Open Thread: Reading Is Fundamental As Is Journalism
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
I want to kill a few birds with one post: publish an open thread, discuss a topic in which most of us have an interest, and address an essential issue critical to our survival over the next several years.
The topic is books — what have you been reading or about to read which is enlightening, edifying, and worth discussing with others? What book(s) do you believe others will find necessary as the SHTF?
The essential issue is journalism — apparently we need to burn it all down and start with the basics, by which I mean crack a book used as journalism curriculum in J-school.
The book I find essential was recommended by journalism instructors I once worked with. At less than 300 pages in paperback, it’s a straightforward and slim read: The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. There have been four editions published to date, any of them are worth reading, and there are +100 copies available now through used book reseller Alibris so you don’t have to go to Bezos’ Amazon.
The frontispiece sets readers off in the right direction. It’s not artwork but text and it’s the outline of the rest of the text:
THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM ARE:
• Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
• Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.
Based on this manifesto, it’s difficult to say that the Washington Post is a legitimate journalistic venture. Long-time editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned this past week from WaPo. The spiking of her cartoon which criticized billionaire oligarchs and media businesses for sucking up to as-yet-uninaugurated Trump — including WaPo’s ultimate owner Jeff Bezos — demonstrated yet again WaPo’s inability to fulfill the necessary attributes of authentic journalism.
The public should be demanding the resignation of WaPo’s editor-in-chief, Will Lewis. They should have been doing so for months now, after a string of gross failures not the least of which is WaPo’s elevation of the fucked-up politicized prosecution of Hunter Biden, but the obvious preference for Trump in its coverage in spite of Trump’s manifest unsuitability for the White House.
WaPo’s management doesn’t even have the balls to come out and say it has a preferred ideology on which it frames its published work. Instead it hangs the burden on its staff.
You know damned well if it spiked Telnaes’ cartoon, it’s spiking other content, too, in ways which are much less obvious to the public.
The public bears considerable responsibility for this situation as well. It does not respond as it should to WaPo’s failures. It’s this lack of appropriate response which encouraged me to pick up The Elements of Journalism once again, because we need to get on the same page and have the same understanding about our relationship with the Fourth Estate.
The First Amendment reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There’s no daylight between our freedom of speech and that of the press. We need to stop acting like the press is a wholly separate entity, because it doesn’t exist without us as readers. Only the business of the press is separate so long as our representatives don’t choose to regulate it otherwise. The right of the free press is our right as citizens in this democracy.
Elements explains to its readers:
What do we do as citizens if these rights are not met? What action, for instance, can and should we take if a newspaper reports on a case of business or political fraud but doesn’t follow up on the controversial issues it raises? First, of course, such contact works best if it comes constructively, as advice and information rather than condemnation. Second, if it is ignored it should be offered again, perhaps through more than one means. If, for example, an e-mail is not acknowledged, send it again, and then pick up the phone or write a letter, with a copy to the editor in chief. If you want to make other citizens aware of your complaint, keep a public record of your attempts to contact the organization and their reactions on a blog.
What can we do if as citizens we offer news organizations this feedback and our contributions, ideas, or criticisms are ignored? Rights mean something only if they are viewed as rights. At that point, withhold your business. Drop the subscription. Stop watching. Most important, write a clear explanation of why you have done so and send it to the editor or media critics, or post it on your own site. …
There’s a bit more reminding us that passivity is our failing. We get the media we fail to demand.
We need to learn how to demand better in a big fat hurry.
I will put good money down that WaPo management leaned on Telnaes after she published her October 25 cartoon, Democracy Dies in Darkness after management said it wouldn’t make an endorsement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/ann-telnaes-cartoon-donald-trump-kamala-harris-washington-post/
From her Substack on Friday, under the headline “Why I’m Quitting the Washington Post”:
She’s put an image of a rough draft of the cartoon in question in her post, likely because the WaPo owns the rights to the final version – even if they don’t publish it.
Thanks – I linked her Substack entry about her resignation in my post but maybe some folks don’t want to go to Substack.
