Trick Mirror
From one of the brightest young chroniclers of US culture comes this dazzling collection of essays on the internet, the self, feminism and politics. We are living in the era of the self, in an era of malleable truth and widespread personal and political delusion. In these nine interlinked essays, Jia Tolentino, the New Yorker's brightest young talent, explores her own coming of age in this warped and confusing landscape. From the rise of the internet to her own appearance on an early reality TV show; from her experiences of ecstasy both religious and chemical to her uneasy engagement with our culture's endless drive towards 'self-optimisation' from the phenomenon of the successful American scammer to her generation's obsession with extravagant weddings, Jia Tolentino writes with style, humour and a fierce clarity about these strangest of times. Following in the footsteps of American luminaries such as Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Rebecca Solnit, yet with a voice and vision all her own, Jia Tolentino writes with a rare gift for elucidating nuance and complexity, coupled with a disarming warmth. This debut collection of her essays announces her exactly the sort of voice we need to hear from right now and for many years to come.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
13mentions
12people
2019–2021years
69% recommend31% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Not to start a flame war over book choice but forcing kids to read the Bible, Homer's Iliad, and Shakespeare are probably what is causing such marked disinterest in the first place. There are so many interesting and valuable works of writing, fiction and non-fiction, that can captivate and entertain modern children that aren't unapproachable tomes translated from ancient, dead languages, or written in Iambic Pentameter.
One of the first plays I read that actually interested me in Theater was Waiting for Godot. Reading The Stranger in high school exposed me to so many new and complex ideas. Even extremely recent books like "Something that May Shock and Discredit You" by Daniel M. Lavery or "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino are fascinating works of the modern American Canon. I'm not Polish but I'm sure there are equally relevant works in Polish.
If you think kids just prefer to watch a "movie based on a book" maybe stop making them read boring books that truly lack lots of meaningful relevance to their lives today.
And seriously, stop making kids read The Bible as a literary lesson. Nothing made me dis-engage in school like being told "I know you're Jewish and this feels like proselytizing, but I promise, this is purely a lesson in literature, nothing more". That is proven to be a lie when King James's edition is selected over an English translation of the Torah, and when no other non-Christian religious texts are selected for literary evaluation...
- For a more modern and youthful perspective, I'd recommend "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino. It really dives into how chaotic world of internet and media has influenced younger generations.
- Trick Mirror is quite fun.
It’s not a particular book, but nothing has more radically altered the way I think about thinking than the work of Theodor Adorno (and to a certain extent, Horkheimer). I had, prior to reading their work, a tendency to think of thinking as an activity that occurs with quite a definite shape, in quite a well-circumscirbed space. They really exploded the concept for me and broadened my considerations about thought, how it works, what different forms it can take, and that most of the time, it’s more like a peice of music than it is a rational or practical sequence of arguments, and that the societal patterns and forces that attempt to fix your thought into a limited sequence of statements are in fact instances of control impinging itself upon you. This is not to say “don’t be rational” but it is to say there are definte thresholds upon which thought crosses over from the plane of a genuine “thinking through” into an “idiomaticity” or a “thinking about” — a preconception, a repetition, a bias.
- "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0...
"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...
"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...
"Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Darwin-Genetic-Engineering-Hu...
"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Sh...
"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...
"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/...
"Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...
"Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People...
"Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence" https://www.amazon.com/Prediction-Machines-Economics-Artific...
- Sure.
No. 1. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky.
No. 2. "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard.
No. 3. "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman.
No. 4. "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" by Jamie Metzl.
No. 5. "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.
No. 6. "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein.
No. 7. "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre.
No. 8. "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" by Jia Tolentino.
No. 9. "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" by Malcolm Gladwell.
No. 10. "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence," by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.
- List plain text (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-...)
“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” by Shoshana Zuboff “The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company,” by William Dalrymple “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,” by Casey Cep “Girl, Woman, Other,” by Bernardine Evaristo (Booker Prize winner) “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present,” by David Treuer “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” by Jenny Odell “Lost Children Archive,” by Valeria Luiselli “Lot: Stories,” by Bryan Washington “Normal People,” by Sally Rooney “The Orphan Master’s Son,” by Adam Johnson “The Yellow House,” by Sarah M. Broom (National Book Award winner, nonfiction) “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,” by Patrick Radden Keefe “Solitary,” by Albert Woodfox “The Topeka School,” by Ben Lerner “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion,” by Jia Tolentino “Trust Exercise,” by Susan Choi (National Book Award winner, fiction) “We Live in Water: Stories,” by Jess Walter
