Currently reading
The Lonely Sea: Collected Short Stories
Her Benny
Vedere din Parfumerie
Mysticism and Logic (Western Philosophy)
The Analects of Confucious
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask
Mutual Aid
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
The Brothers Karamazov
Abused No More: Recovery for Women from Abusive or Co-Dependent Relationships
Roughly once a month, my almost entirely wordless father would get drunk somewhere and come home to talk philosophy. He was naturally quite emotional at these times, about insoluble sources of frustration he couldn't describe. He had very real reasons to feel frustrated, like anyone, I suppose, the emotions of a complacent, agreeable man caught up in a mostly miserable environment, but listening to him and even probing for details at such strange times was like looking for headlines in rain-pulped newspapers.Eventually, the unsolved mysteries seemed to be the whole point of the series, which is probably why I've never seen a single episode of "Lost". Unfortunately, I did turn to self-help books from the 1980s, such as this book, although it's important to point out that I am not a woman and I am not abusive.
The worst consequence of Reagan-era pop psychologists publishing in the U.S. is that they seemed to think society's problems were caused by too much dependence, even down to family relationships. No one is as dependent as one feels or as indepedent as one imagines, but a combination of emotional independence and financial dependence would seem to be a very bad relationship for everyone involved.
