Reading thread

[accordion]

Cultural criticism nowdays would probably just be any general opinion piece on society, its customs, politics, arts, etc. The most prominent modern intellectual to master this genre would be Jacques Barzun, whose style and focus descend from William Hazlitt, and perhaps earlier from Montaigne. Literary criticism is a much more academic practice not usually reserved for popular periodicals, or even for most literary magazines.

 

[noob in 89]

No, I gotcha. I just thought you were looking for something (at least purportedly) more academic. That's interesting, though -- the peeps down here would barely consider the popular stuff as deserving of the term. (Not that I agree).

Anyway, sorry for the derail. I'd also like to find some more quality options.

 

[Superb0bo]

ive recommended this before, but just want to do so again (my favourite "pop" science book)

pioneers in cultural evolution/gene-culture co-evolution research summarizes their theory and data in a very readable and overall great book. Was mindblowing for me when I first read it , and made me change focus on my own research. Really points out how important culture is for human behavior and human evolution (first point usually not emphasized in psychology/sociobiology, and the latter point really integrating culture with biological evolution).


Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution - Peter J Richerson & Robert Boyd

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Genes-Alone-Transformed-Evolution/dp/0226712125

 

[LonerMatt]

Guys if you like Murakami try some Orhan Pamuk - it's not super similar, but there's enough that if you like one I think you'll like the other.

Pamuk;s books that I've liked have been:
Museum of Innocence (huge book, about love and obsession, just so focused)
Snow (maybe my favourite of his, initially about suicide and religion in rural Turkey, but then about love and obsession)
Istanbul (autobiographical, about family, love, obsession and Turkey)

The narrator is always a lonely, single man in pursuit of beautiful, often unobtainable women, they are slightly melancholy, and very vividly real. Not nearly as whimsical as Murakami, but often as delightfully mundane.

His famous book 'My Name is Red' I just couldn't get into.

 

[ConcreteFiction]



Is there a resource anywhere that reviews or gives a rundown on the political/aesthetic leanings of literary and cultural periodicals? I'm looking for something to read that's not the New Yorker, Harper's, or Paris Review. I'd prefer less content on politics and current events and more on cultural criticism and the arts. I've been reading arts and letters daily for a long time and it's become a constant stream of whining from academics about how the humanities are dying and MFAs are a waste of money. The rest are what I call intellectual click baits, e.g. "ezra pond was a brilliant poet but an anti-semite, henry james was a genius writer but hated his mother, van gogh made great art but bit off his year, click here to read more!" And occasionally they'll have a truly ****** article that only gets posted because the opinion expressed aligns with the site's milieu, usually on how art and education are dying and the American creative class is under threat. I'm bored of the New Yorker after ten+ years as a subscriber cuz I don't live in New York, am not upper-middle class, and would like some fresh perspective. Literary magazines are cool but they don't talk enough about the real world.

The only thing I'm aware of that might be in the area of what you are looking for is n+1, a quarterly. It is definitely criticism heavy with a literary bend (usually one fiction piece and maybe some poems per issue, and always reviews of books and other arts). It is based out of Brooklyn, but is not as NYC-centric as the New Yorker and is very wary of class, so it is more likely to criticize the upper middle events and/or topics that the New Yorker, or even Harpers sometimes covers. It was founded by young leftist writers right just before the recession, so some of the themes that resurface from time to time are things like the lack of job security/benefits/wealth gap, technology, the national security apparatus, and media criticism (often aiming at places like Harpers, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker). It doesn't "report" politics and economics so much as offer criticism, and while there are issues that have mostly focused on things like Occupy Wall Street and the drones, the essays are consistently my favorites and are what I think might fall into the kind of cultural criticism you could be looking for (though I am far from a philosophy or criticism expert, so apologies if I am way off. This issue is pretty representative of your average issue. If any of this sounds interesting, I'd recommend going out and picking up a copy from your local bookstore.

 

[accordion]

Thanks for the rec, I was aware of n+1 but dismissed it as some hipster start-up journal but it does have interesting content.

