Just Us / Saving Time
ISO book recs!
Listen, I’ve felt so compelled to write something for about 10 years — a nonfiction exploration of “homesickness” — and now after much hemming and hawing I’m finally getting to it. (Big thanks to a proper jumpstart via the yearlong creative nonfiction writing workshop I was part of last year.) But here’s the thing: So much of what I read and am inspired by is fiction, as you can see from all these hundreds of squares. I have *no* interest in writing fiction, fyi. HOWEVER, I’ve read two books in the last year that have knocked my socks off because of their successful ability to thumb their noses, if just a bit, at prescribed genre. I read Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine for the aforementioned workshop and am currently finishing Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell because I had a hunch that her work — she’s a multidisciplinary artist — would inspire me. (I was right, and if you’re not familiar, her writing is nothing like the self-help-y/Atomic Habits-esque verbiage that the title suggests.)
So, besides Rankine’s and Odell’s other books (Citizen and How to Do Nothing, respectively) what recommendations does anyone out there have for nonfiction books that might be a bit more genre-bending than is typical? What have you read lately (or ever) that has felt less like a straight-up history/academic deep dive and more like getting a look inside someone’s brain that zips from pop culture references to academic studies to personal narrative?
And hey, if no recs come of this, then simply consider this my offering of two recommendations for you. Even if you’re primarily a fiction reader — because #artiseverywhere
{Btw, thanks to those who replied to my stories the other day where I shared a bit about this project. The 🔥 responses in particular really lit a 🔥 under me 🤩}
originally published on instagram