What do you think?
Rate this book
n+1 Discussions
No Regrets: Three Discussions
No Regrets is a set of three transcribed roundtable discussions with 12 participants and moderator Dayna Tortorici about what the women recall from their lives and reading lists in their early twenties.
- GenresNonfictionFeminismEssays
127 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2013
4 people are currently reading
959 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
January 8, 2024
The title of the book is No Regrets, with the idea of interviewing the panelists about their college years and the formative books they read or wished they'd read and to give advice to people who are students now.
The first group of panelists is by far the most unwelcoming. They spend more time lamenting how cringe they were in college than offering actual recommendations or advice to readers. “This is embarrassing but Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg [and] Zami by Audre Lorde [once mattered to me]” (Martin); “This is really embarrassing [but I was inspired by Natural Born Killers while in college]” (Dombek); “This is embarrassing but I used to go to [raves]” (Resnick). None of this stuff is embarrassing??? It just feels so judgmental and snobbish—in so vehemently disavowing things they've grown away from it doesn't leave room for the reader to feel empowered to tread their own growth.
The second and third groups are more forgiving, more analytic about the things in their past that don’t hold up for them today. “I hope it still has that magic for someone encountering it for the first time… Maybe you have to be 20 and have never experienced anything like it before,” (Gould) has a lot more grace than the first group’s “It feels dumb now, but it changed my life” (Dombek). But they are still pretentious. For example, there is a panelist who speaks about a two-year speedrun at Brown to which her father responded, "I'm so happy you got the silly ivy league thing out of your system.” My god.
The third group contains Elif Batuman, whom other reviewers mention is the highlight of the book—the one panelist who makes the whole book worth it. They are right. She is the best part. She is verbose and you can kind of tell she's taking the piss, just loving the sound of her own voice. But she is funny and has whims and wiles and comes across as a welcome chaos to the other panelists’ stuffy and crafted personas.
The advice is thin, the recommendations are unsurprising and not revelatory. Every group mentions Judith Butler's Gender Troubles, Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, and Eileen Myles's Chelsea Girls. There's some Henry James, Joan Didion, and Foucault. It's not vital. But there are some validating stories like Blumenkranz's struggle trying to keep up with her Harvard peers' "secret canon," and Batuman's petty spite reading (or eschewing) authors because of men in her life. And I mean, I read the whole thing? So?
The first group of panelists is by far the most unwelcoming. They spend more time lamenting how cringe they were in college than offering actual recommendations or advice to readers. “This is embarrassing but Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg [and] Zami by Audre Lorde [once mattered to me]” (Martin); “This is really embarrassing [but I was inspired by Natural Born Killers while in college]” (Dombek); “This is embarrassing but I used to go to [raves]” (Resnick). None of this stuff is embarrassing??? It just feels so judgmental and snobbish—in so vehemently disavowing things they've grown away from it doesn't leave room for the reader to feel empowered to tread their own growth.
The second and third groups are more forgiving, more analytic about the things in their past that don’t hold up for them today. “I hope it still has that magic for someone encountering it for the first time… Maybe you have to be 20 and have never experienced anything like it before,” (Gould) has a lot more grace than the first group’s “It feels dumb now, but it changed my life” (Dombek). But they are still pretentious. For example, there is a panelist who speaks about a two-year speedrun at Brown to which her father responded, "I'm so happy you got the silly ivy league thing out of your system.” My god.
The third group contains Elif Batuman, whom other reviewers mention is the highlight of the book—the one panelist who makes the whole book worth it. They are right. She is the best part. She is verbose and you can kind of tell she's taking the piss, just loving the sound of her own voice. But she is funny and has whims and wiles and comes across as a welcome chaos to the other panelists’ stuffy and crafted personas.
The advice is thin, the recommendations are unsurprising and not revelatory. Every group mentions Judith Butler's Gender Troubles, Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, and Eileen Myles's Chelsea Girls. There's some Henry James, Joan Didion, and Foucault. It's not vital. But there are some validating stories like Blumenkranz's struggle trying to keep up with her Harvard peers' "secret canon," and Batuman's petty spite reading (or eschewing) authors because of men in her life. And I mean, I read the whole thing? So?
