nonfiction Archives - Notes of Oak

DJ Waldie’s ‘Where Are We Now’ Finds LA’s Pulse

02/21/202002/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF D.J. WALDIE’S 2004 NONFICTION COLLECTION WHERE ARE WE NOW: NOTES FROM LOS ANGELES

If you’re like me, the name D.J. Waldie immediately evokes L.A. suburbs and the unique prose “blocks” writing style that he used in his most famous work, Holy Land (1995), to represent the layout of that tract housing. However, in his 2004 collection of essays composed over a decade, Where Are We Now: Notes from Los Angeles, Waldie wrenches himself from Lakewood, CA and attends to Los Angeles with a bird’s eye historical and geographical view. Is the result as successful as Holy Land, which is considered quintessential wider-L.A. region reading? Read on to find out.

Book Review

‘The Japanese Linguistic Landscape’ is Quintessential Reading

10/15/201910/16/2019
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF NAKANISHI SUSUMU’S NONFICTION TEXT — THE JAPANESE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE: REFLECTIONS ON QUINTESSENTIAL WORDS (AUGUST 2019)

Recently published by Japan Library as an English translation, Nakanishi Susumu’s The Japanese Linguistic Landscape: Reflections on Quintessential Words is many things: essay collection, gathering of reflections, distilled wordstock, linguistic history, and philosophy for living. But above all, the text maps out a poetic landscape punctuated by beautiful word-landmarks. The waypoints on this map are both literal elements in reality, e.g. “folded layers of mountains,” “traditional hair ornament,” and “light blue,” and also the Japanese words that represent these real things. The poetry of these curated “quintessential words” amplifies the significance of the literal elements/phenomena they denote. That is, by considering the nuances of the language we use to describe our world, the author helps us chart powerful new intellectual and emotional connections to that world.

Book Review

‘What We See When We Read’: A Tame Thrill

09/06/201902/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF PETER MENDELSUND’S NONFICTION TEXT — WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE READ (2014)

Have you ever wondered, “What do I see when I read?” Well, Peter Mendelsund seems to have the answer to your question with the functionally named, What We See When We Read. Published in 2014, this text is a self-described “Phenomenology with Illustrations” and it does indeed teem with images. Such a graphic form behooves Mendelsund, whose author bio explains that he’s “the associate art director of Alfred A. Knopf…His designs have been described by The Wall Street Journal as being ‘the most instantly recognizable and iconic in contemporary fiction.'”

Book Review

‘On Color’ and ‘The Music of Color’ Book Reviews

05/15/201902/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A DOUBLE-DECKER BOOK REVIEW OF ON COLOR BY DAVID SCOTT KASTAN AND STEPHEN FARTHING (2018), AND THE MUSIC OF COLOR BY SHIMURA FUKUMI (2019) – TWO NONFICTION TEXTS EXPLORING COLOR

From the new books at the college library where I work, I plucked The Music of Color by Shimura Fukumi, enchanted by the cover photo of blue, white, and green yarn, the soft and creamy dust-jacket, the poetic title, and the dazzling photographs nestled amid lyrical text within. Then I put it in my desk drawer where it sat like a glowing orb while I did actual work.

Over the next few days, more new books were sent out to the shelves and, being a greedy reader who wants all the freshest volumes, I also harvested On Color by David Scott Kastan with Stephen Farthing, wooed by its squat shape, its indigo cover depicting a chalk stick rainbow, its vivid pictures, and its promise to investigate the intriguing subject of color.

Book Review

‘Essayism’ by Brian Dillon is Dark, Bright Bricolage

11/28/201802/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF BRIAN DILLON’S ESSAYISM: ON FORM, FEELING, AND NONFICTION

Bricolage. Collage. Geodes. Bright silver ore running through boulders. Jagged fragments. Stained glass shatters. Crystalline snowflakes, gathered. All of these descriptions come to mind when trying to define Brian Dillon’s collection of essays on essays entitled Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction. And I think the author would approve, since his work revels in the curious lists, fragments, and assemblages found in compositions both familiar and obscure.

Book Review

‘The Nature of Photographs’ Is as Rich as Prose-Poetry

10/17/201810/17/2018
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF STEPHEN SHORE’S NONFICTION PHOTOGRAPHY PRIMER

In this era of unlimited image feeds, selfies, and pictures appropriated for tawdry catch-phrases (memes, gifs, etc.), rarely do non-photographers pause to consider the basic elements that unite to compose a photo. We’re all bleary-eyed from bad pictures. Indeed, while many of us ordinary picture-takers can recognize when we take a nice photo, perhaps of a shadow resting in a clavicle, we can’t pinpoint why that particular image turned out to be so effective, and why the picture that we took of our foot turned out to be just an unattractive photo of our foot. To rein in chance and increase the probability of taking good pictures, we need to understand the nature of photographs — to see how what they’re made of affects how we experience them. And that’s what the nonfiction text, The Nature of Photographs: A Primer by Stephen Shore offers the rookie image-taker: an introduction to the intrinsic ingredients of photographs and how to identify these features when contemplating pictures.

Book Review

Human Hubris Dictates ‘The Soul of an Octopus’

10/01/201802/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF SY MONTGOMERY’S NONFICTION TEXT – THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS: A SURPRISING EXPLORATION INTO THE WONDER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Perhaps it’s because I just read Ill Nature, with its incisive critiques of humanity’s handling of animals, from scientists in the name of research, to zookeepers in the name of conservation. Or maybe it’s because my friends are cephalopod aficionados who don’t need to cosset octopuses in an aquarium to recognize their significance as living creatures. But for being a book entitled The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, Sy Montgomery’s 2015 text seems awfully fixated on oblivious humans, while offering only a surface-level, diluted view of the souls the title purports to give prominence to.

Book Review

‘Ill Nature’ is Even More Vital in 2018

09/21/201802/24/2023
by Hannah Huff

A BOOK REVIEW OF JOY WILLIAMS’S ILL NATURE ESSAY COLLECTION

I found Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals by Joy Williams tucked at the top of the nature section at the Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, CA. The book’s titular pun and subtitle reeled me in, since I’m a reader specifically seeking texts that grapple with the ways humans individually affect nature in the 21st century. Indeed, one of the most successful aspects of this book of essays by Williams, who is more widely known as a short story writer, is that it identifies the reader as a primary culprit in nature’s malaise.