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How to Read Now
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83/99
Critics' Rating Index
37/99
Readers' Rating Index
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
"When I started reading the book, I (another Asian American living in the Bay Area) frequently found myself in ambivalent or even direct disagreement with Castillo."
"Elaine Castillo's How to Read Now begins with a section called 'Author's Note, or a Virgo Clarifies Things.' The title is a neat encapsulation of the book's style: rigorous but still chatty, intellectual but not precious or academic about it ..."
"Its essays are so thoroughly linked by their worldview that the book often feels less like a collection than a single, impassioned argument on behalf not only of thoughtful, ethical reading, but also of fiction designed to be thoughtfully, ethically read—fiction that is both a world unto itself and a lens through which to examine the world around us ..."
"This is not a collection of essays to race through; instead, it should be read thoughtfully and with an open mind to encourage fresh understanding."
"It matters who draws the bath, and that is Castillo's point."
"This one packs a powerful punch."
"The effects of centuries of colonialism are dangerous and wide-ranging, as Castillo documents throughout How to Read Now."
"Provocative, deeply analytical, and powerfully expressed ..."
"The collection's cautiousness about its politics is evidenced by the repetitions I have outlined: it traffics in arguments that have already circulated on the internet, arguments that are thus 'safe' insofar as there exists a ready audience for them ..."
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