Author: Bryan G. Robinson

Blogger formerly known as Unfinished Person. Still an unfinished person...

On where my head is, according to my Kindle queue

I thought this week, for a change of pace, I’d share what is queued up on my Kindle. This might, or might not, give you, and me also, an idea of where my head is. So here goes:

  • A Beam of Light by Andrea Camilleri
  • Bittersweet by Susan Cain
  • The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
  • Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich
  • No Man is An Island by Thomas Merton
  • A Prayer in the Night by Tisha Harrison Warren
  • Radical Compassion by Tara Brach
  • Selected Letters of Seneca, translated by Elaine Fantham.

So two fiction books and six nonfiction books, which is odd for me because I’m not a big nonfiction reader. By my choice of nonfiction, you might think my mind is calm, but not really. I think that’s where I am trying to get with the help of most of the nonfiction. So this might not be so much where my head is, but where I want it to be: calm.

Addendum: Speaking of calm, this morning I learned one of my favorite podcasts is back after a short summer break:

Where I’ve been

Really, nowhere.

But my mind has been all over the place.

Mostly, my mind has been unfocused because of changes at work, but also the national, international, and even local news that has gone national. The borough mentioned is less than 20 miles from where I live. Of course, with the news, I have zero control; with work, I have a little control, mostly with how I respond or if I respond at all.

Which is why I haven’t been here on the blog or on Instagram, the last social media platform I’m on (at least for now).

I’m reading very little, finishing two books in the last couple of weeks:

  • Angelica’s Smile by Andrea Camilleri, which is part of the Inspector Montalbano series, and which I’ve been trying (and not trying) to finish for the last six months.
  • The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness, a new interpretation of Epictetus’s Manual (or Enchiridion), by Sharon Lebell.

The Manual, as described by Lebell, is “a pithy set of excerpts selected from his multi-volume Discourses that forms a concise summary of Epictetus’s essential teachings.” Last year and the year before, I read a modern translation of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations by Gregory Hays and this year, I selected Lebell’s interpretation of Epictetus’s Manual, which I’ve been reading since January. Next up, I’ll seek out a translation of Seneca’s Letter from a Stoic — to complete the trilogy? the Stoic triumvirate?

I’ve been watching this and that, with the only movie of note that I’d recommend being The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Nicholas Cage. It lives up to its trailer:

Well, and Paddington 2, which Cage mentions as one of his favorite movies, and is one of our favorites too. No, really, watch it.