benfridge's bookshelf

benfridge

Joined 2026-04-25

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benfridge.com Technology, Philosophy, and the Creative Life

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goodreads export to bookshelf import possible? goodreads drops a CSV file that could be culled to just title/author for ease of import... might be against ethos/philosophy of this platform- if so, total respect.

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The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life

The Control of Nature

Philosophical Essays

The Sacred Canopy

Does Writing Have a Future?

Medicine and the Reign of Technology

Movies Are Prayers

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

The Technological Bluff

Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving

On the Abolition of All Political Parties

Cultural Amnesia

A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers

A Testament of Devotion

Roses Among Thorns

Gateway of Life

Reconceiving Infertility

The Uncontrollability of the World

Neurotheology

Love in the Ruins

Metaphors We Live By

The Shaping of Things to Come

Plutarch's Lives

Destroyer of the gods

Risk Society

Some of the Words Are Theirs

The Power of Babel

Walking on Water

The Mind of the Maker

We Survived the End of the World

The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays

Writing Creativity and Soul

A Prayer Journal

Voices from the Margin

Sweet Hunter

Wandering in Darkness

I SEE A NEW CITY

The End of Memory

The Way of Paradox

The Redeemed Reader

Children of the Book

Morning Knowledge

Walking to Martha's Vineyard

The Eighth Day: Selected Writings of Christian Bobin

River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007

Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet

A Year with Rilke

The Crowded Dance of Modern Life

The Need for Roots

Technics and Human Development (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 1)

Is Peace Possible?

Alpha and Omega

Willard Gibbs: The Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts

Selected Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Introduction by Nicholas Boyle

The Nonviolent Alternative

Small Is Beautiful

Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression

Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue

Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality

Presence in the Modern World: A New Translation

Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

[ ... ]

Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures

Meaning of the City

Not Exactly: in Praise of Vagueness

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis

Begotten or Made?: Human Procreation and Medical Technique

Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know...

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking

The Grace in Living: Recognize It, Trust It, Abide in It

Silence and Witness: The Quaker Tradition

The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

The Body of This Death: Letters from the Last Archbishop of Lancaster

The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

Digital Tarkovsky

The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate

Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading

Theaetetus

How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation

The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering

In Praise of the Earth: A Journey into the Garden

On The Art of Reading

80,000 Hours: How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Technology and Barbarism: Or: How Billionaires Will Save Us from the End of the World

The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World

Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth (Philosophy of Technology)

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing

Building 903

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Bibliophobia

Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser

How I Became a Tree

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

The Tender Bar: A Memoir

String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis

The Word for World is Forest (Hainish Cycle, #5)

The Fifth Sacred Thing (Maya Greenwood, #1)

Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

From Print to Ebooks: A Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts

E-flux Journal: The Internet Does Not Exist

How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

A Field Companion for Wandering

Haptic Verse: in Imaging Vessels

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City

As You Wake, Break the Shell

Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life

Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Now I Surrender

Difference and Repetition

Anything You Want

Making and Being: Embodiment, Collaboration, & Circulation in the Visual Arts

In Defense of Degrowth

The Waste Books

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

Telling is listening : selected essays 1973-2014

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise

The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading

Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

A Little Theology of Exercise: Enjoying Christ in Body and Soul

The society of the spectacle

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts

Deschooling Society

Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI

Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

Reading 🌿

Things That Disappear

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

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Joining Creation's Praise: A Theological Ethic of Creatureliness

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The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

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Read 🪴

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety

Why I Write

What To Do When It's Your Turn (and it's always your turn)

You Are What You Love

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

The Design of Everyday Things

Slaughterhouse-Five

Breakfast of Champions

The Sirens of Titan

Walden Two

Walden

Monk & Robot Series #1-2

The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)

The Yearling

Bewilderment

Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces

Letters by a Modern Mystic: Excerpts From Letters Written To His Father

The Foundation Series

This is How You Lose the Time War

Interior Freedom

Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image

I Want You to Be: On the God of Love

slouching towards bethlehem

If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young—The Graduation Speeches

Laurus

The Kingkiller Chronicles #1-2

Red Rising Saga #1-6

The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World

Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Bird by Bird

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

The War of Art

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place

Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation

An Essay on Typography

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation

Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control

Fox & I

Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

The Ministry for the Future

The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

The New Yorker Book of Technology Cartoons (with CD-Rom)

Domestic Monastery: Creating Spiritual Life at Home

The Carbon Almanac: It's Not Too Late

Mother Night

The First Law Triology

Hyperion

Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

Never Let Me Go

The Didache

The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man

Practicing the Way

The Creative Act

Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age

Abraham's Silence The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God

Women and the Gender of God

On the Incarnation

The Rule of Taize

The Medium is the Massage

The Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth

Julian of Norwich: The Showings: Uncovering the Face of the Feminine in Revelations of Divine Love

The Orthodox Way - Classics Series Vol. 2

Seeds of Contemplation

dune messiah

Dune

The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament

Interior Castle (The Essential Wisdom Library)

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

Paul: A Biography

The Murderbot Diaries

Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

Dark Night of the Soul (Tan Classics)

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

[ ... ]

How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

Things in Nature Merely Grow

Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart

Gentleman Bastard Sequence

The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health through the Art of Nurtured Parenting

Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch, #1)

Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

Mistborn Era's #1-2

Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age

Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics

James

Bartleby the Scrivener

The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations

Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

The Will of the Many

Reading for the Love of God

Prayer Vol. 01

The Overstory

Project Hail Mary

Dungeon Crawler Carl

The Sun Eater Cycle

Meister Eckhart's Book of Secrets: Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom (Wisdom of Meister Eckhart)

The Book of Longings

The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion

Flannery O'Connor and the Scandal of Faith

St. Francis of Assisi: His Life, Teachings, and Practice (The Essential Wisdom Library)

klara and the sun

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

Steal Like An Artist

Playground

Piranesi

The Graveyard Book

The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

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The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

Antonin Sertillanges

finished: 2026-07-06 05:00:00

“Details are nothing: facts are nothing: the important things are the dependences, the transmissions of influence, the connecting links, the exchanges, which constitute the life of nature. Now, behind all these dependences, is the primal dependence; at the spot to which all connections converge is the supreme Bond; at the highest point of all transmissions, the Spring; beneath the exchanges the Gift; beneath the systole and diastole of the world, the Heart, the boundless Heart of Being. Must not the mind refer back to it unceasingly, and never for a minute lose touch with what is thus the All of all things, and consequently of all knowledge?” “When silence takes possession of you; when far from the racket of the human highway the sacred fire flames up in the stillness; when peace, which is the tranquillity of order, puts order in your thoughts, feelings, and investigations, you are in the supreme disposition for learning; you can bring your materials together; you can create; you are definitely at your working point; it is not the moment to dwell on wretched trifles, to half live while time runs by, and to sell heaven for nothings.” “The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.” "You want to produce an intellectual work? Start by creating within yourself a zone of silence, a habit of withdrawal, a will of dispossession, of detachment, that makes you entirely available for this work; acquire this state of soul, free from the weight of desire and one’s own will, which is the state of grace of the intellectual. Without this, you will not do anything; in any case, you will not do anything of value." "A chain compressed by narrow margins will go further. The discipline of a craft is a great school: it teaches the man of studies to expand his possibilities. Coerced, he concentrates more, learns the value of time, enthusiastically takes refuge in those rare hours when, duty fulfilled, he embraces his ideal, hours when he enjoys the chosen action, after the action imposed by harsh existence."

Hello Beautiful

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Babel

Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth

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Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth

Jennifer Banks

finished: 2026-07-06 05:00:00

"The Holocaust was a consequence of a death drive that ran deep through Western societies, one that had propelled humanity into a fruitless, barren place… Locked in their own privacy, flying into their inner selves, they had lost faith in their ability to transform their worlds and to create new, plural realities through their actions and their speech…" "From the time we are born, we are being shaped by birth… Study birth always; it takes an entire lifetime to learn how to give birth or to come to terms with our having been born… The great philosophers are those who practice being born and birthing… Keep birth daily before your eyes… Birth is evidence of our freedom... The fundamental purpose of art is to process the strange, painful, and miraculous experience of childbirth…" "Although humans may have been created out of nothingness, the fact that they were made at all paradoxically negates all forms of nothingness. “Once called into existence,” Arendt writes, summarizing Augustine, “human life cannot turn into nothingness.”" "Birth and the miracle of our creative beginnings are what indelibly shape us and prove our capacity to creatively act in the world." "Birth confounds the binary. It is an experience of neither mastery nor powerlessness; it confronts us with our embodied, earthly creativity, with what we can control and with what we simply cannot control…" "Birth breaks down most of the dualisms humans use to structure reality: man/woman, mind/body, thought/experience, destruction/creation, self/other, creator/created, birth/death. In challenging those binaries, birth can be an act of nonconforming, and motherhood an expression of alterity. Therein lies the difficulty of talking about birth today: birth is both the norm and its transgression."

With All Its Teeth: Sex, Violence, Profanity, and the Death of Christian Art

An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation

A Little Life

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Suicide and the Communion of Saints

The Writing Life: The Classic Essay Collection on the Creative Process

Spirituality of the Psalms (Facets)

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

Collected Poems, 1909-1962

the burnout society

The Year of Magical Thinking

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Open

The Imitation of Christ

There Is No Antimemetics Division

The Crisis of Narration

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A Larger Reality

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A Larger Reality

Ursula K. Le Guin

finished: 2026-07-06 05:00:00

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom-poets, visionaries- realists of a larger reality." "I create alternatives. I show that alternatives exist. Probably the sum total of my message to the world is that you do not have to do it one way." "I think art remains centrally important in any age, the best or the worst, because it doesn't lie. The hope it offers is not a false hope. And I think the novel is an important art because it talks about what we live by, other than bread. And I think science fiction is- well, no, not important, yet still worth talking about, because it is a promise of continued life of the imagination..." “I am not proposing a return to the Stone Age. My intent is not reactionary, nor even conservative, but simply subversive. It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.” "Nature is humanity's "Other." As an Other, nature is demonized, idealized, extolicized, subordinated, objectified, and distance is lessened in a hundred thousand ways. To the extent any of us participate in this Othering, we lock ourselves out of community with the species with whom we share this world. We lock ourselves into a tiny, tiny cell that defines what we mean by "us." Solitary."

Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again

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After Amen: 50 Days of Poetry and Prayer

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, #1-3)

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