Apropos of nothing, here are some books to read when your country is invaded by Russians.
Red Dawn
On “Unpacking My Library”
There’s a lot of (justified) talk about the power of reading, but simply owning a book can be meaningful. Mabel Rosenheck considers Walter Benjamin‘s perspective on book ownership – “[it] is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.” – and her own experiences with book collecting in San Francisco in an essay for The Toast. Pair with Anne Fadiman‘s essay on relationships, books, and relationships with books, “Marrying Libraries.”
Citizen of the Year Reading List
ICYMI Colin Kaepernick was named GQ‘s 2017 Citizen of the Year a few weeks ago. In light of this honor two of his closest friends “have compiled a list of ‘Freedom Dream’ resources spanning close to two centuries—including books, essays, films, documentaries, songs, and museums—that can help readers, viewers, and listeners to understand race as the central political, cultural, economic, social, and geographic organizing principle of our nation, past and present. For it is only when we acknowledge the centrality of race in dictating the outcomes of life and death in the United States can we begin to work toward meaningful forms of racial justice.” Find the books, music and movies that helped inspire Kaepernick (and that will enlighten you too) here.
Made-Up Awards
When Mark O’Connell asked why we care about literary awards, he probably didn’t imagine the situation in China.
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
iCat
The first feline review of the iPad is in. According to Iggy the cat, the game Noby Noby Boy and the Magic Piano iPad ap are quite enjoyable (c/o Kotaku).
●
●
HMH Broke
With debts and liabilities in excess of $1 billion, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has officially filed for bankruptcy.
●
●
Geoff Dyer on Novelistic Essays and Essayistic Novels
Need to kill 37 minutes? Check out “The Novelistic Essay and the Essayistic Novel,” a lecture by Geoff Dyer from this past year’s Key West Literary Summit. (h/t Mark O’Connell)
●
●
The Therapy Fads
“We learn how to be mad, the same way we learn how to be male or female, or how we learn how to participate in society.” On fads and mental illness.
Can The Millions (and The Rumpus, and every other somewhat-left-leaning lit site) please not traffic in fearmongering regarding Russia? What Sessions did in his confirmation hearing was a terrible and all-too-telling precedent, and there certainly are a whole lot of stray connections between figures involved in Trump’s campaign (and the right-wing / international nationalist movement more generally) that one can conjecture about. But there is as yet no concrete *evidence* of a Russian “invasion.” In the meantime, there are plenty of terrors in the Trump admin’s regard for immigrants and brown and black people for us all to focus on, educate ourselves about, and resist. Same goes for their stance on government agencies and regulations. How about a deregulation reading list, or one that probes Steve Bannon’s desire to gut the government…?