Curated by Manual

We have zipped past the first quarter of 2022, and it feels like we barely have the time to process the events happening since the start of the year, much less contemplate the disruptions wrought by the pandemic a couple of years ago.

In partnership with Art & Science, Manual has curated a list of reading materials that encourages readers to look at our current fast-paced modern life through refreshed perspectives and question our preconceived role within it.

To wit, we revisit Wendell Berry’s concerns on technological reliance in Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, which includes the essay originally published in 1987. There’s also Robert Poynton teaching the benefits of improvisation skills and applying them in our everyday lives in Do Improvise: Less Push. More Pause. Better Results. A New Approach to Work (and Life). Elsewhere, B Magazine’s spotlight on the global short form mobile video platform TikTok, underscores how the platform has significantly shaped our relationship with social media.

Whether you’re flipping the pages before bed or in transit, we hope this reading list offers insightful outlooks on this increasingly complex modern life as we gradually make our way to a post-pandemic future. Happy reading!

With the spirit of gaining new perspectives and recalibrating what we’ve learned for 2022, we’ve curated some books that are worth reading for this year.