Here are 100 books that Within the Context of No Context fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve never felt that fiction was quite enough. Like a dream that someone tells you, it’s arbitrary and slightly meaningless to anyone but the dreamer. Nonfiction is nice, but because what is described did, in fact, actually happen, it can’t happen any other way. And where’s the fun (or art) in that? Autofiction, which tries to blur the line between the two, seems to draw attention to itself, making the author of the story more important than the actual story. So what’s the answer? There is no answer. But every now and then, a book seems not to care about the difference and, therefore, transcends it.
Framed by a scholarly appraisal of an actual archaic text, this novel, in verse, proceeds to tell a story of love, from boyhood to death.
It’s the story, amazingly, of a monster, a mythic creature with wings and red skin, but you forget about the myth when you’re reading. And you forget about poetry. Or you wonder, what’s the difference between poetry and a beautiful narrative of longing, of heartbreak, of hope and friendship and family ties, and when you get to the end of the life of this kid, which, like all our lives, is a story of love, you feel you understand a little more clearly what it is.
In this extraordinary epic poem, Anne Carson bridges the gap between classicism and the modern, poetry and prose, with a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon.
There is a strong mixture of whimsy and sadness in Geryon's story. He is tormented as a boy by his brother, escapes to a parallel world of photography, and falls in love with Herakles - a golden young man who leaves Geryon at the peak of infatuation. Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, until that glass house is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I fell in love with reading and writing as a child, but it wasn’t until college that I discovered the magic of poetry and began writing it myself. I began to immerse myself in poetry and, in particular, the poetry of Pablo Neruda through a course on The Poet’s Voice in which we explored how the poet’s voice changes over a lifetime of writing. For many years, I thought of myself as a fiction writer, but gradually I turned to poetry, and poetry saved my life. I start each day with a poem or two, and much of my work is inspired by the poets and poems that I read.
I heard about this delightful book from a friend and knew I had to read it. It is a meditation on the color blue. Each of Nelson’s “propositions” explores blue metaphorically, literally, historically, emotionally.
Reading this book I immersed myself in blue and all its facets, and through doing so I discovered the worlds of other colors, so that when I step outside, I see not only green but all greens, not only brown but all browns, and blue, of course, everywhere.
Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color ...A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the…
I’ve never felt that fiction was quite enough. Like a dream that someone tells you, it’s arbitrary and slightly meaningless to anyone but the dreamer. Nonfiction is nice, but because what is described did, in fact, actually happen, it can’t happen any other way. And where’s the fun (or art) in that? Autofiction, which tries to blur the line between the two, seems to draw attention to itself, making the author of the story more important than the actual story. So what’s the answer? There is no answer. But every now and then, a book seems not to care about the difference and, therefore, transcends it.
A girl gets a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Information Desk. The current show is an installation called Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt, and so begins the book that is housed inside a poem but is really the story of how the author negotiates her way around loss, love, lust, and memory.
Along the way, she dissects the paintings in the Met. Also, insects, and creepy co-workers, and she finds something in them that resonates with her. And the President’s son, John-John is also part of the life living in the ideas the author makes so visceral and tangible and felt.
Named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick
“Among the year's highlights . . . groundbreaking, epic . . . Like visitors exiting the Met’s galleries, readers will emerge from Information Desk bedazzled by the transformative horizons of art.” —Washington Post
“An effluvial rush of memory, desire, data, and metaphor . . . It’s bracing to encounter a mind so voracious, so unapologetic in its intelligence.” —New York Review of Books
A book-length poem set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from a writer whose work offers “something few poets ever discover:…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve never felt that fiction was quite enough. Like a dream that someone tells you, it’s arbitrary and slightly meaningless to anyone but the dreamer. Nonfiction is nice, but because what is described did, in fact, actually happen, it can’t happen any other way. And where’s the fun (or art) in that? Autofiction, which tries to blur the line between the two, seems to draw attention to itself, making the author of the story more important than the actual story. So what’s the answer? There is no answer. But every now and then, a book seems not to care about the difference and, therefore, transcends it.
As weird and self-indulgent as an actual person, this “novel,” about a failed filmmaker who finds, in the failed life of Simone Weil, a worthy doppelganger, takes some getting used to. But the author’s honesty doesn’t let go, and pretty soon, I found myself wondering along with her, what is worthy? And who gets to decide what’s worthy? Who gets to decide anything in a world that seems to make no sense?
Weil, an ersatz saint who starved herself to death, is just one of the triggers raising the questions that are raised by a book that, appropriately, fails to answer them. But it does so with humor and an often exhilarating disrespect.
It's 1996, and Chris Kraus is in Berlin, seeking a distributor for her film Gravity & Grace, described alternately as 'an experimental 16mm film about hope, despair, religious feeling and conviction' and 'an amateur intellectual's home video expanded to bulimic lengths' ...
It's 1942 in Marseille, and Simone Weil is waiting for the US entry visa that will save her from the Holocaust, while writing work described alternately as a 'radical philosophy of sadness' and 'immoral, trite, irrelevant and paradoxical' ...
It's the late 90s, the millennium is approaching, and Chris Kraus is in Los Angeles, not eating, waiting for…
My name is Daniel Robert McClure, and I am an Associate Professor of History at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. I teach U.S., African diaspora, and world history, and I specialize in cultural and economic history. I was originally drawn to “information” and “knowledge” because they form the ties between culture and economics, and I have been teaching history through “information” for about a decade. In 2024, I was finally able to teach a graduate course, “The Origins of the Knowledge Society,” out of which came the “5 books.”
