![]() ![]() ![]() Alexievich’s work shows memory is as much about what we experienced then as now. Vox’s Anna North and I put together an oral history of the pandemic from the view of a New York City block, but Secondhand Time made me wonder what people might say in another year, or five, or 10. This made me think of how we will remember this time - the pandemic, but also the social, political, and economic upheaval that accompanied it. The past gets reframed in the chaos of the present. With that comes nostalgia for Soviet rule, even as people tell harrowing stories of life under it. Together, the oral histories reveal a collective disillusionment with the end of communism, and the gangster capitalism and corruption that replaces it. ![]() What you get are these intimate portraits of daily life framed against the turmoil of the breakup of the USSR. Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015, lets her subjects talk. Alexievich’s book documents the collapse of the Soviet Union through the oral histories of the people who lived it - the soldiers, former party leaders, factory workers. Secondhand Time was a reminder that endings are rarely so simple. That anniversary coincided with America’s expanded vaccination campaign, and it came with this sense that, finally, this might all be over. I picked up S econdhand Time in early 2021, around the anniversary of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich You just have to dig around a bit (or read Alexander’s work) to understand what is being said. Proof! was another reminder to me that everything in the world - even the things that seem the most absurd - is the product of a cultural and social history. But when I picked up Amir Alexander’s book, Proof!, he took me on a tour of Euclidian geometry, French gardens, and absolute monarchies, which culminated, eventually, in an explanation for why the map of DC is the way it is. I didn’t think I’d ever feel wonder, or even appreciation. I have felt a lot of things about the layout of the streets of Washington, DC: anger, frustration, general incredulousness that such a nonintuitive mess is allowed to exist. Proof!: How the World Became Geometrical by Amir Alexander Because what could be more interesting than how people live? - Constance Grady, book critic That’s the one that offers up Colwin’s philosophy, her reason for “frittering away her time” on simple domestic concerns like what people eat and the way they eat it. Both are excellent, but if you must choose one, go for More Home Cooking. Home Cooking and More Home Cooking have both been reissued this year as part of Harper Perennial and Vintage’s Year of Laurie Colwin. But since her death, a cult has developed around her food writing, the columns she wrote for Gourmet magazine in which she celebrated her own domestic life: washing dishes in the bathtub of her tiny East Village apartment, nursing a hangover with veal medallions and watercress, feasting on a roasted turkey neck she kept back for herself after Thanksgiving “without a trace of guilt, because I did all the work.” Colwin’s food writing is built on a commitment to good, simple food, cooked very well what she describes in one of her novels as a sort of domestic sensuality. I like to know how they serve food, what they do with it, how it looks.”Ĭolwin, who died in 1992, was celebrated in her lifetime as a quietly elegant novelist of quirky bohemian love stories. Maybe war, or death or something, but not to me. “I used to think I was frittering away my time, but the fact is, what is more interesting than how people live? I personally can’t think of anything. “I’m very interested in people’s domestic lives,” she explains. More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin Harper PerennialĮarly on in More Home Cooking, the novelist and Gourmet columnist Laurie Colwin confides that she loves to read cookbooks. Melinda Fakuade, associate editor, culture and features We hope these books carry you into the new year with a refreshed sense of purpose and peace. We can engage with new ideas, ones that cultivate hope, calm us, and help us to imagine the possibility of a different world.Īs 2021 draws to a close, we’ve asked members of the Vox staff to share the books that made us think or act differently this year. Those feelings can cause a tunnel vision that’s hard to snap out of, but reading can help us find a way to escape. The events of the last two years have left a lot in their wake, including despair and loss. ![]()
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