Results for “best non-fiction” 144 found
My favorite things New Jersey
1. Music: There is Count Basie, Lauryn Hill (download "I Just Want You Around"), Paul Robeson, and Deborah Harry’s best songs; my favorite is the reggae-inspired "The Tide is High." Paul Simon was born in New Jersey, and of course there is sax player Wayne Shorter. Even at age 44, I’m still not into Frank Sinatra. Bruce Springsteen I now find mostly unlistenable (monotonous rhythm sections), but parts of Born to Run still send a thrill through my heart.
2. Author: Philip Roth is the obvious pick, but I prefer Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, a neglected masterpiece, and the first half of his Executioner’s Song. Stephen Crane is from the state, but somehow he doesn’t count in my eyes as a New Jerseyan. Mencken had the bottom line on James Fenimore Cooper.
3. TV show: Duh. I still don’t get the appeal of The Wire; for obvious biographical reasons, I’d rather watch white New Jerseyans kill each other than black Baltimoreans.
4. Poet: William Carlos Williams, here is a quickie poem.
5. Comic: Jason Alexander, by far the funniest guy on that show. Bud Abbott is another pick. James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) can be funny when they let him.
6. Director: Steven Spielberg, AI is about how morally superficial people can be; Sugarland Express and Close Encounters (director’s cut) are other favorites of many. There is also Brian de Palma, his best film is the Hitchcockean Dressed to Kill.
7. Non-fiction writer. John McPhee has raised the bar for all of us.
8. Painter: Jacob Lawrence, especially the early works. There is also George Inness, who painted Montclair, and Ben Shahn, here is my favorite of his.
9. Sculptor: George Segal I am not so fond of, but otherwise I draw a blank.
10. Economist: Milton Friedman.
11. Movie, set in: Here is a list, plus there is Clerks and other Kevin Smith creations, not to mention Big (Tom Hanks) and Buckeroo Bonzai. I opt for Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. What else am I missing?
12. Mom: Mine.
The bottom line: Too obvious to state.
The second bottom line: Population density is a wonderful thing.
What I’ve been reading
1. Michael Crichton, Next. Yes it is "writing-by-numbers," yes it is better than his recent work, but no, it is not nearly as good as Jurassic Park, Sphere (my favorite), Congo, or for that matter his book on Jasper Johns. Some critics like it. The start is OK but it falls apart as it proceeds. By the way, here is my previous post on human-chimp hybrids.
2. Robert Bolaño, Distant Star. A minor masterpiece. He is another of those first-tier Latin writers, along with Asturias and Rulfo, who for mysterious reasons no one in the United States seems to read.
3. Richard Powers, The Echo Maker. A deserving winner of a National Book Award, plus I am interested in the neurology theme. I find many of Power’s earlier books too intellectualized, but this one held my attention throughout. By the way, I also tried the non-fiction National Book winner, the book about the Dust Bowl years, but it didn’t hold my interest.
4. The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story, by Asif Dowla and Dipal Barua. A very good look at the micro-credit movement.
Addendum: The NYT picks its ten best books of the year.
What I’ve been reading
1. Dave Eggers, What is the What. Despite its preciousness, I quite liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Sadly this quasi-fictional tale of a Sudanese refugee reveals that most contemporary writers are lightweights, pure and simple.
2. Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir. I loved Palimpset, volume 1, but this follow-up is junk. Julian is his best book, but overall he has more misses than hits.
3. Othello. I’ll teach this in my spring Law and Literature class. I read Shakespeare as despising the Moor for turning his back on his natural Muslim allies and fighting them in Cyprus. In a strange way Othello deserves some of the bad treatment he receives — why should anyone trust him?
4. The new Stephen Dubner book…I am not reading it yet, but I don’t want to be slow with the news. Discover the other Dubner.
5. Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic. This is from the guy who brought us Everything Bad is Good for You, except it turns out that cholera isn’t good for you, it is bad for you. A brisk and readable story of public health issues in Victorian London.
