For the past few weeks on the blog, I’ve been discussing the importance of reading challenging texts. “Challenging” covers a broad range of books — it can mean books you hate, books you don’t enjoy, books that you are ideologically opposed to, or books that are worth reading but hard to get through.
Continue reading “Mitch Horowitz on Reading Great Occult Texts”
Last week I explored why I believe reading challenging and controversial books is a beneficial practice — a skill I’m calling resilient reading. After publishing that post, though, I realized it might be worth exploring some disciplines that make resilient reading tenable.
Continue reading “The Art of Resilient Reading”
I’ve been reading J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series (written under the pen name Robert Galbraith), and it’s ignited some reflections on one of my long-standing obsessions: reading literature deemed harmful, problematic, or dangerous. In my circles, reading anything by J.K. Rowling is fraught. In the aftermath of her public stances on trans people, a generation of readers are now re-examining her books and legacy. Mentioning that I’m reading J.K. Rowling inevitably generates exasperated sighs, eye rolls, or outright hostility.
Continue reading “J.K. Rowling and Resilient Reading”
Some time ago, a person asked me, “what is it with young men being obsessed with Jordan Peterson?”
Well, I thought, I’m a young man, and I’ve historically been obsessed with Jordan Peterson. Allow me to share my personal experience.
Continue reading “The Center of the Cathedral: The Allure of Jordan Peterson”
2021 was a hard year, and once again I got through it by gorging myself on books. I completed just over 50 books, and the following are the standouts. A reminder: this is not a “best books” list. These are the most notable and interesting to me personally, including the best and the worst. Finally, a book only makes this list if I have something to say about it. A novel might blow my mind, but if I struggle to write a paragraph about it, it won’t make this list.
Continue reading “Top Books of 2021”
In his book The Better Angels of our Nature, linguist and polymath Steven Pinker discusses the extraordinary power of book reading.
Continue reading “Reading as a Technology of Compassion”
I’ve spent the past few months writing a series on reading challenging books, all of which you can find listed at the end of this post. In my fervor to make the point, I’ve come to realize that something essential was under-emphasized in my previous posts.
Continue reading “Everyone Needs a Safe Word”
I’ve gotten some interesting criticisms of my recent series of blog posts on the importance of reading challenging and problematic literature. The most common is along these lines: “you can get information that is just as good from non-problematic sources, so why not just do that?”
Continue reading “Books Aren’t Search Engines”
I’ve spent a good portion of my online career bashing Jordan Peterson. I’ve often found him clownish and, at times, downright dangerous.
His new book Beyond Order, however, surprised me. The Peterson that emerged from its pages was a far more complicated and interesting figure than I had previously given him credit for. He lives with brutal addiction and depression, and yet doles out advice on how to lead a good life. He’s weird, eccentric, verbose, and surprisingly progressive and conservative at different turns. I found parts of his book genuinely helpful, and other parts frustrating and overly esoteric. None of this is to say that I’m a fan or that I agree with him on everything. It’s simply to say that I found his most recent book worth engaging.
Continue reading “Jordan Peterson on The Utility of Horror”
I’ve been making noise on social media lately about how I deliberately read problematic books. By problematic, I mean that they are deemed, justly or unjustly, toxic or bad by people I usually agree with. I’ve noticed some palpable discomfort when I bring up the topic, so I thought I would take some time to explore why I think reading problematic literature is helpful.
Continue reading “In Defense of Reading Controversial Books”
Stephen Bradford Long 