What I Read Q3 2025
Slowing down; Mishima and Marquez; more on The Bhagavad Gita; much more mythology; Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant; and our last hero, Henry Aaron
Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means "Solve It By Walking." On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life's puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will take a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please
For the first time since college, I am reading a sizable number of books in community. Earlier this year, some friends put together a Gents Book Club. I read a book in concert with others in conjunction with Eknath Easwaran’s Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. And a friend gifted me a book that we read together over three months.
Overall, I enjoy this mix of private reading of my own choosing alongside a few books selected by others. It is worthwhile to self-direct your content consumption, and also be confronted with stories and ideas you would not have otherwise come across.
Also this year, I have slowed down my reading pace. I go back and re-read much more than I have before. Some books may take weeks or months to complete. I find the slower pace rewarding. I sense more enjoyment from my reading and also a lovely gift to myself to reflect more on each work. Slowing down contains great power.
My reflections on this quarter’s books are below. You can also see reviews of the books I read in the first and second quarters:
The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson; audiobook)
“‘Achilles, you should not
be bitter at your death.’“But he replied,
‘Odysseus, you must not comfort me
for death. I would prefer to be a workman,
hired by a poor man on a peasant farm,
than rule as king of all the dead.’”
Zero days are made worse by listening to The Odyssey.
The Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros
“What I mean is that by walking you are not going to meet yourself. By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone is telling their story, it’s all well for psychologists’ consulting rooms. But isn’t being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake – for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait – a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.”
My friend JG gave me this book for my birthday. We read it together, three essays per week for 11 weeks. Gros writes unevenly. Some essays touched me, almost taking my breath away with their language. Others are simply garbage. Gros does not have, or at least share, many original ideas about walking. I constantly felt that I had already read or heard everything before. Still, I loved reading the book with JG and lamented the arrival, and inevitable end, of essay 33.
Ka by Roberto Calasso
“Krishna hardly ever spoke about himself.”
“[I]mpatience is the only sin.”
Part of Calasso’s nine-part series on mythology, philosophy and modern life, he weaves together Vedic, Hindu and Buddhist story and lore. It made me want to read more of the Vedas, Upanishads and other beautiful Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. What higher praise can a book receive?
The Celestial Hunter by Roberto Calasso
“This is the premise of the Laws: to build a bastion so that the god can be seen and heard.”
Another book in Calasso’s series, this one focuses on the philosophy and mythology of the West, especially of ancient Egypt and Greece. He especially emphasizes Plato’s The Laws, written toward the end of his life and his main dialogue which does not include Socrates. As my political philosophy professor Fr. James Schall, S.J., said, “There is nothing in Plato which is not supposed to be in Plato.” Meaning – Plato left Socrates out for a reason. I’ve been pondering that reason ever since, and felt eager to read The Laws ever since. For the walkers out there, Calasso relates this tidbit:
“An inscription of 421/420 B.C.E suggests that a bridge there, probably destroyed in war, must have been rebuilt. The decree ordered that the bridge be wide enough to allow passage for the priestesses with “sacred objects” and future initiates, who were referred to as “the walkers.” Nothing else was needed to describe the candidates for initiation.”
As a side note, I bought this book at Shakespeare and Company, across from Notre Dame, in Paris. Pretty awesome place to purchase a book.
The Bhagavad Gita: Yoga of Contemplation and Action by Georg Feuerstein
“The most outstanding characteristic of the Bhagavad-Gita is its syncretic approach.”
In the first quarter and the second quarter, I read a few of Feuerstein’s books about Yoga and The Bhagavad Gita. Reading more of Feuerstein makes me want to, well, read more of Feuerstein.
The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Eknath Easwaran
“In these dark times, therefore, I would like every one of you to remember this: we are not alone. This is not a world of chance, with “neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.” We are surrounded by creative powers, as surrounded as we are by air and light and gravitation. It is only when we fail to ally ourselves with the forces of light that they are unable to support us. If we give our wholehearted support, love will triumph. This remembrance brings faith; it brings hope; it brings the certitude of victory.”
This concluded my second reading of Easwaran’s magisterial, verse by verse commentary on The Bhagavad Gita. I read a verse and its accompanying elucidation each evening before bedtime. It takes me about 18 months to finish the book. I believe I will read a verse and its analysis every evening for the rest of my life.
Take Your Time by Eknath Easwaran
“When concentration is deep, we may forget our body completely. In fact we may forget altogether about that dreariest of subjects, ourselves. This is the real secret of happiness.”
I read this book slowly, a few pages per week, in concert with Easwaran’s Blue Mountain Center of Meditation over six months. While I definitely don’t race through books, it felt uplifting – and challenging – to deliberately slow down…to re-read that week’s section….and re-read it again…and to not blaze ahead of the rest of the community reading the book. I reveled in that experience and have continued reading with the Center’s eSatsang since then.
The Ramayana by R.K. Narayan
“Rama watched him fall headlong from his chariot face down onto the earth, and that was the end of the great campaign. Now one noticed Ravana’s face aglow with a new quality. Rama’s arrows had burnt off layers of dross, the anger, conceit, cruelty, lust, and egotism which had encrusted his real self, and now his personality came through in its pristine form – of one who was devout and capable of tremendous attainments. His constant meditation on Rama, although as an adversary, now seemed to bear fruit, as his face shone with serenity and peace.”
