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How to Read Now

How to Read Now

by Elaine Castillo

Viking ·2022 ·340 pages
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
70/99
Top of the Pile

83/99

Critics' Rating Index

Maybe Someday

37/99

Readers' Rating Index

Top of the Pile

90/99

Scholars' Citation Index

89/99

Volume of Reviews

48/99

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About This Book

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.


Reviews

"And on this I agree with Castillo: It so desperately needs to change."

Jane Hu· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Provocative, deeply analytical, and powerfully expressed ..."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"How to Read Now offers its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we're all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity — a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return."

Zan Romanoff· Los Angeles Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Although How to Read Now is technically about reading, it doubles as a work of refreshingly blunt literary criticism."

Lily Meyer· The Nation Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Brilliant and passionate ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"I still found Castillo's fiction much more compelling than her essays ..."

Kathy Chow· Los Angeles Review of Books Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"The effects of centuries of colonialism are dangerous and wide-ranging, as Castillo documents throughout How to Read Now."

Kelly Blewett· BookPage Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"It matters who draws the bath, and that is Castillo's point."

Anna Nordberg· San Francisco Chronicle Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Each of her essays has indelible lessons to explore and absorb ..."

Terry Hong· The Christian Science Monitor Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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