November was another month where I didn’t read as much as I would’ve wanted, but in my defense, I spent a week in NYC (where I bought lots of books but was too busy to do much reading), and then when I got home, I was so inspired I started making a whole new collection!
And of course, I couldn’t resist adding one of those pretty new dishes to this month’s book stack! (You can find this one and others in my online store.)
Still, the books I ended up reading in November were a pretty interesting and thought-provoking bunch. (Which is why I’m getting back in the habit of actually writing about the books and not just listing them out like I did the past two months.)
I kept seeing mention of Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit before it came out, so I couldn’t resist when I spotted it at my local bookstore. I’m so glad I decided to grab it because it did not disappoint. It’s a meandering exploration of an idea, which is perfect for someone like me, who loves to read to learn about new things. My absolute favorite part of the book was the exploration of the importance of pleasure in the midst of political upheaval and the idea of fighting for “not just bread, but roses too.” So often, but especially over the past few years, I’ve heard artists doubt the value of what they do, but this book so eloquently explains why beauty and art are so important, even in, especially in, trying times.
I’ve had The Art of Understanding Art by Hugh Moss on my bookshelf for a while (I think I picked it up at The Met on another trip to New York years ago) but something about it caught my eye and I decided to give it a read before my last trip. While I don’t agree with everything Moss says, I do find his attempts to come up with a universal theory of art that isn’t just grounded in European/Western ideas of art fascinating. What was most interested to me (and what I wished I could have read more about) was the idea that so much of Chinese art is focused on private, intimate experiences of art, something I talk about a lot in my book proposal.
I went through a phase last year (and the beginning of this year) where I was doing a lot of reading about work and our relationship to it, but I took a break over the summer to focus on books more related to my book proposal. Now that I’m in the painful waiting game stage of querying my proposal, I decided to resume reading about a topic that’s been fascinating to me. Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction by Susan Ferguson was a good entry back into the subject. (Not to mention an interesting expansion of ideas we’ve been talking about in Artists & Profit Makers.) It’s pretty academic and focuses a lot on summarizing other people’s theories of feminism and work, so it’s not a book I’d recommend to everyone. (If you’re looking for a good starting point, I’d recommend Work Won’t Love You Back by Sara Jaffe. You can read my thoughts on it in this post. And I’d definitely recommend the audiobook on that one, as it’s a bit of a beast!) Still, Women and Work was good for gaining a perspective on the evolving relationship between feminism and work.
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