literal_libris, posts by tag: pop culture - LiveJournal

The last book I read was Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson.

It is official, watching TV, playing video games and surfing the net make you smarter.

Violence and sex you're worried about?  Afraid it will warp the minds of your children?  Ah, worry not, the content doesn't even matter!  These things aren't out with a moral agenda!  They teach you to think, which has nothing to do with morals at all.  And don't forget, the most popular video game titles are the ones with almost no sex or violence.

It's just different kinds of smart.  Even reality television, supposedly the lowest-of-the-low, can teach us important lessons and allows us to flex out social/emotional intelligence muscles.  Video games teach us creative ways to make decisions and prioritize, and how to explore new environments, to push boundaries of system.  Complicated television shows and movies, with more plot lines and characters than ever before tax our brains by making us memorize more complex social structures and sets of relationships.

Somehow he does an amazing job of factoring out everything else and makes an insanely plausible case.  According to his studies, IQ scores have risen, on average, 13.8 points over the last 30 years, due almost entirely upon more complicated and interactive media forms.

So remember that television, movies, video games, and the internet make you smarter.  Which means the next time one of those anti-TV people get in your face about the evils of television, you can kick them in the teeth.

The Chigago Sun-Times takes a look at Continuum's 33 1/3 series. Each book in the series contains one writer's examination of an album considered to be a masterpiece of its genre. I've read a number of these, the one I recall being the most interesting was the look at REM's Murmur. Other books have covered Radiohead, Prince, The Smiths, and The Velvet Underground. These make perfect non-fiction reading for summer, being small and portable and able to be read in an hour or two.

Right now I'm reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters detailing three types of jobs in three different locations, and an evaluation. Right now I'm at the end of the first chapter, and I'm finding it to be interesting but somewhat unremarkable so far. I still have about a hundred and seventy pages to go though, so I'm hoping it becomes more substantial.

I just finished Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I found him to be generally insightful and entertaining, and on occasion genuinely funny or thought provoking. I also really enjoy the essay format since I tend to be unable to commit myself to long continuous works. This book is neither long nor continuous, so it must be perfect for me! Anyway, I was impressed by the way Klosterman weaved a variety of personal narratives and pop culture references together and drew conclusions from these things that are relevant in a much more broad sense than you'd expect judging by some of the topics he chooses(Billy Joel, reality TV, SAved by the Bell, Pam Anderson, etc). It was an overall good read.

Here is my nonfiction To Be Read List(with Amazon links!). Any comments? You liked it, you hated it, you plan to read it, you don't understand why anyone would read it, whatever..


Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania by Andy Behrman
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jameson
Bedlam: A Year in the Life of a Mental Hospital by Dominick Bosco
Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by Robert Whitaker
Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp
The Baby Boon : How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless by Elinor Burkett
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapintro
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century by George Sessions
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine
Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
The Color of Water : A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother</i> by James McBride