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How to Read Now
How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.
At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.
At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published July 26, 2022
About the author
Elaine Castillo
10 books359 followersElaine Castillo was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a graduate of the University of California – Berkeley. America Is Not the Heart is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 368 reviews
June 2, 2024
How to Read Now is that rare species of book that I don't feel I can recommend without having a conversation about it, or—six different conversations at once. It’s been such a joy to live with this collection of essays in the past few weeks, to read it and reread it and think about it so often I feel that it’s become part of my internal narrative. I still find myself returning to individual pages, underlining and pondering passages, chewing over individual lines, sometimes arguing with them loudly in my head, sometimes wishing I had a glass of wine that I can gulp down in fierce agreement.
If you spend any ordinate amount of time in online bookish spaces, you have probably noticed how utterly diseased our reading culture has become, invaded and reduced in the same breath by practices that seem instinctively antithetical to the very spirit of reading. In How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo unspools and amplifies what’s long been intimate, complicated inner thoughts I had about our reading practices, the amalgamation of all the almost-screams that scraped my throat whenever I learned about yet another book ban in the United States, or read a particularly infuriating Hot Take on Book Twitter. Reading this collection of essays felt like listening to your fiercely intelligent friend improvise a masterpiece of rigorous critical thinking in a personalized voice note. It felt like being seen and being rescued, all at once.
Castillo’s targets resonate deeply in our cultural moment, a bolt sliding perfectly home: the empty platitudes about how reading teaches us empathy without interrogating who exactly it’s making us more empathetic towards (and to the detriment of whom); the silences and erasures kept within our “canon,” all the gaps into which entire unrecorded worlds and peoples disappear and no one ventures; the hollowed, impoverished performance of “Representation Matters” that continuously fails to address the fundamental and systematic class-race disparities within the industry or truly account for the heterogeneity of marginalized communities; the hypocrisies of demanding we “separate the art from the artist” when your favorite white author is outed as a fascist or transphobe while seizing and measuring art by artists of color against a standard of authenticity that positions their “otherness” as something exotic—like subjects in a zoo, to be observed safely from a distance.
Whether she’s writing about Asian cinema, the cult of Joan Didion, or dragging Peter Handke through the (metaphorical) mud, Castillo’s writing is generative, incisive, charming, irreverent, with clever arms to hold you. But despite what the title might conjure, How to Read Now is not a prescriptive book. Castillo does not offer her reader an exhaustive How-To Guide to thinking about and engaging meaningfully with art. She doesn’t even ask you to agree. The assignment Castillo gives herself instead is to create for the reader the conditions to be present and alert alongside the questions that animate her essays. In other words, what Castillo offers is a profoundly personal record of thought—one that explodes with perspective and voice—to place alongside (sometimes even against) our own, so we might trace the connections and contradictions and see what meanings might be revealed from those intersections. The resulting book is an earnest and open-hearted invitation to think, seriously, about our responsibilities as readers in the world. Why do we read the way we do? And, most important, how can we imagine otherwise? How do we start to make space for new ways of reading and seeing that are novel, galvanizing, rewarding, and even reparative?
In How to Read Now, Castillo asks us to meet her vulnerability with our own, which is, I think, at bottom, precisely the kind of reading and seeing practice that she powerfully gestures at in these gorgeous essays: to read with openness, with depth, with constant complexity, to read as an opportunity to reiterate our closeness to each other, to strengthen our connectivity, to take up each other’s stories and open ourselves to each other’s silences—instead of an opportunity to shift burden, absolve debt, or refuse the intimacy of sitting in discomfort. The kind of reading How to Read Now champions is one of both freefall and rootedness, of both surrender and resistance—reading as an undeniably political act that spares no one and implicates everyone, reading as a practice that estranges us from and ultimately returns us to ourselves.
In the end, this is what How to Read Now solidified for me, in ways I will never stop thinking about: reading asks of us all manner of vulnerability, sometimes to extents unbearable—if one suspects they have stepped out of a work of art entirely untouched, perhaps one never submitted in the first place at all.
If you spend any ordinate amount of time in online bookish spaces, you have probably noticed how utterly diseased our reading culture has become, invaded and reduced in the same breath by practices that seem instinctively antithetical to the very spirit of reading. In How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo unspools and amplifies what’s long been intimate, complicated inner thoughts I had about our reading practices, the amalgamation of all the almost-screams that scraped my throat whenever I learned about yet another book ban in the United States, or read a particularly infuriating Hot Take on Book Twitter. Reading this collection of essays felt like listening to your fiercely intelligent friend improvise a masterpiece of rigorous critical thinking in a personalized voice note. It felt like being seen and being rescued, all at once.
Castillo’s targets resonate deeply in our cultural moment, a bolt sliding perfectly home: the empty platitudes about how reading teaches us empathy without interrogating who exactly it’s making us more empathetic towards (and to the detriment of whom); the silences and erasures kept within our “canon,” all the gaps into which entire unrecorded worlds and peoples disappear and no one ventures; the hollowed, impoverished performance of “Representation Matters” that continuously fails to address the fundamental and systematic class-race disparities within the industry or truly account for the heterogeneity of marginalized communities; the hypocrisies of demanding we “separate the art from the artist” when your favorite white author is outed as a fascist or transphobe while seizing and measuring art by artists of color against a standard of authenticity that positions their “otherness” as something exotic—like subjects in a zoo, to be observed safely from a distance.
