29 Lists of Recommended Books Created by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Patti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

in Books | December 2nd, 2016

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Cre­ative Com­mons image of Aus­tri­an Nation­al Library by Matl

At any giv­en moment many of us can rec­om­mend a list of books to read. Books that have imprint­ed on us, named emo­tions we did­n’t know we had, carved trails through our brains. Books that stand as a tes­ta­ment to a life lived as a read­er. We may con­struct lists to pass on to a curi­ous niece, nephew, son, daugh­ter, stu­dent, or appren­tice. “Life is per­plex­ing,” we might say, “com­plex, won­drous, curi­ous, painful, open to unimag­in­able pos­si­bil­i­ties. Read these, then go out and find the books that inspire, soothe, guide, chal­lenge, and enlight­en you.”

Of course, as you know from read­ing this site, we fre­quent­ly bring you many such lists, from famous writ­ers, artists, musi­cians, sci­en­tists, and oth­er titans of their respec­tive fields who have inspired mil­lions of young stu­dents and appren­tices. Today, we have com­piled a mas­ter list of rec­om­mend­ed read­ing lists, from writ­ers like Jorge Luis Borges, musi­cian-poets like Pat­ti Smith, sci­en­tists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, futur­ists like Stew­art Brand, and many, many more.

In fact, we have two lists from Borges, both pre­dictably lengthy and eccen­tric. The first con­tains 33 books that could start a fic­tion­al Library of Babel, among which we find Jack Lon­don and Her­man Melville along­side occult Eng­lish writer Arthur Machen and Qing Dynasty Chi­nese writer Pu Songling. Borges’ sec­ond list spans 74 titles, and was intend­ed, before his death, to expand to 100. Pat­ti Smith also rec­om­mends Melville in her list, as well as Mikhail Bul­gakov, Louisa May Alcott, and her hero, Arthur Rim­baud. Tyson’s list is short, only 8 titles, and he sug­gests these books not only for the avid read­er but—in answer to a Redditor’s question—for “every sin­gle intel­li­gent per­son on the plan­et.”

And Stew­art Brand? Well, his list of 76 books is one of many such lists (includ­ing anoth­er one from Bri­an Eno) for his Long Now Foundation’s “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion,” a library meant to inspire and inform the few intel­li­gent peo­ple left on Earth in the event of cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse.

Find the com­plete list of lists above. 28 in total. In some cas­es, the titles in each post link to online text or audio books freely avail­able online. And, sep­a­rate­ly, you should not miss our list of 74 essen­tial books rec­om­mend­ed by “a group of inter­na­tion­al women writ­ers, artists and cura­tors.”  Please let us know in the com­ments if there are any espe­cial­ly good lists not men­tioned here–ones you think our read­ers would do well to con­sult.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

100 Nov­els All Kids Should Read Before Leav­ing High School

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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J.M. Coetzee on the Pleasures of Writing: Total Engagement, Hard Thought & Productiveness

in Books, Literature, Writing | November 24th, 2016

Mar­tin Amis once crit­i­cized his fel­low nov­el­ist J.M. Coet­zee for writ­ing in a style “pred­i­cat­ed on trans­mit­ting absolute­ly no plea­sure.” This con­fused those of us read­ers who enjoy both men’s books, but then British tra­di­tion, of which Amis has been an inher­i­tor as well as a crit­ic, says that if some­one gets put on a pedestal, you must at least try to knock them down. The South African Coet­zee, win­ner of one Nobel Prize and two Book­ers, does­n’t exact­ly want for acclaim, but his stark prose and ascetic, ultra-seri­ous images hard­ly make him seem like an author drunk on his own lit­er­ary pow­er.

In a con­tro­ver­sial pro­file, Coet­zee’s coun­try­man Rian Malan wrote that “a col­league who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once.” We might expect the author of books like Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians, Dis­grace, and Eliz­a­beth Costel­lo to declare what he declares in the inter­view clip above: “Writ­ing, in itself, as an activ­i­ty, is nei­ther beau­ti­ful nor con­sol­ing. It’s indus­try.” Yet he does cred­it it with cer­tain plea­sures, “the plea­sures of total engage­ment, hard thought, ver­i­fi­able activ­i­ty, ver­i­fi­able results. Pro­duc­tive­ness.”

