The Gentrification of the Mind
Sarah Schulman
—Read more…As with most historical traumas of abuse, the perpetrators — the state, our families, the media, private industry — have generally pretended that the murder and cultural destruction of AIDS, created by their neglect, never took place. They pretend that there was nothing they could have done, and that no survivors or witnesses are walking around today with anything to resolve.
On Writing
Stephen King
It’s been a while since I read a book focused on writing. Many writing books are useful for thinking about creativity in general or for applying to any type of writing, but this one is geared toward fiction, at least in the specifically advising sections that are technically the core of the book. I actually skipped much of those, as I didn’t find much of the advice helpful and appreciated the memoir parts more.
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You Are Here
Katharine Harmon
A curated exploration of “Personal Geographies And Other Maps of the Imagination,” I appropriately read and browsed through this while visiting a city that I used to live in, wandering old neighborhoods, piecing together streets, and layering new experiences over the mental cartographies. There are a few essays and textual maps in this book, but most of it is visuals.
Grace
Grace Coddington
As someone who first learned of Grace Coddington from her feisty presence in The September Issue, I felt appropriately chided by the introduction where Coddington declares it “the movie that is the only reason anyone has ever heard of me.” That claim is mostly untrue in terms of the fashion world, but then the average person who saw that documentary is unaware of who edits the spreads in fashion magazines.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Jeanette Winterson
I loved Winterson’s first, semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
The Long Goodbye
Meghan O’Rourke
When I read the excerpt from this book in The New Yorker a couple years ago, I wasn’t particularly drawn to read the whole thing. But a copy showed up in a giveaway pile at work, and I wound up turning to it between library holds. I thought I’d put it aside when something else came along but instead wound up determined to finish, staying up late to get to the end.
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Storming the Gates of Paradise
Rebecca Solnit
I started reading Storming the Gates of Paradise early last year, but since it’s not a light read, the library wound up wanting it back before I could finish. Only thanks to having added it as my “currently reading” book on Goodreads was my memory jogged enough times to get another copy and finally read the rest. An anthology of essays over a number of years, the book is grouped by subject matter with a fair amount of overlap — each essay was originally written to stand alone, so key facts or concepts tend to get rephrased across them.
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The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects
John Tingey
In many ways W. Reginald Bray could be considered a mail art pioneer, as he sent a bevy of interesting items through the post including, as the title reveals, himself —twice! He also posted his dog and various objects with addresses and stamps applied directly to them, as when he traveled to Ireland and dug up a turnip and etched his address into it (the turnip itself didn’t survive to be documented). His experiments seem more inquisitive of the abilities of the Royal Mail than artistic though.
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Smoking Typewriters
John McMillian
For the past couple years, I’ve been pretty focused on fiction, so I determinedly picked this history of the 1960s underground press off my to-read list in an attempt to seek a bit of balance, plus the alternative media angle still had my curiosity piqued two years after I first flagged it for later reading.
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Wild
Cheryl Strayed
Like many people, I first came across Cheryl Strayed through her column Dear Sugar on the Rumpus, though her identity was still a secret at that point. Sugar’s advice is so unsparingly raw, honest, and compassionate — I think I read all the entries the first time I came across one of them.
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