Susan Dominus recently wrote for the magazine about dieting in France, a mysterious case of twitching teens and the woman who took the fall for JPMorgan Chase.
Book I'm reading now:
I couldn't bring myself to read Benjamin Anastas's "Too Good To Be True," a memoir about a New York author's descent into debt and destruction (too harrowing for this writer); but the reviews of his writing were so good, I downloaded his first novel, "An Underachiever's Diary," and have been loving pretty much every word. The book is told from the dyspeptic perspective of a twin long considered his brother's inferior, subject matter inherently fascinating to me as the mother of twin boys; but I think even if that were not the case, I would be equally charmed by his voice — his pitch-perfect recollections of '70s-era Cambridge, his candid wit and his nuanced characterizations of sibling love and hate. (After I wrote this blog post, I found out he works periodically as a freelance research editor at the magazine.)
Last book I loved:
I know everyone has already read Michael Lewis's "The Big Short," about some of the individuals who cashed in betting on the financial collapse in 2008, but I just got around to it. No wonder it was such a huge best seller — it makes you want to proselytize on its behalf, especially to those people who think they are destined to die not knowing what a credit default swap is. But I also feel the need to urge it on people who don't care to know what a credit default swap is (or already do). I found the book most fascinating at the human level, as Lewis answers some questions he was brilliant to think to ask: What kind of person can so clearly see what almost no one else can, and what are the costs of that vision, or contrarianism?
Unread book on my bedside table that gnaws at my conscience
"To the Finland Station," Edmund Wilson's book about the intellectual origins of the Russian Revolution, is truly a beautiful book. And by that I mean, in the case of my copy, at least, it is wholly pristine, despite the four years it has spent in the stack on my bedside table. I think I am slightly undone by the review excerpted on the back jacket, which says, "The first thing that strikes us about 'To the Finland Station' is the breathtaking vastness of its scope." I just read that sentence and I am immediately exhausted. Why do I persist in keeping this book on my bedside table? Someone I admire recommended it. Plus, I must harbor the expectation that I will one day wake up and discover that my brain has been reconfigured into that of someone who cannot put this book down. I am apparently waiting very patiently for that day to arrive.
Three books in my field that I highly recommend:
I'm not exactly sure what my field is, but here are three nonfiction books that are truly great.
"Killings," by Calvin Trilllin. "Killings" is a collection of pieces that are all ostensibly about small-town murders, but are really about American values, the imperatives of local cultures and deadly quirks of fate. Trillin relies on court documents and local interviews to tell one great heartbreak of a story after another.
"Profiles," by Kenneth Tynan. The worst thing one can say about Tynan is that he might be partially responsible for emboldening, a generation or two later, many failed impersonators, authors of the kind of overwritten, heavy on first-person profiles that Jennifer Egan skewers brilliantly in "A Visit From the Goon Squad." But Tynan's profiles are rich, psychologically astute, inventive and reported with the zeal of a historian.
"Hiroshima," by John Hersey. Terse, understated, beyond thorough — Hersey famously took one of the most overwhelming moments in history and boiled it down to a book that is all the more powerful for its conciseness.
Book most people might assume is boring, but is actually not boring:
I'm halfway through Anne Fadiman's "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," (which somebody at her publishing house sent me because it has recently been reissued — thank you, whoever that was). I resisted it for weeks, because it was not immediately obvious to me that I would like a book about, as its subtitle spells out, "A Hmong Child, her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures." I also think the title is lethal. But the book itself is a subtle shock to the system, portraying our medical culture — with all its oddities and bizarre rites — as seen through the eyes of Hmong immigrants, people with a wholly different, fascinating belief system. And throughout it all, there is the devastating story of a young, ill girl being failed by so many people, all of them trying desperately to help the best way they can.
Then there are the books that sound like homework, just because they are old, but are actually barnburning, literary page-turners: I think of Trollope as the most overlooked among even people who love Henry James or George Eliot.
One book I would recommend to anyone
"Just Kids," by Patti Smith. What does it mean to live for art? Where does creativity come from? Patti Smith answers these questions, as much as they can be answered, as only a true artist could. "Just Kids" is like an X-ray of an artist's soul, plus love story, plus cultural history, plus poetry.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
The 6th Floor Blog: How to Read Like a Staff Writer Who Writes About Everything
Dengan url
http://koraninternetonline.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-6th-floor-blog-how-to-read-like_27.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
The 6th Floor Blog: How to Read Like a Staff Writer Who Writes About Everything
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
The 6th Floor Blog: How to Read Like a Staff Writer Who Writes About Everything
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar