Eira Tansey

2019 media highlights

Something I’ve been chewing on with the recent annual spate of “this year in reading” social media proclamations is my discomfort with the book as a form of media exceptionalism. People brag about how many books they read, how often they read books, and what books they read in a way that simply doesn’t exist with other forms of media People get excited about end of year publishing sales more than magazine subscription sales. A pile of 50 unread magazines is treated with a far different attitude than a pile of 50 unread books. People post “shelfies” of books they have to read, but not screenshots of their podcast queues.

I also have a lot of straight up insecurity around the number of books I read, because it is a number that has nothing to do with how much of my time I actually spend reading. I read a ton of news, pamphlets, zines, magazines, long-form investigative journalism, the occasional literary journal, and academic journals. I gut tons of academic books. None of these items make it on to my annual compiled list of what I read. Putting together a “books I read this year” list is at odds with trying to convey how my media consumption actually shapes my understanding of the world, since magazines and podcasts and even social media accounts influence me as much as books.

As a slow reader, I look at the number of books I read compared to other readers and feel really self-conscious about how few books I read compared to others (even though I often read dense non-fiction books that are well over 500 pages, and I came close to my own personal reading goal this year). But I have to remind myself that the number of books read is not a proxy for time well spent. Time spent with friends and time spent outdoors is just as vital to my intellectual development and personal well-being as reading.

Last year I did a reading roundup of thematic highlights of my favorite books (quality and context over quantity, baby). I’m repeating that format this time, but with other media mixed in besides books.

Water

The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy (book, Anna Clark): An excellent foregrounding of the urban history of Flint, Michigan informs this book about the city’s water crisis. Clark does a great job of making clear that the water infrastructure problems in Flint are not unique, but exist across the country.

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (book, Elizabeth Rush): Hands down my favorite environmental book I read this year. Elizabeth Rush visits the communities already suffering from sea-level rise and treats their stories with a significant amount of compassion and empathy. The story about the community on Staten Island working through managed retreat deeply shaped how I think about the topic of adaptation to changing coastlines.

The Water Will Come (book, Jeff Goodell): This was a fascinating book to read right after Elizabeth Rush’s book, because while the book’s premise is very similar, Jeff Goodell is like Hunter S. Thompson trawling for the most outlandish stories to Rush’s gentle but determined Rachel Carson approach. One of the more memorable stories is when he interviews the benefactor of the Perez Art Museum in Miami, Florida.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes (book, Daniel Egan): This was the first thing I read when I began preparing for my Access keynote since I knew I wanted to focus on the Great Lakes. A great historical overview of the many, many human interventions in the Great Lakes watershed and the cycles of pollution and renewal it has undergone over the last 200 years.

The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare (article, Nathaniel Rich): This is the article that inspired the movie Dark Water (which I also highly recommend!). As with the book by Anna Clark, Rich makes it clear that the water issues particular to DuPont’s devastation of Parkersburg’s water supply is not limited to just the initially affected area, but exemplifies similar stories happening elsewhere.

The Allegheny Front (podcast): This podcast is produced out of Pittsburgh, and it often covers regional environmental stories, including those about the Ohio River. The podcast has covered everything from the ORSANCO debacle to the emerging threat of new petrochemical facilities in the watershed.

Energy

Cultures of Energy (podcast): Although this podcast is now on hiatus, Dominic and Cymene have a massive back catalog of interviews with other (mostly) academics that delve into their research areas. Most of the scholars work in energy studies, but other environmental studies topics like water, plant, and food studies sometimes come up.

Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal (book, Peter Galuszka): An easy to read overview of one of the deadliest coal mine explosions in recent years, and a short history of the coal wars in Appalachian between labor and management. Read this to find out why former CEO Don Blankenship ranks among the worst people on Earth.

Tarot (yes really)

Modern Tarot (book, Michelle Tea): This was the first book I read about tarot when I wanted to begin exploring but didn’t really know where to start. The book is arranged into short chapters that correspond with the major and minor arcana of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and its derivatives. This book is a little more Witchy with a capital ‘W’ than I tend to roll (for example, every chapter ends with a spell, many of which use very specific crystals), but I still found it to be a super accessible intro to tarot since it keeps things pretty simple and also uses a lot of gender inclusive language.

