How to Read Now

'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay
'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino
'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer
'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed . . . Phenomenal' R.O. Kwon
'A wake-up call. A broadside. A rich and brilliant war cry' Chris Power

How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words - beautiful, aspirational - are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, she moves to wrest reading away from the aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work.

How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy - within ourselves, and with each other.

Auteur

Elaine Castillo

Texte du rabat

'Castillo's How To Read Now took my breath away. Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny, it whips the tablecloth from under the setting of contemporary reading, politics and intellectual culture in a literary act of daring. It seems there is nothing Castillo can not do. Read How to Read Now now.'
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize -winning author of Less

An exploration and manifesto investigating the power of reading - and our potential to become radically better readers in the world.

How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our life? Of course, these beautiful words are sometimes true. But reading is-and can be-more powerful, more relevant, and more vital than we currently let it be.

What do the cliches and good intentions we rely on to talk about the warm fuzzy feeling of reading gloss over or sell short when it comes to the critical skills reading fosters, and the range of emotions reading allows us to explore? Castillo illuminates-and insists upon-our potential to become better readers, readers who will wield the power of reading ruthlessly, effectively, and to startling result to enact equity, kindle authentic connection, and clear space for voices to be heard.

As Castillo interrogates and reflects on the stale questions and uncritical proclamations that so often sub in for vital discussion, she takes readers on deep dives through everything from anime to the overlooked novels of Peter Handke to the art of the mix tape, all while mapping the paths toward more lively, more urgent, more inclusive reading. By widening the lens of reading to include the ways we digest all media, Elaine Castillo brings fresh philosophical and moral clout to our discussions of the power of reading.