Hiiiiii. I do read a lot but I find myself reading very popular books, and I’d like to move into something more niche. I know there is a well of literature for what I’m looking for, I just can’t seem to find it but I know it exists! I enjoy Dostoevsky, Huxley. My last read books these past two weeks were psychopolitics, ham and rye, Giovanni’s room, franny and Zoey, blackshirts and reds, and the dawn of everything. I enjoy anything political or philosophical. I love art. I love the human condition. Any recommendations?
by Obvious_Theory8320
2 Comments
**Islands of Abandonment**, by Cal Flyn.
I really love this book and have purchased about 120 copies over the course of about 2 years to give to friends and coworkers. She goes to about a dozen places where humans used to live but no longer do or can for a variety of reasons, including nuclear accident (Chernobyl), volcano (Montserrat), border dispute (Cyprus), toxic chemical dump post-WWI (Verdun, France), urban blight (Detroit), economic depression (Swona, Scotland). She looks at how and to what degree the locations have recovered from human involvement, but that doesn’t capture the beauty of this book. She is a wonderful writer, and she’s writing consciously from the first person so you experience her explorations with her. I know that there are plenty of people to whom I’ve recommended the book who have self-selected out because they are sure it’s not their cup of tea, but everyone who has read it has circled back to me, thanking me for turning them on to the book and specifically calling out one or two chapters that really caught their imagination. For me it was Montserrat and her description of traveling in a region where the volcano is live and if it starts to spew again, you really have like five minutes to get to safety.
One of my favorite recent reads was Still Life by Sarah Winman. It is very character driven, rather than plot driven, but it’s an absolutely lovely book about art, the human condition, philosophy, etc., so I think you might like it.