Whether she’s writing about Asian cinema, the cult of Joan Didion, or dragging Peter Handke through the (metaphorical) mud, Castillo’s writing is generative, incisive, charming, irreverent, with clever arms to hold you. But despite what the title might conjure, How to Read Now is not a prescriptive book. Castillo does not offer her reader an exhaustive How-To Guide to thinking about and engaging meaningfully with art. She doesn’t even ask you to agree. The assignment Castillo gives herself instead is to create for the reader the conditions to be present and alert alongside the questions that animate her essays. In other words, what Castillo offers is a profoundly personal record of thought—one that explodes with perspective and voice—to place alongside (sometimes even against) our own, so we might trace the connections and contradictions and see what meanings might be revealed from those intersections. The resulting book is an earnest and open-hearted invitation to think, seriously, about our responsibilities as readers in the world. Why do we read the way we do? And, most important, how can we imagine otherwise? How do we start to make space for new ways of reading and seeing that are novel, galvanizing, rewarding, and even reparative?
In How to Read Now, Castillo asks us to meet her vulnerability with our own, which is, I think, at bottom, precisely the kind of reading and seeing practice that she powerfully gestures at in these gorgeous essays: to read with openness, with depth, with constant complexity, to read as an opportunity to reiterate our closeness to each other, to strengthen our connectivity, to take up each other’s stories and open ourselves to each other’s silences—instead of an opportunity to shift burden, absolve debt, or refuse the intimacy of sitting in discomfort. The kind of reading How to Read Now champions is one of both freefall and rootedness, of both surrender and resistance—reading as an undeniably political act that spares no one and implicates everyone, reading as a practice that estranges us from and ultimately returns us to ourselves.
In the end, this is what How to Read Now solidified for me, in ways I will never stop thinking about: reading asks of us all manner of vulnerability, sometimes to extents unbearable—if one suspects they have stepped out of a work of art entirely untouched, perhaps one never submitted in the first place at all.
January 3, 2023
2 stars: It was OK.
Unsurprised but still disappointed that I didn't find this book worthy of the gushing reviews being posted across bookstagram. This happens basically whenever a book about social justice hits the mainstream; what's beloved and accessible is inevitably also very basic. Castillo writes about ideas that have been circulating for decades as if they're brand new, and she writes about them in the pithy-but-muddied, cluttered, Americentric, and furiously shallow style of someone whose brain has been hijacked by social media. Also, she's extremely into astrology.
I want to say that if conversations like this are new to you, then you'll learn from this book. But there are so many other, much better places to go to learn about it. People in the reviews keep saying they learned a smattering of US imperial history, etc, but a better place to learn that is from a history book. So I don't recommend How to Read.
The introduction was the most promising part, and the essays that followed paled. The part where Castillo praises New Zealand for doing land acknowledgments (gestures that she herself describes as completely empty) was bizarre. I think maybe she originally praised New Zealand outright and then her editor was like "hmmm...." and made her add nuance that completely diminished her own initial opinion. Just my guess as to how that essay ended up so tangled and pointless.
I'm not saying her takes are bad, although sometimes they are. It's more that I read a lot of great nonfiction, and this doesn't compare.
Works that explore the same themes and are much better:
1. The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh (literature, imperialism, environment)
2. The Nutmeg's Curse by Amitav Ghosh (imperialism/environment)
3. Well-Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim (literature, race)
4. The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison (literature, race, U.S. history)
5. Read Until You Understand by Farah Jasmine Griffin (ditto ^)
6. N.K. Jemisin's essays; start here: https://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-lon...
Unsurprised but still disappointed that I didn't find this book worthy of the gushing reviews being posted across bookstagram. This happens basically whenever a book about social justice hits the mainstream; what's beloved and accessible is inevitably also very basic. Castillo writes about ideas that have been circulating for decades as if they're brand new, and she writes about them in the pithy-but-muddied, cluttered, Americentric, and furiously shallow style of someone whose brain has been hijacked by social media. Also, she's extremely into astrology.
I want to say that if conversations like this are new to you, then you'll learn from this book. But there are so many other, much better places to go to learn about it. People in the reviews keep saying they learned a smattering of US imperial history, etc, but a better place to learn that is from a history book. So I don't recommend How to Read.
The introduction was the most promising part, and the essays that followed paled. The part where Castillo praises New Zealand for doing land acknowledgments (gestures that she herself describes as completely empty) was bizarre. I think maybe she originally praised New Zealand outright and then her editor was like "hmmm...." and made her add nuance that completely diminished her own initial opinion. Just my guess as to how that essay ended up so tangled and pointless.
I'm not saying her takes are bad, although sometimes they are. It's more that I read a lot of great nonfiction, and this doesn't compare.
Works that explore the same themes and are much better:
1. The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh (literature, imperialism, environment)
2. The Nutmeg's Curse by Amitav Ghosh (imperialism/environment)
3. Well-Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim (literature, race)
4. The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison (literature, race, U.S. history)
5. Read Until You Understand by Farah Jasmine Griffin (ditto ^)
6. N.K. Jemisin's essays; start here: https://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-lon...
Want to read
November 5, 2022saw ms rf kuang reading it so now i have to 🤭
November 21, 2022
This lady is very smart and has some good points, but she's so angry that it was hard to read. It's exhausting to read hundreds of pages of anger, and though the anger may be an appropriate reaction to the massive injustices that people of color have suffered, it's just too much after a while.
I agree with the proposition that all writing has a political element to it, so to pretend that it doesn't is incorrect and is a political statement in its own right. I suppose that even my reviews are political, though they are generally not intended to be. Of course good writing, even good political writing, isn't just political, and once you get past the rhetoric, Ms. Castillo recognizes that. She suggests at one point that the proper attitude of the reader is as a tiny fragment of a great flawed world. I think it has to be more than that, but that's going in the right direction.
I enjoyed the dethroning of Joan Didion. It was a little harsh, sometimes too harsh, but I have always been dissatisfied with Ms. Didion's writing, so Ms. Castillo helped me to feel vindicated, and she articulated some of my feelings about Ms. Didion's writing better than I had previously formed them in my own mind. I liked the criticism of writing representative model characters in works about people of color. Characters are better when they are complex and imperfect. I'd rather read about someone who is interesting than about some idealized role model.