Unfortunately I have a critique about her alternate home. I wish folks leaving corporate media would stop going to Substack because it’s a fascist-enabling POS. Substack pays Nazi/adjacent folks for content and some of Substack’s funders are also Nazi/adjacent. It’s not constructive to move from one Nazi bar to another.
And because the next question is where besides Substack, see Molly White’s thread: https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/113669432276408736 — there are economic reasons to avoid Substack.
Thank you. I read her reasoning via your mstdn link. Essentially hard cost outlays for the Substack alts.
EW.net hosted Brandi Buchman for a while and it was great. Others no doubt but my failing mind.
Is there a hidden “business model” alternative for EW.net in hosting journalists like this?
I would be willing to pay a monthly sub fee in addition to my monthly tip jar contribution.
I mean this corporate journalistic crap has to be stood up to.
First, Rayne, thank you for drilling straight into the core issue I keep banging my head on. Your insight and book recommendation are invaluable.
I’m willing to sound stupid. Many of the writers I can’t live without (Tim Snyder, Mary Trump, etc.) seem available to me only on Substack. I can’t even remember how many subscriptions I’m paying for! When you desperately need access to someone like Snyder, how can you bypass Substack?
‘The topic is books — what have you been reading or about to read which is enlightening, edifying, and worth discussing with others? What book(s) do you believe others will find necessary as the SHTF?’
Two of my most recent books have been: one which is a bit of a hot topic, A City on Mars; and one which is not at all in the press but it’s a beautiful story, JRR Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major.
1. A City on Mars is a really good read. Deeply researched, topical, and a lot of fun. Going into space sounds cool (I would love to go) but it’s not glamorous. Far from it. And it’s not very good for humans. Space medicine is not nearly as well understood as it needs to be, to say the least: we can survive in the ISS but that is no guide to Mars.
2. Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major is one of those stories which seems, on the surface, to be very simple but it’s got all sorts of stuff going on beneath the surface. He wrote it towards the end of his life, and I think he’s trying to put a lot of his experience of what matters in life into it.
And then, thirdly: ‘The essential issue is journalism — apparently we need to burn it all down and start with the basics, by which I mean crack a book used as journalism curriculum in J-school.’
I’m not a journalist but my third most recent read happens to relate to this: it’s Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan. It’s gonzo journalism tempered with Spider Jerusalem’s knowledge that he can’t really change anything; what he can do is give us the tools to try and change things ourselves. At least that’s what I take from Volume One.
But, please, please can somebody target Trump and his minions with a bowel disruptor gun set to ‘prolapse’?
Thanks for the recs. I assume the authors of “A City on Mars” are Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith? Naming the authors ensures readers snag the right book since there may be more than one by that name in the age of digital plagiarism boosted by generative AI.
Second, let’s avoid calls for anything close to violence. We have enough to deal with here, don’t need visits from dark-suited persons in four-door sedans.
Yes, it’s the Weinersmiths.
And, okay, sorry about the bowel disruptor. I thought it was so obviously satirical as not to need to require a health warning. But it was getting on for thirty years ago when I first read those comics (I’m rereading the omnibus volumes) and maybe the men in black have been working away in their labs.
Ouch!
Good to note. Titles are not copyrightable. The same title reappears often, in different media and for completely different works.
I have friends who’ve been ripped off by digital pirates. It’s become a major PITA for writers who are increasingly on their own to police copyright violations — and Amazon often enables the thefts.
I’ve had problems putting books in Calibre because it thinks duplicate titles are duplicate books.
Rayne – have you read the Transmetropolitan series?
I purchased all ten volumes and discovered some small differences in the dialog from the originals I got at the library – but the gist is not damaged.
The bowel disruptor is a bit of a running gag al a “three titties – that’s awesome” or “who the hell is Adam Shadowchild?” from the movie ‘Paul’.
While this is your living room that reference does not rise to the level of violence IMHO.
Added bonus: I always thought the ‘Adam Shadowchild’ character reference was a cheap shot aimed at Warren Ellis – anybody else get that impression?:
https://warrenellis.com/
Looking rather Jeffrey Tambor-ish or is it my imagination?
