astrid's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 10 May 2025 17:49:46 -0700 60 astrid's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life]]> 9792456 230 Jim Kristofic 0826349463 astrid 0 to-read 4.08 2011 Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life
author: Jim Kristofic
name: astrid
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987�2007]]> 10838202
Can what is playing you make it to Level 2?

Fanged Noumena assembles for the first time the writings of Nick Land, variously described as 'rabid nihilism', 'Deleuzian Thatcherism', 'accelerationism', and 'cybergothic'. Wielding weaponised, machinically-recombined versions of Deleuze and Guattari, Reich and Freud, in the company of fellow 'werewolves' such as Nietzsche, Bataille, Artaud, Trakl, and Cioran, to a cut-up soundtrack of Bladerunner, Terminator, and Apocalypse Now, Land plotted a rigorously schizophrenic escape route out of academic philosophy, and declared all-out war on the Human Security System. Despite his 'disappearance', Land's output has been a crucial underground influence both on recent Speculative Realist thought, and on artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.

Beginning with Land's radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Kant, and ending with Professor Barker's cosmic theory of geo-trauma and neo-qabbalistic attempts to formulate a numerical anti-language, Fanged Noumena rescues from obscurity papers, talks and articles some of which have never previously appeared in print. Long the subject of rumour and vague legend, Land's turbulent post-genre theory-fictions of cybercapitalist meltdown smear cyberpunk, philosophy, arithmetic, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology, and the occult into unrecognisable and gripping hybrids.

Fanged Noumena is a dizzying trip through Land's rigorous, incisive, and provocative work, establishing it as an indispensable resource for radically inhuman thought in the twenty-first century.]]>
666 Nick Land 095530878X astrid 0 to-read 3.88 2011 Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987–2007
author: Nick Land
name: astrid
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Love's Work: A Reckoning with Life]]> 759251 144 Gillian Rose 0805210784 astrid 0 to-read 3.98 1995 Love's Work: A Reckoning with Life
author: Gillian Rose
name: astrid
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Fresh, Green Life: A Novel 219522067
After resigning from an adjunct teaching position, our narrator Sebastian Castillo, who shares a name with our author, Sebastian Castillo, and also with a translated Spanish writer, Sebastián Castillo, resolves to spend an entire year without speaking, passing the time by exercising each day and watching self-improvement videos.

But, come New Year’s Eve, Sebastian (the narrator)—whose rich interiority in precontemplation alone is curiously and addictively easy to read—will break his silence by accepting an invitation to the home of a former professor for a reunion amongst his cohort, one decade after graduating. This invitation surely would have been ignored if not for the promised attendance of Maria, Sebastian’s former classmate and love interest. What follows is an inexplicable series of fascinating events charting the erosion of young, male hope.

Inside a world with a peripheral understanding of Rilke, Descartes, Kant, Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, and more, Castillo has written a short epic that is curiously addictive and unexpectedly delightful. FRESH, GREEN LIFE is a meditation on literature, academia, and philosophy; a trek through the past that forecasts a mediocre future; and a compact miracle of the fake-real.]]>
160 Sebastian Castillo 1593767919 astrid 0 to-read 4.30 Fresh, Green Life: A Novel
author: Sebastian Castillo
name: astrid
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, Expanded Anniversary Edition]]> 28265294 Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist's strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer fleshes out Pierre Bourdieu's signal
concept of habitus, deepening our theoretical grasp of human practice. And he supplies a model for a carnal sociology capable of capturing the taste and ache of action.

This expanded anniversary edition features a new preface and postface that take the reader behind the scenes and reveal the making of this classic ethnography. Wacquant reflects on his path to, and uses of, fieldwork based on apprenticeship. He traces the genealogy and draws the anatomy of habitus
and explicates how he deployed it as method of inquiry. The postface retraces the trials and tribulations of his gym mates in and out of the gym over the past thirty years, and reflects on what they reveal about the economics of prizefighting, masculinity, and the passion that binds boxers to their
craft.

Body and Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto at century's end. A subtle investigation and provocative extension of habitus, this expanded
anniversary will intrige and excite students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities.
]]>
432 LoĂŻc Wacquant 0190465697 astrid 0 currently-reading 0.0 2002 Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, Expanded Anniversary Edition
author: LoĂŻc Wacquant
name: astrid
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]>
Evenings and Weekends 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever�

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]>
352 OisĂ­n McKenna 0063319977 astrid 0 to-read 3.77 2024 Evenings and Weekends
author: OisĂ­n McKenna
name: astrid
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
A Good Man Is Hard To Find 75090 A Good Man Is Hard to Find is Flannery O'Connor's most famous and most discussed story. O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most often chose for readings or talks to students. It is an unforgettable tale, both riveting and comic, of the confrontation of a family with violence and sudden death. More than anything else O'Connor ever wrote, this story mixes the comedy, violence, and religious concerns that characterize her fiction.

This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of the story itself, comments and letters by O'Connor about the story, critical essays, and a bibliography. The critical essays span more than twenty years of commentary and suggest several approaches to the story--formalistic, thematic, deconstructionist-- all within the grasp of the undergraduate, while the introduction also points interested students toward still other resources. Useful for both beginning and advanced students, this casebook provides an in-depth introduction to one of America's most gifted modern writers.]]>
180 Flannery O'Connor 0813519772 astrid 0 to-read 3.89 1949 A Good Man Is Hard To Find
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: astrid
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Uncle Vanya 231560 116 Anton Chekhov 1406507881 astrid 0 to-read 3.86 1897 Uncle Vanya
author: Anton Chekhov
name: astrid
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Shadow-Line 273524 The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain's first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain.

This is indeed a work full of "sudden passions," in which Conrad is able to show how the full intensity of existence can be experienced by the man who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is prepared to "stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience." A subtle and penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that counters the tale's seemingly conventional surface.]]>
192 Joseph Conrad 0192801708 astrid 0 to-read 3.73 1916 The Shadow-Line
author: Joseph Conrad
name: astrid
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1916
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Fever Dream 30763882
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.]]>
183 Samanta Schweblin 0399184597 astrid 0 to-read 3.62 2014 Fever Dream
author: Samanta Schweblin
name: astrid
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Fury: A Novel 154431847
� Fury has the poetic and wild force of the desert. In its pages there is tenderness, fear and forceful, rhythmic writing with images that are difficult to forget. It is about the violence of desire that turns us into dogs that drool, howl and bite, but also about love in the midst of hostility and helplessness. This is why it is a disturbing and, at the same time, deeply moving novel.� —Mónica Ojeda

In a desert dotted with war-torn towns, Lázaro and Juan are two soldiers from opposing camps who abandon the war and, while fleeing, become lovers and discover a dark truth. Vicente Barrera, a salesman who swept into the lives of women who both hated and revered him, spends his last days tied up like a mad dog. A morgue worker, Salvador, gets lost in the desert and mistakes the cactus for the person he loves. Over the echoes of the stories of these broken men—and of their mothers, lovers and companions—Mendoza explores her characters� passions in a way that simmers on the page, and then explodes with pain, fear and desire in a landscape that imprisons them.

After winning the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Poetry Prize, Clyo Mendoza has written a novel of extraordinary beauty where language embarks on a hallucinatory trip through eroticism, the transitions of conscience, and the possibility of multiple beings inhabiting a single body. In this journey through madness incest, sexual abuse, infidelity, and silence, Fury offers a moving questioning of the complexity of love and suffering. The desert is where these characters' destinies become intertwined, where their wounds are inherited and bled dry. Readers will be blown away by the sensitivity of the writing, and will shudder at the way violence conveyed with a poetic forcefulness and a fierce mastery of the Mexican oral tradition.

"An amazing, hypnotic and beautiful novel, like contemplating the desert." —Juan Pablo Villalobos]]>
233 Clyo Mendoza 1644213729 astrid 0 to-read 3.88 Fury: A Novel
author: Clyo Mendoza
name: astrid
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Hospital 36327040 The Hospital, appearing for the first time in English translation. Based on Bouanani’s own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the hospital begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a strange nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of a motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator’s consciousness as the hospital transforms before his eyes into an eerie, metaphorical space. Somewhere along the way, the hospital’s iron gate disappears.


Like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka—or perhaps like Mann’s The Magic Mountain thrown into a meat-grinder�The Hospital is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.]]>
128 Ahmed Bouanani 0811225763 astrid 0 to-read 3.53 1990 The Hospital
author: Ahmed Bouanani
name: astrid
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare]]> 184419
As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn't be interesting at all, though, if he didn't also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.]]>
182 G.K. Chesterton 0375757910 astrid 0 to-read 3.85 1908 The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
author: G.K. Chesterton
name: astrid
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Passion of Michel Foucault]]> 436920 The Passion of Michel Foucault is a startling look at one of this century’s most influential philosophers. It chronicles every stage of Foucault’s personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.]]> 492 James Miller 0671695509 astrid 0 to-read 4.18 1993 The Passion of Michel Foucault
author: James Miller
name: astrid
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
trans girl suicide museum 48703727
drawing its source material from chance encounters--wordless interactions in basements or bathrooms or hotel rooms--to archives of 20th century critical theory, sleepover secrets exchanged between old friends, rhetorical barbs deployed in the classrooms of elite universities, arguments on the phone with your parents across timezones, the nonverbal codes of high and low fashion, and scribbled notes on the backs of receipts for medicines you don't know how they work, TGSM is a morbid yet strangely hopeful meditation on the possibilities and meanings of gender variation in our time.]]>
144 Hannah Baer 1948434067 astrid 0 to-read 4.44 2019 trans girl suicide museum
author: Hannah Baer
name: astrid
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond]]> 7442281 Social Theory in the Twentieth Century, now benefitting from the collaboration of Filipe Carreira da Silva has been brought right up-to-date with cutting-edge developments in social theory today. It offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory, covering a range of key figures and classic schools of thought. The authors bridge the gap between philosophy and social theory, locating the theoretical views of individuals such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens and Jurgen Habermas within wider historical traditions. The revised edition includes new material on French pragmatist sociology and cultural sociology, and on contemporary social thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Saskia Sassen and Theda Skocpol. The authors conclude with a bold, new pragmatist agenda for social theory and the social sciences.

Written in a lively style, and avoiding jargon, Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond is aimed at students who wish to gain an understanding of the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Like its predecessor, it will be a standard introduction to modern social theory for students in sociology, politics and anthropology.]]>
248 Patrick Baert 074563981X astrid 0 currently-reading 3.77 2009 Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
author: Patrick Baert
name: astrid
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]>
Styles of Radical Will 6335915 The Aesthetics of Silence, a brilliant account of language, thought and consciousness, and Trip to Hanoi, written during the Vietnam War. Here too is an excoriating account of America’s identity and future, a robust and surprising discussion of pornography and other richly rewarding writings on art, film, literature and politics.

Susan Sontag has written four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; a collection of stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed; and five books of essays, among them Against Interpretation, On Photography, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and most recently, Where the Stress Falls. Her books are translated into twenty-eight languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.

Susan Sontag died in December 2004.]]>
274 Susan Sontag 0141190051 astrid 0 to-read 4.11 1969 Styles of Radical Will
author: Susan Sontag
name: astrid
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Less Than Zero 9915
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs, and into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.]]>
208 Bret Easton Ellis astrid 3
interesting how as it progressed, there was more of the morally objectionable, grotesquely violent and sexual stuff that american psycho is very much renowned for. but yeah, amidst it all, it's banal, vapid, nothing-y rich people bullshit - which is also very similar to american psycho, frankly. lots of drugs and consumerism and empty conversations with no real connections.

i thought it was okay - quite effective at creating the whole despondent, nihilistic vibe that ellis is going for. not sure i enjoyed reading it massively, though: like others have commented, leaves you feeling pretty hollow and depressed. obviously i can't relate to most aspects of clay's life and identity, but on a student basis, i think there's something to tap into about empty vacations and surreal homecomings...]]>
3.62 1985 Less Than Zero
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: astrid
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
you can disappear here without knowing it

interesting how as it progressed, there was more of the morally objectionable, grotesquely violent and sexual stuff that american psycho is very much renowned for. but yeah, amidst it all, it's banal, vapid, nothing-y rich people bullshit - which is also very similar to american psycho, frankly. lots of drugs and consumerism and empty conversations with no real connections.

i thought it was okay - quite effective at creating the whole despondent, nihilistic vibe that ellis is going for. not sure i enjoyed reading it massively, though: like others have commented, leaves you feeling pretty hollow and depressed. obviously i can't relate to most aspects of clay's life and identity, but on a student basis, i think there's something to tap into about empty vacations and surreal homecomings...
]]>
<![CDATA[Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power]]> 37133029 Exploring how neoliberalism has discovered the productive force of the psyche

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.

]]>
96 Byung-Chul Han 1784785784 astrid 0 to-read 4.10 2014 Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
author: Byung-Chul Han
name: astrid
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Philosophy Through Film 1948229 256 Mary M. Litch 0415938767 astrid 0 to-read 3.60 2002 Philosophy Through Film
author: Mary M. Litch
name: astrid
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
King Lear 879843 176 William Shakespeare 1853260959 astrid 4 3.80 1605 King Lear
author: William Shakespeare
name: astrid
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1605
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
Last scene of this was actually crazy because how and why did so many people die in such close succession
]]>
<![CDATA[The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies]]> 374224 368 Vito Russo 0060961325 astrid 0 to-read 4.19 1981 The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies
author: Vito Russo
name: astrid
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[John Heath-Stubbs, F.T. Prince, Stephen Spender (Penguin Modern Poets 20)]]> 2926858 176 John Heath-Stubbs 0140421408 astrid 0 to-read 3.44 1972 John Heath-Stubbs, F.T. Prince, Stephen Spender (Penguin Modern Poets 20)
author: John Heath-Stubbs
name: astrid
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory]]> 201632587 Marxist Modernism is a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School. It is also a new resource from one of the twentieth century's most important Gillian Rose.

Her 1979 lectures on the Frankfurt School explore the lives and philosophies of a range of the school's members and affiliates, including Adorno, Luk�cs, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, and outline the way each theorist developed Marx's theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture.

Edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson]]>
176 Gillian Rose 1804290114 astrid 0 to-read 4.16 Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory
author: Gillian Rose
name: astrid
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe]]> 4788279
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves � and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives � and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.]]>
130 Leon Trotsky 0141036753 astrid 2 theory 3.65 2008 An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe
author: Leon Trotsky
name: astrid
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Happy New Year! Starting things off strong with a compilation of Trotsky speeches and writings that has been sitting on my shelf for probably 3/4 years... it was okay? Some nice lines, but I'm sure they were more powerful spoken and/or situated in context (of course, there's a little contextualisation, and I had some awareness of historical context going in, but that doesn't account for the resonance of remarks that are direct interventions on an ongoing situation). Probably more interesting as a set of historical documents than a political framework, as most things here are clearly more intended to rile up, defend, or sell a position (positions) to a wider audience as opposed to outlining policy intricacies or ideological nuance. I liked that in the writings just before his death, the key assertion was still the depth of his communist belief (and his atheism...). And this beautiful segment, relayed also, I think, in some other reviews: "I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full." 2025 manifest...
]]>
The Prince 28862
1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people.
2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him.
3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose.
4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory.
5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression.
6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope.
7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters,
8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure.
9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice
10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.]]>
144 Niccolò Machiavelli 0937832383 astrid 4 theory 3.85 1513 The Prince
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: astrid
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
rating: 4
read at: 2018/10/10
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:

]]>
The Communist Manifesto 30474 The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels' revolutionary 1848 summons to the working classes, is one of the most influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration, the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property, or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which capitalism is overthrown. Their vision transformed the world irrevocably, and remains relevant as a depiction of global capitalism today.]]> 288 Karl Marx 0140447571 astrid 4 favourites, theory Long-awaited Marx re-read... 3.67 1848 The Communist Manifesto
author: Karl Marx
name: astrid
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1848
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/13
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Long-awaited Marx re-read...
]]>
Notes on Nationalism 39339934 52 George Orwell 0241339561 astrid 4 theory 4.00 2012 Notes on Nationalism
author: George Orwell
name: astrid
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2018/08/30
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Communist Manifesto: A Graphic Novel]]> 35888432 Manifesto for the Communist Party was at once a powerful critique of capitalism and a radical call to arms. It remains the most incisive introduction to the ideas of Communism and the most lucid explanation of its aims. Much of what it proposed continues to be at the heart of political debate into the 21st century. It is no surprise, perhaps, that The Communist Manifesto (as it was later renamed) is the second bestselling book of all time, surpassed only by the Bible.
Ěý
The Guardian’s editorial cartoonist Martin Rowson employs his trademark draftsmanship and wit to this lively graphic novel adaptation. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, The Communist Manifesto is both a timely reminder of the politics of hope and a thought-provoking guide to the most influential work of political theory ever published.
Ěý]]>
80 Martin Rowson 1910593494 astrid 4 theory 3.98 2018 The Communist Manifesto: A Graphic Novel
author: Martin Rowson
name: astrid
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/08
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?]]> 6763725 81 Mark Fisher 1846943175 astrid 4 must-read, theory 4.20 2009 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
author: Mark Fisher
name: astrid
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/05
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: must-read, theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants]]> 52379389 As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings-asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass-offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

