2024 Roundup: My year in Books

For Teachin’

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
J. M. Coetzee, Foe
John Richetti, ed, The Cambridge Companion to ‘Robinson Crusoe’
Peter Hess, trans, Violent First Contact in Venezuela, Nikolaus Federmann’s Indian History
Carlos A. Jáuregui, trans, The Conquest on Trial: Carvajal’s Complaint of the Indians in the Court of Death
Neil L. Whitehead, trans, Of Cannibals and Kings: Primal Anthropology in the Americas

For Book-Writin’

Richard C. Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century
Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages
Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages
Plato, Phaedo (trans G. M. A. Grube)
Helinand of Froidmont, Verses on Death (trans Jenny Lind Porter)
Cicero, On Fate, and Boethius (trans R. W. Sharples)
The Book of Causes (Liber de Causis) (trans Dennis J Brand)
Aristotle, De Anima (trans C. D. C. Reeve)
Francine McGregor, Equine Medicine and Popular Romance in Late Medieval England

Group Reads for Various Groups

Marco Polo, The Description of the World (trans Sharon Kinoshita)
The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck (trans Peter Jackson)
Proust, The Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower
Maya Wind, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom

Books by People I know more or less well, either online or off

Ben Lerner, The Lights
Ryan Ruby, Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry
Allison C. Meier, Grave
A. V. Marraccini, We the Parasites
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy or, the Style of Too Late Capitalism
Helen Phillips, Hum
Jade E. Davis,The Other Side of Empathy

Other Poetry

Lyn Hejinian, My Life and My Life in the Nineties

Books Bought on a Whim for Cheap at Conferences, Generally Quite Short

Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller Essays
Youval Rotman, Slaveries of the First Millennium
Kriston R. Rennie, Medieval Canon Law
‘Uthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābalusī, The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medieval Egypt
Don J. Wyatt, Slavery in East Asia
Dolly Jørgensen, The Medieval Pig

Review a Book Manuscript, They Pay You in More Books, So You Should Read Them

R. Howard Bloch, God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
Steven Justice, Adam Usk’s Secret
Samuel R. Delany, Of Solids and Surds
Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Valerio Cappozzo, A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy
Teju Cole, Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time

Attempts to Figure out Present Catastrophes

Lorenzo Varacini, Israel and Settler Society
René Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Johan Walters, ed, The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
Martin Parker, Shut Down the Business School: What’s Wrong with Management Education
Benjamin S. Case, Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence
Olúfẹ́mi O. Taiwo, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

A Lovely Gift

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Report Horror Story

Presses Devoted to Interesting Writing

Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
Kate Briggs, The Long Form
Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, An African in Greenland
Rosmarie Waldrop, The Hanky of Pippin’s Daughter
Yoko Tawada, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel

Whatever’s Left Over

Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind
László Krasznahorkai, Satantango
Lauren Oyler, No Judgment: Essays
Rachel Cusk, Aftermath
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Live Performances of Various Kinds
Blonde Redhead
Die Frau ohne Schatten
Ainadamar
Julio Torres’ Problemista Tour
Arctic Explorations (opera by Michael Dellaira)
Adoration (opera by Mary Kouyoumdjian)
Eureka Day
Cellino v. Barnes

Other Cities and Countries

Philadelphia
Sewanee Tennessee
Bellingham Washington
Kalamazoo
London
Oslo and Bergen and a handful of very small places (eg, Eidfjord, Borgund) in Norway, the year’s big trip
Edinburgh
Baton Rouge
New Orleans
Brattleboro Vermont, its outskirts

Other Stuff

Did manage to run a 1:53:51 half marathon. Did 1:55:02 on the same route in 2023. So that’s a good trend. Otherwise ran just a bit more than 1200 miles this year, which is well short of what I did in 2023. Became a “gym guy.” Dealt with other health stuff: if you’re of a certain age, get your colonoscopy, however unpleasant it is. If you’re furnished with a prostate, and likewise of a certain age, get your PSA checked.