For all the progress updates in one place:
Progress Update: May 2025
Here are the books I read/listened to for my research during May 2025, and my notes on the progress:
Co-Intelligence
A Life Worth Living: Contributions to Positive Psychology
The Second Sex (Sections)
Positive Desintegration
Goethe: Life as a Work of Art
A Small Treatise on The Great Virtues (Sections)
The Little book of philosophy (Sections)
The Meaning of Life (The Oxford University Press one)
The Story of Philosophy
Experience and Education (Dewey)
The Art of Showing Up
Nietzsche In Italy
Reality+ (Sections)
Conquering Crisis (Sections)
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing
Writing About Your Life
Write a Must-Read
Essays:
On Not Being a Philosopher
Happiness is Everything, or Is It?
The Gold Pill
Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life
De Profondis (Oscar Wilde)
The Soul of Man (Oscar Wilde)
Notes:
• May was a good reading month. I’ve been in a better mental space, so I worked consistently to redeem myself after a slow April. I’m also getting to the point where I can see the light at the end of the research tunnel (only about 80 more books to go). That’s giving me a second wind of motivation.
• This month, I faced another Titan: The Second Sex. Simone de Beauvoir continues to impress. She is sharp, clear, and well-structured. The Second Sex is a monumental work, and she wrote it while working on other projects, traveling, and keeping up with many more commitments. Respect, Simone…Respect.
• Since the actual writing of the next book is only about a year away, I started reading about writing again to sharpen my skills.
• My favorite reads for the month were “Goethe: Life as a Work of Art” and “Nietzsche in Italy.”
I knew I would have to go into Goethe’s life at some point since he’s been the example of ‘a life well lived’ for many philosophers. It was a great biography. What stuck with me the most is that even for such a talented and successful polymath, life was full of doubt, tragedy, frustration, and failure. Reading about his life reinforces the idea that problems and difficulties are not something that get in the way of life; they are life.
“Nietzsche in Italy” was special because I just came to live in Florence for some time. Most of Nietzsche’s biographies talk about his time in Sils Maria, but it was Italy he loved most—and he had some of his most important ideas during his extended stays here.