One thing that I didn't like besides the excess anger was the use of a lot of academic jargon words like "precarity" and "performative." This kind of language makes me wince because the words are awkward and are often a lazy substitute for original creative expression. But Ms. Castillo is too smart a person and too good a writer to have done this unconsciously. It is part of her political statement about who she is. I'm fine with that part of it. And I agree with much of the political position, but I do wish that she could have expressed it with a different vocabulary.
I agree with the proposition that all writing has a political element to it, so to pretend that it doesn't is incorrect and is a political statement in its own right. I suppose that even my reviews are political, though they are generally not intended to be. Of course good writing, even good political writing, isn't just political, and once you get past the rhetoric, Ms. Castillo recognizes that. She suggests at one point that the proper attitude of the reader is as a tiny fragment of a great flawed world. I think it has to be more than that, but that's going in the right direction.
I enjoyed the dethroning of Joan Didion. It was a little harsh, sometimes too harsh, but I have always been dissatisfied with Ms. Didion's writing, so Ms. Castillo helped me to feel vindicated, and she articulated some of my feelings about Ms. Didion's writing better than I had previously formed them in my own mind. I liked the criticism of writing representative model characters in works about people of color. Characters are better when they are complex and imperfect. I'd rather read about someone who is interesting than about some idealized role model.
One thing that I didn't like besides the excess anger was the use of a lot of academic jargon words like "precarity" and "performative." This kind of language makes me wince because the words are awkward and are often a lazy substitute for original creative expression. But Ms. Castillo is too smart a person and too good a writer to have done this unconsciously. It is part of her political statement about who she is. I'm fine with that part of it. And I agree with much of the political position, but I do wish that she could have expressed it with a different vocabulary.
August 13, 2022
Performative Diversity
Another agitprop screed with its own (frankly racist) hangups and double standards. Let me count the ways.
1. Castillo framing her university class’s facile dismissal of Henry James��� The Turn of the Screw, which she enjoyed, as telling of latent racial bias of white supremacy even as Castillo herself spends ample page time dismissing Didion and Steinbeck as racially biased authors based on their portrayal of California. And Henry James is white British.
2. Castillo’s critique of popular fantasy works (Harry Potter et al.) centered around a white protagonist as appropriating brown and black minority struggles against majority oppression. She ignores, or is ignorant of, an even longer history of white-on-white colonial oppression and subjugation based on class, nationality, and even “race” in Europe and the British Isles (the Anglo-Saxons over the Celts, the English over the Irish and Scots, the Romans over everybody, etc.). You could easily argue that Europeans and their American descendants have been a conquered peoples longer than they have been the conquerors. Hence the popularity of these narratives. But nope, they’re all an appropriation of minority stories because only brown and black people have ever been oppressed. It’s all they’re known for, right?
3. Castillo’s critique of minority writers being pressured to write chiefly about their heritage cultures/how hard it is to be X minority in America to “educate” an implicit white audience as a kind of performative diversity is well-argued, if very much obvious. And then for the rest of the essays Castillo does precisely just that—write about how hard it is to be X minority in America and tired, dated critical theory analysis of minority character tokenism and portrayal in the media.
4. For an essay collection on how best to read, Castillo doesn’t spend much time on literature or even other media critique as much as on the real-life effects of colonialism and Western imperialism. Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s. And for all her point of American minority writers not being accessed for their craft and the quality of their writing but for their sociopolitical agitprop, Castillo goes on to excoriate lit critics whitewashing Didion and Steinbeck et. al’s supposed racism by an exclusive focus on their craft. Which is it, Castillo? Should we judge authors by their style and craft regardless of their personal or political views or vice versa?
With pages of this logic Lego, its contortions and distortions, I’ll return the favor with my own facile conclusion: Anything Castillo doesn’t like or offends her personally or politically betrays its white supremacy and what she does like is somehow not. Fantasy by (certain) white authors is good, realist fiction by Californian white authors not good. The intellectual acumen is just breathtaking.
Another agitprop screed with its own (frankly racist) hangups and double standards. Let me count the ways.
1. Castillo framing her university class’s facile dismissal of Henry James��� The Turn of the Screw, which she enjoyed, as telling of latent racial bias of white supremacy even as Castillo herself spends ample page time dismissing Didion and Steinbeck as racially biased authors based on their portrayal of California. And Henry James is white British.
2. Castillo’s critique of popular fantasy works (Harry Potter et al.) centered around a white protagonist as appropriating brown and black minority struggles against majority oppression. She ignores, or is ignorant of, an even longer history of white-on-white colonial oppression and subjugation based on class, nationality, and even “race” in Europe and the British Isles (the Anglo-Saxons over the Celts, the English over the Irish and Scots, the Romans over everybody, etc.). You could easily argue that Europeans and their American descendants have been a conquered peoples longer than they have been the conquerors. Hence the popularity of these narratives. But nope, they’re all an appropriation of minority stories because only brown and black people have ever been oppressed. It’s all they’re known for, right?
3. Castillo’s critique of minority writers being pressured to write chiefly about their heritage cultures/how hard it is to be X minority in America to “educate” an implicit white audience as a kind of performative diversity is well-argued, if very much obvious. And then for the rest of the essays Castillo does precisely just that—write about how hard it is to be X minority in America and tired, dated critical theory analysis of minority character tokenism and portrayal in the media.