Thanks!
“that reference does not rise to the level of violence IMHO.”
You will not be the one who gets visited by the four-door sedan. I really need you to think about how easily — and deliberately — a certain pig-headed spectrum of our society will misinterpret what you think is a throwaway comment.
We left normal back in 2016.
“Smith of Wootton Major” is a perfect story. If you don’t mind having the curtain pulled back, Tolkien’s essay on “Smith,” first published in Verlyn Flieger’s expanded edition of the tale in 2005, is excellent reading. However, the essay may spoil the story’s magic for some readers, although it does include new mysteries — one of which I asked Flieger about after she read the essay at a conference that year. (She didn’t have an answer.)
i am immediately reminded of a dinner i head ten (gulp) years ago with friend’o’the blog Jason Leopold where he introduced me to his friend, legendary journalist Robert Scheer. Robert had guest-lectured at UCLA in Journalism for years, but was lamenting that the school was having to re-think things as very few students were interested in pursuing journalism. They all wanted to work in publicity.
Yes, we need to do what we can to challenge and re-shape what is going on at the major papers. But I’m left with how do we begin to address the vast majority of Americans who get their news, however defined, from self-selected, self-obsessed social media.
” …very few students were interested in pursuing journalism. They all wanted to work in publicity.”
Many of them arguably went to work at WaPo and NYT, anyway.
For a lot of media, publicity and journalism are the same thing. Tends to pay more than investigative journalism, though I’m surprised that with that priority, these students didn’t go right to B school.
No B school because, obviously, they can’t do the math.
Thanks Rayne.
Read: The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism by Joe Conason
Read: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson
Reading: How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson
Will Read: Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre by Heather Cox Richardson
Shared all the books with my father who said, “At 95 years old, one is never to old to learn about American History.”
We agree Heather Cox Richardson is a fabulous weaver of words from the past to the present.
Reading novels lately. Waiting by Ha Jin, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, and One Man’s Bible by Gao Xinjian are all very good. Read a book of short stories by Shusako Endo that were really good and a novel of his called A Beautiful Fool. Those were the stand-outs.
Having a ( slow ) blast with Invidicum and looking forward to Énard’s The Deserters.
Currently reading Watership Down, which carries lessons about ethical leadership.
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It’s been a very long time since I read that, probably not since I was a tweenager. I should add that to my tsundoku.
I’m nearly 60 and it’s my first time reading it, Rayne.
I wasn’t expecting a meditation on leading by example (Hazel) vs. leading by fear (General Woundwort). It resonates in our time.
Interesting bunnies!
Been a while, but I also liked Shardik pretty much. A completely realized world with it’s own culture and history.
I think the post-election move away from Xitter and onto Bluesky is a sign that at least some folks are realizing the price of patronizing a Nazi crustpunk dive bar, and finally decided it wasn’t worth it any more. Some of these were individuals, but it also included various media outlets like The Guardian. They explained their decision like this: (Internal links omitted)
More like this, please.
reading:
The Rhetoric of NO
A Freewheelin’ Time : a memoir of Greenwich Village by Suze Rotolo
The Hard Stuff by Wayne Kramer
[Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8-letter minimum. Please be sure to use the same username and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you; the email address you used on this comment does not match the last one you used. /~Rayne]
Partial list, past three years:
2024
Timothy Egan — A Fever in the Heartland
Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson captures Indiana 1920’s politics, grows movement nationally, aims for U.S. presidency, rapes a woman who dies as a result. Before she’s dead she gives testimony; he’s found guilty, is jailed. Klan spirals downward; by 1930 is basically kaput. Epilogue notes some of his henchmen join American Nazi movement in 30’s/40’s. (See Maddow’s “Prequel”).
Like Trump, pathological liar, racist, con man, serial rapist; but also an alcoholic, big time.
Zoë Schlanger — The Light Eaters
How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
(boquila is a revelation; it sees what plant of another species is nearby and grows to look just like it; it copies anything.)
Benjamin Nathans — To The Success of Our Hopeless Cause
The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
(a lift at 639 pages.)
