Image: Barthélemy d’Eyck, Still Life with Books in a Niche, c.1442-45, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“Weekend Reading” is an ongoing series, in which we write about what has captured our attention lately on and outside the web.
Looking for something to read this weekend? We scour the web (and our bookshelves) for thought-provoking articles, books and the occasional podcast. Enjoy!
Jessica identified with Jonathan Coleman’s recent piece for Harvard Business Review, “Why Businesspeople Should Join Book Clubs.” She writes,
“Smartly and succinctly, Coleman sums up all the benefits of book clubs to people in business (and people in general) and shares interesting anecdotes about book clubs he knows of along the way. In addition to helping you commit to a regular reading schedule, Coleman says, ‘the act of reading in community can help you read more deeply and better understand diverse perspectives.’ Doing so, ‘builds and reinforces relationships’ and increases comfort and confidence in professional discussions. Executives from Mark Zuckerberg to Neil Blumenthal (founder of eyeglass maker Warby Parker) have committed to “reading in community” and we heartily agree that its benefits accrue at the workplace and beyond!
Capria has found herself investigating mysteries:
1st edition cover art via wikipedia.org
“This past weekend I took my 6 year-old son to the theater to see The Maltese Falcon (1941). It was super fun to whisper back and forth as we tried to keep up with all the plot twists and to hear my son inevitably ask over and over ‘are they telling the truth?’ The New Yorker recently posted an article about T.S. Eliot trying to articulate what makes great detective fiction, and I found myself asking the same thing last weekend. Is it the character development? Is it the plausibility of the motivation for the crime? Eliot seems to say that ‘what he appreciated, was the genre’s capacity for conveying intensity of sentiment and human experience within taut formal designs.’ We have read a few detective fiction stories at Books@Work (some Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep to name a few) and participants seem to really enjoy the experience. They say the greatest pleasure in reading this genre is that it feels like working on a puzzle together. Everyone is seeing different aspects of how something fits – or doesn’t fit. Most interestingly, the conversation turns from ‘who done it’ to who can be trusted and THAT is the beginning of a very lively discussion!”
And as for me, I enjoyed Jennifer duBois’ essay for Lapham’s Quarterly, “MFA vs CIA” so thoroughly that I read it twice. This complex, provocative essay explores empathy and morality in literature and in our work lives. What, duBois asks, do writers and spies share? Her answer, woven throughout the piece, is both nuanced and compelling:
“writers and spies share an ability – and a willingness – to hide in plain sight, to deflect attention not only from the nature of their role but from the fact that they have any role at all. A spy obscures his relationship to events in order to affect them, just as a writer hovers anonymously beyond the page in order to exert her tyrannical, obsessive control. What is authorial distance, anyway, but a form of plausible deniability? This willingness to disappear is another difficult quality to gauge in normal terms – it seems to be simultaneously a form of delusional arrogance and its exact opposite. But writers and spies both understand its uses; in both cases, it is the vanishing act that enables the sorcery.”
Elsewhere on the Internet:
Google has something to say about walking and creativity.
On self help, habits and ethical seriousness.
A bookstore inspired by one of our favorite short stories – The Library of Babel.
From The New Yorker, “One Man’s Impossible Quest to Read – and Review – the World.”
Maria Papova on “motivated dissatisfaction” and creativity.
Further Reading
How Reading Fiction Increases Our Capacity for Empathy
“Creative Discomfort”: Exploring Unfamiliar Literature
The Element of Surprise: What Stories Help Us See
Image: Barthélemy d’Eyck, Still Life with Books in a Niche, c.1442-45, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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