Best of 2023

Books I liked.

There is a documentary I saw once on our local PBS channel. It was called “Sandwiches That You will Like.” Being a simple girl who likes a sandwich, I watched it and have never forgotten it. It was the most earnest, understated visual treatment of that most ordinary culinary delight- the sandwich- and I still laugh to think about the work it took to travel the country to document sandwiches and land on such an understated refrain. Throughout the film the host tastes a sandwich and says some version of “it’s a good sandwich, you might like it!” Not “this is the world’s best sandwich!” or “this sandwich will change your life!” Just, it’s a good sandwich, I think you might like it.

It is possible that this is not as funny as I think it is. But what sticks with me about this low-budget treatment of sandwiches is the combination of delight and understatement, both of which rely on something we might just call taste. He liked the sandwich, and he thinks I might like it. He doesn’t care if my understanding of the sandwich is changed or if I become a better eater thanks to the experience. It’s just a good sandwich, here, have a look at it.

So many end-of-the-year reading lists are gilded with overstatement and pretension, as if reading is about demonstrating one’s place on the intellectual hierarchy. There are certainly books which are unassailably good, some books which are entirely bad- but much writing falls somewhere in the middle, appreciated by some and ignored by others. Developing as a thinker requires as much skill as it does honing one’s taste. To be able to recommend a book based not on what it’s knowledge says about you but what the experience of it brought forth in you requires intellectual modesty and honesty that I find all too rare. So, to that end, here is a list of books you might like. Or not.

In January of 2023 I started taking notes using a modified version of a zettelkasten. I quickly became a convert. I find that, though I type much faster than I write longhand, I retain much more when I write longhand. So I took on the slow task of copying quotations and such on 3x5 index cards- using these and only these pens. (Kids do not take my pens!!)

I do keep an index/ bibliography of sorts, though I haven’t updated it in a while. For the most part, I write a partial annotation the top, copy interesting quotations, and index the card in the bottom right hand corner by including a topic or subject heading or two. Easy peasy.

Writing a Best of 2023 List is fun with this form of notetaking, because I can just flip through the cards and be reminded of what caught my fancy. So here you have my eccentric “Best of” List, for 2023.

Hans Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ (1975).

Gosh I loved this book.

Post-liberal theology rejected the liberal turn of the mid twentieth century and attempted to do theology from the narrative of Scripture. These are not “KJV only” folks, though. “From Scripture” for post-liberals means from the story of the Bible, the warp and woof of a canonical reading that uses the Bible’s own way of telling a story to extract a truth claim. For Christology, this means examining the narrative of the gospels to figure out who Jesus was, not as a historical figure but as a human one. Without delving into depth psychology or analytic philosophy and attempting to answer unanswerable questions, Frei tries to ask who was Jesus Christ- what was his “unsubstitutable identity” based on what the narrative of Scripture tells us about him- and specifically how is who he was revealed by the resurrection?

Savvy readers will recognize the knot Frei is trying to untangle- between the “historicity or bust” folks on the one side and the historical-critical method on the other, the first seeking proof of unprovable things like the resurrection, the second casting aside the miraculous. Frei rightly insists that it is the resurrection that identifies Jesus as who he is; we read from this event to understand the narrative of the gospels.

The book was written as a series of essays for Crossroads, an adult education magazine of the PCUSA (1967). It is difficult to imagine anyone publishing such a sophisticated theological reflection in a contemporary religious magazine. For that alone, it’s worth a read. This is one of those that I read first in library copy and then ordered for my own personal library.

George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (1984).

I have written a few reflections on this book on this ol’ Substack, though I have a few more to write. I am sure I was supposed to read this in grad school but either didn’t or don’t remember having read it; picking it up this year was a revelation. I hope to do some more writing on the book as well as its method in the New Year; in short, long live the postliberals.

Frans deWall, Are we Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016)

I have been thinking a lot about knowledge and what is called in philosophy “theory of mind”. Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a Bat” got me started, in preparation for this talk.

I am interested not in what animals know but how they know and what the disanalogy is in our language about “knowing something”. What is it for an animal to “know” something or to transmit knowledge? Is it anything like what it is for a human to know something? And how would we know? Not to be cheeky, but these questions are too seldom asked when we think about AI. Put as squarely as possible- how is AI not not-human, but not animal? Stay tuned (and New Atlantis, hit me up- a deadline would help me finish this up).  

