What I’ve been reading

 [[{“value”:”1. Anna Bogutskaya, Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us.  A fun read about the importance of horror movies in contemporary culture, and a lament that we underrate them. 2. Daniel Tammet, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum.  This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the
The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

1. Anna Bogutskaya, Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us.  A fun read about the importance of horror movies in contemporary culture, and a lament that we underrate them.

2. Daniel Tammet, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum.  This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the chapter on Dan Ackroyd especially interesting.  Do note that the writing style is autistic, which you may consider either a plus or a minus.   And “Are we there yet?”

3. Michael Haas, Music of Exile: The Untold Story of the Composers Who Fled Hitler.  A detailed, well-organized and captivating look at this story.  My conclusion, though, is that the Germanic compositional scene already was starting to reach dead ends in terms of quality and innovation?

4. Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict.  A good look at the festering problems in place before 1948.  Among other things, it shows how many of the current arguments and debates have very deep roots, and just how far back the lack of trust goes.

5. Luke Stegemann, Madrid: A New Biography.  Madrid is now one of the world’s very very best cities.  You can judge tomes like this by how many other books they induced you to read or buy, and in this case the number was eight.  I bought a whole catalog of color plates by the 18th century still life painter Melendez, for instance.  Recommended.

6. Michael H. Kater, After the Nazis: The Story of Culture in West Germany.  Another excellent work.  From this book I took away the (unintended?) conclusion that the German written and cinematic contributions have not aged well, due to excessive (but understandable) preoccupations with Naziism and the Second World War.  The greatest German postwar cultural contributions in fact are Richter, Beuys, Kiefer, Baselitz, Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, and Can.  The less literal artistic forms dealt with the war obsession in more effective and lasting ways, noting that some Kiefer works still have this problem.

Self-recommending is Dana Gioia, Poetry as Enchantment, and Other Essays.  The essays on Frost, Auden, and Bradbury are some of my favorites.

Jordan Ott’s Back to the Future: How to Reignite American Innovation is exactly that.

Speaking of Kraftwerk, I also enjoyed the new Simon Reynolds book Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow’s Music Today  Reynolds is very good at covering parts of music history that other people ignore.

More to come!

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