Reading

This is the list of the books that listeners to this radio series of interviews are currently reading. Please use the comment box below to add your book(s) or comment if you wish on all these great suggestions!

598 COMMENTS

  4. I’ve noted some great book recommendations from readers thanks.

    I’ve just finished reading 3 related books, each with a very different tone but all strung together with Michelangelo at the center.
    As an artist with a passion for history and culture I found each book fulfilled its promise.

    “Michelangelo’s Mountain” Eric Scigliano
    “From Marble to Flesh” A. Victor Coonin
    “Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling”
    Ross King

  7. I’m reading McSweeny’s #70 a quarterly of new fiction, short stories that I devour as soon as it arrives! This one is excellent.

  10. The Dragon Queen by Alice Borchardt in a series called The Tales of Guinevere, Bantam Books.
    I am addicted to fantasies and sci-fi and have been since researching hundreds of this style to attempt a book of my own. Not only the story line but the characters are well constructed and the writing of descriptions of the lands and the creatures are so incredibly painted that it is nearly impossible to separate one’s mind from the story and the reality masterfully created. A vision of Guinevere that is unique and unforgettable.

  11. Currently reading “Upstream” by Mary Oliver. The richness with which she dives into the beauty of the natural world around her is both stunning and refreshing. I love the way she honors the influence of Allan and Poe in her work.

  12. Utopian Vistas by Lois Palken Rudnick. The story of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos NM. Where inter ethnic life,ongoing poverty, hippies, Chicano radicals, gifted artisans, doomed up geniuses, mystics and ghosts mingled together. American counter cultures in New Mexico from 1920’s to 1990’s.

  13. Utopian Vistas by Lois Palken Rudnick. The story of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos NM. Where inter ethnic life,ongoing poverty, hippies, Chicano radicals, gifted artisans, doomed up geniuses, mystics and ghosts mingled together. American counter cultures in New Mexico from 1920’s to 1990’s.

  14. The Community Cure by James Maskell. Since I work as an art psychotherapist I am keen on connecting people not isolating people as our current medical systems can do. And art has the potential to provide a safe space to grow deeper emotional connections, intimacies between strangers as part of a collective unconscious or transpersonal realm.

  15. “The Tenants of Moonbloom” by Edgar Lewis Wallant. First published 1963 and currently available from New York Review of Books (Classics).
    I read it shortly after its original publication and now find it as compelling and magic as it was then.
    Wallant also wrote The Pawnbroker which was made into a powerful film which was adapted into an award-winning film directed by Sidney Lumet (1965) and starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Juano Hernandez, and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. And music by Quincy Jones.

  17. I just finished the novel My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok about a Hasidic Jewish boy who is born into a distinguished Hasidic family and is obsessed with drawing and then painting. His passion is an enigma to his family, especially his father, and to others in the society to which he belongs. This book is a compelling read about the sacrifices one must make for the work and for one’s integrity.

  18. Art is Life
    —Jerry Saltz

    Jerry shares his own story as a “failed artist” (his words) and how his many years of living the life of an outsider/self-taught artist formed him as an art critic who stands out from the rest. His insights into the art world, art history, and the drive to create are worth the dense read even though his over-the-top enthusiasm sometimes devolves into a word salad here and there. But his exuberant love of not only art but for the artists themselves make him somewhat of an outsider critic which affords him an outside-the-box view of the art world. With a searing clarity that many of those playing the game inside of it don’t have, he opens his heart and takes great risks to generously divulge with us the artist/reader what he’s learned. It’s no wonder he won the Pulitzer for Art Criticism. He deserves it.

  20. the sea thea sea by iris murdoch,
    Recently I was tempted into a nearby book club, however it would take an emergency far more serious than a book club to disturb my work at 10:00 AM. THE SEA, THE SEA, which title is in a neat trick of double meaning explicating as it does both the sea and the seeing which insights come with age and time. Iris Murdoch bills this as a RICH, CROWDED, MAGICAL LOVE STORY. It is about the transformations of love over time generated by theatrical artifice. acid flashbacks and twists of personal obsession.

    Charles, the main character, is a well known theatre director enchanted by the idea of peace & solitude after a busy and materially successful life. He retires to a small stone fortress by and in some ways in the sea. Harboring the romantic idea of becoming monk like in his cell, he is both rejuvenated and tragically enlightened by his interactions with the sea.

    The darkness we all grapple with adds authenticity to the characters with the camaraderie and depredations of friendship providing comic relief and color to the kaleidoscopic imagination of Murdoch’s tale. A collage of asian mysticism, class explication and the seemingly cold inevitabilities of the natural world, this is not a crowded story so much as a rich one.

    As one may do in difficulty, metaphors expanding meanings into the so called real world might be made in the larger world. Must we wait for the depredations of old age to achieve wisdom? As for the living sea, which has so much in the way of healing, knowledge and awe to offer our species, might we be better caretakers of this living entity instead of poisoning its irreplaceable magic and raiding the life it supports through our greed and ignorance? Nature may seem a rough taskmaster, something to be conquered and dominated, however this way of doing things no longer works, if in fact it ever did.

    A voracious reader always, I read Murdoch when I was young and had difficulty with her complexity, which works here as a spur to interest and a flowering of sensual enjoyment.

  21. 11 by Paul Hanley, 2014 … ‘eleven billion people will share this planet by century’s end. Adding 4 billion to an already overburdened world will force everyone to change everything’

    ” Every concerned citizen of this planet needs to read this book” – Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

  22. I highly recommend The Inconvenient Indian. Informative, historical accounting with a witty, casual style including engaging pop culture references. Shines a bright light on issues of the past and today. If you read only one book on Indigenous relations, let this be it. From the write-up, “Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King’s critical and personal meditation on what it means to be “Indian” in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/93028/the-inconvenient-indian-by-thomas-king/9780385664226

  23. Not a new book (published in 2006) but a must to read: Imperial Life in the Emerald City – inside Iraq’s green zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post journalist. To understand how things went so badly in Iraq…and why our foreign policies fail.
    Mary Angela Schroth
    Sala 1 Rome

  25. I went through every page of “Great Female Painters” by Phaidon, reading pages of artists that caught my eye. Placed post-it notes on artists I’d like to investigate further, and am now researching each post-it marked one. Love finding and learning about these influential artists. Starting with Hilda AF Klint.

  29. I am just began reading Deepak Chopra’s, “Life After Death”. I have been researching time, other dimensions and find myself contemplating “cosmic” spiritual questions intensively most of my life which emerges in my art. This book parallels with my work in progress, with a working title, Timeline of the Cosmos.

  30. Rereading “The Good Earth”, by Pearl Buck, written in 1931, for which she won the Pulitzer. Love this book about a family in China around 1920, and all the trials and tribulations and joys they endure. Pearl Buck is remarkably sensitive and articulate about the actions, passions, deeds (good and bad), that are human beings. So much respect for Pearl Buck.

  31. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thomson
    Super interesting book really. Describes how things really work in art world business. I recommend it, it is a must.
    I will not make a spoiler because it is worth the discovery through the pages.

  32. just finished “night & day” by virginia woolfe- She is such a rich writer, the mannerisms are victorian, which i sort of like, but also her penetration of how peoples minds work and a very dry sense of humor made this a delightful read. also her first volume of essays is good for the history.
    “authority and freedom” by jed perl. Named after the first chapter which is rich and i will probably reread.
    “internet for the people: the fight for our digital future” by ben turnoff
    “the shadow of god:Kant, Hegel and the PASSAGE from HEAVEN to HISTORY” by Michael Rosen. intense and heavy, not easy, but the title was irresistable to me.
    “another world: the transcendental painting group” exhibit catalogue- definitely these are my lineage painters

  33. “In The Dark Places Of Wisdom” Peter Kingsley

    “Conscious Luck” Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline

    “Radical Curiosity” One man’s search for cosmic magic and a purposeful life. Ken Dychtwald Ph. D

  34. Grace Purpura

    How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alaine de Botton

    Alaine de Botton writes a lively and funny book by dipping deeply into Proust’s life and work–giving hilarious Proustarian advice on keeping friendships, why prostitutes do not inspire love, the art of suffering successfully, when you should write a letter and not send it, and recognizing love when you see it. Proust, who describes artists as “creatures who talk of precisely the things one shouldn’t mention,” then wrote a novel of several volumes, giving him the chance to mention them all.

  35. Thank you, Brainard, for this new format for Books We Read. I like the addition of a Reply to voice our thoughts and begin a dialogue. Just naming a book does not motivate me to read it. Adding a comment on how the book resonates to you makes me interested and motivated, and I am more likely to read it.
    Great column.

  36. Currently reading:
    “The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Built It”. by Tilar J. Mazzeo
    and finishing up:
    “Moth” by Melody Razak The book takes place during Partition-era Delhi.

  41. The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large of Time magazine, and Emmy-nominated host of CNN, writes a well-researched, intelligent, easy-to-read book on the growth and development of China, India, Brazil, and other countries posing a challenge for America–emerging markets that have surged ahead, coupling their economic growth with pride, nationalism, and a determination to form their own future. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, Zakaria draws on lessons from the past 500 years–the rise of the West, and the rise of the United States–to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, “the rise of the rest.”

