“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (translated by Lucia Graves)

This is a mystery story designed to be devoured by lovers of books. Zafon’s novel has books wrapped within books, mysterious libraries, and book burnings. It is a strange tale where fact and fiction blur and the reader sometimes struggles to keep solid footing. The setting of post-World War II Spain, with Franco’s despotic rule hanging in the background, lends to the somber mood. There are flashbacks to the Civil War, which all the characters seem to want to forget. The plot has love, young and old, betrayal between childhood friends, and plenty of deaths all around. At the heart of this novel is the story of the power of books, reading, and fiction. Even Zafon’s title for his actual novel is the imaginary title of the most important novel in his book. This is a true page turner, which blends murder mystery and historical fiction with characters that you root and ache for as the plot unwinds page by page.

“God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human” by Dominic Johnson

Johnson posits that far from religion being a by-product or parasite of other evolutionary features, it actually was an adaptive trait that was selected for in our evolutionary progress. It was the advent of a fear of supernatural punishment that advanced humanity. Advanced societies developed “theory of mind”- the ability to put oneself in the shoes of the other. They also developed language- the ability to communicate and, thus, the ability to inform on or gossip about those not present as well as strangers. This allowed for an increase in group size and changed group dynamics. In a band of just 50 individuals, there are 1,225 one-on-one relationships. These two traits combined made it very costly to act selfishly consistently or deviant to societal norms. These traits are also unique to humans, absent even among our fellow primates. From this point forward in homo sapiens development, it evolutionary did not pay to act selfishly. Instead, one had to act against his own urges and suppress what often came most naturally. Self control became advantageous to the individual and humans who could adapt to this new feature of the landscape would tend to be more attractive to mates and to reproduce more. The ability to cooperate well with others became a dominant attribute. Formal religion, or belief in karma, or in a cosmic order, or in simple fate became mechanisms to act as if someone was watching you even when you thought you were alone and your actions were undetectable. Fear of supernatural punishment was adaptive to social cohesion and to repression of selfish behavior. Furthermore, at the group level, religion allows for in-group solidarity, puts the group above the individual, unites people of different ethnicities and languages, and, in general, makes quick friends among strangers. Societies with high levels of religiosity (all things being equal) grew bigger and were more technologically, culturally, and economically advanced.

“Possession” by A.S. Byatt

Byatt describes her novel as a romance. It won the Booker Prize in 1990. It is about literature, poetry, myth, love, betrayal, longing, penitence, and devotion. The plot jumps between the academic milieu of England in the 1980s and the literary scene of London in the 19th century. Many of the chapters are simply poems, diary entries, or travelogues. At the heart of the story are two 19th century British poets: one an obscure lady, Christabel LaMotte, whose family originally hailed from Brittany and who was only recognized by twentieth century scholars of feminism and lesbianism for her epic poem, Melusina, and one a famous man, Randolph Henry Ash, whose volumes of poetry made him famous in his day and later stood the test of time, “Ash liked his characters at or over the edge of madness, constructing systems of belief and survival from the fragments of experience available to them.”

It was discovered by Roland Michell, a toiling post-doc in 1980s London, that Ash, though married to his wife Ellen for over forty years, had a secret epistolary correspondence with LaMotte. This discovery threatened to upend what modern scholarship thought of both poets. “The truth is—my dear Miss LaMotte—that we live in an old world—a tired world—a world that has gone on piling up speculation and observations until truths that might have been graspable in the bright Dayspring of human morning—by the young Plotinus or the ecstatic John on Patmos—are now obscured by palimpsest on palimpsest, by thick horny growths over that clear vision.”

In an other letter, Ash writes to LaMotte of poetry, “You know how it is, being yourself a poet—one writes such and such a narrative, and thinks as one goes along—here’s a good touch—this concept modifies that—will it not be too obvious to the generality?—too thick an impasto of the Obvious—one has almost a disgust at the too-apparent meaning—and then the general public gets hold of it, and pronounces it at the same time too heartily simple and too loftily incomprehensible—and it is clear only that whatever one had hoped to convey is lost in mists of impenetrability—and slowly it loses its life—in one’s own mind, as much as in its readers…. The only life I am sure of is the life of the Imagination…. When I write I know. Remember that miraculous saying of the boy Keats—I am certain of nothing, but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—Now I am not saying—Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, or any such quibble. I am saying that without the Maker’s imagination nothing can live for us.”

In the course of the novel, Christabel LaMotte finds herself at the home of an aristocratic cousin and his lone daughter, Sabine de Kercoz, in the family’s ancestral home in Brittany. Sabine’s diary reveals, “I sat by her side and whispered to her that I had hopes of being a poet. She said, ‘It is not the way to happiness, ma fille.’ I said on the contrary, it was only when writing that I felt wholly living. She said, ‘If that is so, fortunately or unfortunately, nothing I can say will dissuade you.’” In another diary entry, Sabine writes, “She talked of Melusina and the nature of epic. She wants to write a Fairy Epic, she says, not grounded in historical truth, but in poetic and imaginative truth…. She says Romance is a land where women can be free to express their true natures, as in the Ile de Sein or Sid, though not in this world. She said, in Romance, women’s two natures can be reconciled. I asked, which two natures, and she said, men saw women as double beings, enchantresses and demons or innocent angels.”

“The Gay Science” by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by Josefine Nauckhoff)

Nietzsche published the first edition of this treatise in 1882 and the second expanded edition in 1887. In between, he had published both “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and “Beyond Good and Evil”. This book largely consists of a set of aphorisms, paragraph-length topical discussions, and a collection of poems. Nietzsche begins, “What distinguishes the common nature is that it unflinchingly keeps sight of its advantage…. The unreason or odd reason (Unvernunft oder Quervernunft) of passion is what the common type despises in the noble, especially when this passion is directed at objects whose value seems quite fantastic and arbitrary…. The higher nature’s taste is for exceptions, for things that leave most people cold and seem to lack sweetness; the higher nature has a singular value standard…. The most industrious age—our own—doesn’t know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money except still more money and still more industriousness…. The opposite of the world of the madman is not truth and certainty but the generality and universal bindingness of a faith; in short, the non-arbitrary in judgment. And man’s greatest labour so far has been to reach agreement about very many things and to lay down a law of agreement—regardless of whether these things are true or false. This is the discipline of the head which has preserved humanity…. The most select minds bristle at this universal bindingness—the explorers of truth above all!”

Nietzsche pontificates on the necessity of aesthetics to achieve meaning in life, “As an aesthetic phenomenon existence is still bearable to us, and art furnishes us with the eye and hand and above all the good conscience to be able to make such a phenomenon ourselves.” This goes, hand in hand, in opposition to his conception of morality. “As soon as we see a new picture, we immediately construct it with the help of all the old experiences…. There are no experiences other than moral ones, not even in the realm of sense perception…. Wherever we encounter morality, we find an evaluation and ranking of human drives and actions. These evaluations and rankings are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd: that which benefits it the most…. With morality the individual is instructed to be a function of the herd and to ascribe value to himself only as a function.”

Finally, Nietzsche often deals head-on with the problems of modernity and God, “Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us?” He gives some suggestions for living the best life, “Either one does not dream, or does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one’s waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.” Nietzsche concludes, “The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!”