I've been reading Nell Zink's Wallcreeper, and despite her recent and improbable fame, I've found her prose truly remarkable, similar to the New Yorker profile that portrayed her as more or less a hidden genius. Her style is a perfect mix of high and low, she's a cultural repository as confirmed by Jonathan Franzen, and she has a talent for deadpan humor that dulls the pedantry of her allusions. I don't remember the last time I've read a first-person narrative that has such a bright and effortless voice. I usually try to consider contemporary fiction aside from their themes and press, but in this case I can't help but feel she really is the real deal. Her novels are short, and she's made them seem like elaborate jokes for the sake of getting of getting published. But her voice is rare and even though the novel may be flawed and boring, it's really fun to read and I'm obsessed.

 

[ConcreteFiction]



even though the novel may be flawed and boring, it's really fun to read and I'm obsessed.

Oddly, this line is the type of recommendation that catches me. I will check her out. Thanks.

 

[GoldenTribe]

If it's fun to read, it's not boring.
If it's boring, it's not fun to read.
:foo:

"Flawed but fun" at least makes sense.

 

[Superb0bo]

Halfway through the latest Donna Tartt book, "the goldfinch". She is good as usual, but im not loving it really. Difficult to top the teenage romaticism of "the secret history though" (even her last two books have probably been better from a writing perspective.

 

[Portland Dry Goods]

Currently messing my life up with Knausgaard - My Struggle Book 1

A.) because its part of a 4 book series (and I've got two other series' I've yet to wrap up)
B.) ultimate norwegian bummer jams storytelling.

great so far though, I'm looking forward to reading more.

 

[LonerMatt]

Reading the 5th book in the Expanse - I have a lot of thoughts I will write up when it's done. Suffice to say I wish SF/fantasy authors would write a book about the characters without the end of the world stuff once in awhile - readers are invested and interested, there doesn't have to be an external catastrophe (there's already been 4!), to make the story interesting. Blah blah.

 

[LonerMatt]

The fifth book in The Expanse series - written by James S.A. Corey. This was one of the better books of the five that have been written. it starts with a tired, spent crew re-docking at a space station, and three of the four members requesting leave for personal reasons. The narrative is initially woven around these characters, going through mundane pasts and trying to resolve situations that are nuanced, relatable, but normal. I found this an incredibly refreshing beginning - after one too many 'let's save the galaxy' plotlines, it was great to read a story that was about characters I was invested in just going through personal issues.

However, it wouldn't be a space opera without some ~drama~, and about halfway through the book the **** hits the fan and the characters have to find ways to save the galaxy.

In many ways, this was a let down. I'd been thinking I'd finally stumbled across a restrained SF novel - one that could simply tell small story about big characters, and be the more interesting and meaningful for that, yet that restraint was lifted, and the classic (or cliched) formula of the previous 4 novels was applied here again. Seemingly separate events are actually related! and the crew have to band together and sort it out!

The story is never bland or bad, but at times I wish for something more invigorating - not bigger or more bombastic, but more approachable and pedestrian - a story that continues to humanise the characters and their world, rather than making it a place with more drama, more extremes and more problems.

 

[LonerMatt]

So, if you're like me, you've grown up with the War on Terror being the dominant conflict of your adolesence - and heard so much about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and American soldiers you're a weird mix of tired, curious, war-sick and confused. Not sure what's gone well, or poorly, not sure what is true, and what is just current.

I read Sebastian Junger's War, partially based in this emotion and academic quagmire:

Sebastian Junger, a journalist and writer, spends 15 months embedded in the Korengal Valley with an Army unit. Through the book (it's long form journalism) he recounts events, but mainly focuses on the soldiers, their personalities, their experiences, the effects war has on them, and the more terrifying prospect of returning home.

Junger also often discusses the role of a journalist and objectivity, and one feels his strain to be objective while being fed, protected and cared for by the Army, and seeing people he cares about hurt, die and struggle. In that regard I feel the attempt at objectivity was noble, but perhaps a flawed premise (and he acknowledges this well).

