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I love having time to read! Now that summer is over there will probably be way less time to indulge in random themes, but in case anyone has a fall vacation coming up here are some of best things I got to this summer.
Great House, Nicole Krauss
“Somehow I thought that the circumstances, the emergency brewing around us, the fact that I was delivering you to a war—I thought the pressure of it all would foce the cork and that something of you would come trickling out. But it was not to be. You made yourself clear, turning sharply away to stare out of the window. And though I was disappointed I was also, I admit, a little relieved. Because I, who always had something to say, who leaped to have the first word and pressed on until I had the last—I was at a loss. I saw how your body had grown around the gun. How casually you held it, how at home you felt with it in your hands. As if you had absorbed its mechanism—all it demanded of you, its power and its contradictions—right into your flesh. The boy whose own arms and legs were once alien to him had ceased to be, and in his place, sitting next to me in dark sunglasses, his sleeves pulled up to show bronzed forearms, was a man. A soldier, Dova’leh. My boy had grown up to be a soldier, and I was delivering him to war.” (184)
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Amazing Grace, Rachel and her Children, Letters to a Teacher, and Death at and Early Age, Johnathon Kozol
Whatever minor critiques of Kozol exist, more important is the existence of his cannon of incredibly accessible heartbreaking, but not hopeless, depictions of the broken beurocracy of welfare in America. I loved reading a bunch of his books all at once because he’s been writing since the very beginning of his career (Death was published in 1968) up until today (Letters was published in 2008), an arc which makes a compelling argument for his hopefulness and some of his values, while subtly adjusting and updating outdated and perhaps immature views from earlier in his career.
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A Happy Marriage, Rafael Iglesias
Reads like a sad movie you cannot stop watching.
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How to Read the Air and The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu
Wow, is Mengestu an amazing writer! I can’t wait for him to publish more. Even in the moments where his characters’ experiences are as different from my own as I could imagine he managed to make me feel like I was sitting right next to them in their bedrooms, like they were my brothers.
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If They Come in the Morning, ed. Angela Davis
This was the really the only thing Angela Davis that I hadn’t read, and actually she’s not the author but the editor. Reads like a fabulous collection of historical sources your favorite professor would pull together.
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Malcolm X, Manning Marable
Had to because everyone else was reading it. Here’s some great debate: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/19/manning_marables_controversial_new_biography_refuels
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Women and the Politics of Empowerment, Ed. Ann Bookman and sandra Morgen
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The Second Bill of Rights, Cass R. Sunstein
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Just Kids, Patti Smith
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Want to Start a Revolution?, Komozi Woodard
Good, despite Woodard’s chapter on Assata Shakur which was annoying. I disagree entirely with his framing of female revolutionaries. He focuses on Assata because “[she] is singular because she is a recognizable female revolutionary, one not bound to a male persona.” I think that’s his own perspective bubbling to the surface. One that I’m sure Davis and Cleaver would have a lot to say about, and anyway, seems like a pointless one to share.
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Bird by Bird and Operating Instructions, Ann Lamott
If you need inspiration to write everyday read Bird by Bird. It was full of fabulous little gems of advice that nag you to write, like your mom was sitting in the corner reminding you why it is important that you do. Also in Operating Instructions Lamott has a great quote from Mother Teresa, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
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All Over but the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg
Great storyteller, great perspective on 1960s American South.I loved this bit of dialogue:
“It was there that I met a fishing guide named Jimmy who never, ever wore shoes, who never noticed the mosquitoes that feasted on him, who talked only when he wanted to and that wasn’t much. I will never forget sitting in a boat with him on one of those pitch-black nights, and hearing him clear his throat.
‘I’ve et dog,’ he said, unsolicited.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It was in my yard,’ he said, that that was if for a while.”
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We Took the Streets, Miguel “Micky” Melendez
Dark Days, Bright Nights, Peniel Joseph
I’m obsessed with these books right now. I love that they really tell you what an American revolution looks like. They make it feel real and useful and possible. Especially good if you’ve been reading too much depressing news about the broken American political system.
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And another organizing book, Why David Sometimes Wins, Marshall Ganz
There was a great line someplace in the beginning that said psychologists found the three things that foster creativity are motivation, salient knowledge, and learning—or heuristic—practices.
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Winner Take All Politics, Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson
All the books Hacker has written are great. Seriously. Accessible, clever, timely.
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How to Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, Ralph Ellison
Both of these are great essay writing inspiration. Which is so important if you are forced to write essays for school. Just when mine seem start feeling unbearable dry and five-paragraph thesis-statement-y these books provide nice inspiration and reason to keep trying harder.
If you’re in NYC get yourself to MOMA P.S.1 this summer (before July 24th!). Not just for their awesome summer dance parties, but for the incredible exhibitions showing right now! P.S.1 can be totally hit or miss in my experience but it is absolutely worth a trip right now to see The Holy Mountain (pictured) directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Laurel Nakadate’s Only the Lonely, and Nancy Grossman’s Heads.
These were the perfect snack on a hot summer day! Thanks Dewey :)
An ideal summer recipe: these are easy, travel well, and are super healthy. Make them on Sunday and snack on them by Wednesday, or leave them in the fridge for weeks at a time: they last very well. These blow baby carrots out of the water: crunchy, a little sweet, a little spicy, a little…
I want a trained fox. (London, UK)
“Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.” ~Alice Walker
Hello from London!
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