6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold [Crónica de una muerte anunciada]. I regard One Hundred Years of Solitude as a good but overrated book; this slim volume may well be his most exciting fiction and it is clearly the most humorous. I’m also fond on his non-fiction book about the kidnapping and volume one of his memoirs, plus of course the short stories; that is what he will be known for.
Christmas gifts
This is not quite a year-end "best of" list, but if you are looking for gifts, here are my off-the-cuff picks in some select areas.
1. TV show: Season one of Veronica Mars. Matt Yglesias and Dan Drezner are fans as well.
2. Classical music: Maurizio Pollini, Chopin’s Nocturnes.
This recording has none of the flaws that Pollini would have shown in
these pieces 20 years ago; they are lyrical and beautiful. For something
new try Golijov’s Ayre song cycle, and don’t neglect the accompanying Berio pieces. Richard Egarr’s Goldberg Variations is the only harpischord recording which stands up to Glenn Gould. Finally, Paul McCartney’s Ecce Cor Meum was better than most other new releases, and yes I hated Liverpool Oratorio but he finally figured out how to do it.
3. Non-fiction: Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling Upon Happiness, or for the economist David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations. Google back to my reviews if you don’t remember them.
4. Fiction: A slow year for this category, maybe I will pick Suite Francaise. I’ll bet against the new Thomas Pynchon being any good but if I am wrong I will let you know.
5. DVDs: You might try Solo con Tu Pareja, the new Criterion release of the 1991 Mexican film by the guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien. After that, stick with TV, at least for the time being.
6. Popular music: You could try the new Dylan, or the new Beck, but so far I think the new Justin Timberlake is — against my will I might add — more interesting than either. My real pick here is the Argentine sensation Juana Molina. Buy Son.
Acoustic guitar, clear voice, light percussive rhythms, ringing bells,
sheer magic. This is that "isn’t it amazing I never heard of her
before" CD you were looking for…
7. Jazz CD: The new Monk/Coltrane find is the obvious pick, but the new Ornette Coleman release is one of his best.
If you read only one book by Orhan Pamuk
The White Castle is short, fun, and Calvinoesque. Not his best book but an excellent introduction and guaranteed to please. Snow is deep, political, and captures the nuances of modern Turkey; it is my personal favorite. The New Life isn’t read often enough; ideally it requires not only a knowledge of Dante, but also a knowledge of how Dante appropriated Islamic theological writings for his own ends. My Name is Red is a complex detective story, beloved by many, often considered his best, but for me it is a little fluffy behind the machinations. The Black Book is the one to read last, once you know the others. Istanbul: Memories and the City is a non-fictional memoir and a knock-out.
My favorite things Virginia
It feels like an eon since I have traveled, plus I have been at home with the sniffles and a nasty cough. So here goes:
1. Music: Right off the bat we are in trouble. Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News but she is overrated (overly mannered and too self-consciously pandering to the crowd). We do have Patsy Cline and Maybelle Carter, the latter was an awesome guitar player and a precursor of John Fahey, not to mention the mother of June Carter.
2. Writer: There is Willa Cather, William Styron, and the new Thomas Wolfe. Cather moved at age ten to Nebraska. Some of you might sneak Poe into the Virginia category, but in my mind he is too closely linked to Baltimore. If you count non-fiction, add Booker T. Washington to the list.
3. Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Person: I have to go with Helen Keller. If you choose her for "20 Questions," no one will hit upon her category.
4. Movie, set in. The first part of Silence of the Lambs is set in Quantico, Virginia. No Way Out, starring Gene Hackman and Kevin Costner, is set in DC and around the Pentagon.
5. Artist: Help! Can you do better than Sam Snead? George Caleb Bingham was born here, but I identify him with Missouri.
6. The Presidents. I’ll pick Washington as the best, simply because he had a successor, and Madison as the best political theorist. Jefferson’s writings bore me and Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst Presidents we have had.
