Here are 100 books that Silence fans have personally recommended if you like
Silence.
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She really gets at the heart of how Brown and Black bodies are seen, and what is fascinating to me is the approach through current “technical art” and a good discussion of architecture. I had a class focus on her discussion—lengthy—about surveillance and race. It’s extremely poignant, and something whites especially just don’t think about. I will never again go through an airport without thinking about her book.
In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the…
Lyons' 100 Best Jazz Albums shaped my listening for a long, long time. His references to Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, and Art Ensemble were well-written and hugely informed. Some of the choices are now extremely dated, but it is a great overview of the history of jazz (up to the early 1980s). It could give even an experienced listener or artist some pointers about where to round out their listening. Jazz is twice as old now (as a genre) as it was when I was coming up, so there’s so much more to listen to, and so much more has happened. This book should be a listening test for every student and faculty member—especially everything Duke and before and after Monk.
T.N. Krishnan’s book discusses Carnatic (south Indian) music in depth, sure. But more importantly, he discusses why music matters, what it’s for, emotion, and human existence. It’s a primer in art, philosophy, and intention. Read it along with Ramani Maharshi’s writings, and one is pretty much ready to be fully human.
One of the foremost Karnatik vocalists today, T.M. Krishna writes lucidly and passionately about the form, its history, its problems and where it stands todayT.M. Krishna begins his sweeping exploration of the tradition of Karnatik music with a fundamental question: what is music? Taking nothing for granted and addressing readers from across the spectrum - musicians, musicologists as well as laypeople - Krishna provides a path-breaking overview of south Indian classical music.
I want to live in a future where all life can thrive. Toward that end, I spend my days teaching and writing about how we can solve the problems we face in our communities and world and build such a future. No surprise then that I read extensively about solutions to problems, looking for those that are visionary while being practical and which truly strive to do the most good and least harm for everyone. As a systems thinker, I’m always looking for books that recognize how interconnected our political, economic, production, food, legal, energy, and other systems are and that offer ideas that will have the fewest unintended negative consequences.
I’m not a fan of either Doomsday or Pollyanna-ish books, especially in relation to climate change. I’ve read lots of books on this subject, and this is my favorite.
It doesn’t shy away from explaining what’s at stake and what is likely to happen if we don’t stop the escalation of climate-heating gases in our atmosphere, but it offers us a path toward solving this potential catastrophe that we can and must take together.
'Everyone should read this book' MATT HAIG 'One of the most inspiring books I have ever read' YUVAL NOAH HARARI 'Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW' MARK RUFFALO 'Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world' NAOMI KLEIN
*****
Discover why there's hope for the planet and how we can each make a difference in the climate crisis, starting today.
Humanity is not doomed, and we can and will survive. The future is ours to create: it will be shaped by who we…
I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.
Like Lisa Wells, I’ve spent years looking up to many possible heroes in my dream of making the world a better place. So much inspiration out there, and yet all our heroes become flawed the more we learn about them. How to remain hopeful when we find out the truth? Only through poetry, art, beauty, intensity. One of the finest books of the year, impossible to categorize.
"An essential document of our time." ―Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering
In search of answers and action, the award-winning poet and essayist Lisa Wells brings us Believers, introducing trailblazers and outliers from across the globe who have found radically new ways to live and reconnect to the Earth in the face of climate change
We find ourselves at the end of the world. How, then, shall we live?
Like most of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by increasingly urgent news of climate change on an apocalyptic scale. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes, but…
I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.
From the guy who came up with the phrase “Occupy Wall Street” is a manifesto for questioning authority and turning the tools of advertising and persuasion against the man. Lasn understood what memes really are before the internet trivialized the concept. He reminds us of the transformational power of simple, clear, addictive ideas.
"Engrossing, exciting [...] This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics ..." —Literary Review of Canada
"Thought-provoking and creative" — Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics
"Meme Wars is a Molotov cocktail tossed into the boardroom. "— Calgary Herald
From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a…
Born in England but living now in America’s mountain west, I am sucker for landscapes that dance with unusual plants and animals. I have been a commercial fisherman, a tool librarian, and a back-country park ranger. These days, I’m an award-winning public philosopher and author. I have written books and articles about powerful emerging technologies. However, I realized a few years ago that wild animals are an antidote to the technological and commercial forces that can flatten our world. From art painted on cave walls millennia ago to the toys we still give to our children, animals are an important part of human identity. I celebrate this in my work.
