John Kaag, American Philosophy: A Love Story **

 American Philosophy is a memoir and a survey of Harvard-based philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the midst of an existential crisis, the author stumbles upon the personal library of William Ernest Hocking, whose contents bring him solace and turn his life around.

The subject matter is off great interest to me: William James, links between American pragmatism and German idealism, the purpose of living, bibliophilia, beautiful libraries tucked into the New Hampshire woods.

The building was constructed of rough-hewn, multihued granite... From the outside I was able to make out the skylights in the roof, which probably filled the space with glorious reading light. ... It was one large room, partitioned into different working nooks by walnut built-ins... To my right and left, at opposite ends of the building, were two large marble fireplaces. ... Oriental rugs, mismatched and nearly worn through, covered the library's wide oak floorboards. The first-generation Stickley rocking chairs -- with their solid walnut slats and musty horsehair seats -- looked as if they hadn't held a visitor for years.

But man oh man, is Kaag a terrible storyteller! He can't convey a clear line of thought or action. On the first page, for example:

[Holden Chapel] was a place I became intimate with in the spring of 2008. I'd spent months scouring Harvard for the origins of American philosophy. ... The aisles at Widener Library, just steps from Holden, are altogether fifty miles long. In the autumn of that year, I'd walked their entire length. ... Still nothing. It was only November. ... But then, on an evening in the spring of 2008, I gave up.

Spring, then autumn and November, then back to the same spring? Just the first of many times Kaag jumbles together thoughts from before and after and now. He also builds paragraphs that drift randomly from descriptions of a philosopher's thought to incidents from that philosopher's personal life to Kaag's personal life. There are lots of interesting tidbits in the book, but it's not clear Kaag knows what to make of them. His ultimate conclusion -- that the great generation of American pragmatists cared deeply about how philosophy addresses the meaning of life and how they resisted the professionalization of philosophy -- is rather trivial.

Javier Marias, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me **** 1/2

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is a prime example of a book I love but I expect would exasperate most other readers. It starts (and, spoiler alert, ends) with an unexpected death, and the narrator insinuates himself into the dead woman's family, but those coming to the book for its plot will soon get lost in the winding train of thought. The narrator ponders what it all means rather than what happened.

Let me quote Ema from Goodreads, who says it better than I ever could:

Marías talks about death, about memory, about guilt, about the power of names. He also talks about the life of a story, prone to be transformed with every additional mouth that will pass it on. The plot of Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is merely an excuse for the writer to travel down the meditative path, to reach depths of thought that left me wondering and made me feel exalted. So many truths that I haven't thought of before, so many approaches that now seem obvious. He made me look at my possessions and ask myself: do these objects hold any interest to other people, or is it just me who justifies their existence and utility? And do I really need all these things around me?

I can't get enough of this kind of novel, where an eccentric or downright crazy narrator eloquently circles around his or her personal obsessions. I especially loved the first third, wherein our narrator haunts and is haunted by Marta (the woman who died).  

Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks ****

This is a book about the power of language – strong style, single words – to shape our sense of place.

I have picked up Landmarks in book stores several times in the years since it was published (2015), but knew that I'd need to be in the right state of mind to appreciate it. Sheltering in place in our backyard on a quiet summer afternoon: perfect.

The book doesn't have a narrative or complicated argument, just precise natural descriptions in colorful language. ("Even in high summer, snow still lies in the deepest corries, sintering slowly into ice.") Each chapter describes a piece of idiosyncratic literature that shapes the way people perceive a particular type of British landscape (moors, mountains, waterways, farms), and is followed by a glossary of regional terms related to that landscape ("didder  of a bog: to quiver as a walker approaches  East Anglia"). The glossaries can be as entertaining as the prose chapters, with their combination of fun-sounding words, vivid definitions, and technical terms alongside dialect.

Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage *****

In the introduction to my original list of book reviews, I made a dismissive crack about stories concerning "the intimate bond between sisters," suggesting that my masculine taste didn't cotton to accounts of characters' relationships and feelings. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage proves the folly of my prejudice. Only one of the stories in this collection features sisters ("Queenie"), but all of them are about relationships and feelings.

The turning point in a Munro story, the surprise twist, comes in an emotional reaction rather than an event. The title story, for example, has two teenage girls fabricating a correspondence between a housekeeper and a man who lives in far-off Saskatchewan, leading the woman to believe that marriage may be in the cards. You can see disaster approaching. But even though the plot goes exactly where you think it's going, the woman responds to the situation in an unexpected way. Resulting in a happy ending!

Munro's characters are navigating the competing needs for companionship, and independence. The narrative set-up often feels familiar from other writers, but even the weaker stories include an impressive a-ha moment. I wasn't enjoying "Post and Beam" until Lorna's bargain with the universe two-thirds of the way through; the adulterous plot of "What is Remembered" is clichéd but I loved how the inciting intimacies were comfortable spouse-like rapport rather than titillating glances.

I guess the Nobel folks were on to something.