In my last reading update, I mentioned that I had read the first book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Since then, apart from reading for my dissertation, that’s pretty much all I’ve read. I just finished The Yellow Admiral, which means that I’ve read 18 of the 21 books (one left unfinished at the author’s death) in the series. Because I was so engrossed in dissertation research on the one hand and these historical novels on the other, I dramatically cut down on my longform reading in Pocket, so this update will be much shorter than past ones. My biggest recommendation would be to give the O’Brian novels a try. They’re engaging, candid, humane, and funny.

Books

• Books 2-18 of the Aubrey-Maturin series.
• Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese. A quick read, and quite good.

Longform Journalism

• Jennifer Breheny Wallace making helpful distinctions between empathy and compassion in the Washington Post.
• Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson and Jason Potts writing on Medium about what they call “byzantine political economy.”
• Sean Illing’s interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones in Vox about racial segregation (in schools and housing) in America.
• Brian Oliver’s Guardian article about vegetarianism and veganism in top-level sport.
• Todd Gitlin writing for the Washington Post on the history of campus ‘free speech.’
• A keynote address from John Bogle about big data and index investing.

Featured image: “Bollard: San Diego Harbor,” Photos by Clark, CC-BY-NC 2.0