“Hav­ing writ­ten the book, being able to look back on hav­ing com­plet­ed the book, may or may not be con­sol­ing, but writ­ing a book is quite dif­fer­ent.” Work, asks the inter­view­er? “Yes. It’s good work.” And why do this work in the first place? Coet­zee would advise against the mis­sion of “trans­form­ing the world into the world as it should be. That would be too much of a task if one under­took it every time.” He finds “grasp­ing the world as it is, putting it with­in a cer­tain frame, tam­ing it to a cer­tain extent” — tam­ing “its wild­ness, its dis­or­der, its chaos” — “quite enough of an ambi­tion.”

These words come from an episode of the Dutch doc­u­men­tary series Of Beau­ty and Con­so­la­tion on Coet­zee which aired in 2000, after the pub­li­ca­tion of Boy­hood but before that of Youth and Sum­mer­time, the books of his tril­o­gy of par­tial­ly fic­tion­al­ized “autre­bi­og­ra­phy” in which he grasps frames, and tames the events of his own expe­ri­ence. “I haven’t for­got­ten the mis­eries of my child­hood,” he says, going on to insist that mis­ery has no beau­ty in itself. “I have plen­ty of hap­py moments in my child­hood, many of which are in the book. The rich­ness of those moments depends very heav­i­ly on their being embed­ded in a cer­tain life. A book is a way to bring that life to life,” in its plea­sures and sor­rows alike.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read and Hear Famous Writ­ers (and Arm­chair Sports­men) J.M. Coet­zee and Paul Auster’s Cor­re­spon­dence

Lists of the Best Sen­tences — Open­ing, Clos­ing, and Oth­er­wise — in Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els

The Read­er: A Touch­ing South African TV Com­mer­cial Cel­e­brates Lit­er­a­cy and Scotch

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stewart Brand’s List of 76 Books for Rebuilding Civilization

in Books, Education | November 16th, 2016

When the future looks dim, we can attend to the present with furi­ous agency, spin­ning from task to task, for­get­ting for days on end to prac­tice fore­thought. How much of this comes from tech-addled infor­ma­tion over­load and how much from phys­i­o­log­i­cal respons­es to real impend­ing dan­ger is anyone’s guess. But both sources of anx­i­ety dri­ve away thoughts of what Stew­art Brand— futur­ist, founder of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log, and one of Ken Kesey’s band of Mer­ry Pranksters—calls the “Long Now,” also the name of his foun­da­tion advo­cat­ing “the long view and the tak­ing of long-term respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

But, you may object, we think of our chil­dren, and maybe of our grand­chil­dren, too. Yet when Brand says long, he doesn’t mean 25, 50, or 100 years in the future. Inspired by an imag­ined clock that ticks away years, cen­turies, and mil­len­nia (and which Long Now is actu­al­ly build­ing) the foun­da­tion aims to cre­ate a ver­sion of Isaac Asi­mov’s “library of the deep future.” Long Now—whose board includes Bri­an Eno, Wired founder Kevin Kel­ly, and dig­i­tal map maven David Rumsey—refers to their library as the “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion,” a some­what grandiose title for a very ambi­tious project: an archive to help rebuild civ­i­liza­tion in case of dec­i­ma­tion or cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse.

Many of the board mem­bers—like Kel­ly and Eno—have sub­mit­ted their own lists of rec­om­men­da­tions for titles to add to the col­lec­tion of 3,500 books. (We’ve fea­tured Eno’s list in a pre­vi­ous post.) The sam­pling of con­trib­u­tors so far is hard­ly a diverse group, and read­ers have point­ed out that the sam­pling of authors (it’s over­whelm­ing­ly male) isn’t either. That per­fect­ly legit­i­mate crit­i­cism aside, these lists do pro­vide us with ways of think­ing about the kinds of books some pos­si­ble future might need to rebuild. Would ancient Greek epics like The Ili­ad and The Odyssey have much rel­e­vance if the world lost its cul­tur­al wealth, along with the mil­lions of ref­er­ences to Homer?

