What I’m doing now

Primarily reading (aiming for 150+ pages a day) with a focus on classic lit and on nonfiction, in particular history and biography. Writing stories and making occasional art.

Currently reading

In alphabetical order, and these are subject to change at any time as I add or abandon books (which happens often):

• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (2019, history, 650 pages), by William Dalrymple.
• Captured by History: One Man’s Vision of Our Tumultuous Century (1997, memoir, 640 pages), by John Toland.
• Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens (2012, history, 340 pages), by Andrea Wulf.
• The Diary of John Evelyn volume 1, 1620–1644 (1901, diary, 625 pages), by John Evelyn, edited by William Bray.
• Extreme Economies: What Life at the World’s Margins Can Teach Us About Our Own Future (2019, nonfiction, 430 pages), by Richard Davies.
• Germinal (1885, translation published 1894, fiction, 680 pages), by Émile Zola, translated by Havelock Ellis.
• The Histories (440 BC, translation published 2015, history, 1,150 pages), by Herodotus, translated by Tom Holland.
• History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire volume 1 (1776, history, 1,110 pages), by Edward Gibbon.
• Life of Johnson volume 2: 1765–1766 (1791, biography, 850 pages), by James Boswell, edited by George Birkbeck Hill.
• Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, & Architects volume 1 (1568, translation published 1912, biography, 330 pages), by Giorgio Vasari, translated by Gaston du C. De Vere.
• Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters and the Age of Revolution (2025, history, 940 pages), by Amanda Vaill.
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1300s, translation published 1975, poetry, 230 pages), by J. R. R. Tolkien (translator).
• Titian: His Life (2012, biography, 1,085 pages), by Sheila Hale.
• The Tomb of Dragons (2025, fantasy, 410 pages), by Katherine Addison.

See the reading log for books I’ve finished reading.