POTUS’s Essential Reads
President Obama is serving as a visiting editor of Wired magazine in November, but prelude to that, he has given them a list of 10 books everyone should read. It’s a mix of a couple of more recent titles and some all-timers, which is a bit Obama in a nutshell–a little pop-culture, a little old-time politics.
Bob Dylan Isn’t There
Here it is a couple of weeks after Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature, and Dylan still hasn’t said…anything. No acknowledgment of any kind. And the Nobel committee isn’t happy. At this point, it’s not clear that Dylan will show up for the ceremony, take the money, or have anything to do with the most prestigious artistic award in the world. If I were a betting man, I would not put a thin dime on Dylan doing anything more than what he has already done.
Claudia Rankine To Open Racial Imaginary Institute
Fresh off her Macarthur “genius award,” Claudia Rankine is planning to start a institution that will be a “space which allows us to show art, to curate dialogues, have readings, and talk about the ways in which the structure of white supremacy in American society influences our culture.”
It isn’t clear yet what form it will take, but it will be located in lower Manhattan. Also, whiteness will be an explicit topic, which isn’t (or perhaps even often) a focus of projects that center on race. Culture, Rankine, thinks is at the leading edge of how people talk and think about race, so policy isn’t currently part of the plan.
Thanks to TryAudiobooks.com for sponsoring This Week in Books.
Listen While You Cook! While spending hours in the kitchen prepping meals for the holidays, put on a good audiobook and let the story help you along.
Cooking for Picasso and The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living are great cooking memoirs or you can listen to Where Am I Now? Read by Mara Wilson herself! Let audiobooks be your secret ingredient this holiday season.
