A Good Deep Read To Commemorate MLK

If you’re like me, you’re already eyeing a fat stack of books to run through this year.  The holiday break gave me time to finish my essential magazine reading — articles I just couldn’t part with that were gathering dust in my file cabinet (Yup. Got one dedicated to articles). Like the Interview magazine exchange about synesthesia between Pharrell and Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, or this NYT art review of a show centered on Moroccon boucherouite rugs and full of beautifully wrought skepticism.

We have one more holiday coming soon – the long weekend for the celebration of MLK Day, the last before we’ll be forced to look 2011 square in the face and embrace all the new titles it will offer. I’ll be using the weekend to dig into a last review of 2010 books. Below, from president blink blink (a blog I often turn to for reading recommendations) some of the reads I’ll be considering, fitting for a holiday that honors a freedom fighter.

Recap: Reads of the Year, 2010

Susie Linfield, Living With The Enemy
Guernica
On the living limits of reconciliation as a political ideal.

Ross McKibbin, Time to Repent
London Review of Books
Britain’s new political settlement, and where the fuck Labour went.

Daisy Rockwell as Lapata, The Reluctant Feudalist
Chapati Mystery
Can what is said of Sadat Hasan Manto also be said of Daniyal Mueenuddin? A literary investigation.

Dibussi Tande, Undermining African Intellectual and Artistic Rights; Shakira, Zangalewa and the World Cup Anthem
Scribbles from the Den
A brief history of the double standard of artistic property for African artists.

Alma Guillermoprieto, The Murderers of Mexico
New York Review of Books
War as theatre.

Basharat Peer, Tear Gas Over Batamaloo
The National Interest
What is at play, and what at stake, in Kashmir this year.

Brian Phillips, Pelé as a Comedian
The Run of Play
Perhaps David Foster Wallace’s notion of the delight we take in sport as religious experience undermines itself.

Amitava Kumar, Birth of a Salesman
Guernica
In the War on Terror, an FBI informant’s doppelganger is the terrorist suspect.

Rafia Zakaria, Muslim Grrrls
Guernica
A lawyer investigates how Sharia and feminism go hand-in-hand.

Jacqueline Rose, ‘J’accuse;’ Dreyfus in our times
London Review of Books
Possibly my favourite this year. Justice is an infinite affair.

If none of these pique your interest, maybe Roswitha has something more up your alley here.