March 10, 2020
Worth reading mainly for Elif Batuman's crazy, hilarious, insightful monologues in the last section. The premise is pretty narrow and self-indulgent: a bunch of people affiliated with the n+1 literary magazine have conversations and then share their lightly-edited hot-takes with the rest of us. More than anything it reminded me of a literary version of those sports shows I sometime flip by on ESPN, where a bunch of dudes are posturing and pontificating and trying to outdo each other with silly bits of sports arcana and blustery insight. Only in this case it's all about Foucault and feminist theory and Judith Butler and Shulamith Firestone, rather than whether Lamarcus Aldridge is a future Hall of Famer. Anyway, there are interesting bits interspersed throughout and Elif Batuman redeems the whole project by being brilliant and funny and generally less pretentious that the rest of the crew.
As a side note, I feel a little less alone in the world after finding that I'm not the only one who hated Henry Miller, Bukowski, Updike, Kerouac, and the rest of the talentless, humorless, pompous 20th century male hacks that somehow convinced each other, themselves, and the world that they were artists.
As a side note, I feel a little less alone in the world after finding that I'm not the only one who hated Henry Miller, Bukowski, Updike, Kerouac, and the rest of the talentless, humorless, pompous 20th century male hacks that somehow convinced each other, themselves, and the world that they were artists.
May 18, 2022
I first read this book at 23 and it was really interesting to reread it now, my 23-year-old marginalia and all. In some ways I feel like I’m so much more ready to receive this information now, a decade past the age for which it was intended, but also it’s fascinating to see the ways in which books and writers I became obsessed with in the intervening years are laid out here — and I didn’t even get it from this! But it’s like, oh, a passing mention of William Finnegan, and then of course Elif Batuman’s participation. 23-year-old me LOVED what she had to say in this book — she got the most underlined — and then 27-year-old me (a lifetime later, having no memory of this book) LOVED The Idiot. So it’s just fun to revisit and see this evolution laid out in book form.
March 25, 2015
The companion and follow up to n+1; What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions, it features many of the same elements from the previous set of interviews but all the interviewees (intentionally) are women. Just as fascinating as the previous volume.
December 29, 2023
I like knowing what women writers read but I did feel like some were more evasive or not given enough time/space to discuss the works that animate their writing.
I’ve been thinking of my own list of college books: Plainwater, A History of Scientific Revolutions, Ariel, A Thousand Plateaus, The Waves, The Bluest Eye, Simulacra and Simulation, Notes from Underground…surprised that there aren’t more poetry books that come to mind…
I’ve been thinking of my own list of college books: Plainwater, A History of Scientific Revolutions, Ariel, A Thousand Plateaus, The Waves, The Bluest Eye, Simulacra and Simulation, Notes from Underground…surprised that there aren’t more poetry books that come to mind…
June 24, 2023
corinne lent this to me + i’ve been reading the last few days on the subway (including right now!) because it is small and light. some interesting stuff but nothing revelatory; interesting meta-discussion about books / relationship to reading and growing up.
August 12, 2023
i loove hearing people talk ab their relationship with reading & books & writing so i enjoyed this; tbh once u get to group 3 and get to witness elif batuman’s rants, u realise what a yawn the other 2 groups were- felt like they were all just name dropping at times :|
wld be a good gift to someone ab to enter college
wld be a good gift to someone ab to enter college
January 2, 2014
"it's not a recommendation, but there is something about this, the position of consuming vs. the position of figuring out how to fill the world around you with art and action, which you can only do with people." (P 36)
January 3, 2014
It feels wrong to be the first review on this, so let me simply say that I have this thing dog-eared within an inch of its life. "Secret Canon", "Wrong Science" and "Advice" especially.
oh, and:
oh, and:
DAYNA TORTORICI: What would Jack London do? Christ. You'd be dead.
September 12, 2019
A wonderful little pamphlet that grew my reading list and opened fifteen tabs in my browser. And I didn't even start digging into the lists in the back of the book. This is the kind of loose discussion-based material that could make a podcast that I'd shoot straight into my veins. I want to know so much more about what all of these women think.
June 13, 2022
such a lovely read and simply so fascinating! i love how much disagreement there is but still my tbr just doubled in length (and got completely reordered!!)
im gonna call it - best book of the year (so far but gonna be a hard one to beat..!)
im gonna call it - best book of the year (so far but gonna be a hard one to beat..!)
