theTangentSpace

In early 2026 I made a sort of reading plan. Since it’s “Staying Motivated” week in Blaugust, let’s see how that’s actually going.

The reading plan had two main parts: follow Jared Henderson’s 2026 reading list, and find time for three ancient Greek classics (this wasn’t a deliberate “curriculum” choice, the three books I wanted to read next just happened to be three of a kind). Those three books were Plato’s Republic, Homer’s Odyssey, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In the case of Aristotle, I arranged with a friend (who is himself a philosopher by profession) to do a buddy read, as while he was fairly familiar with Aristotle’s ethics and metaphysics he’d never done a cover-to-cover read himself.

I managed to follow the reading list for the first 5 months: I read Non-things by Byung-Chul Han (review here), The Circle by Dave Eggers, The Score by C. Thi Nguyen, You and Your Profile by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, and The Right To Oblivion by Lowry Pressley (review here). These were all interesting and time well-spent.

During this time, I also managed to make decent progress with the Republic, which I finished, and the Odyssey.

The wheels started coming off this plan a bit in June. June’s book seemed a bit less interesting to me, so I figured that would be a good time to do the Aristotle buddy read. However, scheduling complications meant we didn’t end up starting in June — though I didn’t really want to start another of Jared’s books until I knew what was happening. All this meant in June I didn’t really read much at all, and ended up spending that time playing retro games.

However, in mid-July, the buddy read started. The plan was to do two books (there are ten altogether) each week together with a phone call to discuss them. But after week one it was clear this would have to be revised, as we talked for around two hours about book 1 only. We’ve slowed down to one per week in theory, but scheduling difficulies mean we haven’t kept that pace exactly. We’re doing the book 4 call this evening and starting book 5 tomorrow! I will say this is a wonderful way to read a book of this kind. Book clubs are cool, but in a larger group there is less flexibility with what and when you read. With one trusted friend, it’s easy to organise and re-organise calls when it suits us both.

The imminent release of Nolan’s film in July did move me to also finish the Odyssey, which is fantastic. Both classics I read this year I’m super keen to re-read. My friend and I will probably buddy read the Republic next.

Now that I have two distracting devices — the ever-problematic phone and now also the retro handheld — I’ve started to be a bit more aggressive with my strategy for reading. I’ve started doing “reading pomodoros”. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before as I have occasionally used the pomodoro technique for work. There’s something a little bit distasteful about employing a “productivity technique” to leisure time, but I feel it’s a necessary response to how bloody distracting phones are. It’s not that I’m trying to productivity-hack leisure, but that I’m trying to defend my leisure against something that has hacked me.^[1] Once the pomodoro timer is set, the rule is clear: read the book and don’t look at the phone until the timer runs out. It also provides a bit of motivation — aim to do at least one, ideally two, reading pomodoros per day. We’ll see how well this keeps up, perhaps it’ll get its own post if it works for me.

I’m not sure whether I’ll resume the Jared Henderson list. There’s a couple left on there that I have already read anyway. I did buy Technics and Civilisation (August’s book), but I’ve missed the schedule on that one. I’ll definitely get to it at some point — it had already been on my TBR for a while anyway, thanks to glowing recommendations from Librarian Shipwreck.

In summary, I’m not reading exactly to the schedule or quantity that I originally set out to do, but I am enjoying and learning from some great books, which is all that really counts.