What I’m Reading This Winter Break
I covet this shelf.
I think my favorite book recommendations these days haven’t come from Amazon (sorry, overlords), but from friends and colleagues. As a result, I was inspired by Rebecca Onion’s blog post about her holiday reading docket, and I decided to write a similar post cataloging my book reading ventures over the next month. These’ll be keeping me very busy for a few reasons: I have a lot to absorb to be able to write a solid MA report this spring (!), and I’m taking a complete break from the internet for a week when I return to Texas (!!) so will have my nose deep in books and articles without distractions.
So, without further ado…
Stephen King, 11/22/63
Already finished this one. It was incredible. I went through a phase in 8th and 9th grade where I read nothing but Stephen King books, so I’ve actually read most of his work. This one deviated from his past work. 11/22/63 is more historical and less fantastic (but with some fantastic elements) – but it’s humane and engrossing nonetheless. Burned in my brain, as I think about my graduate work: the residue of the past, and how that residue attaches to our thoughts and memories.
David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
Excerpts from this were assigned to a class of mine the documentary medium, and I was intrigued enough to buy the book. It’s not a typical nonfiction book; it extracts quotations about particular subjects on memory, reality, art, fiction, nonfiction, etc. from other authors and thinkers. Included: Wittgenstein, an unnamed Bush aide, Ross McElwee… it’s interesting. And it seems particularly useful for nabbing other sources on the aforementioned subjects.
Carl T. Bogus, William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism
This will be the latest in my exploration of conservatism and – hopefully – intellectual conservatism. I’ve been deeply troubled by the anti-intellectualism of the contemporary Right, so maybe Carl T. Bogus (awesome name, by the way) can shed some light on what’s happened – and how William F. Buckley is involved. The book‘s gotten rave reviews from several reputable news outlets, so I’m really looking forward to delving into this one.
Harvey Mansfield, Manliness
Mansfield is a former professor of mine, and we read excerpts of this in a seminar I took in college. The book tracks the political and social content of manliness through history, lamenting the feminization of culture. I haven’t given it its fair due, though, so I’m going to slog through the polemical content from cover to cover. Wish me luck.
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
I received this book as a gift from my senior year English teacher and felt compelled to re-read it this summer – only I only got through the first third of the book. I just want to finish what I’ve started, especially in light of all these apocalyptic narratives going around these days. This one’s more for pleasure, but I’m sure it’ll be useful to my work in some way, too.
Øyvind Vågnes, Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination Film in Visual Culture
From the UTexas press website:
The first book devoted exclusively to the topic, Zaprudered traces the journey of the film and its effect on the world’s collective imagination. Providing insightful perspective as an observer of American culture, Norwegian media studies scholar Øyvind Vågnes begins by analyzing three narratives that are projections of Zapruder’s images: performance group Ant Farm’s video The Eternal Frame, Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld, and an episode from Seinfeld. Subsequent topics he investigates include Dealey Plaza’s Sixth Floor Museum, Zoran Naskovski’s installation Death in Dallas, assassin video games, and other artifacts of the ways in which the footage has made a lasting impact on popular culture and the historical imagination. Vågnes also explores the role of other accidental documentarians, such as those who captured scenes of 9/11.
So. Excited.
Errol Morris, Believing is Seeing
This is Morris’s latest book, and focuses on documentary photography and the blurriness of fact and fiction therein, a subject he treated in depth for the New York Times on a few occasions. The book’s received rave reviews, unsurprisingly, but what really convinced me to read the book were Morris’s hilarious tweets. If Believing is Seeing reads anything like his Twitter feed, color me stoked.