The bottom line: Maybe you are impressed by the Presidents, but for a state so old, it makes a pretty thin showing. It has lacked a strong blues tradition, a major city, and has remained caught up in ideals of nobility and Confederacy.
The Great American Novel — my runners-up
1. Faulkner. He came close to winning. But which novel? Absalom, Absalom is the deepest and richest. But you need to read it at least twice in a row, and that makes it less of a story. Here is the first page. As I Lay Dying is the most enjoyable. Read it through once, without trying to understand it. Then read it through voice-by-voice. Then read it through again. Sound and the Fury and Light in August (Faulkner’s easiest major work) cannot be dismissed either.
2. Henry James – The Golden Bowl. Are you interested in Girardian doubles, the triangulation of desire, self-deception, the use of gifts to imprison, the mediation of desire through objects, and the dynamics of marriages? This was James’s last and best novel. For my taste Portrait of a Lady is static and stands too close to the Merchant Ivory tradition. Interestingly, I believe not one of you mentioned James in the comments thread.
3. Huckleberry Finn. It seems more Shakespearian each time I read it. Right now Yana is reading it and loving it.
A few comments: Fitzgerald is not quite there. I am tempted to count Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as a novel, not a poem. Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Nabokov’s Pale Fire are close, although my wife will not let me treat the latter as an American novel. Philip Roth has many excellent novels but no one for me stands out. Only the first third of Gravity’s Rainbow is wonderful. I prefer Hemingway’s short fiction and most of all his sociological non-fiction on bullfighting. Bellow is excellent but I wonder how much his books will mean to people one hundred years from now. The dark horses you already have heard about.
Books of the year
The Economist and The New York Times (password required) have put out their "best books of the year" lists. Each list is at the respective link, the common elements are:
Philip Roth – The Plot Against America
Anne Tyler – The Amateur Marriage
Colm Toibin – The Master
Alan Hollinghurst – Line of Beauty
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
Orhan Pamuk – Snow
Moving on to non-fiction, we have:
Ron Chernow – Alexander Hamilton
Seymour Hersh – Chain of Command
The 9-11 Commission Report, and
Stephen Greenblatt – Will in the World
As for my favorites in fiction, Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is my clear pick, with nods to Garcia Marquez and Alice Munro. For non-fiction, my memory summons up Craig Seligman’s Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me, Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, and Bart Schulz’s Henry Sidgwick: An Intellectual Biography. For science I’ll nominate Brian Greene’s Fabric of the Cosmos. I’m leaving off everything that has made our "Books we Recommend" list over the months.
My apologies if I forget your book. No, I haven’t forgotten its content (yet), I simply have no idea whether it came out this last year. Age has compressed my sense of time into two rather gross categories: "my plans for the future" and "the distant past."
Christmas gifts
OK, the end of the year is approaching, here are my “best of” lists:
1. Classical music CD: Bach, St. Matthew’s Passion, conducted by Paul McCreesh. As good a recording as you will find, and this is arguably the best piece of music ever. One voice to a part, as they did it in Bach’s day, but never stale or musty.
2. Popular music CD: Outkast, Speakerboxx/The Love Below. Starts at hip-hop but spans the entire musical map, from an immensely talented duo.
3. Book, fiction: J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello. The finest novel yet by this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature, deep and philosophical, but also a great read.
4. Book, non-fiction: Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Games. Baseball puts me to sleep, this book is actually about human irrationality and performance. Everyone should read it.
5. DVD: Jean-Luc Godard, Band of Outsiders. OK, so he was (is?) a commie. Still, he understands the power of cinema in a way that few other directors do. The screen sparkles in every frame, the release is of course by Criterion.
And if you really want to go on a shopping spree, here is an article about notable art masterpieces still in private hands. I would recommend the Pollock at $50 million, except that the owner is not selling at that price.