For some reason I can never separate William James and William Blake. They are the same person in my head. I need to read a lot more about them to split them into two.
Don’t read about William James, just read a bit of William James! His book Pragmatism is short, freely available, and has his signature writing style: a clarity that is nearly unmatched anywhere, and especially when discussing philosophy. An excerpt:
Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament.
