Recent reads

1. Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions. Borges' non-fiction is just as lucid and enjoyable as his fiction. Many of the major themes of his fiction are present in his essays as well. This volume contains a wide selection of pieces.
2. Friedrich Hölderlin, Kom nu, eld. A new edition of Hölderlin in Swedish, selected and translated by Aris Fioretos, himself a prominent writer. I hadn't read much Hölderlin before, and my slim knowledge of Greek mythology and German geography no doubt prevents me from grasping some essential aspects. But even so, some of these poems are truly wonderful. There is an amazing energy here, and one often gets a sense of bumping against something unspoken and perhaps unspeakable.
3. Henri Michaux, Varje kung återvänder till spegeln. An old Michaux selection in Swedish. Several nuggets here.
4. Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability. Hacking surveys the early history of probability theory. I found his argument that probability theory couldn't have been developed without a fairly modern conception of evidence to be particularly interesting.
5. Lars Gustafsson, Ett minnespalats: Vertikala memoarer. Autobiography. Primarily interesting for its perspective on the Swedish literary climate.