2023
Jonathan Freedland — The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
(Extraordinary read.)
Eric Foner — The Second Founding
(thanks, Ed.)
Greta Thunberg — The Climate Book
Rachel Maddow — Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
(They might have prevailed but for Pearl Harbor.)
2022
Sara Manning Peskin — A Molecule Away From Madness
Tales of the Hijacked Brain
(good; slim volume; 186 pages)
Kati Marton — The Chancellor : The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel
Marie Yavanovitch — Lessons From The Edge : A Memoir
Robert Greenfield — Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III
(acid man and sound guy for the Dead; political grandfather is featured in a recent Smithsonian Magazine!)
Amy Zegart — Spies, Lies, and Algorithms
Lars Chittka — The Mind of A Bee
(fascinating stuff; they learn, they teach.)
Fever in the Heartland, by Tim Egan, gave me a fascinating part of my piecemeal history of the KKK. It did NOT die in the midwest, and it raged further south. If you want to know more, read The Barn by Wright Thompson. It is an investigation of the Emmett Till murder done by a local (white) resident, and it is a wrenchingly beautiful work.
Thanks. Too many books; too little time; but at the least, I’ll consider The Barn. Not sure where I’m going next.
Recently read The Hunter by Tana French. Great fiction set in Ireland. Also read The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes.
(In response to your username, as this is an open thread.)
Some of Ed Walker’s posts discuss the concept of community, which implies working together for the good of all and sometimes sacrificing for the good of all. But now no one wants to take responsibility for anything, much less to help others. We have Bezos not saying a word about WaPo’s descent into darkness. The Supreme Court (and other courts) deciding important cases with one word affirmances. On migration, well, I’m in, so you can close the door now. Trump, of course, never owning up to anything. Nobody seems to give a damn about anyone else’s well being, it’s just what I want, what I want. What’s going on?
I love Tana French, waiting impatiently for her newest.
I’m most of the way through Barry Lopez’ Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. It will help me through the next few years, not by one huge thesis, but by multiple disparate examples. Probably not a good introduction to Barry Lopez for folks who aren’t already familiar, though. After that I will either revisit Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, or read her A Book of Migrations, which I somehow didn’t pick up when it came out.
Those books of essays aren’t quite journalism, but are perhaps long-form journalism-adjacent. They also bridge responding to longer-term ecological decline (not just climate change) and shorter term human-centered catastrophes and responses.
Atkins & Bauer’s We Are the Land: a History of Native California is something I need to reread for several reasons. It’s fundamental theme is of indigenous peoples not as noble savages or passive victims, but as peoples with agency, dealing with new powerful outside forces by trying to leverage them, resist, mitigate, and survive. But I’m afraid it may just depress me by being a bit too close to what is about to ramp up again for outsider communities in our country.
Just put down James Lee Burke’s Harbor Lights
Just picked up Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Nearer
Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz. Hardboiled detective murder mystery set in a alternate 1920’s history where native Americans did not get wiped out and founded a multiracial society that is one of the US states.
Everyone Who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. History of the Central American migration to the US, particularly focused on San Salvador. It’s an ugly story of US foreign policy based on late stage capitalism and racist demoguary.
Cahokia Jazz is an amazing novel.
also recommend:
Zak Podmore’s Life After Dead Pool, Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River. More broader than how data dense the title sounds.
Edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston, Fourteen Days. A collection of stories by people stranded in a NYC tenement building during Covid.
Lives down there were like living under a tornado warning every single damn day. Had to put that one aside for a few months. May pick back up.
The author (Blitzer) wants people to understand. Too few people understand. And never will.
I started David Daley’s “ANTIDEMOCRATIC: Inside the Far Right’s 50-year Plot to Control American Elections” a few days ago.
Quite a good read so far—Daley is also the author of “RATF**KED: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count”.
After that, probably some Fantasy or Sci-Fi to cleanse my palate.
