One of the most important aspects of being a good writer is also being a good reader. Both characteristics require consistency and practice as one continues to evolve their craft. Both Nakita and Michele of The Drawing Board are avid readers that have a perpetually evolving reading list. It’s often hard to nail down just what we are reading at any given time because it changes daily, but here is a list of current books, open to varying degrees, on Nakita’s desk. Let’s hope they inspire and feel free to share your reading list too!
Patterns of Culture: Ruth Benedict – In Patterns of Culture, Benedict presents sketches of three cultures, the Zuni, the Dobu, and the Kwakiutl, and uses these cultures to elaborate her theory of ‘culture as personality-writ-large.’ Before introducing the ethnographies, Benedict includes two theoretical chapters and introduces the term ‘pattern,’ which she interchanges with similar phrases in the rest of the text.
Introduction to Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger – This is the published version of a lecture course he gave in the Summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg. The book is famous for its powerful reinterpretation of Greek thought. The content of these lectures was not published in Germany until 1953.
In the Name of Identity: Amin Maalouf – In this work, Maalouf discusses the identity crisis which Arabs have experienced since the establishment of continuous relationships with the west, adding his personal dimension as a Christian Arab. The book is intended for both Arabs and Westerners (as well as for people with mixed heritage). This work is divided into five major chapters, “Identity and Belonging”, “When Modernity Comes From the Other”, “The Era of Cosmic Tribals”, “Taming the Shrew” and a glossary. He begins with universal values of identity, which he dissects, describes the extremes, then applies them to the Levant. He tries to describe how the average modern Arab feels, along a wide spectrum of ideologies in practice throughout the Arab world…from religious beliefs and traditional practices to total secularism. The book also sheds light on recent events in the Arab world, from civil wars to relations with the west.
Islam Observed: Clifford Geertz – “In four brief chapters,” writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, “I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan.”
On the Genealogy of Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche – An1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated essays that expand and follow through on doctrines Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three Abhandlungen trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to undermining “moral prejudices”, specifically those of Christianity and Judaism.Some Nietzsche scholars consider Genealogy to be a work of sustained brilliance and power as well as his masterpiece. Since its publication, it has influenced many authors and philosophers.
The Yacoubian Building: Alaa-Al-Aswany – Published in Arabic in 2002 and in an English translation in 2004, the book, ostensibly set in 1990 at about the time of the first Gulf War, is a roman à clef and scathing portrayal of modern Egyptian society since the Revolution of 1952. The locale of the novel is downtown Cairo, with the titular apartment building (which actually exists) serving as both a metaphor for contemporary Egypt and a unifying location in which most of the primary characters either live or work and in which much of the novel’s action takes place. The author, a dentist by profession, had his first office in the Yacoubian Building in Cairo.The Yacoubian Building was the best-selling Arabic novel for 2002 and 2003, and was voted Best Novel for 2003 by listeners to Egypt’s Middle East Broadcasting Service. It has been translated into 23 languages worldwide.
Archaeology of Knowledge: Michel Foucault – The premise of the book is that systems of thought and knowledge (“epistemes” or “discursive formations”) are governed by rules (beyond those of grammar and logic) which operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought and language use in a given domain and period. Most prominently in its Introduction and Conclusion, the book also becomes a philosophical treatment and critique of phenomenological and dogmatic structural readings of history and philosophy, portraying continuous narratives as naïve ways of projecting our own consciousness onto the past, thus being exclusive and excluding. Characteristically, Foucault demonstrates his political motivations, personal projects and preoccupations, and, explicitly and implicitly, the many influences that inform the discourse of the time.
With over a quarter of the year left to go in 2015, we have already quadrupled our readership and the numbers just keep going up.
The Drawing Board 