Archive for the 'bookmaggot' Category

testo junkie, by paul b. preciado

A woman who has reached forty-five in the heterocapitalist economy can arrive at the lesbian economy with a status close to adolescence. Bingo.

radical companies, by matt perez

Our deepest problems are the inescapable side-effects of the FIAT system we live in, a system based on domination: our collapsing climate, the gaping wealth gap, discrimation against people of color, the exploitation of women. We need a generative way of relating to one another…

who killed my father, by edouard louis

For the ruling class, in general, politics is a question of aesthetics: a way of seeing themselves, of seeing the world, of constructing a personality. For us it was life or death.

when we cease to understand the world, by benjamin labatut

…every individual manifestation is only a reflection of Brahman, the absolute reality that underlies the phenomena of the world.

we all want impossible things, by catherine newman

My whole life with the girls is telescoped into this moment—running away, running back. Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.

deep hanging out, by malcolm margolin

The reality that seized me is the reality of a world more abundant and wise and beautiful than anything I deserved, its people more courageous and more generous.

birnam wood, by eleanor catton

A defeated, airless, ugly feeling rose in her whenever she heard a person of her parents’ generation talking brightly about home ownership, or foreign holidays, or financial serendipity, or education for its own sake, or second chances in a crowded field; she felt this way sometimes simply if someone spoke about the future – even the very near future – in optimistic terms.

elderflora, by jared farmer

TREES ARE PLANTS THAT PEOPLE CALL TREES—A TERM OF DIGNITY, NOT botany. Personification is intrinsic to treeness.

the possessed, by elif batuman

The British called this conflict “The Great Game,” but no Russian people called it that.

the idiot, by elif batuman

Turkish, for example, had a suffix, -miş, that you put on verbs to report anything you didn’t witness personally. You were always stating your degree of subjectivity. You were always thinking about it, every time you opened your mouth.

stolen, by anne-helén laestadius

Then came the inexplicable shame. Of not being believed. Of not being worth more.

the fourth child, by jessica winter

“I feel a responsibility,” Mom said. “You always want to feel responsible for everything,” Lauren said. “And that’s so bad?” “It’s like—you want to feel guilty about it, like you’re being selfless, but you’re not, you’re just making it all about you.”

the candy house, by jennifer egan

“…friendship risks the end of friendship…”

sea of tranquility, by emily st. john mandel

There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

stay true, by hua hsu

“Why do you think it’s your fault?” she finally asked. It had never occurred to me that it was not.

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, by gabrielle zevin

“There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—”it’s a haunted house.”

some books i loved this year and why you might want to read them

America is Not the Heart and How to Read Now
Have you ever really thought about Fremont? No? Why not?

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873
Learn your blood-drenched history and mourn your courageous dead

Another Day in the Colony
Know that history is in no way done with us yet

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Comics aren’t supposed to make me cry (are they?)

Homage to Catalonia
Reread old novels now that you’re big enough to understand them

Nona the Ninth
Meet the soul of the earth

Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case
Understand how power corrupts

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Consider alternatives

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred and The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)
Drive from San Francisco to Joshua Tree thinking about deep space and social justice

The Years
…so that when Annie Ernaux wins the Nobel Prize you can say “oh yeah Annie, I call her Annie, she’s great”

becoming story, by greg sarris

In that brief moment before the clouds shielded the sun again, I felt what it was like to be held. I was standing in the earth’s enormous hand.

claire dewitt and the bohemian highway, by sara gran

The drive over the Golden Gate Bridge never stops being beautiful. In every kind of weather on every kind of day it’s a different kind of beautiful.

inciting joy, by ross gay

Whoever saved the seed loved us before they knew us. And some of them loved us as their world was ending. Our gardens archive that love.