  43. “A Year With Rumi” Daily readings
    “American Midnight-The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis” by Adam Hochschild. A reminder that our country’s history has had other troubled times.
    “Portraits” by John Berger

  44. Am Re-reading “The Ending of Time” A conversation between physicist David Bohm and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. I carried this book with me everywhere in the late 60s to savor the thought given in highly focused remarks during their intense and profound discussions. This book will always be important ..

  45. I like this thread! It reminded me of a couple of books I meant to read, especially “Women in abstract Expressionism,” because that’s what I am.
    I recently read “All About Love, A love Song to a Nation”, by Bell Hooks — inspiring and healing
    And I read “The Redneck Riviera” a local history book.
    I am a third to half way through Madeline Albright’s autobiography (I take breaks) — her family came to the US via UK from Czechoslovakia as WW 2 refugees. If ever there was an antifascist… she speaks from experience.
    A book on mixed generation leadership in academia assigned to college directors by work because for one of the first times, four or five generations of people are working together in the workforce.
    Curation: “Drawing the Line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists from Museums to the Movies” is on my next pile, in my bag. Also for work, a textbook on museum registration.
    Pleasure: I just downloaded “Where the Crawdads Sing.”

  47. The Master and His Emissary (The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) by Ian McGilchrist
    And
    The Velveteen Daughter (about the early 20th century child prodigy artist Pamela Bianco) by Laurel Davis Huber

  48. Just finished Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland: A Deep Time Journey,” reading its 496 pages very slowly over several months to absorb the magnitude of his piercing insights. Its philosophical implications are vast.

  49. I am currently reading two books, one in the studio and one at home. In the studio I am re-reading Norman Mailer’s great WW2 opus “The Naked and the Dead”, first published in 1948 (the year before my birth). I first read this in college during the late sixties, when Mr. Mailer was better known for “Armies of the Night” a novel based on the 1967 march on the pentagon. “The Naked and the Dead” was published one hundred years after “Moby Dick” and might be just as great a tale of man’s obsessions.
    At home I am reading a very recently published book titled “Strangers to Ourselves” by Rachel Aviv, subtitled “Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us”. This is a collection of case studies of metal illness and the evolution of treatment and outcome.

  51. Book Review
    How Georgia became O’Keeffe, by Karen Karbo
    and
    Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky

    I did not know there were others who read more than one book at the same time, according to their mood, feelings, or whim. I have just finished reading Wassily Kandinsky’s, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, together with How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, Lessons in the Art of Living, by Karen Karbo. Two very different works in period, style, and delivery—one by a serious introverted Russian aristocrat of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the other by a quirky American humorist and feminist of the twenty-first. And yet, surprise! They were on the same wavelength. Both books spoke of the pioneering movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, allowing the artist to express his own inner life in abstract, non-material terms. Kandinsky believed that just as musicians did not depend on the material world for their music, so artists should not have to copy nature in their paintings. A spiritual revolution in painting, his book is one of the important documents in the history of modern art. As it turns out, Kandinsky’s, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, was one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s influences as an artist. Kandinsky gave O’Keeffe the “get out of jail card” she needed to break free of the artistic tradition of copying nature and the plaster casts in art school that stifled her.  “What about the heart, the feelings?” she asked, and echoing Kandinsky, added. . . “the true subject of any painting is the artist’s inner world.” 

  57. Thank you for this amazing book list from Yale. I see some old favorites and the inclusion of many I am not familiar with. I can see I have my work cut out for me! New to Praxis, but not new to the art world, I have appreciated receiving Brainard Carey’s book, “Making It in the Art World,” which includes not only strategies for navigating the art world, but interesting personal stories for achieving success–like not taking no for an answer, or his personal story for proposing a solo show to Whitney without any completed work, only an idea, and to his surprise, pulling it off! The use of sub-titles makes the book easy to read and to refer back to–topics like writing the artist statement; the necessity for good health, diet , exercise, and discipline; practicing visualization to achieve your goals and having a positive mind-set. Good motivation!

  61. “American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal”

    Kerri is the founder of CTZNWELL, a movement that is democratizing wellbeing for all. A descendant of generations of firemen and first responders, Kerri has dedicated her life to kicking down doors and fighting for justice. She’s been teaching yoga for over 20 years and is known for making waves in the wellness industry by challenging norms, disrupting systems and mobilizing people to act.

    A community organizer, wellness activist and author of the forthcoming book American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal, Kerri is recognized across communities for her inspired work to bridge transformational practice with social justice. She’s been instrumental in translating the practices of wellbeing into social and political action, working in collaboration with community organizers, spiritual leaders and policy makers to transform our systems from the inside out. Her leadership has inspired a movement that is actively organizing around issues of racial and economic justice, healthcare as a human right, civic engagement and more.

  63. The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne
    The Monk of Mocha, Dave Eggers
    Bittersweet, how sorrow & longing make us whole, Susan Cain
    Vincent van gogh, ever yours- the essential letters
    Scorced Earth, Jonathan Crary (a true diagnostic masterpiece of the society &culture now)

  65. I am reading Blood and Bronze The British Empire and the Sack of Benin.
    By Paddy Docherty
    It is a very interesting read filled with great details that brings one of the hottest topics in art today into perspective.

  67. What is art? by Leo Tolstoy- I like much of this author’s point of view, however was surprised at the conservatism of his opinions on the art of his time in the latter part of the book.
    SO MUCH LONGING IN SO LITTLE SPACE, THE ART OF EDVARD MUNCH by Ove Knausgaard
    “Fundamental to all creation is that it is not about transferring something one possesses and wishes to express, but about what is expressed emerging as something in itself. Only then can it come alive.”
    Karl Ove Knausgaard from “So Much Longing In So Little Space”
    The Art of Edvard Munch
    “Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” about Robert Irwin, by Lawrence Weschler
    “Douglass- Autobiographies”
    “Oh to Be a Painter” Virginia Woolfe – not as fabulous as most pf her work, but good from an art historical view.

  69. I know probably everyone read this a while back, but i just finished “Where the Crawdads Sing” a rare dip into fiction for me. I’m halfway through a bio of Henri Toulouse Lautrec.

  72. Essential reading: Cal Flyn’s “Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape.”

    Flyn examines the destruction wreaked by humanity in and on nature and especially in and on cities. Her research throughout the world, but especially in the USA, is remarkable, sobering and absorbing. The The “Washington Post” described the book rightly as “Vital”. I agree with Will McCallum, Head of Oceans Greenpeace, UK, who wrote: “At times desperately sad and in others desperately hopeful – but nowhere losing faith in this beautiful world. Perfect reading for the crisis.”

  78. Hogg by Samuel R Delany, The Complete Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray, Scott Burton/Collected Writings on Art & Performance edited by David Getsy, Written in Invisible Ink/selected stories by Harve Guibert

  79. Vilém Flusser & Louis Bec – Vampyroteuthis Infernalis; Nicolas Bourriaud – Planet B, Climate Change and the New Sublime; Hans Belting – Hieronymus Bosch, Garten der Lüste; Jean Baret – Life TM; Homer – The Odyssey

  80. I am currently reading , “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nahisi Coates and “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Just finished “On Writing” by Stephen King.

  82. I am currently reading “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking in my lifelong quest to understand the mysteries that surround us. While my brain can’t grasp his brilliant mathematical mind, I have enjoyed the front seat he gave us into his thinking process.

    Beyond that, I would like to strongly recommend the podcast (I listen on Amazon Prime Music Unlimited while I am painting), called “The History of Rome.” Even if ancient history doesn’t interest you one bit, as this detailed series unfolds, you will be amazed at how parallel our current political reality is with the events of Ancient Rome. Seeing how their version of democracy became eroded and ultimately descended into one-man rule has resolved the incredulity I experienced everyday over political maneuverings that fly in the face of American democracy. I have begun to think that the former president is well-versed in Roman political tactics, or at least the people surrounding him were. This podcast has helped me understand now more than ever that history does indeed repeat itself.

    • Thanks for this. History does indeed repeat itself. We are connected to one another through time and space. The Romans are our ancestors. They were humans and we are are humans too, so it doesn’t seem too far fetched that we would follow in their footsteps. I keep thinking that right before big changes, the old thoughts don’t want to let go, just like a child doesn’t want to give up their toy.

  84. A Not-So-Still Life by Jimmy Ernst, son of Max Ernst. Growing up as a half-Jewish boy before and during Hitler’s regime. Please don’t miss reading this sensitive and easy to read story of Jimmy Ernst who grew up in the artistic ferment of the times in Germany eventually making his way to the new country.

  86. I’m reading “The Soul of a Woman” by Isabel Allende. She’s one of my favorite authors. she follows in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but her own unique voice is present in her books. I would also recommend “House of the Spirits” for those who have not read it. It’s an amazing novel.

  89. Allende never disappoints. Her newest works are topical and typical of her excellent writing. Eben Alexander, Dr. and neurologic cardiogist describes his coma and what he encountered this period. Very fascinating.