4. For an essay collection on how best to read, Castillo doesn’t spend much time on literature or even other media critique as much as on the real-life effects of colonialism and Western imperialism. Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s. And for all her point of American minority writers not being accessed for their craft and the quality of their writing but for their sociopolitical agitprop, Castillo goes on to excoriate lit critics whitewashing Didion and Steinbeck et. al’s supposed racism by an exclusive focus on their craft. Which is it, Castillo? Should we judge authors by their style and craft regardless of their personal or political views or vice versa?
With pages of this logic Lego, its contortions and distortions, I’ll return the favor with my own facile conclusion: Anything Castillo doesn’t like or offends her personally or politically betrays its white supremacy and what she does like is somehow not. Fantasy by (certain) white authors is good, realist fiction by Californian white authors not good. The intellectual acumen is just breathtaking.
May 16, 2022
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Group Viking for a copy of this new collection of very prescient essays.
The world is a mess. I don't think I am breaking any non- disclosure agreements, nor airing fake news. Socially, physically, emotionally, entertainment, politics, hopes, dreams, aspirations even death itself seems wrong, and even those who follow Facebook for their news, or Twitter for doom scrolling can see this. However what is occuring slowly to many people in this United States, has been known and thought about by people who have been marginalized, ignored or considered not equals for a long time. Best-selling author Elaine Castillo has been dwelling and frankly dealing with the hellscape that is this modern world, and has written a collection of essays How to Read Now: Essays, that demands that how we read the world we are living in is not the way the world is. Foundations have to be kicked over, old Gods left behind, and a new way of understanding and teaching about literature, movies, television, everything needs to be learned.
The book begins swinging right from the author's note, with a brief biography of the author, and a feeling that before Castillo was a person she was a reader. As the essays pass, this statement becomes clearer and more understandable. Also reading is not just about books, but about film, television and anything that reflects on the human experience. Which has been gatekept for much too long.
The book is extremely well written and argued with numerous points and lots of ohh I never thought that, or being a person like me, gee I never even thought that was a thing. I might not be the market for this book, but that did not stop me from enjoying it and thinking of who knew that would get it, and not think of it as an attack. The author has no problem with pointing out people, places and institutions that somehow control so much, as the continue to pass on into irrelevancy.
A book for a time madness, both in ideas and at ideas. A way of looking at things in a different way, to see how ingrained ideas are, and how they become what is the new normal. A book that a reader thinks about well after the last page is read, and one that certain essays will be shared with a "Seriously you got to read this". There will be quite a lot of learned discussions, NPR voiced interviews with people on both sides of any issue, the usual pearl clutching, and fake outrage and stepping out of your place attacks, maybe even a diner interview with Trump supporters that media seems to love. A book this strong, this truthful is going to annoy quite a lot of people.
The world is a mess. I don't think I am breaking any non- disclosure agreements, nor airing fake news. Socially, physically, emotionally, entertainment, politics, hopes, dreams, aspirations even death itself seems wrong, and even those who follow Facebook for their news, or Twitter for doom scrolling can see this. However what is occuring slowly to many people in this United States, has been known and thought about by people who have been marginalized, ignored or considered not equals for a long time. Best-selling author Elaine Castillo has been dwelling and frankly dealing with the hellscape that is this modern world, and has written a collection of essays How to Read Now: Essays, that demands that how we read the world we are living in is not the way the world is. Foundations have to be kicked over, old Gods left behind, and a new way of understanding and teaching about literature, movies, television, everything needs to be learned.
The book begins swinging right from the author's note, with a brief biography of the author, and a feeling that before Castillo was a person she was a reader. As the essays pass, this statement becomes clearer and more understandable. Also reading is not just about books, but about film, television and anything that reflects on the human experience. Which has been gatekept for much too long.
The book is extremely well written and argued with numerous points and lots of ohh I never thought that, or being a person like me, gee I never even thought that was a thing. I might not be the market for this book, but that did not stop me from enjoying it and thinking of who knew that would get it, and not think of it as an attack. The author has no problem with pointing out people, places and institutions that somehow control so much, as the continue to pass on into irrelevancy.
A book for a time madness, both in ideas and at ideas. A way of looking at things in a different way, to see how ingrained ideas are, and how they become what is the new normal. A book that a reader thinks about well after the last page is read, and one that certain essays will be shared with a "Seriously you got to read this". There will be quite a lot of learned discussions, NPR voiced interviews with people on both sides of any issue, the usual pearl clutching, and fake outrage and stepping out of your place attacks, maybe even a diner interview with Trump supporters that media seems to love. A book this strong, this truthful is going to annoy quite a lot of people.
March 20, 2023
a must read. could not recommend this one more highly.
August 4, 2022
Are the aspirations we have around reading accurately reflected in the reality of the world? Castillo tackles that with unapologetic verve and bite here - and this is a collection of essays I will return to.
Here are highlights of some of the essay topics touched, which are in no way comprehensive coverage of all the topics in here:
1. a take on the why behind decolonizing your reading or reading outside of authors writing to your demographic
2. Is non-political reading possible?
3. Does reading fiction actually impact empathy?
4. Who is travel writing written for?
5. A dare, or more an invitation, to do better (maybe just different?) in how and why you read
Castillo engages with long-held assumptions on reading, and her writing comes across as earnest and fiery. I am not in complete agreement with the entirety of this book, but I also need to think more on so much of this book - and it is written in a way that I feel free to be in disagreement with sections because it is an open discourse with demands but also questions.
There is also a deep analysis of how Castillo has read throughout her life - how she has encountered the many mediums of story, how she was expected to interact with those stories, and how that differed from how she actually did.
The 'unexpected reader' is a term she defines as someone an author would not have expected to interact with their material. The examples she provides wiggled free some relation to "Shakespeare in the Bush" for me, which I read long enough ago not to remember clearly, other than the fact that it does seem to me directly pertinent to the concept of the unexpected reader. It is a concept I will likely be unable to forget every time I pick up a book.
