My #best reads list for 2025 was, well, hopelessly #eclectic: #CharlesTaylor, #ManueldeLanda, #VaclavSmil, #PhilipKDick, #IrisMurdoch, #AlisdairMacIntyre, #JamesCScott, #HPLovecraft, etc
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...

Here it is - a couple of days late and a little wonkier than I'd planned. My list of the most notable #books I read in 2025.
#BookSky #reading #fiction #nonfiction #novels #sciencefiction #PhilipKDick #IrisMurdoch #CharlesTaylor #ManueldeLanda #Canadianbooks doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...

When I’m reading a difficult #book like this one by #ManuelDeLanda, I often give myself a pass on the appendix. Or maybe just skim it …
#books #BookSky

“human #history did not follow a straight line, as if everything pointed toward civilized #societies as humanity’s ultimate goal. On the contrary, at each bifurcation alternative stable states were possible, and once actualized they coexisted and interacted with each other.” - #ManuelDeLanda

I’m reading A Hologram for the King by #DaveEggers. Yesterday I finished A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by #ManuelDeLanda, which was excellent.

1 “The #Deleuzian #ontology I have described in these pages is, on the contrary, one characterizing a universe of #becoming without #being.”
🧵
#Deleuze #ManuelDeLanda

“Similarly, our #individual #bodies and #minds are mere coagulations or decelerations in the flow of #biomass, #genes, #memes and #norms.” - #ManuelDeLanda, A Thousand Years of #Nonlinear #History
#philosophy

2 “Or more exactly, a #universe where individual #beings exist but only as the outcome of #becomings, that is, of #irreversible #processes of #individuation.” - #ManuelDeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual #Philosophy
#Deleuze

“the advent of #computers (which are basically automated formal systems) appeared to consolidate the victory of #analytical over #embodied #knowledge, to the point where the difference itself seemed to vanish for all but a few #philosophers.” - #ManuelDeLanda, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear #History