Now that I’m (long) out of college, I choose what books to read in three ways: friends’ recommendations, books I need to read for my writing and editing jobs, and books referred to or recommended in books and articles I’m already reading. The first and third method send me down certain paths and subject areas, all related to each other in some way, and thus necessarily excluding other paths, other authors. It occurred to me when Norman Mailer died recently that I have never read anything he wrote, and that’s primarily because nobody I know has ever recommended him to me and the writers I read hardly ever refer to him, and when they do it’s usually unfavorably. The only exception I remember is George Orwell writing that The Naked and the Dead was a good book, so if I read anything by Mailer, it will be that one first. It’s the same thing with John Updike and William T. Vollmann, two other writers whose books I always see in the bookstore but have never read, and there is certainly a vast constellation of others I have never read, and may never read. If I had the time, it would be interesting to draw a chart of these recommendation connections, to see what my own reading’s constellation looks like, and to see just how far away across the galaxy it might lay from those of other people.
Here are some recommended reading lists I’ve found on the Internet recently from writers or bloggers I like:
- In an interview with the National Book Foundation, Christopher Hitchens recommends the following as his favorite non-fiction books: The Strange Death of Liberal England, by George Dangerfield; The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell; and The Prophet Outcast, by Isaac Deutscher.
- Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, has a long list of recommended reading on his Web site, including books on philosophy, religion, mysticism, and neuroscience.
- Michael Weiss and Nic Duquette’s blog, Snarksmith, has a list of recommended books, movies, and music running down the left side of the home page, including Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim and several other books I would also recommend and several which are on my “to read” list.
- Butterflies and Wheels, self-proclaimed “fighters of fashionable nonsense,” has a list of favorite books, too. (Hitchens is on it, and is also on the Snarksmith list, providing at least one node in my constellation, or one constellation in my galaxy, perhaps.)
- Journalist Danny Postel has a list of readings in a syllabus he prepared for a class on writing for magazines.
- Finally, a MetaFilter post in which people post their answers to the question, “What single book is the best introduction to your field for laypeople?”
I’m working on my own list, which I hope to post to the site soon.
Brian Crowley | 29-Nov-07 at 3:08 pm | Permalink
For a time now, I’ve wanted to ask you about republicanism in the traditional political theory sense of the term, and, if you’ve read in it much, what you think of it. Much of the current political debate and many of the people you’ve been blogging about for awhile have been theoretically centered on classical liberalism. America (and elsewhere) has a long tradition of republican participatory democracy (e.g., New England town hall meeting governance, Dewey, Emerson, etc.). However, it gets little attention in mainstream political commentary.
I think much of current political debate could be aided by an injection of republican thought. (In fact, I even drafted an e-mail about it.)
Julien | 03-Dec-07 at 3:53 pm | Permalink
I haven’t thought about republicanism per se in a while. I read a lot about its history when I was in college. Hans Baron, Quentin Skinner, and J.G.A. Pocock are the names that come to mind, though I can’t remember the details of their arguments very well. Republicanism is certainly part of the liberal tradition, but since I’ve been writing this blog I’ve focused more on rights than on what sort of state best secures them. But if you’d like to inject a little republican civic virtue into these pages, please do.