January 2, 2024
I acquired this as an Elif Batuman completist, but I really enjoyed the other contributors too. It's mostly a transcript of (for me) cool older sisters talking about their secret canons.
May 12, 2018
Themes: wishing for people to guide them, conversely wishing that they read things they didn't have to
January 15, 2019
Better than the first in the series, imo. Really delightful to read.
September 28, 2019
needed to read this
Read
March 12, 2023i inhale everything that has elif batuman in it.
she is sooo witty and full of life nuggets to give away. i always feel like coming out a better person after muddling with her writings^^
she is sooo witty and full of life nuggets to give away. i always feel like coming out a better person after muddling with her writings^^
December 28, 2023
I desperately want to edit something like this.
not-finished
August 16, 2024Only read the third section with Elif Batuman because that's all I was interested in. Some good thoughts about self-perception. Otherwise just an enjoyable speedread.
September 3, 2024
honestly a quick read and just felt like i was listening into a conversation down a dark hallway back at brown
August 26, 2025
Easy and enriching one day read
May 24, 2014
No Regrets: Three Discussions is the N + 1 follow-up to What We Should Have Known, a tiny book the New York publisher brought out in 2007. What We Should Have Known presented transcripts of two panel discussions of N + 1 writers and editors. The idea, according to Keith Gessen’s one-page introduction, was to answer the “canon-based” approach to college study by identifying contemporary classics and by, in Gessen’s words, “articulating a better reason to read the best books ever written than that they authorize and underwrite a system of brutal economic competition and inequality.
But a funny thing happened on the way to compiling a contemporary, Marxist-friendly literary canon. Perhaps guided by the subtext of its title, What We Should Have Known turned into a roundtable discussion of reading regrets. Which made the book complicated and entertaining. If there is such a thing as “the reading life” (there isn’t, not really), it would have to be a life of regrets as much as one of enrichment and entertainment. There are too many books! There isn’t enough time! You can’t possibly read everything, much less read it in the proper chronology. Reading What We Should Have Known is like eavesdropping on a group of super-smart readers confessing to what they wish they had done differently. Actually, it isn’t like that, it is that. It’s a fun, easy-but-still-smart read.
It’s seven years later (already!) and N + 1 is under the leadership of a new generation of editors. One of them, Dayna Totorici, has resurrected Gessen’s project but with a twist. No Regrets: Three Discussions presents three panels instead of two, the cast this time is all female, and the conversations driven by a feminist sensibility. Tortorici’s super-sharp introduction explains that, for women, the injunction “should” in the title of the first volume embodies the double-possibility of female subjection and emancipation. The book, she explains, presents conversations about women becoming themselves. They are, she suggests, the kinds of conversations women tend not to have when there are boys around.
First and foremost, No Regrets offers the reader the experience of reading about reading. It’s a small-scale version of what I imagine reading Rebecca Mead’s book on Middlemarch would be like, but with less time spent on more literary subjects. Joan Didion comes and goes, as do Rebecca Solnit, Henry James, Judith Butler and Roland Barthes. What We Should Have Known was like this, too. Personally, I think it’s a good thing these books are small. The paradox (and the problem) in reading about reading is that while you are reading, you aren’t actually reading anything.
The loose focus of these discussions — how did these women writers and readers become themselves? — is, as Tortorici says, not so much more or less interesting than the focus on the previous book — my misspent literary youth — as it is refreshingly different. Still, I missed the complexity and delightful irony of reading a discussion that at once celebrated and mourned the privilege of having the time to read practically everything. In the first book, the authors’ sense of entitlement (imagine being as well-read as these people, and at such a young age!) was nicely balanced by the remorse they shared in having not taken full advantage of (if not full-on wasting) their gifts of curiosity and ample leisure time. Here, the discussion orbits around calls to action (girls should stop texting and playing the tambourine at garage band hang-outs and pick up a guitar), refusals to admit regret (as suggested by the title), and tributes to influential feminists and critics (Didion, Butler, and Chris Krauss, author of I Love Dick, which sounds amazing).
But I don’t mean to sound negative. If you enjoyed What We Should Have Known, or if it sounds like fun to briefly drop in on a well-edited conversation among super-smart book people, you should definitely read this book. My favorite panel is the last one, and my favorite critic is, as always, Elif Batuman, who offers a brilliant digression on the relationship between fashion advice and the danger of the writer’s instrumental manipulation of a subject’s conception of her own identity; a wonderful summary of why I Love Dick is a masterpiece; and the charming advice her small Turkish aunt always gave her on the phone (which I can’t repeat without spoiling the book’s hilarious and perfect ending).
Dayna Totorici is right. You wouldn’t hear these conversations among a group of men, and you might not even hear them in a group that included just one man. No Regrets is a quick and fun read, an engaging public conversation, a pocket feminist anthem. You should throw a few bucks to the next generation of N + 1 and get yourself a copy. You’ll be glad you did.
But a funny thing happened on the way to compiling a contemporary, Marxist-friendly literary canon. Perhaps guided by the subtext of its title, What We Should Have Known turned into a roundtable discussion of reading regrets. Which made the book complicated and entertaining. If there is such a thing as “the reading life” (there isn’t, not really), it would have to be a life of regrets as much as one of enrichment and entertainment. There are too many books! There isn’t enough time! You can’t possibly read everything, much less read it in the proper chronology. Reading What We Should Have Known is like eavesdropping on a group of super-smart readers confessing to what they wish they had done differently. Actually, it isn’t like that, it is that. It’s a fun, easy-but-still-smart read.
It’s seven years later (already!) and N + 1 is under the leadership of a new generation of editors. One of them, Dayna Totorici, has resurrected Gessen’s project but with a twist. No Regrets: Three Discussions presents three panels instead of two, the cast this time is all female, and the conversations driven by a feminist sensibility. Tortorici’s super-sharp introduction explains that, for women, the injunction “should” in the title of the first volume embodies the double-possibility of female subjection and emancipation. The book, she explains, presents conversations about women becoming themselves. They are, she suggests, the kinds of conversations women tend not to have when there are boys around.
First and foremost, No Regrets offers the reader the experience of reading about reading. It’s a small-scale version of what I imagine reading Rebecca Mead’s book on Middlemarch would be like, but with less time spent on more literary subjects. Joan Didion comes and goes, as do Rebecca Solnit, Henry James, Judith Butler and Roland Barthes. What We Should Have Known was like this, too. Personally, I think it’s a good thing these books are small. The paradox (and the problem) in reading about reading is that while you are reading, you aren’t actually reading anything.
The loose focus of these discussions — how did these women writers and readers become themselves? — is, as Tortorici says, not so much more or less interesting than the focus on the previous book — my misspent literary youth — as it is refreshingly different. Still, I missed the complexity and delightful irony of reading a discussion that at once celebrated and mourned the privilege of having the time to read practically everything. In the first book, the authors’ sense of entitlement (imagine being as well-read as these people, and at such a young age!) was nicely balanced by the remorse they shared in having not taken full advantage of (if not full-on wasting) their gifts of curiosity and ample leisure time. Here, the discussion orbits around calls to action (girls should stop texting and playing the tambourine at garage band hang-outs and pick up a guitar), refusals to admit regret (as suggested by the title), and tributes to influential feminists and critics (Didion, Butler, and Chris Krauss, author of I Love Dick, which sounds amazing).
But I don’t mean to sound negative. If you enjoyed What We Should Have Known, or if it sounds like fun to briefly drop in on a well-edited conversation among super-smart book people, you should definitely read this book. My favorite panel is the last one, and my favorite critic is, as always, Elif Batuman, who offers a brilliant digression on the relationship between fashion advice and the danger of the writer’s instrumental manipulation of a subject’s conception of her own identity; a wonderful summary of why I Love Dick is a masterpiece; and the charming advice her small Turkish aunt always gave her on the phone (which I can’t repeat without spoiling the book’s hilarious and perfect ending).
Dayna Totorici is right. You wouldn’t hear these conversations among a group of men, and you might not even hear them in a group that included just one man. No Regrets is a quick and fun read, an engaging public conversation, a pocket feminist anthem. You should throw a few bucks to the next generation of N + 1 and get yourself a copy. You’ll be glad you did.
January 15, 2023
I just wanted more
May 28, 2025
Cool, cool. I’ve mostly been spending my 20s reading romance— I need fluffy escapism!
Read
February 26, 2021It was enjoyable to relate to the thoughts flowing through these discussions. I am curious how I would read this and how I would answer the questions in 10 years.
