Whoastanderson Book List
I read books I like books I recommend books.
I have been reading the Twilight series with my friends but trust that I will not put them on this list.
In the greatest simplification, Matt Lee's The Backwards Hand is a nonfiction-memoir hybrid, examining how the social consciousness surrounding disability is represented in media, particular horror films, positioned alongside Disability Rights history and his own experience with bilaterial radioulnar synostosis, where the bones of his forearms are fused and he is unable to turn his palms upwards.
In all of his vignettes, personal and historical, Lee examines the role of the "other," the feelings of disgust embedded in the abject. He sifts through his own identity relative to disability; in practice, the narrative of his memoir melts perfectly into the overarch.
Also important to note: Lee has a background in theatre and film. Read emphatically.
A Guest in the House - E.M. Carroll
I love a graphic novel. I love a spooky graphic novel. I love a spooky graphic novel that is meticulously illustrated and a little bit gay, with limited uses of color to grandstand central themes. I love a graphic novel that helps me process the very specific feelings I have sometimes, and I will not elaborate on that.
Here, we follow average townie Abby, who has just married the new-in-town dentist with a young daughter from his previous marriage. She wants to be a good wife, a good mother, to have the idyllic life on the lakeside. But, yknow, things aren't exactly as they seem, and Abby has some secrets to uncover about her husband's previous marriage.
Let's talk about obsession, let's talk about projection, let's talk about the past, let's talk about the many variations of the present, let's talk about delusions, let's talk about the malleability of your own identity relative to your perception of the world.
This graphic novel is HEFTY, but it is so worth it. In a realistic-dystopian Egypt, residents have the opportunity to purchase bona-fide government-regulated wishes! Different tiers of wishes, each at different price points, can work anything up to a miracle. When a small seedy-ish newspaper stand pulls out an ancient box of high-tier wishes, Aziza, Nour, and Shokry each purchase a wish, changing their lives in ways they couldn't really have imagined.
Does that sound like a cheesy pitch? I don't care, this book made me cry. Rotating through each character's perspective, our tale spans decades, reaching into spheres of political injustice, privilege, privilege relative to mental health, a little bit of gender, a little bit of heartbreak, and then some. In many ways, I've forgotten that this graphic novel is rooted in fantasy, because its narrative style and relevancy is so deeply grounded in reality.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell
Everyone in our modern age needs to read this book. I mean it. This is a book that gave vocabulary to the deep dissatisfaction I'd felt with existing in this world. and how much of it I blankly attributed to (gestures to the social media) everything going on in the internet. This is the book that helped me to feel empowered over how I spend the time I have.
Most poignent to me, Odell spends a good chunk of time birdwatching, using this as time to commune with the natural world and as a vessel for self-reflection. This, more than anything else, is what struck me: The idea of divorcing time from productivity, that diverting your time and attention into something that doesn't have to serve anything other that you and your mind, is something that you can just. Do. Consciously. And, in a world that is constantly demanding every ounce of your attention, you the individual have agency over yourself that cannot be taken away, no matter how much it is demanded.
Anyway. My feelings and takeaways from this may bleed into Odell's second book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture. They just might be deeply intertwined.
I'm not joking.
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