These epics, and those of Gil­gamesh and Beowulf, have much more to con­tribute than just his­tor­i­cal val­ue. What about the sci­ence fic­tion of Ian Banks? Sto­ic phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cus Aure­lius and Lucretius? Edward Gibbon’s The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (all six vol­umes)? All of these appear on Stew­art Brand’s list, but so do prac­ti­cal and enter­tain­ing sur­veys like Peter Barber’s The Map Book, and sci­en­tif­ic texts like Paul G. Hewitt’s Con­cep­tu­al Physics and Theodore Gray’s The Ele­ments: A Visu­al Explo­ration of Every Known Atom in the Uni­verse.

Whether we can rea­son­ably expect these books to sur­vive hun­dreds or thou­sands of years from now is maybe beside the point. It’s an exer­cise in futur­ol­o­gy. Long Now rep­re­sents both “a mech­a­nism and a myth,” Brand has writ­ten. His heavy empha­sis on illus­trat­ed non­fic­tion sug­gests some crit­i­cal acknowl­edge­ment that future read­ers may not be flu­ent and may have few mem­o­ries of what things once looked like (espe­cial­ly through micro­scopes and tele­scopes). His heavy empha­sis on clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture and almost exclu­sive­ly Euro­pean his­to­ry shows a par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al bias that may have lit­tle jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

See a select­ed list of 20 titles from Brand’s list below, and see the full list of 76 books at the Long Now Foun­da­tion site here. Find his list myopic or miss­ing some key areas of knowl­edge? Sug­gest your own addi­tions in the com­ments.

The Sto­ry of Writ­ing: Alpha­bets, Hiero­glyphs & Pic­tograms by Andrew Robin­son

Brave New World (The Folio Soci­ety) by Aldous Hux­ley and illus­trat­ed by Leonard Roso­man

Dune by Frank Her­bert

The Sin­gu­lar­i­ty is Near: When Humans Tran­scend Biol­o­gy by Ray Kurzweil

One True God: His­tor­i­cal Con­se­quences of Monothe­ism by Rod­ney Stark

The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order by Samuel P. Hunt­ing­ton

The Idea of Decline in West­ern His­to­ry by Arthur Her­man

What Tech­nol­o­gy Wants by Kevin Kel­ly

The Long Sum­mer: How Cli­mate Changed Civ­i­liza­tion by Bri­an Fagan

A His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tions by Fer­nand Braudel

The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy by Isaac Asi­mov

The Prince by Machi­avel­li, trans­lat­ed by George Bull, pub­lished by Folio Soci­ety

The Nature of Things by Lucretius

The Ili­ad by Homer trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles

The Mem­o­ry of the World: The Trea­sures That Record Our His­to­ry from 1700 BC to the Present Day by UNESCO

The Land­mark Herodotus: The His­to­ries edit­ed by Robert B. Strassler

Brand is not so mod­est as to exclude his own work, list­ing his How Build­ings Learn: What Hap­pens After They’re Built as a can­di­date for a declin­ing or post-apoc­a­lyp­tic world. That book is also a six-part BBC series, with music by Bri­an Eno. You can watch the first episode at the top of the post and find all six parts at our pre­vi­ous post on Brand here.

Again, Brand’s com­plete list of 76 books can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Carl Sagan’s Ambitious College Reading List: Plato, Shakespeare, Gide, and Plenty of Philosophy, Math & Physics (1954)

in Books, Science | November 14th, 2016

List of titles that Carl Sagan planned to read during one of his semesters at the University of Chicago. Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Carl Sagan may have passed away almost twen­ty years ago, but he con­tin­ues to influ­ence minds of all gen­er­a­tions through intel­lec­tu­al heirs like Neil DeGrasse Tyson (host of the remake of Sagan’s beloved 1980 TV series Cos­mos) as well as through the books he wrote in his life­time. But what books influ­enced Sagan, launch­ing him on the jour­ney toward astron­o­my, cos­mol­o­gy, astro­physics, astro­bi­ol­o­gy, and glob­al celebri­ty? Thanks to the Library of Con­gress’ Carl Sagan Archive, we now know at least forty titles from the no doubt volu­mi­nous amount of read­ing mate­r­i­al he digest­ed dur­ing his youth and edu­ca­tion.