  90. Listening to Brene Brown’s “Dare to Lead” – all her work is so useful
    Gabby Bernstein’s “Happy Days” – spiritual and practical guide
    The Little Book of Police Youth Dialogue by Dr. Micah Johnson and Jeffrey Weisberg – I incorporate Circle dialogue in creating collaborative Singing Tree murals and am interested in bring my mural making methodology to Police-Youth dialogue.
    Sun Magazine – great black and white photos and content

  92. Entangled Life ~ Merlin Sheldrake I am an audiobook addict. This one was packed with information, I bought the book so I could use it to research the different names of the mushrooms for my next series.

    I Am Malala ~ Malala Yousafzai I just got it, excited to start, it will be my reward after I get ‘some’ of my PRAXIS homework done. I drew Malala in a painting of 7 young activists for a juried show “Politik” in Portland, Oregon. It was during the pandemic. I only know the internet information about Malala, I am excited to hear it in her own words.

    The Island of Missing Trees ~ Elif Shafak, A great love story told by a fig tree

    Circe ~ Madeline Miller Mythology ~Gotta love it when the woman solves ways to concur obstacles in her way. WOWmyn Spirit Rules!

  93. I Live in Japan and regularly read a favourite book, Kamakura: Fact and Legend.
    Kamakura is a small city one hour south of tokyo. It is where the first Shogun of Japan established his base in about 1185CE. Thus began the KAMAKURA PERIOD.
    The book is written beautifully in eloquent English by Itsu Mutsu. (her adopted Japanese name). And English woman who married a Japanese diplomat. They settled in Kamakura and she visited the 48 shrines and temples covered in the book numerous times recording the founding, traditions, facts and legends of that particular place. She also described scenes such as thatched roofs, lotus on ponds, and tranquil valleys.
    The book has inspired and informed me.
    Kamakura is one of Japans favourite towns. It is a valley opening to a crescent shaped beach with views of Mt Fuji from the headland.
    I’d recommend it for connecting with the ancient vibes of Japan or, inspiring a visit. And don’t hesitate to get in touch if here.
    Best regards,
    Paul

    • Sounds beautiful and so interesting! I read the book of tea by kakuzo okakura which was one of the most elegantly written books I’ve come across, and the writer was also a curator responsible for some major American collections of Asian art, but your book sounds excellent.

    • Hi, Paul,
      Thank you for this recommendation. I studied for a month in Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto), and was able to return with my daughter for a second visit. I love all things Japanese and will definitely get a copy of this book. I completed “The Tale of Genji” a few months ago and also Liza Dalby’s “Tale of Murasaki.”

  94. I am currently reading The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. It honors the spiritual path that shows us how to embrace what life brings our way instead of resisting it. Letting go in this way stimulates our creativity and invites miracle after miracle into our lives

  95. Listening to Against Interpretation by Sontag. Have to take in small chunks. Like it. Read On Photography in the late 70s when in Jack Welpott’s photo program at SFSU. Was a great book to help photography find a footing in the fine art world back then.

    I’d love to hear people’s favorite books on art interpretation and art criticism.

  96. ‘Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid – the Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change (Thor Hanson), ‘Finite & Infinite Games – A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility’ (James P. Carse)

  98. The Magician, by Colm Tóibín is well written and a complex book. In this historical novel Tóibínl portrays the complex personality of Thomas Mann–the German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Excellent read!

  100. The Humans, Matt Haig – fasicnating – I’d’ not thought I’d like it – someone from outer space coming to Earth – but its marvelous – a great read and full of wise philosophy on the human condition. Touching – really.

  101. Dear Brainard,

    The best book I read for many many years, not only because it is well-researched and very well-written is “Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art by Michael C. FitzGerald.

    Whether you study Art History or you do a BA in Arts as an artist, a curator, a dealer, a museum director et al, we have no idea of the making of the modern art market. And this is a weak spot because most of the strategies today and most of the museological displays respond to commercial decisions taken by art dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel, Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henry Kanhweiler and Leo Castelli in close cooperation with artists like Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne and collectors like the Steins, Wilhelm Ude, Havemeyer.

    Art history is the result of the close collaboration of the artist-as-entrepreneur, the dealer and the collector.
    The rest of the artistic agents like the art critic, curator, museum director, art historians west al have traditionally been anti-modern and anti-contemporary art and have obstinately obstructed the progress of modern and contemporary art. I would say that this negative attitude changes sometime beginning of the 1970s. So, while today we think that most artistic agents push in the same direction, for centuries this hasn’t been this way.

    This book is also mandatory for artists to understand the kind of contracts that Picasso and the like were able to impose and what kind of strategies both artists and dealers applied for the creation of the market for modern art, which was always very difficult and fragile as it had a very tiny collector’s base and art critics were against modern art and manipulated the public against artists.

    this incredible but oh so relevant story for the art market and all its agents is told magnificently by FitzGerald, whose book was published back in 1996, almost 30 years ago, but it’s still one of the major books in my long library.

    Paco Barragán, Int. PhD, curator and cultural theorist
    (Madrid, Spain)

    • Thanks so much, this sounds fascinating Paco, the making of the very odd global art market system is so important to understanding its future!

    • Hi, Paco,
      This book sounds fascinating. Your description makes me think of how commercialized exhibitions in major museums have become over the last forty years or so. That point was driven home to me by the title of Banksy’s film, “Exit through the Gift Shop.” I avoid them now like the plague!

      “The Offer,” the dramatized TV series about the making of movie “The Godfather,” demonstrates through the clashes of financial managers and artistic directors, how art can degenerate into merely entertainment, rather than art that moves people.

  102. I’m on Book 3 of My Struggle, from a 6 volume set by the sensation Carl Ove Knausgaard, and it’s a remarkable book, autobiographical, much set in Norway (where he is from) and Sweden, where he lives. A masterpiece, and those are not just my words! If you get into it, it is very rewarding.

  105. art in the after culture, by ben davis
    room to dream, by david lynch and christine mckenna
    pictures of nothing, by kirk varnadoe
    of course this is brilliant, though i disagree with much of it.
    art is too big for authoritarian statements!
    the brilliant history of color in art, by victoria finley

  107. “Lives of the Artists” by Calvin Tomkins, 2008.
    Anecdotes about D Hirst, J Johns, C Sherman, J Koons, … and CM Cattelan (author of the taped banana.) Ten contemporary artists in all.

  108. Revisiting Marquez’s fiction. “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “100 Years of Solitude” I think he may have been the first to use magical realism as a device in his novels. Isabel Allende used it in “House of the Spirits.”

    • Yes, I think you might be right, I recently reread Love in the time of cholera and was thinking about his structure and approach.

  112. I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going by Peetr McGough, a bittersweet memoir of the artist Peter McGough of his life with David McDermott. Set in New York’s lover east side of the 1980’s. A candid look on struggling artists, aids, and the dysfunction that would create and destroy both their lives.

  113. Death of the Artist is another truth telling book that helps you to think outside of the box so as to stop doling out money and art into places that will go nowhere. Extremely reaffirming read that forces you to think differently about yourself, the art world and how you broach it.

  114. Thanks for asking. I am currently reading a new publication by Paul Hunter, Mr. Brick & the Boys. It is so fine, I feel grateful while reading it, like miraculous healing as the world burns, because of it’s simple gentle way and wisdom. (also reading 3 others but this one is sticking out in a very good way).

  117. I am reading The Plague by Albert Camus. Intereast ing how history repeats itself. The scenario in Algeria during the plague reads much like today with Covid.

    • yes, so true! I reread that also, and I thought that when they were saying “the government is doing too little” as well as “the government is doing too much” is just like today! The truth being questioned too… Great book.

      • Thank you, Brainard, for this new format for Books We Read. I like the addition of a Reply to voice our thoughts and begin a dialogue. Just naming a book does not motivate me to read it. Adding a comment on how the book resonates to you makes me interested and motivated, and I am more likely to read it.
        Great column.

  119. I am currently reading Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention
    by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as part of my research for my doctoral dissertation on the necessity of enhancing creativity to thrive and evolve humanity.

  126. I’m currently reading 3 books:
    Aldous Huxley essays “The Human Situation”-in which he amazingly foresees our current
    situation in ‘The Population Explosion’

    “The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats”

    ‘The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats”
    He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
    Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    It was because I came across this poem that I purchased Yeats complete poems (and his autobiography)

    • I hear you! I fell in love with Yeats’ poetry when I discovered a recording by Sioban McKenna, the Irish actress, reading William Butler Yeats. Simple, beautiful language. So elegant!

    • I hear you! I fell in love with Yeats’ poetry when I discovered a recording by Siobhan McKenna, the Irish actress, reading William Butler Yeats. Simple, beautiful language. So elegant! (see eBay)

      Three Things
      W.B. Yeats
      “O cruel death give three things back,”
      Sang a bone upon the shore;
      “A child found all a child can lack
      Whether of pleasure or of rest
      Upon the abundance of my breast”;
      A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

      “Three dear things that women know”
      Sang a bone upon the shore
      “A man if I but held him so
      When my body was alive
      Found all the pleasure that life gave”;
      A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

      “The third thing that I think of yet”
      Sang a bone upon the shore,
      “Is that morning when I met
      Face to face my rightful man
      And did after stretch and yawn”;
      A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind.

