Her breasts though small were beautifully shaped beneath her blouse, and her hips though narrow gave her long, dusty skirt a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved back from the vampire, I saw the tears standing in her eyes like glass in the flicker of the lights, and I felt my spirit contract in fear for her, and in longing. Her beauty was heartbreaking.
Art and sex occupy similar positions under capitalism. The commodification of each, while rampant, is also rife with anxiety and subject to questions of ethics, purity, and meaning. This is because we are told art and sex shouldn’t be commodified. Both are seemingly sacred forms of human expression, and we are taught to keep them close to ourselves, safe from capital’s voracious appetite. And yet, art and sex– and specifically the art and sex industries–are actually capital’s stress points: two industries saturated in hyper-capitalist relations while also existing on the outskirts of the formal economy.
page 5, Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex
If I had to pick a singular theme for the books I read this year, it would be – thoughtful non-fiction. While non-fiction makes up 34% of the 38 books I read this year, most of the ones I read had a significant impact on my thoughts during this year. I suppose that is the most significant metric I use to determine which of the books I read this year were not only good but also impactful.
I think this is the first time I am writing one of these book of the year lists, this should be fun.
The list is below, these are in chronological order of when I read them.
