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essentialsaltes I've Been Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett
It's something of an autobiography of philosopher Dan Dennett, who is my spirit animal. He's done a lot of good (IMHO) work in dispelling a number of *wrong* ways of thinking about consciousness, and his other interests in artificial intelligence, evolutionary theory, etc. are also of great interest.
There's an awful lot more celebrity name-dropping in this than I expected, but I won't begrudge him his fame. Nothing earth-shattering, but a lot of interesting details, like that he was essentially one of the inaugural professors at UC Irvine when the campus got started, only later moving to Tufts where he's been happy ever since. A nice vignette about his farm in Maine with some description of his neighbors that are more sympathetic than those he gives to a number of asshole philosophers when he finally unloads on them in one short chapter about academic bullies. If Dennett is also your spirit animal, then you'll enjoy this. If you don't know who I'm talking about, it's not likely this will appeal
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Supernatural skullduggery among the 'secret' societies of Yale (like Skull and Bones). An enjoyable, but very dark, rollercoaster ride, but the number of smug Ivory Tower elitists is maddening. It helps somewhat that our heroine is a SoCal gutterpunk, but I did keep rooting for asteroid strike -- a pox on all their houses. Lots of interesting prose and more than enough action, but the whole set-up seems a bit contrived, and the possibilities of magic seem pushed by the requirements of the plot more than any coherent system. Go Bruins.
The House at Awful End by Philip Ardagh
I picked this out of a little free library initially because of the Gorey-adjacent illustrations by David Roberts. And the story clearly has a pleasantly dark theme. Allegedly the author wrote this story out, chapter by chapter, for a lonely nephew trapped in a boarding school. Maybe it doesn't go quite as dark as Ninth House, but it goes pretty dark for something aimed at kids. And not just dark, but kind of nasty in a way that goes beyond Roald Dahl's stories if not Roald Dahl's actual life. The book's humor (as such) is a series of random improbable predicaments. I can see how the episodic nature of its composition might lend to that, but it's just not funny. I'm probably wrong, though. The Financial Times writes 'it would be a sad spirit that didn't find this book hilarious," and if any journal is an expert in comedy, it's FT.
It's something of an autobiography of philosopher Dan Dennett, who is my spirit animal. He's done a lot of good (IMHO) work in dispelling a number of *wrong* ways of thinking about consciousness, and his other interests in artificial intelligence, evolutionary theory, etc. are also of great interest.
There's an awful lot more celebrity name-dropping in this than I expected, but I won't begrudge him his fame. Nothing earth-shattering, but a lot of interesting details, like that he was essentially one of the inaugural professors at UC Irvine when the campus got started, only later moving to Tufts where he's been happy ever since. A nice vignette about his farm in Maine with some description of his neighbors that are more sympathetic than those he gives to a number of asshole philosophers when he finally unloads on them in one short chapter about academic bullies. If Dennett is also your spirit animal, then you'll enjoy this. If you don't know who I'm talking about, it's not likely this will appeal
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Supernatural skullduggery among the 'secret' societies of Yale (like Skull and Bones). An enjoyable, but very dark, rollercoaster ride, but the number of smug Ivory Tower elitists is maddening. It helps somewhat that our heroine is a SoCal gutterpunk, but I did keep rooting for asteroid strike -- a pox on all their houses. Lots of interesting prose and more than enough action, but the whole set-up seems a bit contrived, and the possibilities of magic seem pushed by the requirements of the plot more than any coherent system. Go Bruins.
The House at Awful End by Philip Ardagh
I picked this out of a little free library initially because of the Gorey-adjacent illustrations by David Roberts. And the story clearly has a pleasantly dark theme. Allegedly the author wrote this story out, chapter by chapter, for a lonely nephew trapped in a boarding school. Maybe it doesn't go quite as dark as Ninth House, but it goes pretty dark for something aimed at kids. And not just dark, but kind of nasty in a way that goes beyond Roald Dahl's stories if not Roald Dahl's actual life. The book's humor (as such) is a series of random improbable predicaments. I can see how the episodic nature of its composition might lend to that, but it's just not funny. I'm probably wrong, though. The Financial Times writes 'it would be a sad spirit that didn't find this book hilarious," and if any journal is an expert in comedy, it's FT.
