My Top 10 Books of 2021

This second pandemic year has been filled with lots of reading. Here are my 10 favourite books in the order which I read them:

Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

The subtitle of this work, Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, alludes to the difficulties and triumphs of the creative life. But the author’s provide great advice, so that it is possible to carry on, even on those days when it feels impossible to do so.

“Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.”

In the Theater of Consciousness by Bernard Baars

An insightful work on the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. The central idea is networked patches of neurons “work together to display conscious events”. The Global Workspace is where consciousness occurs, as a result of information broadcast from specialised, input receptors and relay brain “stations”. The Global Workspace Theory is a “theater” model of the brain, which holds that consciousness is akin to the spotlight in a theater. Attention is the spotlight and whatever the spotlight of your mind is attending to, that’s what’s in your consciousness at the time. Think about it, you don’t see how the brain generates the show inside your head. You just have access to it. That’s what consciousness does; it provides you with access to the inner state of your body, your memory and your experience.

“All unified theories of cognition today involve theater metaphors. In this version, conscious contents are limited to a brightly lit spot of attention onstage, while the rest of the stage corresponds to immediate working memory. Behind the scenes are executive processes, including a director, and a great variety of contextual operators that shape conscious experience without themselves becoming conscious. In the audience are a vast array of intelligent unconscious mechanisms. Some audience members are automatic routines, such as the brain mechanisms that guide eye movements, speaking, or hand and finger movements. Others involve autobiographical memory, semantic networks representing our knowledge of the world, declarative memory for beliefs and facts, and the implicit memories that maintain attitudes, skills, and social interaction.”

De Anima by Aristotle

To work out the nature of the soul, Aristotle proposes we get to know its properties and operations. Three kinds of substances exist for Aristotle. Matter, form and the combination of the two. A human being is made up of matter and a form. Our form is our actuality or manifestation (or more loosely, our organisation or shape). Matter is the substance which possesses the power of potentiality. The “form” is the actuality of matter. The soul of a living thing just is the capacity to engage in activities that characterise living things, as according to their functions: growth, self-nourishment, decay, movement and rest, perception and the intellect. The soul then is not a real body, but it is the form of the body. Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of the body-mind relation is still widely debated today.

“It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality”.

New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver

Inspired by Whitman, Thoreau and Emerson, Mary Oliver’s poetry dissolves the line between self and the natural world. Her poetry is full observations of the natural world, and in the centre of it all, being alive is explored.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Enchiridion by Epictetus

Often called “The Manual”, this is a short work in Stoic philosophy which promotes freedom of one’s mind through the control of that which is only within one’s control: one’s own mind and actions.

“What other master, then, do you wait for…?”

The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

It took me several months to read The Rings of Saturn. But I savoured every sentence. Sebald’s prose is moving and beautiful. A deep well of insight into history, writing, memory and the quest to forge a tapestry of meaning in our lives.

“And yet, what would we be without memory?”

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

A good feeling book about an autobiographical protagonist, Ray Smith, as he finds freedom and meaning in nature and friendship through a Buddhist lens. His travels in nature, like the solitary stay as a fire lookout on a mountain peak, are juxtaposed with scenes from city life. I love this book.

“Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”

The Symposium by Plato

Plato’s Symposium is both a great work of philosophy and literature. It is an uplifting and joyful investigation into the connection between love, truth and beauty.

“He whom love touches not walks in darkness.”

On Writing by Stephen King

This book by Stephen King is one of two books that I have read twice (Plato’s Theaetetus being the other). It’s a writing memoir; part autobiographical, part writing advice. It’s a truly wonderful book. I highly recommend it, especially the audiobook which is read by the author.

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

Nature and the Greeks by Erwin Schrodinger

An exposition of the view of the world that the Ancient Greeks left us. Schrodinger profoundly highlights that the basic features of modern science are derived from the Greeks: first, that the world can be understood and two, removing the “understander” from the scientific construction of the world is a “device” only, made necessary for reasons of intelligibility. The properties of consciousness - sense of self, sensation, and thought - still evade scientific understanding. It is a deep and profound book.

“And the fragment of Democritus which we have already quoted at the end of Chapter I shows him worried about the fact that his atomistic model of the world is devoid of all the subjective qualities, the sensorial data, from which it was built.”