One of those books where you read 20 pages, grab a pen and restart to take notes, and then abandon the pen at page 50 because you're underlining everything and making a mess of ink. ...more
I’ve never read anything like this. This is everything I never knew that music writing could be. I’ve never read this type of music writing in say, the pages of the rolling stone or anywhere else that’s popular. Our particular experiences as young black music writers, purveyors and absorbers of the ...more
I had never heard of Hanif Abdurraqib (although I don’t read a lot of essay collections, so he might be more well-known in those circles), so it was by pure coincidence that I was in a local bookstore looking for Christmas presents and saw his book on the shelf of Staff Picks. If you want the short ...more
Did you feel my absence, Goodreads friends? I haven't been here in a while, it seems like I haven't been able to finish a book since September, a month that coincided with me finishing the Neapolitan Novels and moving away from my hometown for the first time. I tried to move on since Ferrante, but h ...more
This is, single-handedly, the greatest music/culture book I have ever read. Two essays in and I felt that; two essays in and I was recommending it far and wide. It sustained across the whole collection. Hanif writes in a way that blows music out beyond a sub-culture; it's true that it bleeds into ev ...more
I can't adequately describe how much or just why I love this book so much. Hanif Abdurraqib writes so powerfully and with such insight about all the things we as a nation are grappling with right now.
[A note to potential readers: I loved this book out of the gate but a few essays about emo bands ab ...more
I've read five stellar essay collections that came out in 2017 and this one might sit at the top of the pile. Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib has this way of laying out whatever it is he wants to discuss, then beautifully diving into it and taking the reader in directions they weren't expecting, but that al ...more
There are some books, man. Some books that just make you stop every few minutes and stare and close your eyes and let the unpunctuated words echo around a bit in your head and where every few chapters you've gotta steel yourself when you feel the feels. Prose as poetry, and when you're done you'll f ...more