Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. First up:...
Another year is coming to a close, and here at The Metropole, we editors are once again sharing some recommendations for things to read, listen to, view, or experience in your “off” time in the coming year. First up: the books and podcasts that made us think and feel (and a bonus music recommendation).
Books
Eric Häusler (Book Review Series Editor): Teju Cole’s second novel, Tremor (2023) reads like a collection of essays and excels at relatively short descriptions of people, places, and moments. Cole shares insightful observations on the recurring themes of art (criticism), human relationships, photography, and racism that go far beyond the scope of the book. The fascinating descriptions of Lagos are a bonus for urbanists. Some readers might prefer his books of essays: Known and Strange Things (2021) or Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time (2021).
Kenneth Alyass (Assistant Editor): In the realm of nonfiction, David Graeber and David Wengrow’s, The Dawn of Everything (2021), which challenges traditional perspectives on history and social organization, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), which uses science fiction to shed light on environmental crisis.
Angela Stiefbold (Senior Editor): My favorite audiobook listen was The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2016) by Becky Chambers (audiobook 2019, so still recent…). As is true for most of the best science fiction, while the plot of the novel follows a physical journey across space, the real heart of the story is about the relationships and personal growth of the diverse crew of the ship. I’m looking forward to reading (or listening to) more novels by Chambers set in the same fictional universe.
Ryan Reft (Senior Editor): There, There came out in 2018; it’s not remotely new, but how often do folks actually read a book the same year it’s released? With that noted, let me hype Tommy Orange’s debut novel, which focuses on urban Indians in Oakland, California, and the general Native American diaspora. Traversing history and the present, the book’s cast of characters, some for good reasons and others for bad ones, make their way to a national pow-wow in Oakland. Orange does not shy away from hard truths of the Native American experience, but like Reservation Dogs, manages to do so in ways that neither overwhelm the reader or mock them, but rather reveals the pain, humor, and humanity that defines existence. For folks searching for something more mid-century, Beverly Gage’s G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. and the Making of Modern America (2022) is an all-encompassing history of Hoover and the FBI’s first five decades. Also for D.C. folks, Kyla Sommers When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital (2023) is worth your time. In a city known for skeptical historiographical appraisals, Sommers “sees hope rather than despair in the city’s post-1968 arc” connecting the city’s history of Black activism with attempts to rectify its post 1968 trajectory. We attended her book talk in April, so you can read about it more here.
Zeead Yaghi (Assistant Editor): Elizabeth R.William’s States of Cultivation: Imperial Transition and Scientific Agriculture in the Eastern Mediterranean (2023).
Podcasts
“Woman with headphones listening to radio” (c. 1920s), Underwood & Underwood, photographer, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of CongressAngela: For regional history, culture, and current politics—and often how they all intersect—Inside Appalachia, hosted by Mason Adams from West Virginia Public Broadcasting. And to gain insight on becoming a better writer of history, Kate Carpenters interviews historians to get their insights about the art and process of writing in each episode of Drafting the Past.
Ryan: Holy Week, from the Atlantic, hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II, skillfully, and sadly, marches through the tragic history of Martin Luther King’s assassination, traversing several locales, with Washington, DC, among the most prominent. Grief and trauma are central characters at the national, local, and personal level, as Newkirk guides us through King’s story and its aftermath as it cascaded across urban America. Granted, it’s not an entirely new story, but it’s one that needed to be recounted once again.
Eric: The Bowery Boys New York City History Podcast started back in 2007, and there are more than 400 episodes available. The Bowery Boys (Greg Young and Tom Meyers) tell the fascinating story of New York and offer infotainment at its best! One does not have to be a fan of New York or be in the city to enjoy the podcast. But it is hard to imagine any other city in the world replacing The Big Apple and offering enough material for hundreds of podcast episodes.
Zeead: Ordinary Unhappiness by Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield, which bills itself as “a podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now.”
Kenneth: Not a big podcast guy, but I did listen to the PowerScore LSAT PodCast to help study for the test.
Music
Ryan: Like any Gen X loser from the middle west, I have a penchant for The Replacements, a not quite obscure band from the 1980s that perfected subverting ambition for their own antagonistic, humorous, counterproductive, and often inebriated ends (they once played an entire set of covers when they found out music representatives were in the audience at one of their gigs). What can I say, Gen X folks debated idiotic concepts like “authenticity” and “not selling out” so much it became a fetish, and then, like previous generations, sold out.
Well, The ‘Mats did the same (but they chucked the meta portion of the conversation for a thumb in the eye). The title of their documentary is “Color Me Unimpressed,” all of which comes across clearly in this year’s reissue of Tim, the band’s horribly recorded album that should have been a giant hit but instead came to occupy cult status for fans. The reissue excavates the original from its phone booth–like sound, making entire guitar lines and lyrics, both previously undistinguishable, clear. They never did sell out (far too drunk and self-destructive for that), but then again, I’m not sure anyone under 40 knows who they are. Mission accomplished fellas? Well, if you’re curious, check out the “Let It Bleed” reissue.
Also, honorable mention, LCD Soundsystem casually released “New Body Rhumba” as part of the soundtrack to the immensely weird Noah Baumbach film White Noise, and it’s everything you ever want a LCD Soundsystem song to be: bouncy, funny, and even a bit profound.
Featured image (at top): “More than forty miles of shelves, two millions of books, and ‘of the making … is no end,'” (c. 1906) photograph of the book stacks in the reading room of the British Museum Library, London, by Donald Macbeth, Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress.