Reading

Hyperbole and a Half
Allie Brosh

The Long Take
Robin Robertson

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
Serhii Plokhy

Agency (Jackpot #2)
William Gibson

Dare to Speak
Suzanne Nossel

The Internet of Garbage
Sarah Jeong

The City We Became
N.K. Jemisin

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
David Bellos

Made me think about:
- Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way

Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler

Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women's Work
Jenny Brown

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century
Thant Myint-U

Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America
Dana Luciano

Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights
Hans Belting

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff

Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays
R. Eric Thomas

Inventing Human Rights
Lynn Hunt

The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Sam Greenlee

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Anand Giridharadas

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
Roy Scranton

I have grown to really appreciate concise, idea-packed writing. This book meets those criteria. It takes an existential view to the global climate crisis, asking us to confront the fact that it might already be too late to save what we have as a precondition to meaningful action. What I... more >> 

Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life
Monica J. Capser (ed.), Eric Wertheimer (ed.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about individual and collective trauma recently. Given the extremity of our experiences - the pandemic, historic and ongoing U.S. racism and racial violence, the displacements and escalating disasters of the climate crisis, and so on, how can we begin to approach the ways that trauma... more >> 

Made me think about:
- Intersectionality

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
Sasha Costanza-Chock

Design Justice is a an extremely useful book. The word ‘design’ has a long history behind it and over the last several decades it has become predominantly associated in most people’s minds with the work of mid-century modern product designers, and more recently with Apple and Silicon Valley-flavored human centered... more >> 

Captive Prince (Captive Prince #1)
C.S. Pacat

Dientes de Dragón
Michael Crichton, Gabriel Dols Gallardo (trans.)

The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political
Judith Butler

Made me think about:
- Intersectionality

The Sense of Order (Wrightsman Lectures 9)
E.H. Gombrich

A very thoughtful and comprehensive read on the global (!) history and cultural functioning and evolution of decoration and design. As Gombrich says, "the historian is not a critic and should not aspire to be one," but the book did at times become discursive and hard to follow due to its lack of a strong unifying framework. Very worth the time; I will never look at wallpaper or picture frames the same way again.

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America
Joan C. Williams

Despair
Vladimir Nabokov

Art Attack: A Brief Cultural History of the Avant-Garde
Marc Aronson

Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov
David Lodge