Some essays I found more absorbing than others, but all of them I found thought-provoking.
I now also wish to re-read Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark as Castillo cites it regularly throughout to great effect. If either reading with intention or delving into the whys and hows of reading are in your field of interest check this book out - you may love it or hate it, but it will have you sitting up and taking notes. It isn't a perfect book, but the depth of thought and the passion in it tick all the boxes for my area of interest so I loved engaging with it.
Here are highlights of some of the essay topics touched, which are in no way comprehensive coverage of all the topics in here:
1. a take on the why behind decolonizing your reading or reading outside of authors writing to your demographic
2. Is non-political reading possible?
3. Does reading fiction actually impact empathy?
4. Who is travel writing written for?
5. A dare, or more an invitation, to do better (maybe just different?) in how and why you read
Castillo engages with long-held assumptions on reading, and her writing comes across as earnest and fiery. I am not in complete agreement with the entirety of this book, but I also need to think more on so much of this book - and it is written in a way that I feel free to be in disagreement with sections because it is an open discourse with demands but also questions.
There is also a deep analysis of how Castillo has read throughout her life - how she has encountered the many mediums of story, how she was expected to interact with those stories, and how that differed from how she actually did.
The 'unexpected reader' is a term she defines as someone an author would not have expected to interact with their material. The examples she provides wiggled free some relation to "Shakespeare in the Bush" for me, which I read long enough ago not to remember clearly, other than the fact that it does seem to me directly pertinent to the concept of the unexpected reader. It is a concept I will likely be unable to forget every time I pick up a book.
Some essays I found more absorbing than others, but all of them I found thought-provoking.
I now also wish to re-read Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark as Castillo cites it regularly throughout to great effect. If either reading with intention or delving into the whys and hows of reading are in your field of interest check this book out - you may love it or hate it, but it will have you sitting up and taking notes. It isn't a perfect book, but the depth of thought and the passion in it tick all the boxes for my area of interest so I loved engaging with it.
August 29, 2022
killer stuff. the title may frame #HowToReadNow as a manual of sorts, like a step by step guide of some kind. it isn't. rather, you watch #ElaineCastillo go over some critically-acclaimed texts and media with her even more critical eye. her POV is sharp and decisive. you'll enjoy listening to her through and through. surely it would be fun to bring up with her whatever most-talked-about thing we have now and hear her take on it.
there's no holding words back here. she hates #JoanDidion and will tell you in witty articulation why. she loved what the recent HBO #Watchmen series did for race and superhero discussion, but along with praising she elaborates also what it unfortunately missed. the latter #WongKarWai Appreciation Class is brilliant.
while her awareness on racism, white supremacy, elitism, feminism, Southeast asian culure erasures etc. voice out what you may have read in passing in twitter already, her ideas are more in-depth, specific, and quite refreshing (though i had to pickup other books in between just so i won't be so mad at everybody and myself for mindlessly consuming what is deemed 'good' for us already).
some key terms:
the unexpected reader - re: the non-white-obsessed demographic. the non-fan. the reader all writers should, well, expect.
decolonial reading - branch of the unexpected reader re: heightened sensitivity towards what is caucasian by design and perspective
and so on.
this ought to be a bookshelf staple especially for self-proclaimed culture vultures, i-love-books girls and gays, bingewatching persons today.
if you're only gonna read one nonfictional book this year let it be this. 🖤
PS "Filipinx" being her name for us instead of Filipino bothered me so much tho. i cringed everytime.
there's no holding words back here. she hates #JoanDidion and will tell you in witty articulation why. she loved what the recent HBO #Watchmen series did for race and superhero discussion, but along with praising she elaborates also what it unfortunately missed. the latter #WongKarWai Appreciation Class is brilliant.
while her awareness on racism, white supremacy, elitism, feminism, Southeast asian culure erasures etc. voice out what you may have read in passing in twitter already, her ideas are more in-depth, specific, and quite refreshing (though i had to pickup other books in between just so i won't be so mad at everybody and myself for mindlessly consuming what is deemed 'good' for us already).
some key terms:
the unexpected reader - re: the non-white-obsessed demographic. the non-fan. the reader all writers should, well, expect.
decolonial reading - branch of the unexpected reader re: heightened sensitivity towards what is caucasian by design and perspective
and so on.
this ought to be a bookshelf staple especially for self-proclaimed culture vultures, i-love-books girls and gays, bingewatching persons today.
if you're only gonna read one nonfictional book this year let it be this. 🖤
PS "Filipinx" being her name for us instead of Filipino bothered me so much tho. i cringed everytime.
September 16, 2023
View this review on my booksta!
4.75
Well that was an exhilarating peek into the mind of a formidable writer.
How to Read Now unapologetically read modern reading culture for filth (hehe). And by reading culture, Castillo is referring not just to the most banal definition of the act, but also its more holistic connotation: our ingrained manners of interpreting art, history, the world, and each other.
Castillo spares no one; she doesn’t bother with kids’ gloves as she delivers her delightfully acerbic censures—but her writing is also cuttingly tender and bracingly personal, an implicit invitation to engage with her language just as she lays down her own engagement with the world and with the art that has piqued her (for better or for worse).
This balance is what makes this collection so effective. Castillo neither preaches nor instructs (nor does she claim to do either); she merely harnesses the frustration and hope in her pages as one might whittle the shaft of an arrow: to hone a point into hitting its mark. For while these essays galvanized, as any argumentative piece worth its title ought to do, they also evoked that friend whom you air your pettiest grumbles to; that friend you cackle like a gremlin with, over cold beer and deep-fried potatoes, as you partake in the camaraderie-fortifying tradition known as roasting.
