Required Reading

book recommendations, and why Will Smith sent me spiraling

I have spent the past week in state of existential shock about the future. It started when I stumbled across a video showing the progression of AI technology since its release in 2022 up to the present, visualized though the prompt of Will Smith eating spaghetti.

The side-by side really sent me… This technology is advancing far faster than we can comprehend, regulate, or control. The same week I unconsensually met Will Smith on instagram, I was having conversations with a friend who does marketing for AI start-ups. She told me about AI companions, house cleaning robots, and walls made of LED screens for home interiors that simulate larger spaces. I don’t even want to get started on these.

I was suddenly, painfully aware of where the tech is headed. I am not afraid of losing my job, like many rightfully fear. But I am truly concerned for the slow erosion and loss of critical thinking, individuality, creativity, mental health, and humanity.

I wrote this post innocently a month ago when work started to slow and I wanted to dive back into literature. But it feels more important now than before.

The idea for a “required reading” list came up when Zach and I started dating long-distance. We were getting to know each other over five-hour phone calls and 1,800 miles. We came up with the question together “If I wanted to understand you better, what is on your required reading list?” It was a way to be curious about each others interests, values, and histories.

I use this questions with friends now: I get book recommendations, you get to tell me about yourself, and together we get to celebrate more analog kinds of engagement with the world. I think that’s an act of resistance.

Below you’ll find some of my required reading (*starred*), along with a handful of books that had a capital I Impact on me, from various stages of my life. This list spans about 15 years of reading. At the end, a hand-selected list of books published by alumni of the artist residency I work for.

Please share your required reading with me so I can stay grounded and stop having nightmares about robots <3

some all time favorites

Food Writing

These are mostly memoirs, because I love a memoir. But they are also so much about food, and since food is what I think about from sun up to sun down, these are ever important.

• Blood, Bones, and Butter* by Gabrielle Hamilton. This book cracked something open in me, and made me start writing. A perfect memoir by a one-of -a-kind woman.

• Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl. I just love me some Ruth Reichl. Her writing shows how food can be both deeply personal and totally glamorous. This book follows the years she ran Gourmet magazine. RIP print media.

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. I’ve read this twice, once in print, and once as an audiobook. It’s a hard, beautiful, real memoir about Zauner’s relationship with her mother, grief, and food. Cooking//Crying.

• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Simple, radical, and really resonated with me at a young age as a manifesto for how to eat and think about food.

and Other Memoirs

• Just Kids by Patti Smith. If you haven’t read this yet, do. It’s an essential New York book about love, art, survival, and coming of age.

• Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon. I haven’t read this since high school, but Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) is still an icon. On music, art, identity, and what it is to hold your own in a male-dominated world.

Fiction

My other favorite genre, especially historical fiction (see below). These are the novels I’ve loved, that have stuck in my head like big feelings or memories. Even if I don’t remember the specifics.

• Kindred* by Octavia Butler. American history but make it time travel and speculative fiction. One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. I stayed up all night to finish it.

• All Fours by Miranda July. Pure Miranda July. She is so divisive, but I loved it. Weird, hard, funny, tender. Relatable and also not at all. Realistic but also not at all. Devoured this.

• The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. A coming-of-age story from a small dusty Texas town, by Texas’ most prolific novelist. Honest, sad, and kind of horny.

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I’ve never had the slightest interest in video games until this book. It’s about friendship and making video games. And love and death and a little magic. Plowed through.

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A majorly impactful book from late high school times. Beautifully written. A love story and also a story about identity, belonging, and immigration in America.

• The Seas by Samantha Hunt. A strange, poetic, ocean-soaked-too-short novel that reads kind of like story made up by a child. Perfect for anyone who is (overly) attached to the sea. Plus Samantha is a wonderful person.

• 1984 by George Orwell. One of the few books in my youth that really took me. It’s a classic for a reason. I feel like my consciousness expanded when I discovered dystopian fiction.

Historical Fiction

• The Postcard* by Anne Berest. One of the best novels I’ve ever read hands down. Historically accurate story of world war two, told through the discovering and sequential solving of a family mystery. Incredible (heartbreaking) recounting of the Holocaust.

• Homegoing* by Yaa Gyasi. This book completely changed the way I understood time and American history when it came out. It challenges traditional novel structure. Each chapter follows one character, spanning generations and continents. Unbelievably good, I need to re-read after just meeting her and hearing her talk. Also must read her second novel Transcendent Kingdom.

Non-Fiction

Thank you to these books for writing history and opening my world.

• Braiding Sweetgrass*: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A life-changing read. A huge part of the source material for my undergraduate thesis. Kimmerer writes about ecology, reciprocity, and the value of indigenous knowledge.

• The Perfect Vehicle*: What It Is About Motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. I love love Holbrook’s writing voice. I also love riding motorcycles. Give this book to anyone in your life that likes a motor between their legs. It’s a deeply personal (and feminist) take on motorcycle history. Like a good long essay. I want to read her book about horses too.

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. A book that taught me why gossip is so important to human evolution. Along with so much more.

• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. I mean, it’s Didion we’re talking about!! A whole lot of California and historical vignettes. These are essays that make me want to write. RIP legend <3

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Books by Lighthouse Works fellows

A huge perk of my job is an close look at books by emerging authors. These are the ones I’ve read (and loved), and the ones that I am going to read asap (below).

• The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes. Oh Anna, my dear friend, I loved this book. A dark and mesmerizing novel about witches, sisterhood, and myth. Each sentence reads like a piece of dessert. The story is set on remote Nordic island but is so clearly inspired by Fishers Island, which made me eat it up.

• Worry by Alexandra Tanner. Funny af, dark af, anda very relatable novel about two millennial sisters living together in Brooklyn. Alex really nails the story of becoming an adult in the age of the internet. Another sisterhood book, but more chaotic. And in the works for TV!

• Who You Might Be by Leigh N. Gallagher. A very beautiful coming-of-age story following multiple characters in different parts of the country that ends up (kind of) weaving together. Painful read, just because Leigh so well captures the pain of adolescence.

• Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan. Kind of like a book of poetry but it’s a novel, based on real interviews with a horse trainer.

• We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper. Fittingly for Becky’s career, this reads like a long New Yorker article. It is true crime meets memoir and a very thoughtful investigation into academia, power, and obsession.

Want to Read:

• Aftershocks: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu

• Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda

• Moon and the Mars by Kia Corthron

• The Sisters K by Maureen Sun

• The Ballad of Big Feelings by Ari Braverman

• Fiona and Jane by Jean Ho

• The Time of the Novel by Lara Mimosa Montes

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