stack of books ras is reading

What’s That On Her Bookshelf: Our year-end media picks

And we said to ourselves, shoot, it might be cool to share with people what we’ve been digging, so they can dig too. So here’s our 2013 memorial round-up of tasty media we ingested. Ras put together all the descriptions, we supplied the goods.
Enjoy. ::bows:: -Eighteen

 

///////RAS’S PICKS///////

BOOKS
+ The Oryx and the Crake by Margaret Atwood
Biotechnology, corporate surburbia, human trafficking
+ Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The gradual decline of society, femme adolescent experience, dissociative experiences
+ The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
Exploration, emergent behavior in artificial intelligence, love
+ Alien Wombs and Spirits by Janice Boddy
Possession, dissociative experiences, anthropology, women’s spirituality
+ Affect and Artificial Intelligence by Elizabeth Wilson
Queerness, cybernetics, Alan Turing, male nerd-bonding
+ Story Revisions: Narrative Therapy in the Postmodern World by Alan Parry & Robert E. Doan
Post-modernity, personal history, multiple selves, existential psychology
+ Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense by Jonathan Moreno
Unspoken contracts, neuroscience, the military, mind-reading
+ Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century edited by Chris Spannos
Participatory government, future visioning, post-Marxism
+ Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-girl by Tiqqun & A. Reines
Mysogyny, girlhood, anger, receptacles
+ Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Cold hard survival, dystopia, tribes, DIY communities
+ The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Anarchism, utopia?, isolation, hard work, wisdom

PAPERS
+ “Nightmares, neurophenomenology and the cultural logic of trauma” by Lawrence Kirmayer

SHORT STORIES
+ “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang
Perception of time, linguistics, kinship

WEB
+ Postcolonial Digital Humanities
Digital survival, digital diaspora, digital criticism
+ Longform and Longform/fiction
Narrative, classical digital formats, immersion
+ Socialtext Journal
Open-source scholarship, [post]modern culture, disruption
+ “Neurocultures Manifesto” by Victoria Pitts-Taylor
Neuropower, interdisciplinarianism, decommodifying science

TV
+ The X Files
Trenchcoats, sensible loafers, skepticism
+ Serial Experiments Lain
Manual updates, internet addiction, cyberspaces

FILM
+ Upstream Color directed by Shane Carruth
Abduction, memory, shared trauma
+ Killer of Sheep directed by Charles Burnett
Black Los Angeles, deindustrial wastelands, neverending hustle
+ Ganja & Hess directed by Bill Gunn
African curses, black academia, intense monologues
+ Sound of My Voice directed by Zal Batmanglij
Time travel, cults, faith

 

///////RASHEEDAH’S PICKS///////

BOOKS
+ Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness by Itzhak Bentov
Continuous Big Bang, eternal return, quantum cosmology
+ The PsychoBiology of Mind-Body Healing: New Concepts of Therapeutic Hypnosis by Ernest Lawrence Ross
Mind-body communication, self-suggestion, the cycle of healing
+ Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha Womack
The afro multiverse, fiction as activism, domestic aliens
+ Experiments with Light and Mirrors (Getting Started in Science) by Robert Gardner
Puzzlers, diversions, everyday phenomena
+ Everyday Quantum Reality by David Grandy
Mathematical anti-formalism, reality, science present
+ The Speed of Light: Constancy + Cosmos by David A. Grandy
Visual perception, existentialism, universal blending
+ Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
Medical ethics, institutional sociopathology, rage
+ Myth, Literature and the African World (Canto) by Wole Soyinka
Ritual, storytelling, unity
+ Crystals and Light by Elizabeth A. Wood
Space lattices, point groups, polarization
+ Develop Your Psychic Skills by Enid Hoffman
Right brain, intuition, reprogramming
+ Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World by Robert Anton Wilson
Non-Euclidian geometries, general semantics, relativity
+ target=”_blank”The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics by Julian Barbour
Change, time, immortality, Heraclitus
+ The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe by Eric Lerner
Decay, plasma, electromagnetic fields

