What i read
a snapshot of my day-to-day reading, featuring 60+ books, magazines, journals, essays, and more
This is the second in a trio of posts about reading for paid subscribers. The first, Poser Ethics, was an essay about aesthetics, reading culture, and the fine line between performance and reality. This one is basically an extensive series of reading recommendations. The next will be about how and why I work to develop a reading and writing life as a person with a horrible attention span and no sense of discipline. (just kidding, sort of.)
This is an information-dense post.1 There are over 60 pieces of writing linked or referenced here! I would recommend saving it and coming back whenever you’re at the bookstore, or are looking for a good essay to read with some downtime that you don’t want to spend on Twitter. The end might be cut off if you’re reading in your email, so you may need to finish it in your web browser.
It includes but is not limited to: a list of some of the best books I’ve read or re-read recently; a list of the books I’m most excited to read in the near future (maybe we can read some of them together?); a list of great essays I’ve read over the last few months; some magazines, substacks, and individual writers that I follow religiously; some detail about how I find new and exciting reading material day-to-day; a few thoughts about paywalls.
Before I forget, a request — I’ve been feeling a need to read about kitsch. (I’m starting to realize that I am extremely susceptible to kitsch, and that it might be my fundamental moral and political weakness.) Aside from Avant-garde and Kitsch, Notes on Camp, and Unbearable Lightness of Being — does anyone have any kitsch studies recommendations? Let me know xx
When it comes to reading, I prefer not to get hung up on numbers. I think the pure number of books someone reads per year is usually the least interesting thing about their reading life and almost always the least informative (this might also be a coping mechanism for the fact that I am not a particularly fast reader). But in the interest of giving you what you paid for, here’s my rough breakdown: