I Like to Watch

"Sometimes I'll just be sitting around, reading something this woman's written, and I'll actually think, Why doesn't somebody just put all of Emily Nussbaum's writing into a book? And now somebody has! Except I Like to Watch is more than I knew I wanted. It's got some of the Nussbaum hits (on The Sopranos, on Girls, on Joan Rivers, on Vanderpump Rules, for starters). But it's also more: a work of sustained philosophical argument (What is television?) and resonant personal reflection (What does fandom cost?). It's a book by a critic who loves an art form ardently and remains committed to both questioning the people who make the art and interrogating the ardor itself."--Wesley Morris, critic at large, The New York Times

"Emily Nussbaum is the perfect critic--smart, engaging, funny, generous, and insightful. All of these talents are on display in this marvelous anthology of her essays on television. They illuminate the shows shaping our culture and the power of this flourishing art form."--David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon

"Taken together, the pieces in I Like to Watch form a searching, brilliant history of American attraction, repulsion, and fascination in the era of peak TV. The book assembles a picture, alive with rigor and pleasure, that only Nussbaum could paint of a medium that has risen and transformed into a high-culture institution that's also an ever-shifting experiment about scorn and anxiety and desire. We're lucky to have this record of it, as well as this casual reminder that criticism, at its very best, is an irreplaceable thrill."--Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

"Some critics, even great ones, you read to agree or disagree with them, but Emily Nussbaum writing about television is something else again. As you read her, you can feel her enlarging your mind: not just what you think about the show at hand or television itself, but pop culture and our place inside it. Her fantastically smart work has always been a pleasure to read a week at a time; this book proves she's equally great to binge, and 'Confessions of the Human Shield, ' a new essay on how to think about art in the time of #MeToo, is essential twenty-first-century reading."--Elizabeth McCracken, author of Bowlaway

"Nussbaum has proven to be a shrewd, highly reliable source for evaluating this rapidly progressing medium. . . . Sharp, insightful writing that firmly positions Nussbaum as one of the leading TV critics of our time."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)