  127. ‘Abstracts in acrylic & ink by Jodi Ohl – A playful painting workshop.’ – A very nice book for someone who has just started the adventure with abstracts. Beautiful photographs accompany the text. A number of techniques presented. Very interesting piece of work that tell a lot about abstracts.

  128. The Passion, by Jeannette Winterson. A story about Napoleon, the war, but really about life itself. Beautifully written.

    The Little Book, by Selden Edwards. Gripping story about the individual, set mainly in turn of the century Vienna. Great story!

  129. Nature’s Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World Hardcover –
    Illustrated, May 18, 2021
    by Patrick Baty (Author), Elaine Charwat (Contributor), & 3 more
    Princeton University Press

  134. Great science fiction, so carefully written
    To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars-
    Christopher Paolini

    A look into the lives of Korean women divers, their culture, their lives from before WWII up through the present
    The Island of Sea Women-
    Lisa See

    Also a story of Korean and Japanese mesh of culture from before WWII through recent history though individual stories.
    Pachinko-
    Min Jin Lee

  135. Mostly I like to read was art books specially about different story behind some local artists in my country Philippines.

  136. And these 2…
    Both by David Hinton

    “Hunger Mountain” and “Existence/ A Story

    Hinton is in his 70s and is perhaps our best translator of early and classic Chinese texts. Over the course of a lifetime he has learned to see/ live in the world with the consciousness of those early sages. He applies this to walking the small New England mountain out his back door – Hunger Mountain.
    Existence, A Story is a book length meditation on one Chinese landscape painting – both books just fabulous – for these sages and for all indigenous ‘shamanic’ cultures, we and the land are both ‘conscious’ … needless to say in the modern Western materialist view of nature that’s not an idea with much currency – fortunately that’s changing on many fronts…

  137. “Wetiko: Healing the Mind Virus That Plagues Our World” Paul Levy The Epilogue itself is such a poignant eloquent and profound statement about the crucial importance of art and artists – especially in these most remarkable times…

    “More than Allegory: On Myth Truth and Belief” Bernardo Kastrup – a physicist takes on the big questions and reveals the important acne of myth – and even how science itself is an unacknowledge myth …Jung, Alchemy et all..

  140. The Hamlet by William Faulkner
    The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
    My Brilliant Friend, The Story of the Lost Child, The Story of a New Name, The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferante
    Midnight in the Whitehouse by Adam Schiff

  142. Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat. I got this book from my partner as a christmas present and it’s been a wonderful read so far. I like the personal touch with which it’s written, you can see the artistic path the author took.

    If you like the kitchen or, if you’d like to get into cooking, this is a great book for you.
    Cheers and happy holidays.

  145. Healing Anger, the Power of Patience from a Buddhist Prospective. The Dalai Lama.

    A Bref History of Thought, a philosophical guide to living. Luc Perry

    Havana Real, one woman fights to tell the truth about Cuba today. Yoani Sanchez

    Dylan’s Vision of Sin. Christopher Ricks

    Design for Dying. Timothy Leary

    American Royals. Katherine McGee

    Palahnuick.Chuck Rant

    Being of the Sun (companion volume to Living on the Earth). Alicia Bay Laurel

  146. Bekim Fehmiu ‘Brilliant and Terrifying’ 1 & 2: A short description from Amazon; “Bekim Fehmiu was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor of Albanian ethnicity. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War.”
    While searching through a friends’ book collection I noticed a name that rang a bell. He was not an actor I remember well but I remembered some stories about him keeping his morale high during the war times, keeping himself clean off the illness that ravaged through people; Anger and Hate. His noble aims were not well accepted among his colleagues at the time, it was not popular to think, feel and shake hands, while the winds of hatred were at their full force. As I took the book, a lot of new information opened in front of my eyes. Also, through his book I immediately found another great one to read;
    Stefan Zweig ‘The world of yesterday’. My parents luckily had it on their shelves already – a truly fantastic read about intelligent and peaceful people for whom nations are not borders but bridges.
    Antun Vrgoc ‘My Memories of the World War’ is an autobiography of a Croatian chemist and pharmacognosist who ended up as a prisoner of war in Siberia. A person whose curiosity and courage kept him alive and well during the experience which would probably, drive most of the others to madness.
    Josip Horvat ‘Survival in Zagreb’ (1943-1945) is a diary that literally describes everyday life of an intellectual living in Zagreb during the nazi puppet state regime.

  147. Just finishing Simon Winder, Lotharingia. A personal history of France, Germany and the Counties in between, Picador, 2019. Next?
    Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men. How two prisoners of war engineered he most remarkable escape in history, Profile Books, 2021, then Adrian Goldsworthy, Philip and Alexander. Kings and conquerors, Apollo, 2020;

  154. Oh, to be a painter! Virginia Woolf
    With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985
    John Hoyland, The Last Paintings
    Love in the Void, Simone Weil
    The Secret of the Golden Flower, Wilhelm-Jung

  155. Women’s Work The first 20,000 years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Maya Cosmos by Freidel, Schele and Parker. The theory of the Avant-Garde by Renato Poggioli. Holistic Medicine and the Extra Cellular Matrix by Matthew Wood.

  156. 1) Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Hate in the Homeland: The New GlobalFar Right” (2020)
    2) “The Matter of Black Lives,” edited by Jelani Cobb and David Remnick (2021)
    3) Gabrielle Selz, “Light on Fire:The Art and Life of Sam Francis” (2021)
    4) Evan Osnos, “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury” (2021)

  167. What an interesting reading list this is!

    Currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

  170. Wilderness Tips and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
    All of Henning Mankell’s books including Wallander Mystery Series and now the rest of his books. Rereading works by Doris Lessing and Barbara Pym.
    All amazing.

  171. “The Lady and the Little Fox Fur” by Violette Leduc

    The great French feminist writer we need to remember. (1907 – 1972)

    ‘Leduc can capture the smells of a country….or make you feel the silky slither of her eel grey suit’

  172. Does listening to books count?
    My newest, and now favorite, author is Wilkie Collins.
    “The Moonstone” and
    “The Woman in White”
    I love the way he writes and describes so perfectly that I can envision the people, places and feelings, et al.

  173. I am about to finish “Tale of Murasaki” by Liza Dolby. This is a novel inspired by the world’s first novel, “Tale of Genji” written by Murasaki Shikibu in Heian period Japan (c. 1000).”Genji” is the first novel ever written and it was written by a woman. Liza Dolby imagines Murasaki’s life and inspiration for the events that take place in her novel. The Japanese aesthetic of transience…things are beautiful precisely because they do not last…is found throughout “Tale of Murasaki” as inspired by “Tale of Genji.”

    Recently completed: “The Pope’s Ceiling” by Ross King. I used this book as a reference for a presentation on the Sistine Ceiling. It tells the background intrigue of the commission, the rivalries, and detailed descriptions of process and technique. For anyone who wants to get their head around the Sistine Ceiling frescoes.

  174. “Time or the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy,” by Wolfram Eilenberger

    “Reflections in the Waves: The Interdividual Observer in a Quantum Mechanical World” by Pablo Bandera

  181. I am reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich and Grievers by Adrienne Maree Brown. I have a huge pile of other books in my to-be-read pile. They’re waiting for winter hibernation time.

  183. I am reading How To Be A Successful Artist by Angus Resch. It has some material in it, which I wasn’t previously familiar with. I would recommend it to any aspiring artist. This book has some interesting case studies about successful artists as well as suggestions about career strategies. I think that many of the artists, whom I have met, haven’t come across a lot of the material, which is included in this book. Other artists often ask me career questions and I think that they might find some of the answers that they need in this book. I would say that this book has a different perspective than many art career books. I believe that many aspiring artists would find this career book to be helpful.

  185. I am currently experiencing the loss of two of my dearest and closest longtime friends. I miss them.
    I am reading The Jewel Tree of Tibet -the enlightenment engine of Tibetan Buddhism by Robert Thurman
    which I find very comforting informative and ‘down to earth’
    also
    Anxiety -the missing stage of Grief by Claire Bidwell Smith
    After initially being resistant to the word ‘Anxiety’ I continued to read, stopping when I had a crying episode.
    It hits the spot and I will continue to read it.

  186. Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production, by Dave Beech. Brilliant and crystal. Also, Craig Staff’s Painting, History and Meaning.

  187. I am reading several things at the minute. As research for a film I am working on I am reading Anne Nelson’s compelling “Red Orchestra” about the underground movement against fascism in Germany and Francis Stuart’s postwar novel “The Pillar of Cloud”. I’m intermittently dipping into Victor Klemperer’s “I Shall bear Witness”.

    My evening reads are currently Igor Štiks’ and Krunoslav Stojaković’s concisely written “The New Balkan Left” which outlines the recent successes and failures of left-wing political movements and actions in the former Yugoslav republics. I’m also reading Georges Simenon’s The Snow Was Dirty. Written in post war Europe in the same year as Stuart’s book, it portrays the moral ambiguity, corruption and opportunism that was rife as the continent, and globe, recovered from its most devastating war. It has an air of Greene’s The Third Man to it, but it’s a more intimate and sinister book. I love Simenon’s writing – succinct and unadorned.