Sagan wrote this read­ing list (which a fan has tran­scribed with links and post­ed to Red­dit) in 1954, as an under­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. On it he iden­ti­fies the books, as a young Charles Dar­win once wrote on his own list, to be read, whether whol­ly, par­tial­ly, or as a part of his course­work:

In Whole

In Part

Course Read­ings:

Pret­ty ambi­tious mate­r­i­al for a twen­ty-year-old, but remem­ber: we’re talk­ing about some­one who, around a decade ear­li­er, had already sketched out his ideas for human­i­ty’s space­far­ing future. It makes sense that such a child would grow up to read sci­ence fic­tion — and with the pub­li­ca­tion of Con­tact thir­ty years after that, write it — and even that he would take up math­e­mat­ics and physics as a course of aca­d­e­m­ic study.

But it takes a mind like Sagan’s not to lose sight of the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the non­spe­cial­ist pub­lic, as evi­denced by the pres­ence on his list of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can and Extra­or­di­nary Pop­u­lar Delu­sions. Nor did he neglect, even before his career began, the need to con­tex­tu­al­ize sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies in the realm of human thought and feel­ing, which extends from Pla­to and the Bible to Shake­speare, André Gide, and John Gun­ther — that last writer’s work, and cer­tain oth­er vol­umes on his list, also show­ing an advanced con­scious­ness of human lim­i­ta­tions and mor­tal­i­ty. All of it placed Sagan well, despite his trun­cat­ed time on Earth, to do work that will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

New Carl Sagan Archive Fea­tures His Dig­i­tized Home Movies, Stu­dent Jour­nal­ism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear 20 Minutes of Mark Frost’s New Secret History of Twin Peaks, the Book Fans Have Waited 25 Years to Read

in Audio Books, Books, Television | October 31st, 2016

We live in a good time to be a Twin Peaks fan. Amid the buzz of a third sea­son of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s inno­v­a­tive­ly sur­re­al prime­time dra­ma pre­mier­ing on Show­time next year, we’ve enjoyed the emer­gence of con­tem­po­rary Twin Peaks-relat­ed mate­ri­als (David Lynch’s hand-drawn map of the tit­u­lar small-town set­ting, the Japan­ese cof­fee com­mer­cials he set there) as well as new­er Twin Peaks-themed projects from oth­er cre­ators (an Atari game, an ele­men­tary school play). And now we can read Frost’s nov­el The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks, billed by its pub­lish­er as “the sto­ry mil­lions of fans have been wait­ing to get their hands on for 25 long years.”

The nov­el­’s “362 pages cov­er what hap­pened to some of the peo­ple of that icon­ic fic­tion­al town since we last saw them 25 years ago, but the time­line starts as ear­ly as the 1800s with the jour­nals of Lewis and Clark,” says fan site Wel­come to Twin Peaks. It also “also offers a deep­er glimpse into the cen­tral mys­tery that was only touched on by the orig­i­nal series, and will include over 100 four-col­or illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs.” The near­ly ten-hour audio­book ver­sion fea­tures the voic­es of orig­i­nal cast mem­bers like Michael Horse as Deputy Hawk, Russ Tam­blyn as Dr. Lawrence Jaco­by, and most Twin Peaks of all, Kyle MacLach­lan as FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

In the video and audio clips at the top of the post, you can sam­ple The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’ audio­book expe­ri­ence and get a sense of how it dif­fers from that of a nor­mal audio­book — and how the text itself dif­fers from that of a stan­dard nov­el. It takes the form not of a straight-ahead nar­ra­tive but a thor­ough FBI dossier, the print ver­sion of which Mered­ith Bor­ders of Birth.Movies.Death. describes as “an attrac­tive mul­ti-media hodge­podge, with Xerox­ed mani­la fold­ers and sticky notes, arrest reports, book cov­ers, pho­tos and sketch­es and maps and news­pa­per clip­pings.” The longer excerpt here delves into the sto­ry of Josie Packard, the wid­owed own­er of Packard Sawmill and a par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter in a cast of mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ters. Not to give too much away, but her past involves a fash­ion empire, a Hong Kong drug tri­ad, and a “leg­en­dar­i­ly beau­ti­ful pros­ti­tute.”