We are such a visual species that it is easy to forget how the other senses contribute to the colorful world we share. Moore’s elegant account of the sounds that rumple the aether through which we move opened my eyes (and especially my ears).
Moore is known for her ability to wrap beautiful words around important concepts. Like me, she is trained as a philosopher. Her blend of poetry and insightfulness is fully displayed in this rare homily for nature’s sounds.
Moore worries about their loss as the noise of industry drowns out nature’s own voice. But I would read a chapter before bed each day and drift off to sleep accompanied by lullabies sung by the remarkable kin who share our world.
At once joyous and somber, this thoughtful gathering of new and selected essays spans Kathleen Dean Moore's distinguished career as a tireless advocate for environmental activism in the face of climate change.
In this meditation on the music of the natural world, Moore celebrates the call of loons, howl of wolves, bellow of whales, laughter of children, and shriek of frogs, even as she warns of the threats against them. Each group of essays moves, as Moore herself has been moved, from celebration to lamentation to bewilderment and finally to the determination to act in defense of wild songs and…
How do we decide what is true and untrue, what is real and what isn’t? It’s something I’ve tried to understand since I was a child. In each book I chose, a character has to face a universe completely unlike what they’d believed—in some cases, what they’d spent their entire lives devoted to. How someone would react in such a situation is deeply fascinating to me, and each of these books has not only stayed with me for years but has profoundly influenced my own writing and worldview.
I love books that explore how ordinary people might react in extraordinary circumstances, and this one takes that to another level.
The main characters, Tengo and Aomame, see that the world has changed—the most obvious clue being that there are now two moons in the sky—and it is fascinating to watch how these two very different people cope with living in a new and mysterious context. Murakami has a knack for making the surreal seem believable, and in this book, he is at the top of his game.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her.
She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course…
I have always seen my life as a journey, with lessons to be learnt along the way. Adventures on land and sea have drawn me into contact with many races and traditions and brought me close to nature in its many moods. When a physical journey ends, an inner journey takes me in directions I had never looked at before. Early spiritual questioning led me to eastern philosophies and made me aware of the underlying links between all cultures. In relying on my own experiences rather than what others have written, I believe my writing brings a freshness and individuality to the age-old questions of who we are and where we are going.
The innovative thinking in this book inspired me to put my original ideas into writing. Here was someone else who was looking into the profound origins of humanity and how the world is made up. It reassured me I was on the right track in associating the Major Arcana of the Tarot with the I-Ching. Michael Hayes goes further in detecting a numerical and musical synthesis between ancient doctrines and current scientific discoveries. It is not a quick read, but a real eye-opener. Whilst not agreeing with all of it, there was so much fascinating information; I had to read it through twice straight off.
This is a numerical study proving that religion and science share a common underlying structure, which is very similar to music theory. This study proposes that all the world's major religious and esoteric doctrines share a common scientific origin. Further that this hidden science is none other than musical theory: music being the true common denominator of both religious and scientific traditions. From the mysterious cults of ancient Egypt, China and India and Greece right through to the latest findings in molecular biology and particle physics, there is a law of proportions that corresponds to the rules of music.
By the age of nine, I was beginning to wonder why things were the way they were, or if indeed they were at all. Perhaps growing up the youngest of five siblings and listening to conflicting opinions set me on my course. One of my sisters introduced me to literature. I began to write plays based on Shakespeare and Monty Python. The love of absurdity took me early on. I liked books that offered a different view of reality. I still do, and it influences what I write today. I believe Borges said something to the effect that all authors keep writing the same book, just in different ways.
This is a history of classical music from 1900 onwards. I’ve always been interested in early twentieth-century western art. It seems to have veered off in radically new directions and expressed a different consciousness than what preceded it. Perhaps it was fomented by the dissolution of the relatively stable European order of the nineteenth century, shattered by the First World War.
Alex Ross discusses the music of these times and the lives of the people who composed it. He is eminently capable, being musically trained, and finds the perfect balance between the technical and the personal. I was fascinated to learn that Shostakovich was a man who lived in constant fear of being purged. He always expected to be imprisoned.
I also learned about Harry Partch, the American composer, who devised his own tuning systems and built an orchestra of strange instruments to play his music.
Alex Ross's sweeping history of twentieth-century classical music, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, is a gripping account of a musical revolution.
The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands, each influenced by its own composers, performers and musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour, Alex Ross, music critic for the 'New Yorker', explores the people and places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig, Brahms to Bjoerk, pre-First World War Vienna to 'Nixon in China'.
Above all, this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves…