Like Calasso, Narayan tells the ancient myths in modern language, which makes for an easy introduction to them. Lovely.
The Mahabharata by R.K. Narayan
“The Pandavas marched on in silence with a group of devoted followers trailing along, until they reached the banks of the Ganga. There they spent the night under a spreading tree. A few among Yudhistira’s followers lit a sacrificial fire and melodiously chanted the Vedas, to while away the time.”
Narayan relates the 1.8 million-word Mahabharata in about 180 pages. Again, like Calasso and Feuerstein, reading Narayan made me want to read more — the actual, whole, entire epic soon.
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
“Kiyoaki drew comfort from the peace of mind that comes with loss. In his heart, he always preferred the actuality of loss to the fear of it. He had lost Satoko. And with that he was content. For by now he had learned how to quiet even his subsequent re-sentment. Every show of feeling was now governed with a marvelous economy. If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax. For the first time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing powers of solitude.”
I selected this book for our Gents Books Club. It had sat untouched on my bookshelf for years. Frequently, I heard the praises of Mishima and especially his tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, of which this is the first novel. Spring Snow rehashes the doomed Romeo and Juliet story of love gone awry, this time amidst a backdrop of the uneven and unsettling Westernization of Japan. While the book read far more easily than anticipated, I did not love it. Only the Abbess stood out as a firm character, who knew herself and what she was about. Maybe that was, indeed, Mishima’s point. But I wanted to love this novel and Mishima, and didn’t. Unlike reading Feuerstein or Narayan, reading Mishima didn’t make me want to read more of Mishima.
The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant
“By the time the season was over, however, Henry Aaron had learned something far more valuable than a trophy. He had seen them all up close—Willie Mays, the rookie Ernie Banks, the great Stan Musial, and, as a player, even the great Jackie Robinson—and none had intimidated him. He would later say he had learned how deeply his pride ran, and how that pride, comparing his abilities with those of his contemporaries, was the ingredient that truly fueled his motivation.”
Look, I love Joe Posnanski and his book ranking the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. But he is dead wrong that Willie Mays was a better player than Aaron. Bryant paints a portrait of a dutiful and conflicted hero. I find Aaron all the more relatable and human because of his hesitancy about the role he played in American sports and history. By and large, I do not pay attention to or, shall we say, “feel”, celebrity deaths much. But when Aaron died on January 22, 2021, it ached as a sad loss for America.
Grant by Ron Chernow (audiobook)
“When he grew bored with playing cards on the boat, Julia inquired if he had ever read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. “No,” he said. “I started to read it on the James River but was interrupted so frequently that I read only a few pages.” He began reading it so voraciously that he disappeared for days, only popping up for meals. “He read it very slowly,” said Young, “almost like a man who is studying rather than reading.” Then at eleven o’clock one night, Young was pacing the deck when Grant appeared, fresh from reading, and he asked him about Hugo’s presentation of the battle of Waterloo. “It is a very fine account,” Grant answered. Then he astounded Young with his fine-grained knowledge of the weapons, troops, and tactics employed by Napoleon and Wellington. Despite his contempt for Napoleon, Grant concluded that “it was the finest planned battle of Napoleon, the best conceived battle that I know of, and nothing but Providence being against him defeated him.” For those who thought Grant ignorant of military history, Young delivered a salutary corrective, describing how Grant spoke at length about the art of warfare. He wasn’t simply an intuitive general but a self-aware modernizer[.]”
My wife and I listened to this audiobook on our car trips for parts of three summers. Above all, Grant comes to the fore as a man of supreme goodwill, mourned deeply in the South he defeated as in the North he commanded on the fields of battle. Going back to The Ramayana, Grant emerges as a Rama-like figure, eliciting sentiments of “peace and serenity” the more the nation — and I — contemplated him. A man of supreme goodwill, even toward his enemies. Even to those human beings who were, for a time, his enemies. Can we ourselves aspire to any nobler or more needed ambition today?
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Those who pitied her fate were calmed with a smile. “Don’t worry,” she told them. “Queens run errands for me.””
Another book we read for the Gents Book Club. Look, when this book came out in 1967, sure, it rocked people’s world. No one had written anything like it before. That notion brought to mind what Anthony Bourdain said about visiting Tokyo for the first time:
“I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time, to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend must have gone through, the reigning guitar gods of England, what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town.”
Today, to me, the book elicited feelings of indifference. I do believe if I discussed it with someone who lives in South America, I would come to have a different perspective. The best part was the discussion it prompted amongst the book club about Louisville. Has Louisville become Macondo? Has it been Macondo for decades? Does Louisville matter, even in a Daniel Webster-Dartmouth College, “It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it” sort of way? How does our city not slip into irrelevance or oblivion?
Well, bring on the fourth quarter! Of course, I will be tackling my seasonal readings of Dracula and A Christmas Carol — my 30th reading of Dickens’s holiday wonder. Joining them, I will read Frankenstein with the Gents Books Club, and more from Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Surely a delightful and uplifting quarter. Bring it on!
You really packed on the spiritual reading this quarter! Love it
Loved reading this roundup with your thoughts on each!