This is a nice primary source assessment of the vast shadow created by Gleick and Bod’s books. Read simultaneously as both an artifact of the times as well as serious scholarly material, Boorstin deftly outlines the evolution of thinking and communication against the rising onslaught of electronic media flooding the world of the 1960s and beyond: the image and performative illusion of “pseudo-events” dominating our attention.
Read as prophecy, I also pair with Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970) and Paul Valéry’s The Conquest of Ubiquity essay from the 1920s.
First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported—and the contemporary definition of celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” Since then Daniel J. Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
Memory is capricious and impacts our view of the past. That’s why I do what I do! I am a twenty-year museum professional who began my career at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, worked at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for almost ten years, and am now part of the Arts & History department at the City and County of Broomfield. I have designed and developed programs and events, as well as managed teams in each of these stops. I seek to illuminate stories, elevate critical voices, and advocate for equity through the unique pathways of the arts, history, and museum magic.
Born in 1979, I’m part of the final gasp of Generation X. Klosterman uses pop culture trends and the rise of the internet and cellphones as framing for understanding how Generation X formed its view of the world and its place in it.
A fun musing on the profound changes to society and communication that took place over the decade of the 1990s, The Nineties reminds us that it wasn’t all that long ago that we got most of our news from the TV, magazines, or the newspaper, and that the 90s shaped my generation in a multitude of ways.
From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
That’s a terrible question that gives
me spiritual anxiety. But to get right down to it, I’m just someone who loves
culture. I’m fascinated by why people do the things they do, from ethics to
aesthetics. As a music journalist, I have interviewed everyone from local bands
to Grammy award-winning artists for publications like Alternative Press,
Kerrang!, Revolver, and Loudwire. My work as a freelance
entertainment writer carried me to other types of lifestyle writing, including
food and travel. I am a regular contributor for Reader’s Digest.
Culture critic Chuck Klosterman is
essentially the next-gen Hunter S. Thompson. This book is a stream of
consciousness foray into contemporary pop culture, ranging from essays on
sports to music to reality TV. It’s an odd, brilliant, self-indulgent take on
the American zeitgeist. Feel smart and have a laugh at the same time.
With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Internet porn, breakfast cereal, serial killers, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus freaks, and the real difference between apples and oranges (of which there is none). Sex, Drugs and Coca Puffs is ostensibly about movies, sport, television, music, books, video games and kittens, but really it's about us. All of us.
I started worrying about populism in 2008, when vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin chastised the elitists, whom she defined as “people who think they’re better than anyone else.” Meanwhile, she thought she was so much better than anyone else that she could serve as backup leader of the world despite the fact that she believed that the political leader of the United Kingdom is the queen. After she lost she vowed, “I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I’m not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I’m going to fight the elitist.” She was unaware that there is a third option: to study so that you know more than the next person.
The co-creator of SPY magazine, Kurt Andersen was my hero in high school. He’s been an NPR radio host, a novelist, a magazine editor, and a co-author with Alec Baldwin on their Trump book. But this book feels like all the thinking he’s done in those places put in one place. It’s a textbook of American history from the Puritans until today, through the lens of our special predilection for conspiracy, con artists, and fabulists, both on the left and the right, and how it all culminates in the 1960s. So smart, so funny, so jealous.
You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts
Fantasy is the USA's primary product. From the Pilgrim Fathers onward America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But, this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.
I chose these books because a theme in my writing is standing up, and being a champion for things that get forgotten – books, music, events, people. Also, for anyone who has done investigative reporting, the sense is always like you’re going down a rabbit hole and penetrating a dark, undiscovered country. Also – and I don’t think many people know this – I was an English Lit major in college at the University of Toronto. In my early days I did a lot of reading, on a disparate field of interests.
You’re probably picking up a theme here - I love an underdog, books that go largely unnoticed. Ron Rosenbaum spent most of his career writing for The Village Voice, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and many others. The Secret Parts of Fortune is a collection of some of his best stuff. Someone described Rosenbaum as “one part intellectual and one part private eye,” and these essays will definitely lead you down a rabbit hole, taking you places you’ve never even considered to venture. My point of entry was A Killing in Camelot, about the unsolved murder of Mary Meyer, an artist and Washington socialite who turned up murdered on a D.C. canal towpath in 1964. As the title suggests, there is a Kennedy connection – isn’t there always.
One part intellectual and one part private eye, Ron Rosenbaum takes readers into "the secret parts" of the great mysteries, controversies, and enigmas of our time, including:
the occult rituals of Skull and Bones, the legendary Yale secret society that has produced spies and presidents, including George Bush and George W. Bush.
the Secrets of the Little Blue Box, the classic story of "Captain Crunch" and the birth of hacker culture.
the "unorthodox" cancer-cure clinics of Tijuana.
the Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal.
the unsolved murder of JFK's mistress.
Also including sharp, funny cultural critiques that range from…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am a creature of habitat. I can’t help but connect with my environment in every possible way. It’s physical, emotional. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Mexico City. Leaving was heart-wrenching, but the promise to fulfill a dream drew me to Los Angeles. During the next four decades I became a student of Los Angeles and the Latino community that populates it. I agree with Randy Newman: I love L.A.
I fell in love with Los Angeles in 1983 when I immigrated from Mexico, young, penniless, and ignorant, to start an ad agency for the Latinx community. As the years went by, I succeeded in the business, raised a family, and wrote three novels. It is after you read a book like Peter Lunenfeld’s that you understand why such an improbable story like mine could ever materialize. As in the movies, L.A. is not what it seems. Go behind the scenes with City at the Edge of Forever, Los Angeles Reimagined and debunk some myths.
An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles
How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget; Joan Didion's yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American…