    There are several stacks of books sitting around making me feel guilty for not having started them yet, but I’m too ashamed to list any.

  188. The Last Things we Talk About, Your guide to End of Life Transitions, By Rev. Dr. Eliabeth T. Boatright. THings we all need to know whether young or old because we all lose imporant people in our lives.
    Another book tht i read practically straight throug is Swimming Back to trout River by Linda Rui Feng. Covers the Cultural Revolution – as it hit a partciular group of people’s lives, the saving grace of music, something about disability, and immigration to the USA. Hugely engrossing and touching.

  189. Just opening the cover (finally) … Karl Marlantes, MATTERHORN A Novel of the Vietnam War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010)
    It was Marlantes who said: “When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn’t over for the veterans, or the family. It’s just starting.”
    On the nightstand always:
    David Finkel, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013)
    Tim O’Brien, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (Houghton Mifflin, 1990)
    Karl Marlantes, WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011)
    These books provide insight on U.S. servicemembers’ experiences in war, the cost of war, the heartbreak for many on coming home, and the civilian-military divide.

    And of another genre … Amy Hempel, SING TO IT (Scribner, 2019) whose short stories I never tire of reading and who donates time writing biographies for shelter dogs on death row with the hope they may be adopted.

  190. ‘The Magic Mountain’
    -Thomas Mann

    ‘Manufacturing Consent’
    -Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky

    ‘In Cold Hell, In Thicket’
    -Charles Olson

    ‘The Worm Ouroboros’
    -E.R.Eddison

  191. Theodor w Adorno – Aesthetic Theory. Published 1970- (Adorno’s radical re-thinking of Aesthetics in relation to Modern and contemporary art is so timely now. It makes me realise how so much thought about the making of art has left out a whole realm of Aesthetics.)

    Jean Paul Satre – The Imaginary. ( So much of Lacan’s theory of Vision, the Gaze and Painting comes from this incredible work by Sartre.)

    Flow – Philip Ball. (A scientist who thinks like an artist about patterns in nature, in this case liquids – it’s been an inspiration for the paintings i am currently making with liquid paint, using flow and gravity.

    Merleau-Ponty ‘The Visible and the Invisible’ (This last unfinished work is the most radical re-thinking of vision and its relation to the world that I know)

  192. 1. SeokmunDobeob : the principle and rule of completion on Do(Tao) that makes human (beings) become the gods (2011)

    2. Cheon-gwangCheolro : Hanzonim (the creator / the God)’s biography on training himself to achieve Do(Tao)

    3. Through the Eyes of Joseon Painters (Real Scenery Landscapes of Korea) (2019)

    4. 101 Things to Learn in Art School (2013)

    5. SeokmunDodam edited by Seokmundomun (2012)

  194. Very important to understand the cultural collisions between east and west beginning several hundred years ago, in order to understand what might come out of it, politically, technologically, environmentally. So Two books by Chinese theorist Yuk Hui: Art and Cosmotechnics and The Question Concerning Technology in China. Essential, as well to return to the Dao and to Confucius.
    In addition: Rilke, New Poems (1 and 2), Duino Elegies; Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Map Drawn by a Spy; Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes; Hagi Kenaan, Photography and Its Shadow; Coco Fusco et al Only Skin Deep. These are all ongoing.

  196. I am devouring Kim Stanley Robinson’s books – I’m so happy he has many. I have finished New York 2040, Ministry of the Future, and am now in the Red Mars series. I always promise myself I will read only one book at a time – but as usual I am reading four plus random poetry – this week by Jorie Graham. Also reading Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey, and Wisdom is Bliss by Robert Thurman.

  197. Deep Adaptation, Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (2021)
    Edited by Jem Bendell & Rupert Read
    Deep adaptation is a concept and social movement based on the view that humanity needs to prepare for the possibility of societal collapse, as environmental change increasingly disrupts social, economic, and political systems.
    ‘This book is the “red pill” of our times, offering neither certainty nor confirmation of any story you may be holding about where we are heading in the face of so many colliding crises. What it does offer is togetherness in our insecurity and frameworks in our unknowing for coming to terms with and making sense of these times. I look forward to both “deep adaptation” and “collapsology” entering mainstream discourse so that we might then imagine creating together, as our current paradigm crumbles.’
    Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion

  198. King: A Street Story by John Berger. By chance I found a used copy of this book in Massolit Bookstore in Budapest. I have been working on both a project relating and viewing the world through the eyes of other creatures and a project relating in depth on a daily basis with the homeless. This book is a perfect fit, viewing homeless individuals and their existence through the eyes of dogs. It seems rather serendipitous that it both exists and that I would come across it randomly in a used English books bookstore in Budapest, where I have been living during the pandemic. I only knew John Berger through his book, Ways of Seeing, but of course, this fits the theme. I also read Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, during the pandemic, which is a fascinating book by Peter Godfrey-Smith. My mind opened up to the way an octopus can experience and take in knowledge through its arms, which have, in simple terms, brain-like matter within them. I also would like to say, if you like poetry, perhaps you want to read my first published book of poetry, which is a collaboration with myself (Anne Murray) and a Hungarian artist (Zolt Asta- Zsolt Asztalos) with poems I created to go with his photographs. It is called Battlefields and published by AC Books and available on Amazon, SPD Books, John Rule Art Book Distribution. I created it with the intention that the poems can be seen and read in any order carving different paths per the individual’s own intuition, much like in this photographer’s work, where modular sections are moved around. It was recently reviewed under Harriet Books by the Poetry Foundation, which has been such a lovely validation of this unusual modular style of syntax and symbol, which I included. This poetry is my little gift to the world during these challenging times.

  199. I can’t speak more highly of “Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing” by TJ Demos
    (Duke University Press 2020) It is a powerful look at how contemporary artists are addressing the urgent themes of these times, while imagining what comes after the end of the world.

  200. I’m currently reading for research and pleasure the following:

    Life to Those Shadows by Noel Burch
    The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
    The Secret Life of Plant by P. Tomkins & C. Bird
    Speaking with Nature by S. Ingerman & L. Roberts

  201. ‘Paper: Paging Through History’ by Mark Kurlansky
    –

    From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.

  203. I am currently reading “The Road to Unfreedom: Europe, Russia, America” by Timothy Snyder
    which charts the course of authoritarianism as it as has coursed through Eastern, Western Europe and Russia post WW2 and its political effects on the U.S. And “The Cost of Living” by Deborah Levy, a collection autobiographical essays by a writer of pithy prose, and a two-time Man-Booker Prize nominee.

  204. ‘Primeval And Other Times’ by Olga Tokarczuk

    An imaginative (and close to actual) chronicle of ”the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

    Qu’est-ce qui va changer en 2021

  205. My latest reading self-assignment is Michael Pollan’s “This is Your Mind on Plants”, Penguin, NY (2021). During the pandemic, I have done a lot of technical reading & writing in my capacity as an astrophysicist. I have also reread Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Leonard Cohen’s poetry is for me a great consolation during this period of self-enforced semi-confinement. I play with the idea of a near-future re-read of Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.

  206. I am currently reading “Picasso’s Las Meninas” by Claustre Rafart i Planas which I purchased while visiting Museo Picasso in Barcelona. The museum has the complete series of Picasso’s works inspired by Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” painting and it was the first time I saw the whole series ‘in the flesh’. I have been working on a number of art lessons (for my YT channel “Rob the Art Teacher”) on the subject of how and why artists and art students study other artists, and I plan to add a lesson based on Picasso’s approach to “Las Meninas”.

    I am also ‘in the middle of’ Wiesław Myśliwski’s “Stone upon Stone”, an outstanding example of post-war Polish literature – a semi-autobiographical epic tale, at times poignant, liberally laced with rural wit and irreverence.

  209. Greek plays for a story I want to do:

    ‘Lysistrata and Other Plays’ by Aristohanes (Penguin Ckassics)
    The Acharians, The Clouds, Lysistrata

    ‘Medea and other plays by Euripides’ (Penguin Classics)
    Medea, Hecabe, Electra, Heracles

    and for the depressing stuff
    ‘In defense of Julian Assange’ Edited by Tariq Ali and Margaret Kunstler (OR books)

  210. FÉLIX GUATTARI, The Three Ecologies, 1989
    DONNA J. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, 2016
    ( a bit difficult to follow her jump cuts of academic references, her own lack of viewpoints and my real opposition towards her Cyborg chapter )…
    URSULA K. LE GUIN, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986

  211. I’m reading:

    Maggie Nelson, On Freedom
    Sanford Schwartz, On Edward Hicks
    Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace
    Kateb Yacine, Nedjma

  214. I’m currently reading:
    Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, W.E.B. DuBois
    Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, Vincent Brown
    I just finished:
    The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
    Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, Catherine Clinton
    Next up:
    Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Nicole Fleetwood

  215. Hello… I’m reading a number of books. Nine by Gwen Strauss (9 women escape from Nazi prison camps); Paleofantasy by Marlene Zuk (what evolution relaly tells us about Sex, Die and how we live); and still putting my own book, Coronaville (Blurb) out there, as well as a brand new art and literary magazine called TROUBLE (Blurb). This is vol 1 number 2, The Drug Issue. 180 pages. Free PDF download.

    http://concretewheels.com/trouble/trouble.htm

  216. Andy Grundberg and his new book:

    “How Photography Became Contemporary Art: From Pop to Digital” is an excellent read – a great story that is both illuminating and concise, from a first-witness account by the author, whereby these (now) legendary pioneers and their incredible art making become fully alive, now heroic, in the context of the past-to-present art world. To truth and beauty at 1/125 of a second – the book echoes the apt phrase of Polaroid – “See What Develops”.

