Reading
Books: on balance, I'm for them. These are most of the ones I've read since 2007 or so. The star ratings correspond more closely to "how worth my time this felt" than "how good this is."
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
Made me think about:
- The Parasol Against the Axe
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
Made me think about:
- Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture
- Grief is for People
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
Made me think about:
- Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence
Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays
R. Eric Thomas
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 >>
Made me think about:
- Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
- Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture
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
Made me think about:
- Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism
Despair
Vladimir Nabokov
Art Attack: A Brief Cultural History of the Avant-Garde
Marc Aronson
Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov, David Lodge