadn't read, Byung-Chul Han, that very day I had added his latest book The Spirit of Hope to my t0-read list after reading a review.  So it floated to the top of said list, and I read it shortly after, rounding out all ten on the list.

The ten are: Judith Butler, Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, Jürgen Habermas, Yuval Noah Harari, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Zižek, Byung-Chul Han, and Peter Singer.

Let me take them in the order I encountered them.

Martha Nussbaum lectured at the University of Oklahoma when I was still an undergrad philosophy major at Oklahoma Baptist University.  Her topic in that series was the emotions and how emotions have rational content.  It was some years later before I read any of her books, the first one being one she wrote on religious freedom in America (I highly recommend).  Since then I've read many of her books, and she's become one of the thinkers influential in my own thinking.  If you're a non-academic reader looking for a good place to begin, I recommend The Monarchy of Fear.  Much of her best work is on better understanding our emotions, while her justice work has focused on what capabilities all humans need in order to live well.

Jürgen Habermas was one of those names you learned in a survey of the history of philosophy for his contributions to how the public uses reason to make decisions and solve problems.  I probably first read an excerpt in my history of contemporary philosophy class as an undergrad.  While in graduate school I did read his book Justification and Application, though I really don't remember anything from it.  Last year I read volume one of his current project (he's 95 and wrapping things up), which is a history of philosophy explaining how our use of reason has emerged and developed.  

In graduate school I enrolled in one of those intersession courses where you cram a semester's worth of reading and essay writing in about two weeks.  This particular course was on the philosophy of language, using Noam Chomsky as our main text and other thinkers in dialogue with him.  I came to the course initially with a view of language acquisition that believed we start with a blank slate and have to learn everything as children.  Chomsky argued that we are born already wired with the capacity to learn language, that the slate is far from blank.  This course was one of the few times I could point to such a sudden shift of opinion on my part, brought on my reading convincing arguments of one thinker.

Peter Singer and Michael Sandel are two contemporary philosophers I first read in excerpts while in graduate school and only in the last fifteen years finally read one of their books, particularly when I was teaching philosophy myself at Creighton University.  Singer is a utilitarian ethicist who has followed his convictions to make bold statements on animal rights and alleviating the suffering of newborn humans.  In this century he was the source of what became the effective altruism movement (which was until a few years ago quite trendy) in which one determines the most good one can do with one's resources.  One outcome of this was changing how philanthropy worked, with folks maximizing the life-saving potential of their donations--anti-malaria nets, for instance, are one of the most cost effective ways.  His The Most Good You Can Do outlines this perspective.

Sandel taught a course on Justice that became the most popular course at Harvard.  He later turned it into a very good book, that surveys the major approaches to creating a just society.  The book seriously needs an updated version, as the final chapter waxes euphoric about the election of Barack Obama and all the good that portends for the country.  Sandel believes that a society must have some vision of the good life and what it means to be a flourishing person and create the institutions that will help to further these goals, if we are to achieve justice.

I read Judith Butler's Gender Trouble after I came out as a gay man and was in a period of reading queer classics in various genres and fields.  Butler's work was seminal in our contemporary understanding of gender.  Gender is culturally constructed and is performed.  She was one of the key figures in the development of queer theory then.  As gender has become a hot-button topic in recent years, Butler's old work has come under increasing fire.  She's written a newer book trying to understand what has caused all the trouble.  I haven't read that one yet, but do intend to at some point.  

I'd been hearing about Slavoj Zižek but didn't know much, when I was browsing through Powell's, the great Portland, Oregon bookstore, with my friend Dan Morrow and came across a copy of Zižek's Violence, which explores all the various ways violence and our perception of it permeates contemporary culture and economics.  Zižek is a fascinating provocateur, and much of his work as a public intellectual has been online.  A video I enjoyed using in my philosophy courses was his takedown of philanthropy.

Thomas Piketty's Capital I read during my paternity leave in 2015.  Often with sleeping newborn in one arm and the heavy economic tome in the other.  Piketty's book galvanized folks a decade ago as it explained the deep inequalities of the global economy that helped to explain what had happened in the Great Recession.  And it seems that the things Piketty warned about have only gotten worse in subsequent years.

After it was a major global bestseller, I read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, but frankly didn't care for it at all.  So I've never understood his popularity or influence in how we understand human history and use that to anticipate our future.

Which brings me finally to Byung-Chul Han.  I had missed any familiarity with him until the end of this last year and have since seen a few friends commenting on him and his books.  I do plan to go back and read earlier works that I missed, but I have now read his latest book translated into English, The Spirit of Hope in which he writes about the fear that arises in our current moment of history because of all the crises we encounter.  In this period he encourages us to hope, for "It is hope that opens up a meaningful horizon that reinvigorates and inspires life.  Hope presents us with a future."  

A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third novel of hers I've read, and I continue to be surprised by how much I enjoy them, even if their old fashioned storytelling and sentimentality. They always move me deeply.

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The Spirit of Hope by Byung-Chul Han
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

He was recently listed by El Pais as one of the top ten intellectuals in the world. And, he was the only one on the list I had not read. But, ironically, the day before I had put this book on my to read list after seeing it in an end-of-year best-of list.

I really enjoyed the beginning and the idea of hope as "searching movement." There are definitely sentences I'll be quoting in sermons in years ahead.

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Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yeah, this is a great read. Don't miss it.

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Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation by Mary Daly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally read this classic, having only read excerpts before. And it is still a great read. So many of her insights still sound groundbreaking and radical all these decades later.

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Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. This is more horrifying than anything Stephen King ever wrote.

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Left Is Not Woke by Susan Neiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've often returned to Neiman's Evil in Modern Philosophy and so was intrigued when I saw this new publication. In it Neiman stands up for four values of the left--universalism, justice, progress, and doubt--against their critics, especially those on the left itself who critique these values. It's a good read to help us philosophically understand our moment.

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