As always in Twin Peaks, the more you learn, the stranger things get. But a true fan wants just that, and they can have it and then some by pick­ing up their own copy of the book or audio­book, the lat­ter of which they can get for free if they take audio­book provider Audi­ble up on their 30-day tri­al offer.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Hauntingly Animates Paris’ Famed Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

in Animation, Books | October 26th, 2016

Since his break­out ear­ly days direct­ing com­mer­cials and music videos for the likes of Fat­boy Slim, Weez­er, Daft Punk, and the Breed­ers, Spike Jonze has honed a quirky visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that trans­lat­ed almost seam­less­ly to fea­ture film. But even at his quirki­est, Jonze hasn’t been about quirk for quirk’s sake. His characters—highly emo­tion­al robots, dog-head­ed men with bro­ken legs, tor­ment­ed pup­peteers, enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur dance troops—are under­dogs, weirdos, fig­ures on the fringes who make us ques­tion what it means to be peo­ple: to be lone­ly, in love, cre­ative­ly obsessed, and emo­tion­al­ly scram­bled.…

There is a para­dox inher­ent in Jonze’s films and videos. Their odd­ball plots and char­ac­ters cut through the cyn­i­cal veneer of cool that keeps us from ask­ing hard ques­tions about our emo­tion­al lives, but they do so in styl­is­tic exer­cis­es that in some cas­es them­selves become emblems of pop-cul­ture cool. Not so the short film “Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”), which takes its title from one of the most aching­ly heart­break­ing of Smiths’ songs. This is a love sto­ry for the book­ish and the crafty, set in Paris’ famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny book­store and fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed book cov­ers made from embroi­dered felt cutouts.

Co-writ­ten and with a look inspired by design­er Olympia Le-Tan, the short is “an absolute­ly beau­ti­ful stop-motion ani­ma­tion for book-lovers that’s part This Is Where We Live, part Going West, part cre­ative mag­ic only Spike Jonze can bring.” So writes Maria Popo­va at The Atlantic, sum­ma­riz­ing the ups and downs of the plot and allud­ing to a “hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing” that “comes only after an appro­pri­ate­ly dark and grim twist.”

Watch “To Die by Your Side” at the top of the post, then, just above, see a short behind-the-scenes teas­er video. “You just start with what the feel­ing is,” Jonze told Now­ness in an inter­view, “Me and Olympia both want­ed to make a love sto­ry.… It evolved nat­u­ral­ly and it all just start­ed with the feel­ing. From there you enter­tain your­self with ideas that excite you.” The quote explains why Jonze’s films and videos—for all their visu­al inven­tive­ness and imag­i­na­tive whimsy—nearly always stay ground­ed in can­did emo­tion­al real­ism. How­ev­er far and wide Jonze’ cin­e­mat­ic and nar­ra­tive  imag­i­na­tion takes us, his films always start with the feel­ing.

“Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”) first appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze and Beast­ie Boys, Togeth­er Again

Spike Jonze’s Imag­i­na­tive TV Ads

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook Collects Recipes From T.C. Boyle, Marina Abramović, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates & More

in Books, Food & Drink | October 25th, 2016

writers-cookbook-cover

The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book: A Col­lec­tion of Sto­ries with Recipes © 2016, edit­ed by Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett, illus­trat­ed by Amy Jean Porter, pub­lished by pow­er­House Books..

There will nev­er not be a mar­ket for the cook­book, with all its var­i­ous sub­cat­e­gories, from fad diet to celebri­ty chef. While The Onion’s pro­posed “Niet­zschean Diet” (which “lets you eat what­ev­er you fear most”) may nev­er catch on, one unusu­al cook­book niche does involve the recipes of famous writ­ers, artists, musi­cians and oth­er high- and pop-cul­ture fig­ures. The genre flour­ished in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, with Swingers & Singers in the Kitchen in 1967, Sal­vador Dalí’s Les Din­ers de Gala in 1973, and the MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book in 1978.

