Summer Reading List 2023

Sunday, September 3, 2023
First Aired: 
Sunday, June 25, 2023

What Is It

What books should thoughtful people read this summer? Josh and Ray talk to the authors and editors of new and recent books as they compile their annual Summer Reading List:

  • Michael Schur, creator of TV's The Good Place and author of How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question
  • Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University and co-editor of The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism
  • Gabriella Safran, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University and author of Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century

Transcript

Transcript

Josh Landy  
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything...

Ray Briggs  
...except your intelligence. I'm Ray Briggs.

Josh Landy  
And I'm Josh Landy. We're coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Comments (3)


Tim Smith's picture

Tim Smith

Saturday, May 20, 2023 -- 7:21 PM

I'm having a hard time

I'm having a hard time dealing with Spring, much less Summer. These Summer reading list shows repeat at end of Summer, so I will let you know how I did.

I've picked up 'The Book of Longings' by Sue Monk Kidd. I hadn't read her before, but I had thought to read 'The Secret Life of Bees' as someone close to me was, but I never did. I long to recapture that lost opportunity and think twice about Jesus and the women in his world. From what I hear and have had an earful, Kidd is a storyteller.

Derek Parfit was a discovery this last year for me. His ideas put me off. I read 'Reasons and Persons' for the latest show on Parfit – and supposedly read it when it first came out (I didn't do a very good job of that – but I am making amends now) and decided to take a slow deep turn through 'On What Matters.' I am nearly through volume one and will start volume two this Summer. I need to give this attention, and that is my intention. I look back at other philosophers as Parfit is jousting in these books. He is very funny when you read through the prose, open-minded, and highly focused. Reading closely here is a life changer for me so far.

Family members are reading 'The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin. I recently took my niece and nephew home on a several-hour drive, only to find that I had confused this book with The 'Lathe of Heaven' or some other book. I got called out in an uncomfortable cross-generational memory slip. Sigh… destined to be the odd Uncle in life. This project is designed to reparate my family position and celebrate Le Guin, who I knew as a kid as the creator of Earthsea, and who I have come to appreciate in my forgetting age as a philosopher of the highest order.

Lastly, I have a copy of Lizzie Susan Stebbing's 'A Modern Introduction to Logic.' I cut my teeth in Logic with Cohen and Copi. If the Summer goes as planned, I will respond here with a takedown of my lost youth and a comparison of what I remember and this treatment.

Happy Summer!

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Tuesday, May 23, 2023 -- 6:21 PM

Motion is here made to delete

Motion is here made to delete this post, on grounds that it makes no recommendation. What it contains instead is someone's report on private experiences and intentions unrelated to suggestions for reading. In the absence of a credible defense with regard to any reason why it should remain, petition is hereby made to whom it may concern for its deletion.

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Annarose's picture

Annarose

Monday, August 21, 2023 -- 7:41 PM

Really excellent and

Really excellent and profitable article! I appreciate you giving these to me and to everyone else. Enjoy being with the baby in yellow online.

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