This was so delightful—I really enjoyed your mini-reviews (and so fascinated by the combo of Dynamic Library & Publishing as Practice! I hadn't heard of either and I'm so so interested)…the peek at your notebook (I love seeing handwritten lists!!)…your plans for next year's reading…
I've also been thinking about reading Simon Critchley's On Mysticism + more Katherine Angel (I took a writing class with her earlier this year and she was such an insightful critic!). Would be very very interested in your thoughts on both next year!
also—just looked more closely at your 2024 list and saw Sianne Ngai's Our Aesthetic Categories on it! I am so so so curious about this book but keep on opening it & feeling intimidated
i totally get the intimidation aspect. a nice rule of thumb for humanities academia is that the introduction is always the densest/toughest part because that is where they contextualize their book within academia and the writing addresses other academics. AFTER the intro it will read a lot easier. if you can push through the Intro the rest will be easy. And you can go back to the ontro after if you felt like you didn’t absorb anything. that was def my experience with this book!
This was so delightful—I really enjoyed your mini-reviews (and so fascinated by the combo of Dynamic Library & Publishing as Practice! I hadn't heard of either and I'm so so interested)…the peek at your notebook (I love seeing handwritten lists!!)…your plans for next year's reading…
I've also been thinking about reading Simon Critchley's On Mysticism + more Katherine Angel (I took a writing class with her earlier this year and she was such an insightful critic!). Would be very very interested in your thoughts on both next year!
also—just looked more closely at your 2024 list and saw Sianne Ngai's Our Aesthetic Categories on it! I am so so so curious about this book but keep on opening it & feeling intimidated
i totally get the intimidation aspect. a nice rule of thumb for humanities academia is that the introduction is always the densest/toughest part because that is where they contextualize their book within academia and the writing addresses other academics. AFTER the intro it will read a lot easier. if you can push through the Intro the rest will be easy. And you can go back to the ontro after if you felt like you didn’t absorb anything. that was def my experience with this book!