The Washington Post seems on its way to becoming a chatty company newsletter, filled with recipes, home and garden advice and weather. Apparently Ashley Parker has gone to The Atlantic and others are about to leave. The Post changed the Comment section. It now has an AI summary and 4 choices for critiquing a comment: New to Me, Clarifying, Provocative, and Thoughtful. The AI summary is morphing into what the Company would like the comments to reflect. Just what I wanted: AI to direct my thinking. My subscription is annual and runs out in April. I’ll probably go to The Atlantic.
I believe that the failures of the news media contributed to the rise of Trump and Jan. 6th. The media, with few exceptions, was so allured by his pass the popcorn antics that they failed to report on his business dealings with any depth or frequency. It was as if the media bought the fiction of The Apprentice. The news media reported on some of the dots during the period between the 2020 election and Jan. 6th but largely bought into the Conventional Wisdom that a sullen but peaceful Trump would slink back to Florida. I can’t help but wonder if the news media had raised alarms if the violence would have happened.
As to books, I’m running through the murder mystery novels of Tana French (The Searcher and The Witch Elm Tree are favorites), Louise Penny, Donna Leon, and Laura Lippmann. I’ve gone through the retelling of Greek myths from the women’s perspective: Penelope, Circe, Ariadne, Galatea by English authors. I’m reading a historical fiction, “The Bookseller of Inverness” by SG Maclean about the Jacobite uprisings in the Scottish Highlands. And on the pile is a history of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir.
I’m sure this is not a new suggestion here or maybe anywhere, but I do believe we have the capacity to fund our own news organization. I know so many people who quit their WaPo sub after the Bezos slap down on staff. I believe people will pay for original content, as we get here. With a broad spectrum of excellence as exists increasingly outside the former giants of publishing, we have a great opportunity right now.
It would be fantastic to have the many truth tellers like Marcy and cohorts here, and those who have left or been forced out of media, to develop an alternative platform with the kinds of linkages and lifting we want and need.
I think the hunger is there.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Serviceberry.”
Roberto Calasso’s “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.”
OT: the name of the link to opt out of AI in Google searches?
Read and enjoyed Roberto Calasso’s “Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony” years ago.
ritarita:
yes, its a re-read for me. fabulous book, practically every page pregnant with meaning for the present.
I love a books thread!
Recently read: Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a very enjoyable science fiction book about global warming and how the world can eventually come together to manage a response.
In process: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud. A response to Camus’s The Stranger by a Algerian author, which gives a name and a family to the nameless “Arab” who is murdered by Camus hero Merusault.
A book I did editorial work on, which will be out in June: Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez. Highly recommended, especially for the coming fights over immigration, race, etc. Sumner was one of the architects of the Second Founding, and proposed policies for racial equality that seem ground-breaking even today.
Very excited to hear about that Sumner book! Where should I look for it/preorder it?
I was the last person on earth to read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Loved it, and really want to learn more about the surrounding history.
The Sumner book can be pre-ordered on Amazon. Publisher is Henry Holt. The man was amazing. The speech he gave, on slavery and slave-owners, which incited the famous caning on the Senate floor was absolutely brutal. Fearless. His proposed Civil Rights Act was a template for the CRA of 1964, but went far beyond it. He died trying to get it passed. We could use some folks like him in the House and Senate now.
On another blog I used the Brooks caning of Sumner as an example in a discussion. Another poster said he had a slap-your-head-moment when he read it because his parents gave his older brother a middle name of Brooks and gave him a middle name of Sumner.
Currently reading On Freedom, Timothy Snyder (and some fiction, and an autobiography). Read Autocracy Inc, Anne Applebaum, a few weeks ago.
Read news on Substack these days, can’t stomach most mainstream outlets from America anymore. Still read The Guardian, and they have a good Books section. Happy New Year. :-)
I can’t read novels when I’m writing one. I’m also editing another, by a friend, about the Dobbs leak. So I turn to non-fiction. I hesitated to first order and then pick up and start reading Ministry of Truth, by Steve Benen, thinking it would just be one of those “good to know” reads prior to the election.
Well, it was that, but so much more–somehow Benen manages to make the GOP’s systematic campaign to neutralize reality into a bracing and even energizing read. Now…well, we know what happened…I’m even more glad I read it. I’ve recommended it here before, and probably will again.
