Reading

I put a lot of effort into maintaining a consistent reading habit while getting only limited enjoyment out of it, which often makes me question the advisability of the whole endeavor. Still, any alternative seems even more repulsive, and in the abstract, I’m proud of my accomplishments as a diligent reader. I would very much like to be admired for them, and that’s why I created this page, despite my instinctive reluctance to keep any systematic record of my experiences.

With few exceptions, I read books written in English in the original, and all other books in Polish. (Very recently, I’ve also started trying to read in French and German, but it’s progressing rather slowly.) I enjoy reading works written in verse aloud. I don’t like not finishing books, but I’ve decided that, on balance, there’s no need to subject myself to any more pain and tedium than strictly necessary. I occasionally listen to audiobooks, but don’t count that as “reading”.

2025

  • Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
  • Jacques Cazotte, Le Diable amoureux (in French)
  • Ludwig Tieck, Der blonde Eckbert (in German; amazing!)
  • Charles Nodier, Smarra ou les Démons de la nuit (in French; regrettably, slightly above my level)
  • Lord Byron, The Major Works (Don Juan not as entertaining as advertised, and there’s certainly a lot of it)
  • Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (very long, but much better than I expected)
  • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
  • Andrew Smith, Philosophy in Late Antiquity (DNF; abysmal as an introductory text)
  • George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues
  • William Wordsworth, The Major Works (impressive and necessary)
  • William Godwin, Caleb Williams (nerve-racking!)
  • Théophile Gautier, Récits fantastiques (in French)
  • David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley
  • Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
  • Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (DNF)
  • David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions
  • Alexandre Dumas, Le Château d’Eppstein (in French) (DNF; painfully dull)
  • David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Book I)
  • Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
  • Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations poétiques / Nouvelles Méditations poétiques (in French)
  • Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk
  • Aloysius Bertrand, Gaspard de la Nuit (in French)
  • Georges Simenon, Pietr-le-Letton (in French)
  • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 text)
  • Gérard de Nerval, Les Chimères / La Bohême galante / Petits châteaux de Bohême (in French)
  • Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
  • James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (fascinating and enthralling! one of the finest works of fiction I’ve read in recent years)
  • Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Antony
  • Edgar Allan Poe, Poetry & Tales (I gave up on the poetry quickly, because it seemed like doggerel. I’ve read 20 stories, some of which were new to me. Excellent when ambiguous, quaint at best when direct. Highlights: ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and ‘The Man of the Crowd’.)
  • Victor Hugo, Les Châtiments (in French)
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (DNF; gave up again upon my second approach this year. I find Milton’s blank verse too monotonous to derive any pleasure from the work.)
  • William Hazlitt, Selected Writings (A different collection than last year. I admire Hazlitt as one of the greatest prose writers in the English language, as well as a true thinker: frank, independent, and incisive. It is for this this reason that I found Liber Amoris truly baffling and shocking; I’m still not sure what to make of it.)
  • Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (DNF; I’ve read exactly half of it, which is still quite a lot, and I think that’s enough for me. Dickens is clearly a great writer, but the book was so quaint, whimsical, and good-humored that I felt as though I were eating cotton candy.)
  • Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man (Highlights: ‘Scanners Live in Vain’ and ‘A Planet Named Shayol’. Others I found rather bland and was irritated by the faux-epic narration style.)
  • James Tiptree Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (I appreciated the bleakness, but I was left disappointed. Overwrought and unsubtle. I liked ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’ the most.)
  • Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
  • John Keats, Bright Star: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Thoroughly unimpressed. I bailed at the ‘Longer Posthumous Poems.’)
  • Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales
  • Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations (in French) (Magnificent. Everything I expect from poetry. I’m already looking forward to reading the whole thing again.)
  • Thomas De Quincey, On Murder (OWC collection)
  • Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
  • Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl (DNF; a quarter of the way in and nothing to catch my interest, let alone my imagination. Reads like an airport thriller stuffed with lots and lots of Worldbuilding. Awkward prose that apparently wasn’t even proofread.)
  • Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (Padded out and overwritten. Always careful to spell everything out and paint with brushstrokes broad enough to be seen from outer space. A strange corniness to all the “speculative” inventions, as if the author were at pains to emphasize her distance from the world of commerce and pop culture.)

In progress

  • Lee Martin McDonald and Stanley E. Porter, Early Christianity and its Sacred Literature
  • M. Eugene Boring, An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology
  • Bart D. Ehrman, Hugo Méndez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
  • David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation
  • Sarah Ruden, The Gospels: A New Translation
  • Charles Nodier, La Fée aux Miettes / Smarra / Trilby
  • John Ruskin, Selected Writings (OWC)

Programming books, for some reason

  • Eric Normand, Grokking Simplicity (DNF at 60%; too simplistic, too cute, too padded, and should have used pseudocode instead of non-idiomatic JavaScript)
  • Cristian Salcescu, Functional Programming in JavaScript (DNF; not really a “book”)
  • Brian Lonsdorf, Professor Frisby’s Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (DNF; got lost starting with chapter 8)
  • Eric Elliott, Composing Software (DNF at 60%; badly edited, not really a “book”)

2024

Classics, English

  • W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems
  • Edward Young, Night-Thoughts (DNF)
  • William Blake, The Complete Poetry & Prose (large selections)
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poems
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (great!)
  • Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; Suspiria de Profundis; The English Mail-Coach (great!)
  • Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
  • Thomas Browne, The Urn Burial
  • William Hazlitt, Selected Writings (great!)
  • Charles Lamb, Selected Prose
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Tolkien translations)
  • Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur (DNF)
  • Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (the whole thing)
  • John Donne, The Major Works
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer’s Night Dream
  • Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator (selections)
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
  • William Shakespeare, Othello
  • Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene (books 1 and 2)
  • Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
  • David Hume, Selected Essays
  • John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (only book 1)
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear
  • Jonathan Swift, Tale of the Tub
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
  • Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
  • Francis Bacon, Essays (DNF)
  • Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (great!)
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnets

Classics, international

  • Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia
  • Arthur Rimbaud, Poetry
  • Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell & Illuminations
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachlass 1869–1875
  • Homer, Odyssey (prose translation)
  • Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)
  • Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana
  • Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (great!)
  • Virgil, Aeneid (first 6 books)
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (DNF)
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (DNF)
  • Guillaume de Lorris, The Romance of the Rose
  • The Vulgate Merlin (Jacques Boulenger adaptation)
  • canonical gospels
  • Jewish apocrypha (selections)
  • Seneca, Dialogues (DNF)
  • Plutarch, Moralia (DNF)
  • Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (DNF)

“Modern” fiction, English

  • Thomas Pynchon, V. (excruciating)
  • Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
  • Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn (DNF)
  • Anna Kavan, Ice (great!)
  • Iain Banks, Consider Phlebas (embarassingly bad and extremely disappointing)
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (embarassingly bad; DNF)
  • Stephen R. Donaldson, The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story (bad)
  • Stephen R. Donaldson, The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge (bad)

“Modern” fiction, international

  • Max Frisch, Homo Faber (great!)
  • Arno Schmidt, The Egghead Republic
  • Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller (tedious)
  • Jakub Deml, Forgotten Light (re-read; great!)
  • Unica Zürn, Dark Spring; The Man of Jasmine; The Trumpets of Jericho

In French

  • Arnauld Galopin, Le Docteur Oméga
  • Jules Lermina, Histoires incroyables

Academic / Non-fiction

  • Antoine Faivre, Western Esotericism: A Concise History
  • G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (DNF)
  • Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman
  • Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed
  • Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (fantastic!)
  • Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction
  • Joscelyn Godwin, The Golden Thread
  • Kocku von Suckrad, Western Esotericism
  • Arthur Versluis, Restoring Paradise
  • Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism
  • Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism
  • Dan Merkur, Gnosis
  • David S. Katz, The Occult Tradition from the Renaissance to the Present Day
  • assorted books on the psychology of imagination, guided imagery in psychotherapy, Jungian active imagination etc.
  • Joseph M. Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace
  • Michael Swan, Practical English Usage (the whole thing)
  • Edward D. Johnson, The Handbook of Good English (DNF)
  • Jack R. Crawford, What to Read in English Literature
  • H.E. Stowell, An Introduction to English Literature
  • Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods
  • Anne Tibble, The Story of English Literature
  • William Wallace Robson, A Prologue to English Literature
  • Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance
  • Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism (DNF)
  • Alastair Fowler, A History of English Literature (DNF)