matt Matt(){Matt()}
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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."
Years | Authors
2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007

Hyperbole and a Half
Allie Brosh

24 Dec 2020
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The Long Take
Robin Robertson

27 Nov 2020
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The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
Serhii Plokhy

21 Nov 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Agency (Jackpot #2)
William Gibson

30 Oct 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Dare to Speak
Suzanne Nossel

20 Oct 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

The Internet of Garbage
Sarah Jeong

12 Oct 2020
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The City We Became
N.K. Jemisin

10 Oct 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

02 Oct 2020
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Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler

27 Sep 2020
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Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women's Work
Jenny Brown

24 Sep 2020
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The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century
Thant Myint-U

07 Sep 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

20 Aug 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights
Hans Belting

08 Aug 2020
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff

06 Aug 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

31 Jul 2020
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Inventing Human Rights
Lynn Hunt

26 Jul 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Sam Greenlee

08 Jul 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

03 Jul 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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 >> 

29 Jun 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Speak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov

19 Jun 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

14 Jun 2020
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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

13 Jun 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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 >> 

29 May 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

20 May 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

12 May 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

Made me think about:
- Intersectionality

03 May 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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.

02 Apr 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

23 Mar 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Despair
Vladimir Nabokov

23 Mar 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

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

26 Feb 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 

Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov
David Lodge

21 Jan 2020
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 
2020 total: 31
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