My notes from Upton Sinclair’s The Brass Check, his critique of journalism from 1919
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/16/271728/-The-Jungle-of-Journalism-Upton-Sinclair-on-the-Press
My notes from George Seldes’ autobiography which describes journalism from the first half of the 20th century and beyond
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/20/663606/-Witness-to-a-Century-George-Seldes
I’ve corresponded a bit with Library of America to try and get them to bring out Sinclair’s “Lanny Budd” novels in a boxed set, but apparently there are difficult rights issues to solve there. Read “Dragon’s Teeth” in paperback as a teen and was blown away by it.
Once, long ago, I met an author/reporter by the name of Tyler Bridges. It was a few years after his biography of David Duke was published. He subsequently updated it in 2018 and re-titled it, The Rise and Fall of David Duke. You might remember the brouhaha when Trump claimed he didn’t know Duke.
But in an 11/3/16 Politico article (“David Duke’s Last Stand”) Tyler Bridges said this:
“Trump was either lying or misremembering because in 2000 he ended a brief flirtation with becoming the Reform Party’s presidential candidate by pointing in part to Duke’s association with the party.”
And in the SPLC article below, Bridges says this:
“In some ways what we saw in Louisiana was sort of a dress rehearsal for conservative Republicans to learn how to appeal to frustrated whites,” Tyler Bridges, a reporter who chronicled Duke in the book The Rise and Fall of David Duke, told Hatewatch. “Trump has very strongly tapped into that. It’s helpful to understand Donald Trump today by understanding who David Duke has been.”
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/05/17/white-shadow-david-dukes-lasting-influence-american-white-supremacy
Just finished Neal Stephenson’s “Polostan,” which does a neat job of recovering two bits of American history, namely, the Bonus March on Washington (1933) and the Chicago Century of Progress Fair. It’s also a quick read (unusual for Stephenson, who likes to dive deep into the worlds he renders), but it’s listed as a prefatory volume to a new series, “Bomb Light.” If it’s as good as “The Baroque Cycle,” it will be a winner. The book also features cameos from George Patton and a teenaged (and horny) Richard Feynman.
I picked up a book at a local library sale, “Brave Companions: Portraits in History” by David McCullough. The stories are wonderful. The most exquisite and poetic, for me anyway, is the story about aviation pioneers Anne and Charles Lindbergh, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Beryl Markham. One line said to Lindbergh from a Masai warrior (McCullough’s term) made me think of Ed Walker. “Civilization is not progress. We have known freedom far greater than yours.”
Awaiting me is China Mieville’s “Embassytown”, a story of human precipitated revolutionary change on an alien planet centered on language purity and the ability to lie.
Also Richard King’s “Sailing Alone”, a book about solo oceanic voyages. Since we are all sailing alone at some point I thought the book might have some some valuable hidden lessons for non-sailors, like me.
I’m finally getting round to reading Tara Westover’s “Educated”, which had been sitting on my bedside table for years. Halfway through. It gives a frightening glimpse of how religious fundamentalism (in this case doomsday-prepper Mormonism) can wreak havoc on some families’ mental and physical well-being. She counts as a heroic survivor in my view.
Another one I’ve been putting off: “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” by Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari (of “Sapiens” renown). Published in 2015, I suspect many of his AI theories are either outdated or have already come true.
Most of my non-screen reading is periodicals: The New Yorker (always read the cartoons first!) and a fairly recent discovery, The Sun, which is just brimming with humanity.
What great recommendations for books, especially since I purchased Cahokia Jazz over the break and its the next book on my list.
I’ve just finished “The First Astronomers – How Indigenous Elders read the stars” by Duane Hamacher. A great book due to my connection to some of the areas in Australia through project delivery over the years and a reminder about how clever we are as humans amd have been for tens of thousands of years.
Looks like my revered and just-retired Rep. Barbara Lee might be clearing the field in a run for for mayor of Oakland – a pretty thankless job, but I bet she’d be more effective than Gerry Brown or Ron Dellums.
She’s got my vote – oh wait, I vote in Berkeley.