So, this is an attempt at 'Dispatches' for the War on Terror, but it is quite different. The prose is much less poetic (which is, I think, the strength of Dispatches), and the individual soldiers are a much greater part of the writing. I think Megan Stack's "Every Man in this Village is a Liar" is easy the equal of dispatches, for the WoT.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this book - it was insightful, caring, meaningful, intruiging and demonstrated a real struggle - to see, to act, to write, to think, to worry, to hope, to fear - on the part of Junger, and the novel stands for something that I'm not sure many new novels do: individual soldiers. And that is really what makes this book.

One of my favourite passages:

"It's a stressful way to live but once it's blown out of your levels almost everything looks boring. O'Bryne knows himself: when he gets bored he starts drinking and getting into fights, and then it's on a matter of time until he's back in the system. If that's the case he may as well stay in the system - a better one - and actually move upward. I suggest a few civilian jobs that offer a little adrenaline - but we both know it's just not the same. We are at one of the most exposed outposts in the entire US military, and he's crawling out of his skin because there hasn't been a good firefight in a week. How do you bring a guy like that back into the world.

Civilians balk at recognising that one of the most traumatic things about combat is having to give it up. War is so obviously evil and wrong that the idea that there could be anything good to it almost feels like a profanity. And yet throughout history men like Mac and Rice and O'Bryne have come home to find themselves desperately missing what should have been the worst experience of their lives.

To a combat vet the civilian world can seem frivolous and dull, with very little at stake and all the wrong people in power. These men come home and quickly find themselves getting berated by a rear-base major who's never seen combat or arguing with their girlfriend about some domestic issue they don't understand. When men say they miss combat, it's not that they actually miss getting shot at - you'd have to be deranged -it's that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relationships are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life."

If you're interested in this era, and the people who watched it and wondered, I would recommend the following books:
- Every Man in this Village is a Liar - easily one of the better books I've read this year.
- It's what I do - less focused on this war, but more on a photographer's experience

All highly recommended.

 

[rjbman]

The fifth book in The Expanse series - written by James S.A. Corey. This was one of the better books of the five that have been written. it starts with a tired, spent crew re-docking at a space station, and three of the four members requesting leave for personal reasons. The narrative is initially woven around these characters, going through mundane pasts and trying to resolve situations that are nuanced, relatable, but normal. I found this an incredibly refreshing beginning - after one too many 'let's save the galaxy' plotlines, it was great to read a story that was about characters I was invested in just going through personal issues.

However, it wouldn't be a space opera without some ~drama~, and about halfway through the book the **** hits the fan and the characters have to find ways to save the galaxy.

In many ways, this was a let down. I'd been thinking I'd finally stumbled across a restrained SF novel - one that could simply tell small story about big characters, and be the more interesting and meaningful for that, yet that restraint was lifted, and the classic (or cliched) formula of the previous 4 novels was applied here again. Seemingly separate events are actually related! and the crew have to band together and sort it out!

The story is never bland or bad, but at times I wish for something more invigorating - not bigger or more bombastic, but more approachable and pedestrian - a story that continues to humanise the characters and their world, rather than making it a place with more drama, more extremes and more problems.

Really not a huge fan of how the Expanse went from "Oh **** alien virus" into the Expanse itself. Given the name it was likely already planned out, but I feel myself less interested with each book. Just finished Cibola Burn and really not feeling a pressing need to read the next one.

Onto The Water Knife now, hope it holds up well next to The Windup Girl.

On the literary side I read Go Set A Watchman... there was a whole lot of drama when it first came out due to Atticus's explicit racism, but I think after reading it, it's incredibly obvious that it was a draft of the story that ended up becoming To Kill a Mockingbird. In that respects it was a great read because I could see how the story evolved and became the classic that it did.

 

[LonerMatt]

Felt burned out on Cibola Burn, too.

Water Knife is not as good as Windup Girl, IMO, but it is still a solid read - think I put a review in this thread?