ajp_boyle_camel

Pre­dat­ing these celebri­ty recipe books, The Artists’ & Writ­ers’ Cook­book appeared in 1961. Brain Pick­ings describes the book as “a lav­ish 350-page vin­tage tome, illus­trat­ed with 19th-cen­tu­ry engrav­ings and orig­i­nal draw­ings by Mar­cel Duchamp, Robert Osbourn, and Alexan­dre Istrati.” It fea­tured 220 recipes by painters, nov­el­ists, poets, and sculp­tors like Man Ray, John Keats, Robert Graves, Harp­er Lee, Georges Simenon, and more. What’s old has become new again, with the recent reprint­ing of Dalí’s cook­book by Taschen and, on Octo­ber 11th, the pub­li­ca­tion of an updat­ed Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book, edit­ed by Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett and illus­trat­ed by Amy Jean Porter.

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The 2016 ver­sion includes recipes from such liv­ing artists as Edwidge Dan­ti­cat, Ed Ruscha, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates, James Fran­co, Nik­ki Gio­van­ni, Mari­na Abramović, and many more. The recipes range from the whim­si­cal (see T.C. Boyle’s “Baked Camel (Stuffed)” fur­ther up) to the thor­ough­ly metaphor­i­cal (as in Abramović’s “Essen­tial Aphro­disi­ac Recipes,” above). In-between, we have such stan­dard fare as “The Util­i­tar­i­an, Amer­i­can-Style PB&J: An Artist’s Best Friend,” cour­tesy of Fran­co, which calls for the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents:

wheat bread
peanut but­ter
jel­ly
gin­ger ale (option­al)
pick­les (option­al)

Hait­ian nov­el­ist Edwidge Dan­ti­cat takes a seri­ous approach with a tra­di­tion­al recipe for “Soup Joumou.” She pref­aces this more exten­sive dish with a poet­ic descrip­tion of its nation­al impor­tance, con­clud­ing that it is con­sumed “as a sign of our inde­pen­dence, as a cel­e­bra­tion of a new begin­ning.…” The recipe may send you to the gro­cery, but—especially this time of year—you’ll find all of the ingre­di­ents at your near­est chain store:

1 pump­kin between 2–3 pounds, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 pound cab­bage, sliced and chopped
4 car­rots, peeled and sliced
3 stalks cel­ery, sliced and chopped
1 large onion, cut into small pieces
5 pota­toes, peeled and cubed
2 turnips, peeled and cubed (option­al)
1 lime cut in half and squeezed for a much juice as you can get from it
¼ pound mac­a­roni
3 gar­lic cloves, crushed or cut into small pieces
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig pars­ley
2 tea­spoons salt
2 tea­spoons ground pep­per
1 Scotch bay­o­net pep­per

Sounds deli­cious.

Neil Gaiman keeps things very sim­ple with “Coraline’s Cheese Omelette,” intro­duced with an excerpt from that dark children’s fan­ta­sy. For this, you like­ly have all you need on hand:

2 eggs
but­ter
cheese
1 table­spoon milk
a pinch of salt

The essays and nar­ra­tives in the new The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book are “at turns,” writes edi­tor Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett, “comedic and heart-wrench­ing, per­son­al and apoc­a­lyp­tic, with recipes that are enchant­i­ng to read and recre­ate.” As you can see from the small sam­pling here, you need not have any pre­ten­tions to haute cui­sine to fol­low most of them. And as the book’s subtitle—“A Col­lec­tion of Sto­ries with Recipes”—suggests, you needn’t cook at all to find joy in this diverse assem­blage of artists and writ­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions with food, that most per­son­al and inti­mate, yet also cul­tur­al­ly defin­ing and com­mu­nal of sub­jects. Pick up a copy of The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch 52,000 Books Getting Reshelved at The New York Public Library in a Short, Timelapse Film

in Books | October 24th, 2016

After being closed for 2+ years for repairs and restora­tion, The New York Pub­lic Library’s his­toric Rose Main Read­ing Room reopened ear­li­er this month. Above, you can watch 52,000 books get­ting reshelved in a quick, two-minute time­lapse film. Books get­ting reshelved. Paint dry­ing. A time lapse film can make every­thing inter­est­ing.

Then watch this very relat­ed item: The New York Pub­lic Library Unveils a Cut­ting-Edge Train That Deliv­ers Books.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

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