]]>
390 Robin Wall Kimmerer 014199195X astrid 4 theory 4.47 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: astrid
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Really beautiful fusion of indigenous mythology, ecology, philosophy, anthropology, history, and autobiography that shares crucial messages about reciprocity, the relationship between humans and the planet, and engagement between scientific discourse and folklore and storytelling. Some chapters hit harder than others and the interaction between them wasn't always great (imo), and many of the insights did not strike me as particularly groundbreaking or original, but that isn't exactly the point (much is to be derived here from applying ancient traditions, gifts, and understandings to a contemporary world that neglects and rejects them in post-Enlightenment fervour). I was slow to read it, but would overall recommend.
]]>
<![CDATA[Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity]]> 85767 Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.]]> 236 Judith Butler 0415389550 astrid 4 4.07 1989 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
author: Judith Butler
name: astrid
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: personal-statement, favourites, theory
review:
Extremely good, and very glad I finally found the time to read this! Nothing like actually reading Butler to be made blatantly aware of the level of scapegoating, misinterpretation, and disingenuous readings both them and their work are constantly subject to in popular consciousness, which is sad and frustrating, given some of their ideas are insightful and have fascinating implications for any attempted liberating project (are the categories and structures that we rally around in and of themselves oppressive? Who do categories like 'woman' actually serve, and do they work to actually further feminist goals?). Gender performativity is certainly an interesting concept, and to be honest, I buy into it a lot, especially when shed from the incorrect baggage often wrongly attributed to it (i.e. performativity � performance necessarily, actions are repeated and stylised, performativity, signifiers, and signs are all situated in a certain context and environment, etc). Not giving 5 stars mainly because of all the psychoanalysis (the 2nd part was not for me, although I don't want to outrightly dismiss it and some maybe warrants re-reading); I think some criticisms of Butler's prose are warranted, but I found most of it coherent enough (if we assume the baseline of academic writing, which is often hard work and jargon heavy). The first part - 'Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire' - was, I think, the most readable and widely applicable, so if you're going for a more selective reading, this would perhaps be my recommendation (the last chapter of 'Subversive Bodily Acts' was also quite good, as were the prefaces (once beyond the segment where Butler justifies their writing style, lol) and the conclusion).
]]>
<![CDATA[Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States]]> 16145154 234 Seth Holmes 0520275144 astrid 5 Chapters 4 and 5 were especially powerful to me in their glimpse into my preferred analysis of medicine via the biopsychosocial lenses that interact with it. Chapter 5 especially looked a lot at criticisms of the healthcare model (specifically in the USA, but that can translate to an extent elsewhere) that brought me back to my EPQ, albeit extending beyond the realm of mental health; the consistent failure to recognise the role of social structures and conditions as faulty causative agents in the realm of disease and ill health was brought up again and again, with an underlying failure of healthcare professionals in understanding the factors at play in Triqui health issues. Interestingly, Holmes looked at the bastardisation of the biopsychosocial model to a sort of 'biobehavioural' model, wherein the only validated factors in diagnosis and treatment were deemed to be the biological, i.e. blood tests and radiographic scans (so called 'objective' measures, as opposed to the 'subjective' and thus discounted patient recollections of their own suffering, often misinterpreted due to insufficient translation services regardless), and the behavioural (essentially blaming patients for their own problems, in the form of claiming alleged ethnic differences and cultural lifestyle choices, such as too much spicy food causing gastritis as opposed to a history of physical torture in the stomach region, or an ineptitude in one's job causing knee pain as opposed to the unavoidable physical strain their work involves). Equal parts fascinating and soul-destroying. Another point made in a similar vein was that concerning Crescencio's headaches, which occurred ostensibly due to his racialised mistreatment and abuse under the farm hierarchy, causing him to become angry with his family and drink to cope, in turn leading to him embodying racist stereotypes that would not exist if not for the structural damage of international inequity and neoliberal economic imperialism inducing his initial migration. The mistreatment which is justified by the stereotypes attributed to indigenous Mexicans cause his ill health (here, in the form of chronic headaches), and the justification of symbolic violence found here is reinforced by all subsequent experiences with healthcare, wherein the myopic biomedical lens through which he is viewed perpetuates further violence onto his body, and potentially the other people in his life who must face an individual whose personhood is being wrongly carved by maltreatment. All of this is expressed significantly better in the book, which I commend readers of this review to also read!
There are so many other things I should go into - in some ways, must go into - but I just can't cover everything, nor do I have the capacity to adequately recollect it all. It's so important for books like this to exist - politics is violence, and politics is medicine, and the detachment of politics and economics from the reality of people's lives is a scam that is directly leading to the deaths and suffering of billions. It is a scam incessantly justified, in many nefarious yet subtle ways, by the underlying belief that some people deserve it, or that it isn't so bad, or that there are inherent and biologically pre-determined factors that shift the constraints of humanity for certain groups so as to subliminally justify the ways in which they - sometimes, we - are subject to disproportionate structural violence. The systems upon which the foundations of this planet are built are fundamentally broken in so many ways. Holmes' work is one of many making me increasingly aware of that and the importance of working to change it. ]]>
4.28 2013 Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States
author: Seth Holmes
name: astrid
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/21
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, personal-statement, ethnography, theory
review:
Okay, review time... this book was exceptional. Earnestly, one of the best I've ever read, and my first real ethnography of hopefully many future ones. 'Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies' discusses the lives and experiences of Triqui migrant farmworkers who pick fruit in the USA after making perilous journeys across the US border in a path rendered increasingly difficult and incriminated, yet ironically one upon which the US agricultural industry is entirely dependent for its current functioning. In truth, this book is full of irony, and full of cycles: the irony of the nutritional wellbeing of more affluent Americans being effectively reliant on the bodily abuse and deterioration of hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, for one, is not lost. Holmes impressively incorporates his observations, anecdotes, and recordings taken directly from the field, in an immersive ethnographic technique in which he fully participates and engages in the lives of the indigenous Triqui people he notes the experiences of, with theories of philosophy, medicine, and the social sciences. I hope this is standard anthropological practice, although I am doubtful (nonetheless, I am more optimistic that if not, things are improving... fingers crossed...). One of such frequently referenced academics is Bourdieu, whose insights I found pertinent and applicable - he discusses social reproduction, and the ways in which social and symbolic structures contribute to wider framework reproduction. All are victims, as to live is to participate in the 'game' wherein hierarchies exist and all experience violence implemented in varying forms - there is no capacity to opt out, as all perception occurs through the schemata produced within an unjust society, and as such there is an unknowing consent to the self-perpetuation of the oppressive power structures we all suffer at the hands of.
Chapters 4 and 5 were especially powerful to me in their glimpse into my preferred analysis of medicine via the biopsychosocial lenses that interact with it. Chapter 5 especially looked a lot at criticisms of the healthcare model (specifically in the USA, but that can translate to an extent elsewhere) that brought me back to my EPQ, albeit extending beyond the realm of mental health; the consistent failure to recognise the role of social structures and conditions as faulty causative agents in the realm of disease and ill health was brought up again and again, with an underlying failure of healthcare professionals in understanding the factors at play in Triqui health issues. Interestingly, Holmes looked at the bastardisation of the biopsychosocial model to a sort of 'biobehavioural' model, wherein the only validated factors in diagnosis and treatment were deemed to be the biological, i.e. blood tests and radiographic scans (so called 'objective' measures, as opposed to the 'subjective' and thus discounted patient recollections of their own suffering, often misinterpreted due to insufficient translation services regardless), and the behavioural (essentially blaming patients for their own problems, in the form of claiming alleged ethnic differences and cultural lifestyle choices, such as too much spicy food causing gastritis as opposed to a history of physical torture in the stomach region, or an ineptitude in one's job causing knee pain as opposed to the unavoidable physical strain their work involves). Equal parts fascinating and soul-destroying. Another point made in a similar vein was that concerning Crescencio's headaches, which occurred ostensibly due to his racialised mistreatment and abuse under the farm hierarchy, causing him to become angry with his family and drink to cope, in turn leading to him embodying racist stereotypes that would not exist if not for the structural damage of international inequity and neoliberal economic imperialism inducing his initial migration. The mistreatment which is justified by the stereotypes attributed to indigenous Mexicans cause his ill health (here, in the form of chronic headaches), and the justification of symbolic violence found here is reinforced by all subsequent experiences with healthcare, wherein the myopic biomedical lens through which he is viewed perpetuates further violence onto his body, and potentially the other people in his life who must face an individual whose personhood is being wrongly carved by maltreatment. All of this is expressed significantly better in the book, which I commend readers of this review to also read!
There are so many other things I should go into - in some ways, must go into - but I just can't cover everything, nor do I have the capacity to adequately recollect it all. It's so important for books like this to exist - politics is violence, and politics is medicine, and the detachment of politics and economics from the reality of people's lives is a scam that is directly leading to the deaths and suffering of billions. It is a scam incessantly justified, in many nefarious yet subtle ways, by the underlying belief that some people deserve it, or that it isn't so bad, or that there are inherent and biologically pre-determined factors that shift the constraints of humanity for certain groups so as to subliminally justify the ways in which they - sometimes, we - are subject to disproportionate structural violence. The systems upon which the foundations of this planet are built are fundamentally broken in so many ways. Holmes' work is one of many making me increasingly aware of that and the importance of working to change it.
]]>
Think Like an Anthropologist 35679614
For well over one hundred years, social and cultural anthropologists have traversed the world from Melanesia to suburban England, Taipei to Wall Street, uncovering surprising facts, patterns, predilections and, sometimes, the inexplicable, in terms of how humans organize their lives and articulate their values. By weaving together theories and examples from around the world, Matthew Engelke brilliantly shows why anthropology matters: not only because it helps us understand other points of view, but also because in the process, it reveals something about ourselves too.]]>
368 Matthew Engelke astrid 5 favourites, theory 3.80 2017 Think Like an Anthropologist
author: Matthew Engelke
name: astrid
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/21
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Community, Anarchy and Liberty]]> 763079 196 Michael Taylor 0521270146 astrid 3 theory
Nonetheless, still pretty good - probably not the best intro to anarchism, but more bearable with prior knowledge and momentum built up in the reading process. ]]>
3.43 1982 Community, Anarchy and Liberty
author: Michael Taylor
name: astrid
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/25
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Stupid idiot me putting this godforsaken book on my personal statement... might return to this for a proper review when I force myself into having some smart thoughts about it. If that ever happens.

