Here are two for the summer reading shelf...

Beyond Concepts - by Ruth Garrett Millikan - Concepts are fundamental to philosophy. Millikan looks under the hood, suggest some new terms, looks at natural information... I really enjoyed this book ... but it might take more than a summer for an untrained reader to finish. It took me over a year.... paperback soon but e-book out for under $20.

Consider Phlebas - by Iain M. Banks - readily available in the cheap used format. With an Amazon studios TV series in the works, it is time to lock down your mental imagery of this Science Fiction classic. This is the first of the Culture series that attacks AI and humanity. This book might be a poster child for genre misread, complicated fiction and really great summer reading.

1. All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays of George Orwell

Although I am familiar with Orwell's 1984, Animal Farm, "Politics and the English Language", I have never read his less popularized works. This compilation by George Packer is an excellent place to start. I never realized how broad Orwell's (Blair's) essays reach. From Dickins to Gandhi, he covers quite a bit of territory in this abridged anthology. He is very much the "public intellectual" and displays an amazing ability to write well through his clarity of arguments and wit.

2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

A friend recommended this novel in the spring, and I hope to finish it before school begins in the fall. It is rather long at just under 1000 pages but sustains a level of intensity common for shorter works. Briefly, it is a love story that transcends parallel universes, an insight into the nature of solitude, cult fanaticism, novel writing, rape, assassination, and family devotion. A marvelous weave of masterful subplots worth diving into and disappearing for a couple of hours a day. It is my summer camp for the mind.

I read a little book a few years ago. It discussed what the author called essentialism, i.e., figuring out what is and is not important to one's life and everyday affairs. I do not recall the young writer's name, but am fairly sure he could be found through the wonders of Google. The book did help me decide upon some things which were (I decided) peripheral to my life. Such matters are more important than we may first recognize. Why? because there is a lot of junk vying for our attention---more and more of such junk all the time. Finding pragmatism only cemented my notions about all of this. Essentialism is, after all, a statement about the useful vs. the not-so-much. Check out this book, if you are tired of clutter

In keeping with a desire to absorb as much as I am able on philosophy, I plan to review some of Wilfrid Sellars work. Among those will be EMPIRICISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. Have read some others' comments on Sellars, many complimentary, and felt I should see for myself.