I also read a few books on AI- I commend the following to you.

If you are a complete newbie, Stuart Russell’s Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control (2019) is a good place to start. Rife with illustrations and logic puzzles to help illuminate how artificial “intelligence” differs from “human”, Russell’s is an even-handed treatment of the challenges that arise when humans engage AI, and the possibilities to avoid such challenges.

But Gerd Gigerenzer’s How to Stay Smart in a Smart World (2022) is an even more readable book that gets at the same question. What does it mean to be “smart”, and how do human uniquenesses matter even more in the face of “smart” technologies? I loved this book. Give it to your dad who is starting to spout about “robots taking over the world”.

Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows (2020) reads like an expanded version of a longform essay (which I think it is?)- but in a good way. Without going full doomsday prophet (he is maybe part-time doomsday prophet), Carr outlines the very real ways that the internet is making us less thoughtful, less precise, less serious. I’d love to see him take up the way Substack is making writing and criticism worse- or maybe that should be on my 2024 to-write docket.

Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values (2020). This was my top read on AI in 2023 (Another that I bought in physical copy after reading from the library). The big take way for me was how opaque algorithms are, even to themselves. If you want a big “there is no man behind the curtain” moment, the early chapters in this book will get you there. (NB- I liked this book so well that I checked out Christian’s earlier books- they have very promising titles but are poorly written and argued. Skip them and move straight to this).

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1967).

This book gave me a few “swearing under my breath while reading” moments. Oh to be a philosopher of the mid-century who could treat all of civilization in a paragraph! I have a soft spot for intellectual history that treats the Western world like the crumbs on a kitchen floor, to be swept up by the broom of the philosopher’s mind. What fun that would have been! How nice to not have to footnote anything! Here, a taste:

“Technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his productive activity”, writes Ellul. The machine “has created an inhuman atmosphere” (4):

Men now live in conditions that are less than human. Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories, our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning (5).

Shoot it right into my veins.

The only bad and unforgivable aspect of this book is that the printing itself is terrible. The type is very, very small, the book itself is smaller than standard, and this makes a very uncomfortable reading experience. Please, someone, reprint this! (And give me a beautiful printing of Luther’s catechisms, while you are at it).

Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (2010).

This book is sobering and timely, in ways I wish it wasn’t. Heschel is a historian (and the daughter of the eminent Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the best theologians of the modern era). This book tracks the way Christian theologians systematically rid Jesus of his Jewishness in order to promote a Nazi campaign of white supremacy within the German church. Clearly written, tightly documented, and a must read for Christian theologians, this book features prominently in a chapter of my own book-in-progress.

Mary Midgley The Essential Mary Midgley (2005), Beast and Man: the Roots of Human Nature (2002), and Animals and Why They Matter (1998).

When I play “which Oxford lady philosopher are you”, I always want to get Midgeley (invariably I get Iris Murdoch, natch). Mary Midgeley was one of the contemporary period’s best English language philosophers. Her work reflects a clear knowledge of philosophical concepts and a deep knowledge of the philosophical tradition, but it is her writing that I am most devoted to. Ordinary language philosophers thought that you couldn’t think something if you couldn’t say it clearly- May their tribe increase (I’m looking at you, theologians).

Benjamin Lipscomb, The Women are Up to Something (2021).

I started this book and immediately put it down so that I could tell all of my writer friends to pick it up (and they did!) Part intellectual history, part gossipy memoir, I could not read this quickly enough. The opening chapter is worth the purchase price. I have an essay coming out early 2024 that builds on this, so without giving too much away- they don’t make them like they used to.

For mysteries, I picked up Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter books on John Wilson’s recommendation and could not read them fast enough. All three are excellent. I hope there are more coming! And for sheer pleasure (and also on John’s recommendation), Spencer Quinn’s Mrs.Plansky’s Revenge was a delight. I read it in one go- I simply cannot wait for the second.

Merry Christmas and happy reading (but please don’t take reading too seriously, it’s supposed to be a delight),

Kirsten