Nonetheless, still pretty good - probably not the best intro to anarchism, but more bearable with prior knowledge and momentum built up in the reading process.
]]>
The Argonauts 28459915
At the centre of The Argonauts is the love story between Maggie Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. As Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy, she explores the challenges and complexities of mothering and queer family making.

Writing in the tradition of public intellectuals like Susan Sontag, Nelson uses arresting prose even as she questions the limits of language. The Argonauts is an intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of love, language and family.]]>
181 Maggie Nelson 0993414915 astrid 4 favourites, theory 3.97 2015 The Argonauts
author: Maggie Nelson
name: astrid
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Really good! To paraphrase my thoughts previously articulated to friends on this, I think it was slightly less personally resonant than I might've hoped, but in a way that was fairly predictable given its subject matter - given I'm a disillusioned 18-year-old extremely uninterested in the prospect of parenthood and having a family, there are parts that simply don't tie in for me, and certainly weren't written for people like me. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly much to be learned from experiences beyond those which are yours or aspirationally so, and while the parts about motherhood or childbirth or pregnancy or family or feminism may not have been relatable, per se, they were still extremely beautiful, and extremely poignant. It's nice to see queerness and queer relationships written about in this way, and I found it engaging, albeit at times hard to follow by virtue of the interrupted prose and slight chronological mish-mash. This is clearly Nelson's artistic style, and it's one that I like very much in a memoir: the smatterings of theory that have informed her and reflect her thinking and writing at various points are compelling even when they veer towards incomprehensible to the eye not trained or interested in queer/critical/feminist theory. A little academically autofellating, as a lot of social science can be, but I am admittedly a sucker for that, stylistically and intellectually. I really loved the ending, too - a few pages before the true ending, when Nelson acutely parallels her experience of childbirth with Harry's writing on his mother's death. This made me well up a little as I read it.
]]>
Ways of Seeing 2784 John Berger’s Classic Text on Art

Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times a critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.

"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review

"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling.]]>
176 John Berger 0140135154 astrid 3 theory 3.93 1972 Ways of Seeing
author: John Berger
name: astrid
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/03
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
I have to concur with the many people who have enjoyed this book, but found its formatting to be a little bizarre - for an essay collection that so centrally depicts and discusses works of art, the decision to display this in a small book with inky, slightly unclear black and white printing was certainly an interesting one. Nevertheless, there is still a lot to be taken from it; Berger (and/or the assorted other authors involved in the writing process) is very articulate, and provides some clear and useful insights in critical theory that have certainly proved fundamental to a lot of the public discourse surrounding art and its history in recent years (re women; oil painting; advertising/publicity; consumerism). It also featured a lot of interesting art, which certainly made me feel, to be Bourdieu-pilled for a moment, like I was bolstering my cultural capital (and hopefully picture-round University Challenge skills?
]]>
<![CDATA[Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison]]> 304039 333 Michel Foucault 014013722X astrid 5 favourites, theory 4.22 1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
author: Michel Foucault
name: astrid
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Incredible, insightful book. Makes you realise how many recent social scientific discourses and ideas (alongside notions, systems, and fields far transcending the discipline) have so much owed to Foucault. He pioneered such vital ways of analysing and seeing the social world. His assessment goes much further than the prison.
]]>
<![CDATA[Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era]]> 17465613
In this penetrating analysis of gender, Paul B. Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity are formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado's diaristic account of his own use of testosterone every day for one year, and its mesmerizing impact on his body as well as his imagination.
]]>
429 Paul B. Preciado 1558618376 astrid 4 theory 4.19 2008 Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era
author: Paul B. Preciado
name: astrid
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge]]> 1879 168 Michel Foucault 0140268685 astrid 4 theory 3.87 1976 The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge
author: Michel Foucault
name: astrid
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 44150854 Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.

Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, it established Fanon as a revolutionary thinker and remains just as relevant and powerful today.]]>
224 Frantz Fanon 0241396662 astrid 4 favourites, theory
Perhaps will write a more detailed review later, but overall, excellent, harrowing, and insightful. ]]>
4.08 1952 Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Frantz Fanon
name: astrid
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Incredible book that I think is a must-read - really heavily delves into some of the deep psychological implications of racism and colonialism, and has some passages that will probably stick with me forever. I don't necessarily agree with every point made, there are definitely contentious aspects, and some of the psychoanalysis (and homophobia) is always slightly questionable to me, hence the four stars (regarding the latter point mainly... complete concurrence is not a prerequisite for a 5-star review of mine, lol). Nevertheless, has undoubtedly been extremely influential, on the front of race and phenomenology for one, which I have been delving into a bit recently.

Perhaps will write a more detailed review later, but overall, excellent, harrowing, and insightful.
]]>
<![CDATA[Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Volume 4) (Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity)]]> 472584 410 Joel Robbins 0520238001 astrid 3 ethnography, theory 3.82 2004 Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Volume 4) (Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity)
author: Joel Robbins
name: astrid
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: ethnography, theory
review:
Decent - repetitive at points and not the most interesting read in some of its deepest moments of ethnographic detail, but makes interesting points about the conflict between the relationalism of traditional spirituality and the individualism of Christianity, and thus the constant moral torment of the Urapmin of PNG, who also have a sense of constant inferiority and inclination towards sinfulness on the basis of their race. On this front, it was a very sad read. Was also super intrigued by the more structuralist theoretical influences (and, ofc, any and all references to Foucault bring me deep joy, which is fortunate given my line of study). Can't say I'm looking forward to essay-writing about it, but definitely not without its merits.
]]>
Politics As a Vocation 35452932 52 Max Weber 9333189394 astrid 4 theory
But hey, pretty good :)
]]>
3.75 Politics As a Vocation
author: Max Weber
name: astrid
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Weber's ode to the career politician! But also like, the inevitable contradictions and ethical dilemmas that go hand in hand with political leadership, because politics and statehood are all about violence and who gets to control and threaten its legitimate use, plus the unbearable reconciliation of the ethics of conviction and responsibility, which is A Whole Thing (do the ends always justify the means? Do intentions matter more than the consequences, and can we be judged and held politically culpable for these unintended consequences? Fuck you, Immanuel Kant, consequentialism! And fuck you, Tony Blair, for consistently bringing up the moral righteousness of your intentions when people try to hold you accountable for what happened in the Iraq War! In politics, as in life, unintended consequences are the name of the game).

But hey, pretty good :)

]]>
<![CDATA[On the Game: Women and Sex Work (Anthropology, Culture and Society)]]> 652857 288 Sophie Day 0745317588 astrid 3 ethnography, theory 3.62 2007 On the Game: Women and Sex Work (Anthropology, Culture and Society)
author: Sophie Day
name: astrid
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/10
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: ethnography, theory
review:
Very much skim-read, but pretty good and compelling ethnography centering on prostitution in London over the span of about 15 years.
]]>
<![CDATA[Urban Hunters: Dealing and Dreaming in Times of Transition (Eurasia Past and Present)]]> 44174550
Urban Hunters is an ethnography of the Mongolian capital city, Ulaanbaatar, during the nation’s transition from socialism to a market-based economic system. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Mongolia entered a period of economic chaos characterized by wild inflation, disappearing banks, and closing farms, factories, and schools. During this time of widespread poverty, a generation of young adults came of age. In exploring the social, cultural, and existential ramifications of a transition that has become permanent and acquired a logic of its own, Lars Højer and Morten Axel Pedersen present a new theorization of social agency in postsocialist as well as postcolonial contexts.]]>
288 Lars Hojer 0300196113 astrid 3 theory, ethnography 3.67 Urban Hunters: Dealing and Dreaming in Times of Transition (Eurasia Past and Present)
author: Lars Hojer
name: astrid
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/10
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory, ethnography
review:
Another book skim-read inefficiently to write a seriously haphazard anthropology essay, but also very interesting. Looked at post-socialist Ulaanbaatar and the immense precarity and transitional society that emerged in the 90s and early 2000s, often considering this titular phenomenon of 'urban hunting' to describe the hustling and planning-averse behaviour of many city-dwellers.
]]>
<![CDATA[Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity]]> 125077916 128 Marc Augé 1804292605 astrid 3 theory 3.32 1992 Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity
author: Marc Augé
name: astrid
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Pretty good - a bit jargon-y and confusing at points, as is true of lots of academic writing, but I found this pretty accessible and coherent overall. Perhaps can be said to fall into a wider trend of social scientific writing in the 90s especially that seeks to explain and explore a perceived shift from the traditionally studied world of modernity to something else, marked by increasing digital technology, liminality, the break away from grand narratives (Lyotard), acceleration (Rosa), singularity (Reckwitz), etc, depending on the preferred diagnosis. This gave more of an anthropological insight, relative to the primarily sociological engagement I've had with this type of theory so far. Like the most successful works of this genre of non-fiction written in the 90s, this one too brings forth many insights that feel increasingly prescient: the need for ethnology of solitude in the face of 'cocooning'; the resurgence of nationalisms; the contradiction of supermodernity dealing with individuals identified only on entering or leaving a non-place (consumers, passengers, listeners, voters, users); the transforming of history into spectacle, as with "exoticism" and "local particularity"; the concept of 'non-places' as a whole, which are indeed increasingly prominent features in the landscapes of our lives, just as they are increasingly the subject of discussion and even aesthetic movements regarding liminality, liminal spaces, and uncanny valley. TL;DR, provides some useful analytical tools, language, and ideas to explore phenomena, fascinations, and discourses that I see increasingly playing out on the Internet, and that are undoubtedly an important part of 21st Century experience in 'the West.'
]]>
<![CDATA[Saint Foucault : Towards a Gay Hagiography]]> 1362746 256 David M. Halperin 0195111273 astrid 4 theory

"To be gay is to be in a state of becoming... the point is not to be homosexual, but to keep working persistently at being gay... to place oneself in a dimension where the sexual choices one makes are present and have their effects on the ensemble of our life... [T]hese sexual choices ought to be at the same time creators of ways of life. To be gay signifies that these choices diffuse themselves across the entire life; it is also a certain manner of refusing the modes of life offered; it is to make a sexual choice into the impetus for a change of existence."]]>
3.97 1995 Saint Foucault : Towards a Gay Hagiography
author: David M. Halperin
name: astrid
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Really good! While this may not be the most interesting book for those who aren't into queer theory/broadly intrigued by Foucault's thought, biography, and the scholarship around him, personally, I found it very readable. The first essay predominantly discusses queer politics, the possibilities for fashioning new ways of being through queer sexual practices and living, and specifically how Foucault can be considered to have influenced thought in these areas despite not having been a 'queer theorist' himself or somebody that necessarily discussed queerness extensively outside of the context of the LGBT press. Harder to understand, but perhaps more compelling and useful for a wider audience than the second essay, which specifically looks at 3 biographical works of Foucault and what they fail/succeed in doing. More generic interest can be derived from the implications for the biographies of queer people at large, and the way that 'perversity' labels are used to delegitimise those thinkers whose ideas are not compliant with those of the biographer.


"To be gay is to be in a state of becoming... the point is not to be homosexual, but to keep working persistently at being gay... to place oneself in a dimension where the sexual choices one makes are present and have their effects on the ensemble of our life... [T]hese sexual choices ought to be at the same time creators of ways of life. To be gay signifies that these choices diffuse themselves across the entire life; it is also a certain manner of refusing the modes of life offered; it is to make a sexual choice into the impetus for a change of existence."
]]>
<![CDATA[Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia (Routledge Classics)]]> 58056819
Underpinned by painstaking research carried out by Richards among the Bemba people in northern Zambia in the 1930s, Chisungu focuses on the initiation ceremonies for young Bemba girls. Pioneering the study of women’s rituals and challenging the prevailing theory that rites of passage served merely to transfer individuals from one status to another, Richards writes about the incredibly rich and diverse aspects of ritual that characterised its concern with matriliny; deference to elders; sex and reproduction; the birth of children; ideas about the continuity between past, present and future; and the centrality of emotional conflict.

