# How to Read Now: Essays - Hardcover

by **Elaine Castillo** (Author)

**"_How to Read Now_ explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories."**

"A book that doesn't seek to shut down the current literary discourse so much as shake it up." (_The New York Times Book Review_) Offering "its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we're all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity -- a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return." (_Los Angeles Times_)

"I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed while reading these essays from the phenomenal Elaine Castillo. What powerful writing, what a rigorous mind. For as long as I live, I want to read anything Castillo writes, and you probably do, too." --R.O. Kwon, author of _The Incendiaries_

How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words--beautiful, aspirational--are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, "she moves to wrest reading away from the cotton-candy aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work." (_Vulture_)

_How to Read Now_ explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like _The Watchmen_ to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, _How to Read Now_ empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.

### Author Biography

**Elaine Castillo**, named one of "30 of the Planet's Most Exciting Young People" by the _Financial Times_, was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her debut novel, _America Is Not the Heart_, was a finalist for numerous prizes including the Elle Big Book Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, _Real Simple_, _Lit Hub_, _The Boston Globe_, _San Francisco Chronicle_, _The New York Post_, _Kirkus Reviews_, and the New York Public Library.

**Number of Pages:** 352

**Dimensions:** 1.27 x 8.42 x 5.85 IN

**Publication Date:** July 26, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 28.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 28.00 USD | In stock |

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- How to Read Now: Essays - Hardcover

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