    Yale University Press, excellent book! A must-read!

  217. 1. The Writings of Robert Smithson
    I am revisiting this after many years.
    2. Slide Show – Projected Images on Contemporary Art by Darcie Alexander
    3. Machine in the Studio by Caroline Jones
    Mostly interested in the Smithson essay but the others are good as well.
    4. Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles

  218. The body keeps the score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk (it’s so good!)
    Strange weather in Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami (filled with Japanese food, it made me very hungry while reading…)

  224. Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (Joan Mitchell groupie, btw half way through and it’s still about the men(oye))
    The Essential Cy Twombly (Kurt Varnedoe devotee)
    In the Shadow of the American Dream by David Wojnarowicz
    coming up –
    Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
    The SFMoMA Joan Mitchell Retrospective catalog

  225. Navigating The Art World: Professional Practices For Early Career Artist
    Give me the Now
    Everything you wanted to know about contemporary art but were afraid to ask: talk ART
    A Room with a View
    The Magazine

  230. Just read George Orwell “ 1984 “ Sadly the political lies a falsehood are with us still .
    Am just about to reread “ A Canticle for Leibovitz “ by Walter M Miller JR . It traces a monks journey as he tries to to understand the previous20 th. D try civilization and what happened after “ The atomic Flame Deluge was over. The earth was dead and all knowledge was lost “ First published 1929

  231. I just finished The Rock Eaters, a tremendous and moving book of short stories by Brenda Peynado. I devoured it, laughing and crying my way through every story. Now I am about a third of the way through the massive biography of Alice Neel – The Art of Not Sitting Pretty by Phoebe Hoban. It’s an excellent and thorough account of her life. A must read after seeing the show at The Met.

  233. Reading the Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill a murder mystery and John James Audubon The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes

  234. rereading a novel by John Mcgahern,That they may face the rising sun,a exquisite piece of writing on rural Ireland by the late novelist,and struggling with a large rather ambiguous novel by martin Amis for the last few months,my instincts are to bin it.

  235. I recently read the autobio The Life of Lazarillo De Tormes; and just read several graphic novels by Garth Ennis/Goran Parlov and by R Kikuo Johnson, including his upcoming No One Else; as well, I carry Chip Delany’s Nova around in my bag for whenever I get a moment.

  236. Currently reading the Bible: Genesis. Certainly appropriate. Interesting if one considers human imperatives and the attitudes that have shaped our society. Also read Hannah Arendt: “The Human Condition”, and reading “Crises of the Republic”. Brilliant.

  237. Facing the Extreme; Moral Life in the Concentration Camps by Tzvetan Todorov.

    Before that, Austerlitz, before that The Rings of Saturn both by Sebald.

    Before that, Locus Solus and Impressions of Africa, both by Roussel.

  240. My favorite book this summer? Reza Aslan’s “ZEALOT” >> upon which I’m clearly discovering that I’m far more Pauline Hellenist than James’ Zionist if our New Jerusalem’s constantly in the offing.

    My take? If, after all, the empirical nature of our due BEING has to postpone the timeless destiny of our true BECOMING, it’s ALL Constitutionally upheld in #MorePerfectUnionFormation via a perfection only mattering — squared to light’s speed — MOVING FORWARD. Meanwhile, should many of our ancestors somehow need to be posthumously saved BEFORE the Cross 2000yrs ago compels the need for a thermodynamic time to provide relativist resolve via absolute rewinds. That our destined singularity CAN, for example, retroactively CAUSE the very creation whence we’ve come in the first place to procreate till we’re at the last place is our feared-stay hope’s only happiness.

  242. Just finished the Short Stories of Breece D’J Pancake. Amazing prose, brilliant, wish I could could write this way.

    Just started Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides, it’s a bout Kit Carson and America’s conquest of the West during the early and mid 1800’s.

  243. Outside of several poets for my upcoming workshops, I recently finished Southern History across the Color Line by Nell Painter and Just Kids by Patti Smith.
    Am finishing up The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
    Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley
    The Harlem Reader, ed by Herb Boyd
    Openings: A Memoir from the Women’s Arts Movement, New York City, 1970-1992 by Sabra Moore
    The Firebrand and The First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship by Patricia Bell-Scott
    In different ways, these memoirs, essays and poetry explore American culture, political change, artistic expression, and attempt to make visible what is often erased.

  246. I’m a few pages away from finishing “Evening in the Palace of Reason,” by James Gaines (2005). It’s about the night Bach and Frederick the Great met at the latter’s palace in Potsdam. An astonishing, mesmerizing tale about art and political power. It’s definitely one of my top ten books!

  247. OnCurating Issue 51
    Fluxus Perspectives
    eds Martin Patrick and Dorothee Richter
    Although the Fluxus art (non-)movement is often read as a historical phenomenon, the breadth of its innovations and complexities actively thwarts linear and circumscribed viewpoints. The notion of Fluxus incorporates contradiction in challenging and enduringly generative ways. More than five decades after its emergence, this special issue of OnCurating entitled Fluxus Perspectives seeks to re-examine the influence, roles, and effects of Fluxus via a wide range of scholarly perspectives. The editors Martin Patrick and Dorothee Richter asked notable writers from different locations, generations, and viewpoints, all of whom having written about Fluxus before, to offer their thoughts on its significance, particularly in relation to contemporary art. With its emphasis upon events, festivals, and exhibitions, Fluxus may also be interpreted as an important, prescient forerunner of contemporary strategies of curating.

    Contributions by Simon Anderson, Jordan Carter, Kevin Concannon, Ken Friedman, Natilee Harren, John Held, Jr., Hannah B Higgins, Hanna B. Hölling, Natasha Lushetich, Billie Maciunas, Peter van der Meijden, Ann Noël, Martin Patrick, Dorothee Richter, Henar Rivière, Julia Robinson, Owen F. Smith, Weronika Trojanska, and Emmett Williams.

    • I taught that book in an Honors College program at Hofstra University, and my students loved it. It’s a brilliant “unreliable narrator” story. I’m only sorry the book (and the author) isn’t better known.

  249. I enjoy this question that you ask in every interview.
    Currently I am reading on visionary art- The first manifest of visionary art by L. Caruana/ and Women of visionary art by DJBrown & RAHill; in conjunction with CGJung- The psychology of kundalini yoga ; Latino art-artists, markets, and politics.

  250. Gore Vidal’s “Creation”. Given to me by Elena Sisto. Fascinating account in novel form about the Persians around 2-300 BC and their travails with the Greeks and ventures into India and China. Includes a view into all the religions that were forming and competing with one another in the Middle East and in Asia at that time. Wry contemporary writing.

  253. At the beginning of the pandemic I became deeply engrossed in the Cixin Liu’s trilogy – the first volume is called The Three Body Problem – recently I read a newer work of his called Ball Lightning – While not a regular reader of science fiction these held my attention and I recommend them highly. These also called to mind something I read and loved several years ago- Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy. Having a hard time concentrating with all tht is going on in the world and my normal reading quota is severely diminished

  255. I’m reading The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins and Rose by Li-Young Lee.
    As always there are a couple of plays on the go (Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs, Spring Awakening by Weekend) and a motley crew of sailing books.

  256. Recently I’ve been dipping in and out of the Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.
    Its such a moving tale of brotherly love and the volumes were given to me over 20 years ago by Lucian Freud when I was sitting for him. Lucian was obsessed with these letters, he talked about them often, and reading them takes me back to those days a lifetime ago, in his Notting Hill studio.

  258. Here’s a list of a few books from this year…

    “24/7”
    Jonathan Crary

    “Digital Uncanny”
    Ravetto Biaglioli

    “Glitch Feminism”
    Legacy Russell

    “Tactics of Interfacing”
    Ksenia Fedorava

    “Cultural Analytics”
    Lev Manovich

    “Call Me Burroughs”
    Barry Miles

  260. I’m just about to start reading “ Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations.” In the studio I’m making slow progress on “Art/Work” by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber. It’s an excellent review (I’m learning some new tips, too) of how to run a professional art practice.

  264. Hi there,

    just re-reading after a really long time since the first Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and a very interesting book in German that I do not know if it has been translated into English entitled 1913 by Florian Illies. A book that tells only what happened in that year and I wonder how much really happened in art, society and politics: Duchamp’s ready made, Malewitch’s Black/White Square just to mention a few….