On a deeper level, Chisungu is a crucial work for the role it accords to the meaning of symbolism in explaining the structure of society, paving the way for much subsequent understanding of the role of symbolic meaning and kinship.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Jessica Johnson and an introduction by Jean La Fontaine.]]>
222 Audrey Richards 1000358011 astrid 3 ethnography, theory 3.33 Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia (Routledge Classics)
author: Audrey Richards
name: astrid
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/08
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: ethnography, theory
review:
Bit of a slog to get through, admittedly, and definitely wears some of its theoretical limitations on its sleeve. Nevertheless, insightful insofar as it pertains to a ritual predominantly conducted by, and for, women, which marks it out from a lot of the anthropology of the day. Also interestingly beyond its time in some ways - while Richards is often characterised as a structural-functionalist in her anthropology, there are clear marks of what would now be considered interpretivism within her work, as well as discussions of power, authorship, and the multiplicity of symbology and people's interpretations of it that read like later ethnographies.
]]>
<![CDATA[Hind Swaraj and Other Writings]]> 297609 286 Mahatma Gandhi 0521574315 astrid 2 theory 3.85 1997 Hind Swaraj and Other Writings
author: Mahatma Gandhi
name: astrid
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Interesting at points, but not massively compelling to me overall� I guess I’m too much of a Weberian when it comes to politics and violence
]]>
<![CDATA[The Racialized Social System: Critical Race Theory as Social Theory]]> 85621671 182 Ali Meghji astrid 5 favourites, theory 5.00 The Racialized Social System: Critical Race Theory as Social Theory
author: Ali Meghji
name: astrid
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/14
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Ali Meghji my beloved... a really cogently written and accessible overview of CRT and racialised social system theory which I would highly recommend
]]>
The Concept of the Political 640765 The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition, belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy.]]> 162 Carl Schmitt 0226738922 astrid 3 theory 4.02 1927 The Concept of the Political
author: Carl Schmitt
name: astrid
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Definitely has some theoretically interesting parts, but does have a slightly fascistic vibe (explicably so), and I find the friend enemy distinction reductionist. I feel prompted to recollect Runciman's apt comment that Schmitt's thinking failed on its own terms when he gave his excuse at the Nuremberg trials for his complicity in Nazi war crimes - that he had mistaken Hitler for a dictator and not an authoritarian, perhaps a figure to save liberal democracy from its own excesses and contradictions by means of a temporary fix. Unable to make his own friend/enemy distinction, etc etc.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins]]> 25510906 What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planetMatsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.]]> 331 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 0691162751 astrid 3 theory, ethnography 3.98 2015 The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
author: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
name: astrid
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory, ethnography
review:
Kind of mid honestly... left feeling a little underwhelmed. Maybe needed lower expectations... or maybe it overpromised... or maybe it just really wasn't that good
]]>
<![CDATA[What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy]]> 100021 112 Thomas Nagel 0195052161 astrid 2 theory 3.65 1987 What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy
author: Thomas Nagel
name: astrid
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1987
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
It was okay - nothing to write home about, and sometimes I found Nagel's assumptions and slightly patronising tone a little irritating, but nevertheless very short, readable and accessible introduction to some key philosophical concepts, fields, and questions.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century]]> 59064528 Thrilling, sharp, and deeply humane, philosopher Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century upends the way we discuss—or avoid discussing—the problems and politics of sex.

How should we think about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart.

How should we talk about sex? Since #MeToo many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity�its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power�we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.

We do not know the future of sex—but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships—between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.]]>
276 Amia Srinivasan 1526612550 astrid 4 favourites, theory 4.22 2021 The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
author: Amia Srinivasan
name: astrid
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:
Really good overall - perhaps not the most innovative or mind-blowing book for people who are already pretty engaged in some of the key feminist debates/tensions of the 21st century (albeit often ones that also have deeper historical roots in discourses about freedom/protection, carceralism and neoliberalism, and, naturally, structure/agency and ideology stuff), but very clearly written, nicely referenced, and makes a lot of compelling and interesting points embedded in profoundly important current politics. My favourite essays were probably the titular 'The Right to Sex' (nicely followed up with a solid coda... and probably most interesting to me because it delves into some of the critical questions surrounding why we want what we want, and how ideology and structures shape our preferences, plus the difficulty of reconciling this with ideas of autonomy, entitlement, and the desire to evade unjust self-denial and shame), alongside 'On Not Sleeping With Your Students,' which, despite - or perhaps because! - of lots of Freud and disarming psychoanalysis, felt nuanced and exposing. The passage of stringent ethical judgements on consensual sex might still feel slightly uncomfortable to me on impulse, but there is, undoubtedly, much more to ethical sex than just the basic question of consent. Also made me question and think more deeply about pedagogical relationships in general, which is always good and insightful... as a student...
]]>
<![CDATA[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics)]]> 435817 272 Max Weber 041525406X astrid 3 theory
Only 3 stars because I found the colonialist implications of Weber's introduction especially cringe, and, furthermore, perhaps he neglects the role of colonialism in his theory altogether. There are also questions to be asked about the role of Catholicism (which he fails to analyse altogether, but was arguably having a significant impact at around the same time), and also about the empirical evidence for Weber's claims, which is sometimes... limited. This particularly comes into play when considering questions about the religiosity of Calvinists, and how they on an individual level were interpreting, experiencing, and living a lot of the arguments Weber (and, if we assume his interpretation is correct, Calvin) were making. Were people working hard because of salvation anxiety and to convince themselves that they were members of the elect, or for other reasons? Is Weber overreliant on the writings of the Church in structuring his case as opposed to letters, diaries etc, and if this is the case, how can we be sure that the Church's reportings are representative of how people on the ground were feeling about working and religion, and the relationship between the two? Did they agree with everything the Church was saying, and even if they did, was this a key factor in their behaviour in work? Much to ponder. Also, it was more of a read for necessity than recreation and personal interest, which maybe knocks off a star.]]>
3.75 1904 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics)
author: Max Weber
name: astrid
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1904
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Interesting and readable classic work of sociological theory - I may not agree with all of Weber's conclusions, but I also think the claims he makes in this book are actually quite heavily qualified to the point of being much more reasonable than first impression could imply (he does not, for example, claim that Calvinism has been the only thing historically factoring into the development of capitalism, nor that all emergences of capitalism globally have been 'due to' the so-called Protestant ethic). He starts from the historical observation that Protestants have tended to be more successful entrepreneurs and professionals, and that the most Protestant regions had undergone the greatest economic success. He then looks at features, particularly of Calvinism, and links these to the psychological processes and experiences that prompt hard work and success under rational capitalism. Idleness is evil, and working hard in one's calling is critical - instead of working hard in an attempt to change one's fate (which would run contrary to predestination doctrine: from birth, God has already chosen the elected, and humans have no control in this), Calvinist Protestants are thought to work hard due to salvation anxiety. In the absence of knowing whether one is to be saved, one looks for signs, namely material success in vocation. In this search for evidence that one is a member of the elected, ascetic hard work is pursued... this process, altogether, is thought to be one critical explanation for the development of rational capitalism in some European countries (note also the concept of 'elective affinity' - Protestantism and rational capitalism emerge at similar times and are mutually reinforcing, and Weber also notes that after a point, capitalism acquired momentum in its own right, and the ongoing effects of rational capitalism continued to develop even as an increase in secularisation occurred in many places). It was equally interesting, on a separate note, to see many of the tacit critiques of Marxism that Weber makes - his highlighting of the importance of *ideas* (coming first) and their influence on the material status of the world, waging in on materialism.