WEB
+ “Why I Became an Afrofuturist” by Stafford Battle
Populism, Nat Turner, Steamfunk, Janelle Monae
+ PHYS.org
Crystals, sugar batteries, multicellularity, circadian clocks

MAGAZINES
+ Discover Magazine, Nov 2013
Comet ISON, OCD, pachyderms
+ Scientific American, June 2013
Octopii, metallic robots, light deflection

FILM
+ Hidden Colors 1 & 2
Diaspora, indigenous people, African historical presence

TV
+ Fringe
The FBI, mythology, alternate realities
+ Sliders
Wormholes, parallel universes, Earth Prime
+ Warehouse 13
The US Secret Service, South Dakota, supernatural artifacts
+ Medium
Psychic abilities, intergenerational precognition, deja vu
+ Eureka
Global Dynamics, technological breakthroughs, corporate suburbia
+ The 4400
Mount Rainier, The Department of Homeland Security, precognition

 

///////EIGHTEEN’S PICKS///////

 

Eighteen's bookshelf

WEB
+ The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency’ by Dahr Jamail
Artic methane, climate nightmares, climate realities
+ Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America’s Most Desperate Town by Matt Taibbi
Real dystopias, vigilante blocks, urban anarchy
+ Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics by Natalie Walchover
The amplituhedron, quantum gravity,locality, unitarity
+ Introduction To Nahuatl by Fermin Herrera
The Mexica Movement, indigenous linguistics, cultural substrates

ZINES
+ Vanitas by Hag Collective
Glitter lips, shiny cream sticky kid, ahaha
+ Undoing Sex: Against Sexual Optimism by C.E., encountered originally at negatecity.tumblr.com (currently defunct)
Anti-fuck, anti-orgasm, perspectives on intimacy
+ Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English
Witch hunters, the medical establishment, demonization of woman healers
+ ARKDUST 1 by Alex Smith
Home town superheroes, bodega fantasies, ecstacy

BOOKS
+ Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
False dichotomies, la mitologia de Las Aztecas, The Treaty of Guadalupe, cultural tyranny
+ Happy Baby by Stephen Elliot
The juvenile justice system, pain/pleasure paradox, Chicago
+ Snitch Factory by Peter Plate
Welfare bureaucracy, urban decay, corruption, heroism
+ Doc and Fluff: The Dystopian Tale of a Girl and Her Biker by Pat Califia
Outlaws, violent sex, true love?
+ The Cyborg Handbook by Chris Hables Gray
Cybernetic organisms, prostheses, living machines
+ Robin Hood by Louis Rhead
Chivalry, poachers, merry men

GRAPHIC NOVELS
+ Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Omnibus 1 by Yukito Kishiro
Sky cities, mad scientists, bio-chips

TV
+ Black Mirror
Wireless, techno-paranoia, techno parables
+ Macross Plus
Colonies, rivalries, AI holograms (tw: sexual assault)

 

///////ALEX’S PICKS///////

BOOKS
+ Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality by Ronald L. Mallett & Bruce Henderson
Theoretical physics, space-time, circulating laser light
+ Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Post-Katrina, violence, teen rappers
+ Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by Grant Morrison
Archetypes, superheroes, modern myths

COMICS
+ Copra by Michel Fiffe
Supervillains, psychedelic dimensions, experimental visuals
+ MIND MGMT by Matt Kindt
Super spies, espionage, government agencies
+ I am not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
Racial identity, absurdity, recurrent communication problems

ZINES
+ All That’s Left by Eighteen
Commodified bodies, dome-life, block life, enhancements
+ Destroy the Scene: BROS FALL BACK by The Secret Society of Femmes
Hetero-patriarchy, punk scenes, DIY
+ HYPEBEAST print magazine “The Synthesis Issue
Fashion, IRL identity conjuring, online commerce

AUDIO
+ Young Fathers TAPE ONE and TAPE TWO 12″ EPs
Romance, fortune, remains

WEB
+ Black Girl Dangerous
Mia Mackenzie, voice, experience, expression