Not to be reductive of the broad gradient of meaning that had been so brilliantly painted, but if I were to name the proverbial arrow that hit the proverbial target it would be: to read is to enter a relationship with reality, to allow yourself to be known and to be seen by it, even as you move through its firmament and hold its multitudes within you.
It didn’t teach me how to read better, as it is not a manual of any kind—and frankly the very thing the book impresses is that reading requires internal and personal overhauls of inherited ways of colonial thinking—but it spurred me into clearing some of the cobwebs that have gathered in the wake of my own slacking vigilance; it challenged and it questioned, and it soothed and gave warmth.
Now don't mind me while I go and inhale every item on Ms. Castillo's media list.
4.75
Well that was an exhilarating peek into the mind of a formidable writer.
How to Read Now unapologetically read modern reading culture for filth (hehe). And by reading culture, Castillo is referring not just to the most banal definition of the act, but also its more holistic connotation: our ingrained manners of interpreting art, history, the world, and each other.
Castillo spares no one; she doesn’t bother with kids’ gloves as she delivers her delightfully acerbic censures—but her writing is also cuttingly tender and bracingly personal, an implicit invitation to engage with her language just as she lays down her own engagement with the world and with the art that has piqued her (for better or for worse).
This balance is what makes this collection so effective. Castillo neither preaches nor instructs (nor does she claim to do either); she merely harnesses the frustration and hope in her pages as one might whittle the shaft of an arrow: to hone a point into hitting its mark. For while these essays galvanized, as any argumentative piece worth its title ought to do, they also evoked that friend whom you air your pettiest grumbles to; that friend you cackle like a gremlin with, over cold beer and deep-fried potatoes, as you partake in the camaraderie-fortifying tradition known as roasting.
Not to be reductive of the broad gradient of meaning that had been so brilliantly painted, but if I were to name the proverbial arrow that hit the proverbial target it would be: to read is to enter a relationship with reality, to allow yourself to be known and to be seen by it, even as you move through its firmament and hold its multitudes within you.
It didn’t teach me how to read better, as it is not a manual of any kind—and frankly the very thing the book impresses is that reading requires internal and personal overhauls of inherited ways of colonial thinking—but it spurred me into clearing some of the cobwebs that have gathered in the wake of my own slacking vigilance; it challenged and it questioned, and it soothed and gave warmth.
Now don't mind me while I go and inhale every item on Ms. Castillo's media list.
August 10, 2022
Review: https://clife.blog/2022/08/10/book-re...
I found this novel extremely difficult to get into as the writing was a bit arrogant to begin with and very annoying.
The writing style was a bit annoying as it isn’t very proper every for essay style it was a bore. I have read more interesting novels based on essays in the past. I often find this with American style pieces as it takes a great amount of education it seems for some to write well. As I do have my favourites from all over the world to actually know what good writing is whatever the sub genre of the novel is.
It also didn’t make complete sense in this way. It was constantly full of the authors notes instead of reading as a novel would normally read or even when a novel discusses topics as this just read differently. (EVEN FOR ESSAY STYLE).
There was not really any tips. The title in itself dictates ‘How To Read Now’ which for the average educated person denotes you will be given tips on how to read.
I wouldn’t say it was extremely well written the entire time as it wasn’t consistent in that sense. I wasn’t finding myself too excited to reach for this.
I expected tips from this however it wasn’t as useful as the title suggests. Just my opinion.
I found this novel extremely difficult to get into as the writing was a bit arrogant to begin with and very annoying.
The writing style was a bit annoying as it isn’t very proper every for essay style it was a bore. I have read more interesting novels based on essays in the past. I often find this with American style pieces as it takes a great amount of education it seems for some to write well. As I do have my favourites from all over the world to actually know what good writing is whatever the sub genre of the novel is.
It also didn’t make complete sense in this way. It was constantly full of the authors notes instead of reading as a novel would normally read or even when a novel discusses topics as this just read differently. (EVEN FOR ESSAY STYLE).
There was not really any tips. The title in itself dictates ‘How To Read Now’ which for the average educated person denotes you will be given tips on how to read.
I wouldn’t say it was extremely well written the entire time as it wasn’t consistent in that sense. I wasn’t finding myself too excited to reach for this.
I expected tips from this however it wasn’t as useful as the title suggests. Just my opinion.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1645808644i/7494844._UX200_CR0,6,200,200_.jpg)
February 18, 2023
This was really, really good!
Thought-provoking and delightful, and definitely provided a lot of food of thought.
Thought-provoking and delightful, and definitely provided a lot of food of thought.
August 17, 2022
really tried to get in to this book but realised I am not the intended audience. I totally got the references to how things were framed in literature but as I am British the references to American literature and what is perceived as classical books are not in my sphere of reading. It has made me question the framing of characters of colour and sexuality in my reading choices. Therefore it has been successful in that respect and I will look out for further reading around my choices
January 25, 2023
How to Read Now isn't so much a thoughtfully constructed work of well-structured and well-argued essays as it is a collection of furious, rambling diatribes railing against the many injustices of the world. In Castillo's defense, the injustices are numerous---the rot and evil of colonialism running deep and impossible to escape, infecting every aspect of life and art. Who among us hasn't been spurred into a flurry of rage at the state of things, heatedly enumerating the many ways in which everything sucks? But maybe those excursive tirades are best left for drunken emails to friends and lengthy Twitter threads. A published work cannot be propelled by anger alone---it must, at the very least, have a thesis.
To its credit, How to Read Now has some good, and even novel ideas. It has no interest, however, in developing or arguing them articulately, no interest in anticipating counterarguments or finding the nuance in the works examined. Instead, the essays are unfocused and meandering, overwrought and needlessly obtuse sentences obscuring a lack of clarity in thought. Castillo presents an interesting idea, only to immediately take a convoluted and verbose detour that eventually leads nowhere. There are no theses, only fragmented convictions and observations that sometimes form a mangled image, a paint-by-the-numbers that ultimately disappoints.