The Creative Tarot (book, Jessa Crispin): This book is great for folks who don’t use tarot for divination (reading the future) but are interested in it for its capacity to generate ideas and support creative work. Crispin includes recommended books, music, and painting to correspond with each card, and a number of spreads (ways to lay out your cards) for finding inspiration, clearing roadblocks, etc.

Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in Exurban Wilds (book, Matt Stansberry and David Wilson): This book accompanies the Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck put out by Belt Publishing, which I cannot praise highly enough. The court cards in the deck are represented by naturalists and scientists (think Aldo Leopold, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Rachel Carson, etc), while the minor arcana depict birds, fungi, trees, flowers, and insects. The book itself is a series of short essays describing why certain symbols were chosen for each of the major arcana cards (for example, a possum is the Hanged Man).

The New Tarot Handbook (book, Rachel Pollack): This was a good “advanced” book to read on tarot once I had the basics down. Pollack gets into some of the more subtle symbology of the tarot, and especially the numerology associated with each deck.

Tarot for Radical Self Care (zine, Diana Rose): A short zine with some thoughts on using tarot as a healing practice, especially for folks with marginalized backgrounds. It includes several spreads for supporting different facets of individual and community health. I also love Diana’s instagram account.

Religion

Living the Quaker Way (book, Philip Gulley): This is a very good introductory book that was written for non-Quakers (though I still got a lot out of it as someone who’s been attending a Quaker meeting for a few years). Each chapter is based on an exploration of Friends’ major testimonies.

The Magnificast (podcast): A Christian left-wing podcast that delves into all sorts of historical and current topics. One of my favorite episodes this year was about Dorothy Day’s trip to Cuba.

Modern Ritual (instagram): An instagram account about Judaism run by two young women, a rabbi and a rabbi-in-training. Lots of thoughtful posts on Jewish theology, practice, and politics.

Ben Wildflower (instagram): Prints and art of left-wing Christian themes. I adore the interpretation of Luke 1:46.

Heath and community well-being

How To Do Nothing (book, Jenny Odell): I read this during my first sabbatical month. A great book for helping you consider how you pay attention to things.

Nap Ministry (instagram): By far one of my favorite accounts on instagram. The Nap Ministry is rooted in black feminist politics, and asserts that resting is a form of resistance in a culture that insists that the highest form of achievement is to always work hard.

Refuge (book, Terry Tempest Williams): Another book I read during my first sabbatical month (and while out in Utah, the setting of the book). This also had a lot of themes of religion in it, given Williams’ LDS family. Williams witness of her mother’s end of life with cancer against the backdrop of a flooding of a bird refuge is very moving for those of us who see our family’s health connected to the health of the wider world we inhabit.

Burnout (book, Emily and Amelia Nagoski): Some of my closest friends recommended this book, and it was great! If you have ever suspected that the problem with your exhaustion isn’t because of your messy closet but because of the patriarchy and late-stage capitalism, this is probably the best mainstream self-help book you’re going to find that acknowledges that reality.

The right-wing

Know Your Enemy (podcast): As someone who occasionally reads a copy of the Wall Street Journal solely because I believe in studying one’s enemy, this is hands down my favorite podcast I’ve found this year. I rarely go back and begin listening to a podcast from the beginning, but shortly after finding out about this I went back and started listening from the beginning (and I highly recommend at least listening to Episode 1 so you have a sense of the hosts personal backgrounds – which really help them illuminate their material in a fascinating way). The show takes a left-wing approach to analyzing conservative intellectual history (so if you like the work of Corey Robin, you’ll appreciate what they’re doing here). I think it’s essential that the left-wing understand the infrastructure of the right-wing, and this podcast provides a great foundation.

Rising Out of Hatred (book, Eli Saslow): This is the story of how a former white nationalist was converted away from his beliefs during college. I am perpetually fascinated by stories of total political transformations, particularly because political defectors often play a prominent role as a “translator” within their new political home (for example).

The Shock Doctrine (book, Naomi Klein): Written before This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, Klein’s book about the inherent links between violence and the spread of capitalism is not an easy read. I had to pace myself through it, since parts of it are pretty nightmare-provoking. If This Changes Everything is the book that takes progressives and turns them into full on anti-capitalists (as it did to me), this is the book that provides a historical underpinning for the expansion of capitalist violence with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s.

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Categorised as: life