Still Here

What I've been up to and enjoying lately

Clearly, I have been lax in my posting, and yes, it bothers me.

The last couple of months have been a blur of conference travel, starting with the Public Choice Society annual meeting in San Antonio, to a week in Charleston for the Center for Public Choice and Market Process annual Adam Smith Week, to the 50th anniversary meeting of the Association for Private Enterprise Education.

So while I haven’t been writing here, I have, in fact, been writing.

One project connects the stories in Gulliver’s Travels (Adam Smith’s favorite novel!) to the public choice tradition in economics. Another explores the novels of Horatio Alger as part of an American Smithian tradition of political economy. (Yes, it’s pretty much all Smith, all the time, in my world.) In due time, I’ll share these essays here, because I’d really love to get the feedback of all you smart people!

Finally, if you follow me on social media, you know I’m the queen or #ReadMore. I am loving all the attention reading- and especially reading the classics- is getting, particularly among young people.

But I don’t love the idea that you’re only a “real” reader if you’ve worked your way through some prescribed list. Read what you like, dammit. Just read.

That said, I realized something as I was thinking about this: what I share here often looks like…a particular kind of reading list. In reality, I read far more widely than what shows up in these posts. (Quick note: I’m almost finished with Socrates Café and plan to write about it next week.)

So today I’m borrowing a familiar Substack format and sharing a few things I’ve been enjoying lately.

• I am a devoted reader of the New York Times Book Review. Based on a review of a later book in the series, I recently read Ed Lin’s Ghost Month, a crime story set in the might markets of Taipei. I gave it a reluctant 3 stars (almost 4). In this first book, I am more charmed by the setting than the characters, but Lin sets the latter up very well, and I look forward to spending more time with them in subsequent books.

• I am hooked on this Audible original podcast, The Space Within. A series of people around the world start to go missing. Upon their return, there is no evidence of foul play, but they are somehow… different. Enter psychiatrist Maddie Weil (played by Jessica Chastain) to get to the bottom of the mystery. Gripping!

• As part of the above-mentioned Horatio Alger project, I’ve been digging back in to Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric, which is a joy. I’m looking at what Smith thought made a good writer, as well as what types of writing we might expect to have which sorts of effects. It’s been very useful for my paper so far.

• We also just finished watching the first season of Netflix’s The Gentlemen. Super slick and stylish, and a hilarious look at the state of the aristocracy (and organized crime) in the UK today.

• Finally, I also have recently returned to PG Wodehouse and read The Inimitable Jeeves. Goodness, I had forgotten how funny these are! There are a few more loaded on my Kindle now…

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll share what you have been enjoying below!