  265. I just finished my first book by Thomas Bernhard, “ja” -wow what a writer!

    I follow Karl Ove Knausgårds all books and now read Summer & for my next to follow is obviously his Autumn.
    This summer I have read the 1940s Swedish working class writers, all translated to English which was a mind-blowing experience. For example Harry Martinson (The Road/ Aniara) & Jan Fridegård.

  266. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Benjamin M Friedman

    Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith

    Satires by Horace

    Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant which I am slowly reading with my pal Loren Britton ( they’ve read it before)

  267. Anais Duplan, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture
    Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI
    Joanna Page, Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art

  269. Stuart Cosgrove: Harlem 69. The Future of Soul.
    This is the third book (Detroit 67, Memphis 68) in a groundbreaking series that is eye-opening and a fantastic read. Right up there with the Peter Guralnik trilogy (Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music).

    Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviews.
    Brilliant book paying homage to a brilliant force in 20th Century music.

    Das Jahr 1990 freilegen, ed. Jan Wenzel a.o.
    Quite a tomp dissecting the German year 1990, very very beautiful and a gripping read.

  270. Lots of biographies and autobiographies and also about mindfulness:

    https://www.amazon.com/Kin-Memoir-Shawna-Kay-Rodenberg/dp/1635574552/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kin+%2B+shawna&qid=1632412778&sr=8-1

    https://www.amazon.com/Long-Loneliness-Autobiography-Legendary-Catholic/dp/0060617519/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=long+loneliness&qid=1632412798&sr=8-1

    https://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Race-Transforming-Racism-Inside/dp/1683640810/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=ruth+king&qid=1632412831&sr=8-1

    https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Maria-Chaos-South-Bronx/dp/0545621852/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=sonia+%2B+bronx+stories&qid=1632412925&sr=8-3

  271. Upper Bohemia by Hayden Herrera
    A memoir about how two little girls, Hayden and her sister Blair, survived a childhood of neglect, written through the eyes of a child. It is told with an enormous sensitivity to place and to the people who passed through those places.

  273. Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit;
    The Song of the Trees, David George Haskell;
    The Mother Tree, Suzanne Simmard;
    The Price of the Ticket, James Balwin;
    Jackson Pollock, Kirk Varnedoe.

  274. States of Mind: Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness (a collection of literature, science, philosophy and art, published by the Wellcome Collection)

  280. The age of Wood. By Roland Ennos

    We think of the past in terms of stone, bronze and steel but that is not a true picture. People have mostly used those technologies to make things out of wood. A history of humankind all the way back to primates through their use of wood.

  282. All The Light We Cannot See
    –Anthony Doerr
    Pulitzer Prize winner, stunning and poetic language in a totally convincing story that takes place in Europe during WW2

    Human, Sean Scully
    Images of Scully’s solo exhibition “Human” at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice with essays by art historians, art critics, and curators about his work. My friend went to this exhibition on my recommendation after I saw Scully’s exhibition “Landline” at the Wadsworth Atheneum the year before. I fell in love with his work and couldn’t get to Italy to see “Human,” but my friend loved it so much she brought me back this huge book that weighs about 20 lbs. Not the same as in person, of course, but good art reproductions and some damn good writing.

  283. Watson, Lyall. Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind. 1984. New York Review Book, NYC, NY.
    Wulf, Andrea, editor. Alexander von Humboldt: Selected Writings. 2018. Knopf, NYC, NY.
    Helferich, Gerard. Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Homboldt and The Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See the World. 2004. Penguin Group, NYC, NY.
    Lawrence, Beull, editor. The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings. 2006. Random House, NYC, NY.
    Allende, Isabel. In the Midst of Winter. 2017. Atria Books, NYC, NY.
    Allende, Isabel. A Long Petal of the Sea. 2020. Ballantine Books, NYC, NY.

  284. Wild By Nature by Sarah Marquis

    Epic endurance, focus, dedication to her goal to walk across Asia … alone … And she had no idea that her journey would take 3 years, but she persisted against all challenges and threats and made it. Inspiring book if you have an epic or even small goal.

  285. How Forest Think: Toward An Anthropology Beyond The Human by Eduardo Kohn. Eduardo is a linguistic anthropology and I believe since writing this book critics it as weighted down a bit by the academics he imposes. It’s interesting to read while considering that tension. After all it’s a unique writer who covers our relation to nature without the bs.

  286. Re-reading: The Quantum Revolution – a radical synthesis of art and science” by Paul Levy.
    This book brings an in-depth analysis of the Quantum Theory with quotes from the major physicists in the world. Paul Levy “translates” every concept in everyday words for the lay person, often more than once. The book is brilliant and truly life-changing. The main take away: What is the real Reality? What and Who are we in that context? What we acquire with this book: brand new eyes – outer and inner.

  289. I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, lyrical accounts of various fictional characters and their relationship to trees.I am also reading Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, an excellent account of the women artists during the “abstract expressionist years” I was struck, again, by how incredibly good Lee Krassner was and how she seems to have deferred her career so that she could promote her husband, Jackson Pollack’s career.

  291. David Arora’s ‘Mushrooms Demystified’ is all you could ever imagine knowing about the magical kingdom. Encyclopedic and almost overwhelming with its small font of nearly 1000 pages but the skillfully collected details are layered with such quirky humour it lures you in.
    Surely it must be the result of a lifelong passion!

  293. Kindertotenwald

    Prose Poems by Franz Wright

    Reading this now in hardcover. Franz sent it to me when it was still in manuscript form to read and for safe keeping while he was battling cancer, in case he didn’t make it. He gave a reading from it at Amherst College which was so powerful it blew some people out the door.
    He’s gone now, and I miss him.

  294. Milkman by Anna Burns-so incredibly well written about the troubles in Ireland and how oppressive social control permeates every interaction among the protagonists.
    My absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent-a new American novel.
    Gun Love by Jennifer Clement also contemporary Americana.

  296. Thinking Like A Mountain, Towards a Council if All Beings
    –by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess

    I’m reading this again for probably the fifth time since I first read it in a cultural anthropology class 30 years ago. It’s an anthology of essays on Deep Ecology that changed my life when I first read it many years ago. It begins with Introduction: “To Hear Within Ourselves the Sound of the Earth Crying”

  297. BLASTED ALLEGORIES
    an anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists
    edited by Brian Wallis, foreword by Marcia Tucker
    published 1989, purchased 1993
    revealed an inner truth and necessary power of artists for me, that due to the art markets system of wealth, and the political system in general, slowly has faded up till now….what remains are the writings by artists….one of the most important books for me, in my archive

  299. my book is on Amazon check it it out Color or Die
    my name is Erik Anthony Totten its the book with black n white cover tnere is a few similar books with the same title mines most recent and check out my two insragram profiles #selftote & #MrTotten79
    thank-you
    for love and creation we are quantum baby
    E.Totten

  302. So many books, so little time, right?
    I’ve been wanting to read Truman Capote for years so I’m starting with this collection of some of his works–

    Breakfast At Tiffany’s,
    A Short Novel and Three Stories

  305. Some Memories of Drawings
    –Edited by Doris Bry, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art in colaboration with Georgia O’Keefe

    A collection of Georgia O’Keefe’s drawings in various media with each drawing accompanied by the artist’s comments on how, why, when, and/or where she made each drawing.

    Excerpt:
    “Drawing No. 13. 1915. Charcoal. 24 3/4 x 18 7/8 inches
    This is a drawing of something I never saw except in the drawing. When one begins to wander around in one’s own thoughts and half-thoughts what one sees is often surprising.”

  307. Street Fighting Years; An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali
    Well written and engaging story of Ali’s progress growing up as a Marxist in the fledgling country of Pakistan and then becoming a key player in the politics of revolution in Britain during the 1960s and his activism during the Vietnam War. Tells the less publicised side of that struggle.

  309. Im reading
    Anne of Green Gables
    by L.M. Montgomery

    My first time reading this classic. Anne has now become my favorite charachter in literature.
    “I would very much love to be good at something astonishing”
    Anne Shirley

  310. TRUE LOVE IS MY COUNTRY
    by Insa Rose Vermeeren, self imposed exile from democracy

    A story of transition between declining democracy and a new world.

  314. Have also been reading the Memoirs of Casanova. Super long, but parts are very interesting. To understand Casanova’s beginning as a young priest turned over sexed libertine is worth the one or two dollars in the kindle shop. Also anything by Mary Carr

  315. Reading “Single, Gay, and Christian.” An interesting take and look into what it means to live in these worlds simultaneously, while maintaining your identity in such a way that makes the majority of each group uncomfortable.

  316. In Indian Mexico
    A Narrative of Travel and Labor
    Frederick Starr
    Published in 1908
    The book relates the travels by Frederick Starr visiting the Mexican natives of The Southern part of Mexico. His work was to study the physical type of south Mexican indians but it also relates his adventures , the customs of the people and the friendship he enjoyed with some of them.

  317. The Ravenous Raven by Midji Stephenson, illustration by Steve Gray. While preparing for Women As Birds show in January and working on first ever graphic novel, I needed something energetic and fun. The story is a romp through gluttony featuring a smart bird with a big appetite.

