sshhh! This is a working library.

Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky

In this follow-up to Here Comes Everybody, Shirky argues that we’re evolving from passive consumers of Seinfeld to creative makers of everything from lolcats to open source software to real-time news reporting. One can’t help but hope that the death of television is as nigh as he predicts. more

Days of Reading

Marcel Proust

Proust’s meditations on reading, and the gifts that writers leave their readers. Best read slowly. more

Food Rules

Michael Pollan

This little book from everyone’s favorite omnivore deftly defines a series of simple rules to eat by, expanding on his mantra from In Defense of Food: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. more

Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris, Philip Gourevitch

The book companion to Errol Morris’ movie of the same name. Where Morris tells the story with video and photography, Gourevitch communicates with words alone. The effect is less emotional or tactile than the film, but it’s indictment of the war is more strident. more

Ways of Seeing

John Berger

Based on the BBC documentary, Berger begins with a retelling of Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and concludes with a brilliant analysis of modern day advertising and its roots in Renaissance-era oil painting. The text is set in Univers bold, an unusual choice that has the effect of slowing down the reading experience; the result is akin to listening to a voiceover. Two of the book’s seven chapters eschew words in favor of images, and while the quality of the printing leaves a lot to be desired, the essays prevail nonetheless. more

Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky

I’m late to the party on this, but Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody discusses the evolution of group collaboration in the age of social media, and, conversely, the increasing irrelevance of institutions. Required reading for anyone who thinks about the ways in which technology is changing human behavior. more

Nudge

Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler

A compelling little book arguing for “libertarian paternalism,” a doctrine that nudges people towards the decisions most likely to improve their lives, while maintaining their freedom to do as they choose. Most interesting for their discussions of “choice architecture,” which describes how we create the conditions under which people make choices, with obvious parallels to usability design. more

A History of Reading

Alberto Manguel

Collected Fictions

Jorge Luis Borges

Short, surreal little tales that experiment with the form of the story and often take the library as their subject. more

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Michael Pollan

Worth the hype, not because of the widely-hailed subject matter but because of the extraordinary writing. more

Gravity’s Rainbow

Thomas Pynchon

Pynchon’s famously difficult masterpiece. I destroyed three copies in a (failed) effort to grasp it completely. But despite the challenges, the story is enormously charming; I have very warm feelings about the time I spent with it, and I still think of Byron each time I have to change a bulb. more

Waiting for the Barbarians

J.M. Coetzee

Coetzee’s most important novel, sadly more relevant everyday. Perhaps the writer I most admire. more