The Stacks
Reading
A working library: what I'm reading now, what I've finished, and the thoughts each book left behind.
- 8
- tracked
- 3
- finished
- 5
- in progress
- 3
- in 2026
Currently Reading
5The Myth of Sisyphus
Camus's essay on the absurd - the collision between our demand for meaning and a universe that offers none. Starting from "the only truly serious philosophical problem," suicide, he argues for revolt instead: living fully, lucidly, and without appeal. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Wealth of Nations
Smith's 1776 foundation stone of modern economics - the division of labour, the "invisible hand," and the argument that self-interested exchange, under the right institutions, produces public prosperity. Equal parts economic theory, history, and a polemic against mercantilism.
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
Fung Yu-lan's classic single-volume survey of Chinese thought, tracing the living threads from Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi through Mohism, the School of Names, and Buddhism to Neo-Confucianism - showing how each school answers the same question from a different angle: how a person should live within family, state, and cosmos.
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's final novel sets the murder of a dissolute father against the clashing souls of his three sons - sensual Dmitri, sceptical intellectual Ivan, and gentle, devout Alyosha - to stage a sprawling argument about faith, doubt, free will, and whether morality can survive without God. Part family tragedy, part courtroom drama, part theological debate, it holds the famous "Grand Inquisitor" parable at its core.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
A literary novel following Sam and Sadie, two childhood friends who become creative partners building video games together. Across decades it traces friendship, ambition, identity, disability, failure, and the strange intimacy of making things with someone you love but cannot quite be with.
Finished
3A Short Stay in Hell
Steven L. Peck's philosophical horror novella drops a devout man, Soren Johansson, into the afterlife only to learn that every religion was wrong and the one true faith was Zoroastrianism. His hell is a library modelled on Borges's Library of Babel - a structure dwarfing the known universe, holding every book that could ever be written. To leave, he must find the single volume that recounts his own life exactly, while near-infinite time grinds on around him.
The Count of Monte Cristo
A sweeping adventure about Edmond Dantès, a young sailor falsely imprisoned on the eve of his wedding, who escapes after years in a cell, uncovers a hidden fortune, and reinvents himself to repay the men who destroyed him. Dumas turns betrayal, patience, and elaborate revenge into a meditation on justice, mercy, and the moral cost of playing providence.
The Stranger
Camus's spare existential novel follows Meursault, a man whose flat emotional detachment - before and after a senseless killing on an Algerian beach - exposes the absurd gap between social expectation, moral judgement, and inner reality. His refusal to perform grief, more than the crime itself, is what the world cannot forgive.
Recommend me something
A book, paper, film, blog, or podcast. Anything worth my time, drop it here and I'll work through the list.
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