Days of Reading

Marcel Proust

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

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.

The Value of Nothing

Raj Patel

Raj Patel argues that the tragedy of the commons is one borne of privatization and corporatism, not an innate fact of the commoners themselves.

My Bread

Jim Lahey & Rick Flaste

Lahey’s simple method for bread making (which trades kneading for time) is worth the hype.

Mediated

Thomas de Zengotita

de Zengotita investigates the ways in which our experience of the world is mediated through traditional media (television, newspapers) as well as the ways in which we self-mediate.

Standard Operating Procedure

Philip Gourevitch & Errol Morris

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.

Library

Matthew Battles

Battles’ lively history runs from the ancients to the internet, with tales of libraries built and burned along the way.

Summertime

J. M. Coetzee

With Coetzee’s last few works of fiction, he seems to be making an effort to get out ahead of the biographers who will no doubt pounce on his grave while still warm.

Reading Pictures

Alberto Manguel

Manguel—author of A History of Reading—turns his eye to how we “read” art. A welcome correlative to Berger’s Ways of Seeing.