Nearly every essay features tedious and extensive recaps under the guise of analysis; if making and understanding an argument requires intimate knowledge of a novel or TV show, I'd wager the scope of the argument is far too narrow. The book's greatest weakness (apart from its author, though I suppose that is a redundancy) is its inability to see issues for what they are, which is systemic. Castillo rightfully call out the colonialist point of view that colors every piece of art, the prioritization and overabundance of certain narrative voices, the treatment of minority and marginalized artists as a kind of educators, but there is no acknowledgement of the structures in power that are responsible for these wrongs. Rather, individual artists are held accountable, as though they alone are to blame for the ills endemic to colonialism.
Perhaps I would be more forgiving if Castillo could resist the urge to endlessly self-glorify, or curtail her condescending and insufferable pretension from intruding upon every essay. (In one instance she smugly professes to never having been a fan of Harry Potter, then in the same breath implies that she's an astrology girlie without a hint of irony. In another, there is an anecdote about how she was the only person to give up her seat on a train for two elderly people.) When others engage with art from the western canon, they have settler-colonial mindsets; when Castillo does the same it is de-colonialist and therefore better---she is better. If you ask Castillo, she is the funniest, the smartest, the wokest, an unreliable narrator telling a story where she is the only one doing the work, her rallying cry. The result is unfortunate: despite fundamentally agreeing with Castillo, I often found myself playing devil's advocate, poking holes in her arguments just to poke holes, unable to fully trust the information being proffered.
I'll end on a positive note: despite her best efforts, Castillo occasionally dispensed scathing (though unintentional) criticisms of Sally Rooney. That, I very much enjoyed.
1.5/5
To its credit, How to Read Now has some good, and even novel ideas. It has no interest, however, in developing or arguing them articulately, no interest in anticipating counterarguments or finding the nuance in the works examined. Instead, the essays are unfocused and meandering, overwrought and needlessly obtuse sentences obscuring a lack of clarity in thought. Castillo presents an interesting idea, only to immediately take a convoluted and verbose detour that eventually leads nowhere. There are no theses, only fragmented convictions and observations that sometimes form a mangled image, a paint-by-the-numbers that ultimately disappoints.
Nearly every essay features tedious and extensive recaps under the guise of analysis; if making and understanding an argument requires intimate knowledge of a novel or TV show, I'd wager the scope of the argument is far too narrow. The book's greatest weakness (apart from its author, though I suppose that is a redundancy) is its inability to see issues for what they are, which is systemic. Castillo rightfully call out the colonialist point of view that colors every piece of art, the prioritization and overabundance of certain narrative voices, the treatment of minority and marginalized artists as a kind of educators, but there is no acknowledgement of the structures in power that are responsible for these wrongs. Rather, individual artists are held accountable, as though they alone are to blame for the ills endemic to colonialism.
Perhaps I would be more forgiving if Castillo could resist the urge to endlessly self-glorify, or curtail her condescending and insufferable pretension from intruding upon every essay. (In one instance she smugly professes to never having been a fan of Harry Potter, then in the same breath implies that she's an astrology girlie without a hint of irony. In another, there is an anecdote about how she was the only person to give up her seat on a train for two elderly people.) When others engage with art from the western canon, they have settler-colonial mindsets; when Castillo does the same it is de-colonialist and therefore better---she is better. If you ask Castillo, she is the funniest, the smartest, the wokest, an unreliable narrator telling a story where she is the only one doing the work, her rallying cry. The result is unfortunate: despite fundamentally agreeing with Castillo, I often found myself playing devil's advocate, poking holes in her arguments just to poke holes, unable to fully trust the information being proffered.
I'll end on a positive note: despite her best efforts, Castillo occasionally dispensed scathing (though unintentional) criticisms of Sally Rooney. That, I very much enjoyed.
1.5/5
October 23, 2022
These essays are incredibly thought-provoking and occassionally discomforting. Castillo invites us to rethink our critical thinking of the books, art and history we are surrounded by. Her voice and tone is intellectual but also funny. In response to the American Dirt saga she writes, ‘There is only so much space I can make for this controversy, both in these pages and in my life; controversies like this go beyond racial microaggressions—they’ve become predictable and occasionally lucrative trauma engines, and continually asking writers of color to produce a comment from the hot-take-jukebox on the latest fuckup perpetrated by a dementedly racist and tone-deaf publishing industry is asking those writers to wipe a shit they did not take.’ I still think about her debut novel America is Not The Heart all the time.
Read
December 21, 2022ALL THE STARS
October 18, 2022
Not quite a 5, but definitely near there.
Elaine Castillo’s collection of essays is one with claws unfurled, teeth bared, ready to challenge readers—white and nonwhite—to really think about their reading practices. It would be difficult to summarize this ambitious collection, but topics ranged from decolonizing your reading practices, issues of “diverse” and “empathetic” reading, among others that are ultimately asking, “Why are you reading? How are you reading?”
If you’re approaching this collection with hopes that Castillo will give you the “correct” answer or a better direction, well, that’s not what you’ll find. It’s not her intention to give a right or wrong answer, but, rather, share her reading journey and practices, as well as to engage with ongoing discourse around reading today, and this was presented well.
This isn’t a perfect book by any means, and I didn’t agree with everything, but I found each essay (some more than others) provocative. If you’re looking to reflect on your reading practices (which we should all do every once in a while), I strongly recommend checking this book out.
Elaine Castillo’s collection of essays is one with claws unfurled, teeth bared, ready to challenge readers—white and nonwhite—to really think about their reading practices. It would be difficult to summarize this ambitious collection, but topics ranged from decolonizing your reading practices, issues of “diverse” and “empathetic” reading, among others that are ultimately asking, “Why are you reading? How are you reading?”