“I realized that whatever I wanted to do in the evening I should be doing during the day.” (84)- Astra Taylor
“I realized that whatever I wanted to do in the evening I should be doing during the day.” (84)- Astra Taylor
January 18, 2016
I really enjoyed reading this. I started to read "What We Should Have Known," and found it almost impossible to care about a roundtable of dudes gushing about Henry Miller. So I switched to this and was much relieved. Lots of helpful ways of thinking about reading and the purpose of reading in here, especially for me as a teacher. Dawn Lundy Martin, in the first discussion, talked about her memories of reading To Kill a Mockingbird and being the only black person in the classroom--but not having the necessary language or tools to analyze what exactly was making her uncomfortable and then voice that discomfort. And I thought, YES. That is a very important reason to read: to give yourself the tools to understand the world around you and put them to voice. Also helpful was the discussion of the "secret canon," and how every social circle (or presumably university) has its own subset of canonical texts that act as a shibboleth for entry.
The last discussion was the least satisfying, given how the best advice they all got was to turn down jobs and not do things they didn't love. That advice--though it may have been good for the women discussing it--would be disastrous for most people. That advice clearly comes from a place of privilege: an Ivy League education, parents who have the means to be a backup support system, the sure knowledge that you DO have the human capital to be hirable because you are already white and middle or upper class.
Also, how have I not read Judith Butler yet?
The last discussion was the least satisfying, given how the best advice they all got was to turn down jobs and not do things they didn't love. That advice--though it may have been good for the women discussing it--would be disastrous for most people. That advice clearly comes from a place of privilege: an Ivy League education, parents who have the means to be a backup support system, the sure knowledge that you DO have the human capital to be hirable because you are already white and middle or upper class.
Also, how have I not read Judith Butler yet?
March 20, 2018
i love to revisit this book every year around the same time as a way of taking stock of how my relationship to reading has evolved, and every year i find new things to relate to or be inspired by. often when i don't feel capable of actually sitting down and reading i just scroll through goodreads and read about books, which gets me back in the mindset of wanting to read but is also kind of mindless. reading this feels kind of like doing that but not mindless-- instead of reading canned, five sentence summaries of books i might want to read, i get to read a bunch of smart, interesting women discuss their reading habits at length! reading about people i admire's personal relationships w/ reading makes me feel better about not having read ~everything~ and not being, as one contributor says, "a vast, general brain" bc it reminds me that reading is intensely personal and more about edification and inspiration than having read every sentence of every book in some canon or other.
Read
February 1, 2014I don't think I would've read this if it wasn't for my Emily Books subscription, but I enjoyed it. It made me nostalgic for my early years of university, when Butler and Haraway and other feminist theorists were new and overwhelming for me, and I had all these ideas about what books I should read in order to be taken seriously. I think I was more willing to suffer through books that were dense or obtuse or not easily accessible back then, but I also wasted my time on some bullshit just because it was highly regarded by people I thought I should respect. I love the idea of a "Secret Canon," that definitely exists.
January 10, 2014
I just read this in one sitting. Group Two's conversation spoke to me the most. Brought up questions of reading as an ascetic experience, in order to become an educated person/"an intellectual" vs. reading in order to understand one's own self and one's experience; reading for self-expansion and self-growth in relation to the personal, vs. the educational. Also, reading more masculinist works (by, e.g. Roth, Updike, etc.) in order to understand the other (to identify with the negative female vs. *should* not identify with: the choice defines the goal of one's reading).
December 6, 2015
- Read this laying on a towel on the lawn of the Cambridge Public Library while the sun set, mid-Juneish.
- I love reading transcripts of conversations so this was pure pleasure in that sense.
- Lots of people were changed by I Love Dick - I wonder if I will look back on reading it this summer as a game changer.
- I love reading transcripts of conversations so this was pure pleasure in that sense.
- Lots of people were changed by I Love Dick - I wonder if I will look back on reading it this summer as a game changer.
January 2, 2016
A really friendly and readable discussion of books (and other things) that made a difference, or would have made a difference for these women in their college years. As someone who is at the target age for this book, and just getting into (and loving) theory, reading this felt like hearing from the big sister I don't have, the dedicated and intellectual college advisor I haven't met.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews