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The First Book You Must Put On Your 2012 Reading List
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
My friend and trusted font of book recommendations Josh Christie mentioned this title on the Bookrageous podcast a couple weeks ago and said, “It’s changing the way I read.” And that was all I needed to hear. I mean, we read books that change the way we think all the time, but how often do we read something that changes the way we READ? I had to get my hands on it.
Relentless pursuer of excellent reading material that I am, I obtained a galley and devoured The Lifespan of a Fact whole. Here’s the quick and dirty: author John D’Agata was hired in 2003 to write an essay about a teenager’s suicide jump from the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. It was rejected from the magazine that originally commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies, but The Believer picked it up. And they assigned then-intern Jim Fingal to fact check it.
Sounds straight-forward, right? But here’s the thing: an essay is not a piece of journalistic reportage. An essay, as D’Agata reminds Fingal throughout the text, is an attempt. An attempt to tell the truth. To reveal something about humanity. To get at an idea or event in a way that straight non-fiction cannot. It’s the old Tim O’Brien “story truth vs. happening truth” polemic. And yes, for the sake of this conversation, an essay is a story more than it is a factual account. Read more
The Sunday Salon 11.13.11–The Backlist Binge Approacheth
2011 at 10am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Nine days to go before my Thanksgiving travel begins, and I’m positively chomping at the bit for my annual end-of-year backlist reading binge. I’ll be wrapping up professional review obligations in the next week or so and eyeing the bought-long-ago-and-still-not-read titles on my personal piles, and I cannot wait.
I love being up on new releases, and my 2010 experiment in reading deliberately reminded me how to prioritize the books I *want* to read over the ones I feel like I *should* read, but there’s nothing like having six weeks to read whatever I want, write whatever I want about it (or not write anything at all), and give my reading brain a hard-earned holiday vacation. I’m thinking of changing things up this year and mixing in some forthcoming releases with the backlist, but only because there are a few books slated for early 2012 release that I don’t think I can resist any longer. And you know what? I can because I MAKE THE RULES.
This morning, I’m heading off to spend the day en route to New York for a week full of meetings, events, and some quality time with friends (and also for dinner at a place whose website indicates that their current menu is all about celebrating pork. YES!). I’ll be alternating Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me with Andrew Feinstein’s The Shadow World (diversity in material, what?) and looking forward to meeting some of my Book Riot coworkers in person for the first time.
That’s about all the news that’s fit to print. What are you up to this weekend?
Get Your Feminist Fix with Jennifer Baumgardner’s F ‘EM!
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published October 2011 by Seal Press
It would be an understatement to say that Jennifer Baumgardner’s work has made an impression on me. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future is high on the list of books that legitimately changed my life, and I’ve had a wicked crush on Baumgardner’s “women can be sexy AND feminist” brain ever since. In F ‘em (which I’ve decided sounds like “eff ‘em,” not “femme”), she reflects on 15 years of activism and lecturing by new essays, previously published pieces with updated commentary, and interviews with notable feminists who inspire her work.
Baumgardner opens by noting that while many people relate to the core ideas of feminism—egalitarianism, eradicating sexism, acknowledging that women have been historically oppressed—most are also confused by it. What does it mean to be a feminist? What does feminism demand of a person? Is it possible to live a feminist life without knowing the label? (She would say yes.) But Baumgardner is less concerned with prescribing feminist behavior than with analyzing the future of the movement.
It’s not the decisions one makes so much as the ability to make a decision that indicates whether feminism has arrived in your life.
In the first piece, entitled “The Third Wave is 40,” Baumgardner explains her frustration at the lack of a common understanding of feminist history as she recalls the evolution of feminism and remarks that third wavers wrote “the first feminist books written by people raised with feminism ‘in the water.’” (Unfortunately, the handy breakdown of said evolution doesn’t appear until the final essay.) Read more
Book Review: SHINY OBJECTS by James A. Roberts
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published November 8, 2011 by HarperOne
he Beatles may have sold us on the notion that money can’t buy us love, but what about happiness? In Shiny Objects, veteran marketer and professor of consumer behavior James A. Roberts pulls back the curtain on advertising, the American Dream and contemporary consumerism in an attempt to encourage reflection on spending habits and a return to non-material pursuits.
Two parts sociology and one part self-help, Shiny Objects contains a thorough review of the literature related to spending and happiness. Roberts calls attention to the deep contradiction between Americans’ stated belief that material possessions cannot make us happy and the undeniable fact that we continue to buy as if they will. Additionally, numerous studies indicate that happiness is largely biologically determined–that we inherit it rather than acquire it–so though we may feel a boost in happiness immediately after a purchase, it is short-lived. We quickly adapt to the “new normal” and begin looking for the next acquisition and the next temporary bump. (So much for those thoughts of “Everything will be better when we get the new house/car/skinny jeans.”)
Roberts calls this the “treadmill of consumption,” and he cites evidence that pursuit of material possessions (and the long hours of work and stress required to pay for them) is inversely related to well-being, self-acceptance, personal relationships, community involvement and other indicators of social, psychological and physical health. Basically, it’s bad for you. Read more