If you’re approaching this collection with hopes that Castillo will give you the “correct” answer or a better direction, well, that’s not what you’ll find. It’s not her intention to give a right or wrong answer, but, rather, share her reading journey and practices, as well as to engage with ongoing discourse around reading today, and this was presented well.
This isn’t a perfect book by any means, and I didn’t agree with everything, but I found each essay (some more than others) provocative. If you’re looking to reflect on your reading practices (which we should all do every once in a while), I strongly recommend checking this book out.
February 9, 2023
Gave myself permission to abandon this one. The title was a promise that I didn't feel was fulfilled. Book would likely be more meaningful for people who are familiar with the many cultural and literary references. Also the astrology references really bummed me out... they seem out of place in a book that's supposedly about critical thinking.
October 14, 2022
My thoughts:
* Essential for new age education in literature
* Veers between colloquial and untouchable
* Feels inaccessible which defeats the premise of the book’s intro
* If I have to look up 30% of the words on the page, it’s probably written for a very specific type of audience
* For the love of god please take your 10 line sentence and chop it up a bit
I would love to read again with a physical copy so I can mark up and flesh out my thoughts a bit more! I have some slight issues with it but not enough to take away more than 1 star.
* Essential for new age education in literature
* Veers between colloquial and untouchable
* Feels inaccessible which defeats the premise of the book’s intro
* If I have to look up 30% of the words on the page, it’s probably written for a very specific type of audience
* For the love of god please take your 10 line sentence and chop it up a bit
I would love to read again with a physical copy so I can mark up and flesh out my thoughts a bit more! I have some slight issues with it but not enough to take away more than 1 star.
September 18, 2022
I get her point but it was too much right from the start that I couldn't sit back to read and think about her words because she had such strong emotions. They are valid and important, but I'm not looking for a fight, an argument, a dustup, a war of words in my literature because everything else is so divisive and full of disagreement. It might be cowardly of me, but it's where I am with it right now. I would use it in a book study in separate essays and thought pieces.
August 10, 2022
Might be more aptly called How To Stop Reading Joan Didion. So much of this was 🔥
October 11, 2022
More to come, but that was one of the best books I've ever read and yes it includes an entirely sound and insightful criticism of Joan Didion and her writing.
Read
January 3, 2023the temperature of castillo's writing in this is definitely something i am not accustomed to, especially as most of creative nonfiction writing is taught to be written from a standpoint where one holds a stake to write about it, but remain far enough to take a relatively objective angle at the subject at hand. but given the material castillo worked with, it demanded a more emotional approach, one that is appropriate for the discussion of decolonizing the ways we perceive language, art, media, identity, and other things which influence how we interact with the world and the people around us. i appreciated castillo's wit greatly, and the kind of writer/person that she is, based on the parts of herself embedded in the writing. my only personal qualm is that i don't think i will ever get used to the use of filipinx; i had to take a few pauses here and there because it's a word that i haven't even heard pronounced in real life, yet it can be used to identify me with, if it ever came to that. but that's just me haha otherwise a pretty solid essay collection
November 18, 2023
the opening essay? great.
the essay after that? great.
the essays after THOSE .................................. hm.
the final essay? my favourite. fantastic.
truth be told, the essays in the middle felt very displaced. they weren't as linked to the rest, and even within the essays themselves they lacked that strong conclusion and focus all the others did. i understand why they were included, but they paled in comparison to the rest, and if i hadn't skipped half of 2 i would have DNF'd and missed the final essay, which i really liked.
this collection wasn't what i was expecting, however it still had some standout fragments. Castillo's writing is strong, but it only shines when there is a clear focus and point to drive the writing towards.
the essay after that? great.
the essays after THOSE .................................. hm.
the final essay? my favourite. fantastic.
truth be told, the essays in the middle felt very displaced. they weren't as linked to the rest, and even within the essays themselves they lacked that strong conclusion and focus all the others did. i understand why they were included, but they paled in comparison to the rest, and if i hadn't skipped half of 2 i would have DNF'd and missed the final essay, which i really liked.
this collection wasn't what i was expecting, however it still had some standout fragments. Castillo's writing is strong, but it only shines when there is a clear focus and point to drive the writing towards.
January 27, 2024
If there’s anything I love more than razor-sharp essays, it’s an essay collection that challenges you, forces you to interrogate the parts of yourself you didn’t yet know need to be interrogated. I walked away from this with more questions than answers - and that’s not a bad thing! It’s a book ultimately about how we read - personally, collectively, institutionally. I can’t wait to read it again.
June 29, 2023
A book filled with the most loving, tender rage. I felt many, many pangs at her words. How have not yet read America is Not the Heart
July 29, 2023
Castillo’s writing is uncompromising and piercingly clear. Everyone should read this.
October 13, 2022
Important book.
October 31, 2022
Best book of 2022, no doubt.
Fact I definitely did not know before: Tagalog is the third most widely spoken foreign language in the United States, after Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
Things to look for:
Merata Mita's films (New Zealander)
Tommy Pico "Nature Poem"
Bernardine Evisto "The Emperor's Babe"
Sara Ahmed feminist philosopher, resigned from Goldsmiths
Happy Together--film by Wong Kar-wai late 90s
Fact I definitely did not know before: Tagalog is the third most widely spoken foreign language in the United States, after Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
Things to look for:
Merata Mita's films (New Zealander)
Tommy Pico "Nature Poem"
Bernardine Evisto "The Emperor's Babe"
Sara Ahmed feminist philosopher, resigned from Goldsmiths
Happy Together--film by Wong Kar-wai late 90s
Displaying 1 - 30 of 368 reviews