Book report for April 2026

Not an extraordinary month for reading. Some days just get away from the doctor, unread. So it goes. Books purchased from Dr Essai’s Bibliothèque earn the doctor a modest kickback, not of Trumpian dimensions, but still...

Completed

• Ex Libris, Michiko Kakutani. I bought this book as much for its design as for its contents. Long-time book critic for The New York Times Kakutani discusses ~100 books, old and newer, that have mattered the most to her. She writes not as a critic but as an enthusiast, she explains, and that’s accurate. Of the books listed, I’ve read 26, better than I usually do on those lists. She introduced me to a few authors I’ve never heard of but who sound worth a look, like David Finkel and Tara Westover.

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Life of Stoic Joy, William B. Irvine. A guide to Stoicism by a philosophy professor who, unfortunately, writes like a philosophy professor. Bought on remainder, it had enough information to keep me reading for a while. Then I got tired of the professor’s flat prose and tendency to condescend, so I skimmed the last two-thirds, with un-Stoic impatience.
• These Truths (pp. 1 – 348), Jill Lapore. I am working through this one at a stately pace. It was too heavy to pack on a 10-day road trip, so my progress has slowed, but it is worth savoring. This is not a conventional chronological history that devotes pages to all the major events in a year-by-year narrative, like a textbook. (She dispatches the entire Civil War in a handful of pages.) Lapore begins in 1492 and seems intent on demonstrating how the United States has, from the beginning, been steered, for better or frequently worse, by ruthless capitalist exploitation and slavery. In this argument she is convincing on every page, so far.

In progress

• These Truths, Jill Lepore.
• Schild’s Ladder, Greg Egan.

Purchased

• The Last Movement, Robert Seethaler.
• Chasing Homer, László Krasznahorkai.
• Perspective(s), Laurent Binet.
• On the Calculation of Volume IV, Solveg Balle.
• True Color, Kory Stamper.