A life spent living

An annotated reading of the books I finished in May 2026.

Books Read in May 2026

  1. Parable of the Sower
  2. Parable of the Talents
  3. The Untethered Soul
  4. The Art of Living
  5. Last Gamer Standing
  6. Heart Breath Mind

Setting the stage

Where to begin? Octavia Butler was unbelievably prescient in writing Parable of the Sower. In it, she imagines a world ravaged by ecological uncertainty and the human (mis)behavior this inspires. Through the journey of the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, on her way to Northern California to secure economic stability and security for herself and her newly-founded spiritual community, Butler describes how tribalism and greed have transformed entire cities of the year 2025 into near combat zones rife with theft and violence. This story provides grim yet insightful warnings of the dangers of taking our planet and social fabric for granted.

The Parable of the Talents picks up right where Parable of the Sower leaves off, completing Lauren Olamina’s story arc by illustrating how she spends the rest of her days building and rebuilding her spiritual community, Earthseed. Interwoven with this narrative are short journal entries written posthumously by Lauren’s daughter, in which an outside and critical perspective on Earthseed is boldly shared. This book achieves a rare feat: threading the needle between science fiction, philosophy, geopolitics, and (now) historical fiction.

To be honest, I don’t recall much that stood out in this book, perhaps because it overlaps heavily with many other self-help books that have been written over the last decade. Possibly my main takeaway from this book is that we would all do well to spend more time practicing mindfulness rather than un-mindfulness. And reading widely can be a good starting point for this.

Ironically, even though Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Art of Living and Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul are topically related, Hanh’s writing was much more evocative and illustrative to me. Hanh’s use of analogy and storytelling, I believe, made the difference here. Instead of offering direct advice on how to improve your life, The Art of Living paints a picture of a life well lived, from which we can work backwards.

In a hard pivot away from philosophy, Last Gamer Standing is a throwback to simpler times in reading science fiction. World-building and culture meet science fiction, professional gaming, and the like. As a recent young adult fiction novel, this work offers readers an accessible entry point into the fiction genre as a whole. A way to summarize it simply: picture halfway between Hunger Games and Ready Player One, and you’ve got a good idea of how this book narrates.

Polyvagal theory…a topic that was eventually going to come up in my reading list. Heart Breath Mind, in particular, focuses on resonance breathing, a technique for (adaptively) stimulating one’s vagus nerve to support improved stress management and autonomic arousal. I personally found myself trying this technique not long after finishing this book. I’d recommend it to anyone willing to self-experiment with stress reduction (in a safe and controlled manner).

Alex