  318. “James Wright:A Life in Poetry” by Jonathan Blunk This is a striking biography of Wright, his life, his creative trajectory, and his passionate commitment to his craft. Anyone working in a creative discipline will find deep veins of rich material about living, creating, and devotion to “the work” in these pages. I highly recommend!

  320. The Word, The Book and The Spaces They Inhabit

    This is a first of a series of short books by story-teller and intellectual lawyer Mari Shaw on “The Noble Art of Collecting”.

  324. The Red Tent
    –by Anita Diamant

    I missed this book when it came out 20 years ago but after recently reading Diamant’s “Day After Night,” I wanted more. While not literary fiction, it is lush and full in its poetic use of all the senses–the sounds, sights, touch, tastes, and scents inherent in ancient nomadic desert life–which is enriching my work in the studio each day.

  327. I am reading “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman, “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein,” and re-reading “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire” by Rafe Esquith. Also memorizing “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” by Neil Gaiman (which involves reading and rereading a lot :-D).

  331. My Current list:
    Great book for old masters recipes in all media. I am intrigued by the process behind the paint. Esp the making of the pigments.
    The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting: With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters, by Doerner, Max
    I also am reading this book, to see what I can do myself with materials from my own land.
    The Organic Artist: Make Your Own Paint, Paper, Pigments, Prints and More from Nature
    Neddo, Nick
    Art from my yard is my current focus, and so a book about birch bark plaiting has led the way to some experiments with vessels.
    Plaited Basketry with Birch Bark
    Yarish, Vladimir
    In seeking to understand more about Matriarch vs Patriarch culture and the art that comes from both I am reading this book
    The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization
    Gimbutas, Marija Alseikaite
    Finally and most intriguing is the study of Object oriented Ontology, with thanks to Bjork and Tim Morton
    Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics
    by Timothy Morton

    • For me, I am currently looking at all processes of creating art and any and all avenues to deliver that expression. My main body of concern is the intuitive process in creation, not allowing so much my thinking mind to control, but to let the right brain be free to stumble upon what ever it is that it wants to say. I am always surprised.
      I am at one time reading many different books on many subjects, primarily non fiction, nature, animals, history, plants, herbs, healing. This is one that I think is quite interesting at the moment.

      A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

      Written by: Daniel H. Pink

  335. I have six books that I have had published. “Cowboy Cartoons by Daryl Talbot”, “Cowboy Cartoons #2”, “Cowboy Cartoons #3”. “Oklahoma Cowboy Cartoons”, “Laughing in Cadence” and “Laughing in Rank and File”. Available at Amazon.

  336. I’m enjoying “The Silent History”, a story about a new way of communicating, and being, by Eli Horowitz, et al.

  337. I am leaving the book I wrote, Public Private Relationships and the New Owners of the Means of Production,
    The foundation research for this book is years of studying the economic development statutes put into place in Maine since the Longley Doctrine was institutionalized in the late seventies. My book tells many stories of Maine communities ruthlessly exploited by this doctrine which is stated in a nutshell as ” Centrally managing the economy is an essential government function which must be done by public private relationships”
    Most of my current reading is a continuation of this research, not exactly books- reading statutes and ordinances, and following through with expanded research into articles, written by others. That takes up a lot of time.

  344. Currently reading “Georgia, a novel of Georgia O’Keefe” by Dawn Tripp and
    “The Dream Colony, A Life in Art”, be Walter Hopps with Deborah Treisman and Anne Doran

  345. Lillian de Jong, Janet Benton
    WWWj.janetbentonauthor.com
    True literature and an unforgettable character, deepening your understanding of the mother-child bond and a punishing society whose roots have still not gone away. Enlightening and superbly written.

  346. Cabinet Magazine has a series, Twenty-Four-Hour Book,in ” which an author or artist is “incarcerated in its gallery space to complete a project from start to finish within twenty-four hours.”In this latest, Jeff Dolvin was given a source-text to use one day before-hand:the 1986 catalogue for Braintree Scientific, a company that provides lab equipment for experiments on rats and mice. What resulted is the indelible “Take Take.”

    I am also reading Sharon Cameron’s brilliant meditation on creators such as Robert Bresson and Dostoevsky whose orientation challenges and stands apart from the false constrictures of categorization, “The Bond of the Furthest Apart”.

    And I’m re-reading Bruno Schulz’s “Sanitorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.”

    All 3 are amazing books.

    disn

  349. But What if We’re Wrong? By Chuck Klosterman. ” …speculates on the likelihood that many universally accepted, deeply ingrained cultural and scientific beliefs will someday seem absurd. Covering a spectrum of objective and subjective topics, the book attempts to visualize present-day society the way it will be viewed in a distant future.” Fascinating, really puts into perspective what is remembered and left out of History

  350. I am presently reading “YOUTH: Without Barrier” just doing another revision. Is a collection of 12 stories involving young people struggling in life. They all made the difference in their life.

  353. Three Degrees of Latitude: A Curious Guide to the Natural History of the Pehuén (Yes it’s written by my sister Jane Coffey and it’s terrific!
    Losing Helen by Carol Becker, (meditations on her mothers passing, sad, funny and wise.)
    Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang (It’s a page turner, about an amazing time and person in China’s history)
    Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt (What can one say, it illuminates in this time)
    Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
    The Return by Hisham Matar (elegiac, a loving portrait of his lost father, country and time)
    The Sellout, by Paul Beatty (!!!)
    Delacroix’ Journals (somewhat dull but we can ask does the art world really change)
    The Hills of Hebron by Sylvia Wynter
    (brilliant, wonderful vivid novel ,just read it)

  354. Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History is one of the most revelatory books I’ve ever read, truly epic.
    “Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert’s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world.” Cotton manufacturing was the basis for Western industrialization. Much of the foundation of all our wealth today was the capital generated by unpaid labor of slaves.

  355. I recently read the “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, by Rebecca Skloot, the true and unjust story of a young black woman whose cells were taken without permission or knowledge for medical research. This book is an incredible account of what happened to Henrietta and her family. It is important to remember her legacy and and recognize the history of her immortal cells..

  357. Reading “Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery” by Jeanette Winterson. Must reading for anyone trying to approach and understand art of any type.

    Quote: “If the obvious direct emotional response is to have any meaning, the question ‘Do I like this?’ will have to be the opening question and not the final judgement. An examination of our own feelings will have to give way to an examination of the piece of work. This is fair to the work and it will help to clarify the nature of our own feelings; … It is right to trust our feelings but right to test them too. … But here we come to the first hurdle of art, and it is a high one; it shows us up.”

  358. Right now I am reading Heartsnatcher by Boris Vian, a character in a French New Wave film was reading it during a scene in a coffee shop; and so I thought to myself, I should probably check that out.

  363. Currently reading “Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus” by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Enjoying it immensely, but then, I do love the intersection of disease and culture.

  364. Just finished RED: The Art and Science of a Colour by Bucklow Spike; COLLECTED STORIES by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; THE HANDLESS MAIDEN by Mary Elizabeth Perry. Looking forward to THE RIDDLE OF THE IMAGE also by Spike. Not a fan of fiction but Marques was important so when I heard of his passing, I ordered all of his works and so will make them my summer reading….dark choice.

  365. Finishing ‘The Mind Parasites’ by Colin Wilson. Interesting read (even though I am not a usual fan of the genre this one seems to ‘grasp beyond usual’ if that makes sense)

  367. The Voices Within,
    the History & Science of How We Talk to Ourselves
    By Charles Fern hough

    I find my inner thoughts to be important. And yes, I talk to myself. This book is insightful as Fern hough is a Psychologist and and author. He understands creative voices.

  368. Essential reading for artists today! Incredibly inspiring. — Artists Against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress.

    Also reading New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics

  372. I am reading:

    The Cool School, writings from america’s hip underground
    edited by (the late) Glenn O’brien

    Being of the Sun, (companion volume to Living on the Earth)
    By Alicia Bay Laurel

  377. “Selling Contemporary Art: How to Navigate the Evolving Market” by Edward Winkleman 2015

    One of my goals as an artist is to secure commercial gallery representation. Now that I’ve had my first solo show at a commercial gallery, I am working to find another, then another. This involves talking to many gallery owners, and I find that having an understanding of the challenges faced by modern gallery owners puts me in a better position to understand THEIR goals and discuss how my work would benefit their program.

  379. Javier Marias- A Heart So White
    While reading this book you can feel a dance somewhere. There are moments when i was sure Marias is dancing with me, with my mind. Mostly, I think he is just dancing while writing. Writing is his dance and he is a hell of a dancer. I am grateful to witness this beautiful dynamic.

  381. “Unspeakable”, by, Chris Hedges (cultural critic and author who was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for the New York Times). With noble compassion Hedges slays dragons of lies about the political, economic, and psychological ‘terroir’ contemporary artists the world over are steeped in. The truth is daunting but ironically it brings a little relief as you realize that you are not exclusively to blame for your plight. Want a clearer understanding of what you’re in the middle of? Read this book.