Today I'm curious about some of your offline reading habits. What book did you last read and what are you reading now?
I last read - Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin (This is my fifth Tao Lin book of his this year! I started reading Tao Lin books after I listened to this interview on Bookworm. Many of his novels and poems are absurd, this one in particular.)
And I'm now reading - California PI by Rachel Sommerville (I've been wanting to read this for ages! She was interviewed on Conversations a few years ago, and I'm starting to realise that I have an interest in true crime...)
I've always been an avid reader, but what I really love about reading an actual physical book or magazine these days is that it just feels so old fashioned, indulgent, and in fact luxurious. Like I'm completely and petulantly turning my back on the real world, being ironically the digital world. Lying in bed for the entire day and reading, and not looking at a screen in any form, is the best. So now my dream is to be a painter/walker/reader.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently reading the book Vanessa gave me, A Speck on the Sea
http://www.amazon.com/A-Speck-Sea-William-Longyard/dp/0071440291
"A gripping compendium of noteworthy small-boat voyages made over the centuries."
I love this book. It's great to dip into. I'm jumping around a bit too, which I like doing in books.
And today I picked up this non-fiction book, which I'm looking forward to starting, Noise: A human history of sound and listening.
http://www.amazon.com/Noise-Human-History-Sound-Listening/dp/1781250898
The book "reveals the six different ages of sound and what it was like to live through them". IE, the soundscapes which have shaped us, from prehistory, to biblical and roman times, to the dark ages, the middle ages, the era of revolution, the rise of machines, and the amplified century.
Thanks Sean! I try to read a real book or magazine at least once a day, and keep one at the office for a paper-only lunch break. My current office book is Susan Orlean's Saturday Night, and each chapter chronicles a night out in a different American town or city, from small town polka nights to an LA Saturday night with two hipster teenagers. I think magazines are the ultimate luxury, the fancy paper, new fonts and different layouts. I wince a little at how much some of the cost but really value them.
DeleteI thought A Speck on the Sea might be related to the NY Times man overboard article VM posted. You might like to borrow A Voyage for Madmen one day, it's another VM gem that follows the stories of 5 men who compete to become the first man to circumnavigate the world in a yacht.
I don't read much printed material at all these days, though I know I should, I definitely feel that reading too much on a screen is not good for my brain. At the moment, I'm reading How to Teach Your Baby to Swim by Claire Timmermans, snippets of Letters of Note, and Shapes on the Wind, a memoir by David Lewis (Bryn's middle-name namesake). I bought a stack of a David Lewis books for Ian as a new daddy present, and gave them to him on the first night we brought the baby home. Now we're both struggling to find time to read them!
ReplyDeleteI wish I could bring myself to buy printed magazines and journals, there are so many beautifully designed periodicals these days, but they're shockingly expensive. Which puts a lot of pressure on them to be really, really good!
Sean, that book about sound and listening sounds fantastic, let us know if it's as good as I hope it is. Did you ever hear the radio series The Nerve by Canadian Public Broadcasting? They played it on RN a few years ago. It's an incredibly well produced radio essay on the human relationship to sound and music over the ages and across cultures. I found a link to it below, but the audio wouldn't play on my iPad, let me know if it works for you.
http://m.music.cbc.ca/blogs/2013/4/Inside-the-Archives-The-Nerve-a-documentary-about-Music-and-Emotion
Sonya, I love that you're getting into true crime! Did you listen to any of the John Safran series on RN? It made me want to read all the books, especially The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule, a true crime writer who discovered that the serial killer she was investigating for a book was someone she knew.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/truecrime/ann-rule-on-true-crime/4888596
I really enjoyed John Safran's series - thank you for putting me onto it! I listened to every single episode, and never knew there were so many sub-genres within the true crime field.
DeleteI'm mainly interested in criminal justice stories, reading about true crimes in detail is often a bit much for me. I just noticed that I perk up when there's a story or interview the backstory of how a person, their family, environment and circumstances can factor into their later criminal lives.
I recently read this article called 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' in Harper's magazine, which detailed how the government in Chicago was using big data to try and predict who in the community is more likely to get shot, or shoot someone else. It reminded me of the TAL Harper High series from 2013 in a way, they used an algorithm that factored in things like school attendance, the suburb in which someone lived and who they associated with regularly. The idea was to try and single out potential victims and perpetrators and offer them some kind of early interventionist program to give them better access to higher education, and role models, in an attempt to avert what the algorithm found to be their likely fate.
The article is a case study of a young man who was identified as a future victim/perpetrator and offered a mentoring program. He was accepted into college, moved out of his neighbourhood, but still was murdered shortly after finishing school.
You can read part of the article here: http://harpers.org/archive/2014/03/chronicle-of-a-death-foretold-2/
If you're interested in the rest of it I can photocopy it for you and send it snail mail.
That article sounds very interesting, I'll have a read of the online bit and probably request a photocopy :)
DeleteDid you hear this interview with Susan Orlean on the Longform podcast? It's really good, she has some great things to say near the end about how she knows when she's done enough research and it's time to start writing the story.
http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-25-susan-orlean
Ooh I haven't! Thank you for the tip off, I haven't listened to longform in awhile. Totally agree that it's hit and miss, it's also one that's not too reliable for car listening, sometimes it's recorded so soft. I'm also intrigued in the Mother Jones one, a guy I used to work with went to work for Mother Jones, and he helped upload the Mitt Romney video!!
Delete