Books I Read September 21st, 2025

Mornings are the blues.

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina – Scattered reminiscences of a lost soul growing up in a turbulent East Africa. Sharply written and insightful, Wainaina is a real talent, putting his skills towards understanding the complexity of his personal and national existence. An African writer, and not a Westerner's idea of an African writer.

Understanding Human Nature by Alfred Adler – The first major psychologist who doesn't seem to dislike people, which is nice. On the other hand he still has the Freudian tic of seeing all human development as being the product of certain singular childhood developments, in this case the inferiority/superiority complex, to which Adler assigns an absolute and exaggerated position.

Selected Writings on Client Centered Therapy by Carl Rogers – The father of client centered therapy describes his model of psychoanalysis. By denying the therapist a position as expert and making the patient/client's thoughts the focus of the therapeutic relationship, Rogers revolutionized the field and defined much of modern counseling. Also, he seems like a real sweetheart.

The Politics of the Family and Other Essays by R.D. Laing – Oof. I'd forgotten how unreadable existential philosophy/thought can be. Mundane, even banal truths obscured by unreadable academic language. Did you know that we often internalize the teachings of our elders without realizing it? If not, you'll struggle to learn from these ludicrously opaque writings.

Yaka by Pepetela – A multi-generational narrative of the whites (mostly ex-convicts) living in a small city in southern Angola, impoverished vagabonds exploiting the native population in a miserable quest to survive. Pepetela is the pseudonym of a Portuguese-Angolan who fought with the MPLA, and this feels like a very personal mea culpa. Excellent in any event, a sympathetic but not at all forgiving depiction of the strange struggles of colonial existence. It's really astonishing how much excellent fiction came out of the relatively small population of Lusitanian Africa.

The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda – One thing about ordering a dozen-odd books from the library based on the authors and without really reading the (sometimes limited) descriptions is you occasionally end up reading a charming YA novelette.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino – A cadre of angst-ridden high school girls find themselves aiding their matricidal neighbor. Coming from a country that actually is in a state of collapse, it's kind of odd the degree to which Japanese writers seem so focused on the existential malaise afflicting their culture. Not that I'm in a position to say they're wrong, but some part of me is always like 'I'll see your materialist isolation and raise you the complexities of a multi-ethnic society and the ludicrous ubiquity of gun ownership.'

Creatures of a Day by Irvin D. Yalom – Brief retellings of the author's experiences with different clients, speaking to the essential concerns of existential therapy, i.e., that we're all going to die and how much this sucks. Thoughtful and compassionate.