Tag: Books
MashReads Podcast: If you read one book this year, it should be ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders
Image: MJ Franklin/ Mashable George Saunders has a rule for art: “If you do it right, it’s almost like this beautiful prism, and no matter what the time is, you can shine a light through it and it will make some sense.” It’s an apt description and an excellent way to describe Saunders’ newest book […]
MashRead Podcast: ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ is the classic novel that should be on every reading list
Image: Mashable Composite, HarperCollins Sometimes the best way to understand the present is to look at the past. Or at least that’s true with Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The book was written 80 years ago, but the commentary it makes on race and feminism feels as fresh and contemporary […]
Paul Beatty: For me, Trumps America has always existed
Booker prize winner says presidents rise is not a shock and race relations have improved very little, even under Obama. When Donald Trump was being inaugurated, Paul Beatty was lying in bed with his wife, groggy with medication halfway around the world, in Jaipur, India. His book, The Sellout, a sarcastic, complex novel on race […]
Jonathan Raban: I felt pretty happy that I was still alive
The author on his recovery after a stroke and his fears for a dis-United States. On 11 June 2011, a few days before his 69th birthday, Jonathan Raban was sitting with his daughter Julia at home in Seattle. He’d felt foggy and out of sorts since waking. Having reheated a casserole, he looked down to […]
Out from the shadows: why cruising had a cultural moment in 2016
From an acclaimed novel to an immersive theater experience, the divisive sexual practice made a comeback in art amid heightened anxiety over sex and gender. On a Saturday afternoon shortly before Christmas, I found myself in the dungeon-like basement of a sex club in Manhattan to see a site-specific performance called Adonis Memories. It was […]