Only 3 stars because I found the colonialist implications of Weber's introduction especially cringe, and, furthermore, perhaps he neglects the role of colonialism in his theory altogether. There are also questions to be asked about the role of Catholicism (which he fails to analyse altogether, but was arguably having a significant impact at around the same time), and also about the empirical evidence for Weber's claims, which is sometimes... limited. This particularly comes into play when considering questions about the religiosity of Calvinists, and how they on an individual level were interpreting, experiencing, and living a lot of the arguments Weber (and, if we assume his interpretation is correct, Calvin) were making. Were people working hard because of salvation anxiety and to convince themselves that they were members of the elect, or for other reasons? Is Weber overreliant on the writings of the Church in structuring his case as opposed to letters, diaries etc, and if this is the case, how can we be sure that the Church's reportings are representative of how people on the ground were feeling about working and religion, and the relationship between the two? Did they agree with everything the Church was saying, and even if they did, was this a key factor in their behaviour in work? Much to ponder. Also, it was more of a read for necessity than recreation and personal interest, which maybe knocks off a star.
]]>
<![CDATA[Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown]]> 5627444
Based on archival research and two and a half years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Flammable, this book examines the lived experiences of environmental suffering. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, residents allow themselves to doubt or even deny the hard facts of industrial pollution. This happens, the authors argue, through a "labor of confusion" enabled by state officials who frequently raise the issue of relocation and just as frequently suspend it; by the companies who fund local health care but assert that the area is unfit for human residence; by doctors who say the illnesses are no different from anywhere else but tell mothers they must leave the neighborhood if their families are to be cured; by journalists who randomly appear and focus on the most extreme aspects of life there; and by lawyers who encourage residents to hold out for a settlement. These contradictory actions, advice, and information work together to shape the confused experience of living in
danger and ultimately translates into a long, ineffective, and uncertain waiting time, a time dictated by powerful interests and shared by all marginalized groups.

With luminous and vivid descriptions of everyday life in the neighborhood, Auyero and Swistun depict this on-going slow motion human and environmental disaster and dissect the manifold ways in which it is experienced by Flammable residents.]]>
188 Javier Auyero 019537293X astrid 4 3.84 2008 Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown
author: Javier Auyero
name: astrid
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory, ethnography
review:
Really good - another recommendation from sociology supervisor that I found very illuminating and am glad to have read. Not the first or the last of its kind exploring environmental suffering, but very compellingly considers the twin dimensions of 'toxic experience' and 'collective confusion,' with the latter being particularly interesting from an ethnographic standpoint as Auyero and Swistun strive to interpret and relay how the residents of Villa Inflamable make sense of their lives, the toxic contamination, and the suffering they experience, often in contradictory ways marred by uncertainty, chronic 'waiting,' and ambiguity. These are, as Auyero and Swistun increasingly find themselves, extremely understandable responses to the confusing and contradictory messaging that they face from various sources - from the medical professionals that simultaneously know that 'something' is up about the area, whilst also being clearly uncertain about the real effects of 'contamination,' to the confusing perspectives held on companies no doubt responsible for polluting, but nevertheless entangled in community outreach and health schemes, and the lawyers that mislead about outcomes of cases, promising relocation and monetary consumption that residents constantly believe are on the brink of materialising, but somehow never come. It is an excellent portrait of what can get in the way of social movement formation, and of the ambiguity that is often dominant in the ways agents make sense of crisis and social suffering, but which is perhaps less prominent in how ethnographies have tended to deal with these subjects. I also really appreciated the interdisciplinary fusion, shaped further by the differing positionalities of the co-authors: Auyero being a tenured US sociologist and Swistun a native, fresh-from-undergrad anthropologist who has grown up in Villa Inflamable makes for a compelling fusion that gives a unique depiction of the area and those who have been living these lives, experiencing the build-up of pollution and its impact not all at once, as might catalyse a more dramatic response, but much more slowly and gradually. It was very moving to see Swistun's own revelations about her health as affected by life in Villa Inflamable for so long, and the conflicts felt between her activism, her responsibility to her community, family, and friends, and her own declining health by virtue of continuing to live there. Perhaps my first foray into 'native' anthropology, and I hope not my last. Concluding words on making sense of suffering - making it 'meaningful,' as it were - made me well up, and the final lines too. "This book was conceived of as our way of telling Flammable residents that we are concerned with them, we are with them, we are listening to their stories, and we will testify to what they are living through. If anything, this book bears witness to their experiences of toxic suffering." This is always a powerful mission statement to me when I think about ethnography-based social scientific research, when we are looking not solely to observe, but to help procure material change for the affected, negated, and subaltern.
]]>
<![CDATA[What Use is Sociology?: Conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester]]> 18263939 180 Zygmunt Bauman 074567125X astrid 4 theory 4.00 1984 What Use is Sociology?: Conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester
author: Zygmunt Bauman
name: astrid
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
A good book that I would recommend to those interested in studying sociology, or more broadly feeling confronted with many of the long-standing confusions and qualms within the discipline - what is sociology? Why do it? How to do it? What does it achieve? In many ways, Bauman answers these questions in a pretty humanistic way, and is critical of calls to increasingly render sociology 'scientific' through the endless quest for empiricism (although obviously he sees a methodological role for all of sociology's many tenets and manifestations, just the inherent untenability of some who are desperately yearning for us to 'be a science' in any meaningful way). Probably a lot of this stems from his role in a (possibly currently unfashionable?) tradition of social theory, but also inevitably from what he deems inherent challenges within sociology, and challenges to the granting of its academic legitimacy ('being taken seriously'), which is admittedly easily questioned: these challenges can be found by looking at the heart of what sociology is and does. For one, how can we confidently say that we know more about subjects than they know about themselves? Bauman rightfully points out that the lines between expert and layperson, and 'sociological' and simply 'human' knowledge, are extremely blurry and much more unclear than in other fields, where, for example, a physicist can be said to concretely know more about, or have a degree of specific expert knowledge, over others outside of their field. This question might become increasingly prescient with calls for public sociology by the likes of Michael Burawoy, which I think are critical (sociology is, after all, about human societies, and we are crucially reliant on not fading into irrelevance with the social publics and arena upon which our knowledge and study is contingent), but undoubtedly present dilemmas for the 'academy' and muddy this boundary further. And then there is the question of the subject matter itself, human beings - is reality ever truly available to us, with the subjectivity and ambiguity inherent in human relations, communication, and reflexivity? Can we, societally, be trusted, or are we too unreliable, too unpredictable, too constantly changing and too unstable in the esoteric knowledge we have and (perhaps faultily) communicate about ourselves and others? This is just one of many lines of inquiry explored that I find interesting, and I think Bauman's interviewers do a great job of guiding the conversation, asking about pressing topics, and letting him talk eloquently as he does. There are some far less surprising or remarkable takes, but nevertheless important ones - society as something we make instead of just being made by (cf David Graeber?), sociology as useful in helping us to generate knowledge about ourselves, and to also systematically locate issues of individual suffering and strife outside of the individual and into the realm of wider social ills and societal failings, sociology as being all about exposing what is normative or taken for granted and, as such, denaturalising that, and additionally, perhaps more uniquely, about the reorientation of sociology from being a science and technology of unfreedom to a science and technology of freedom. Bauman is very concerned with questions of human freedom, and this as a priority for his work but also as a profound issue within sociology and sociological objectives (cf Talcott Parsons' Hobbes Problem). One final point of discussion before I wrap up this incoherent review: I came into this familiar with some of Bauman's other work (namely 'Modernity and the Holocaust' and 'Liquid Modernity'). This book did have some interesting follow-up on the concept of liquid modernity and what this means for human civilisation - for Bauman, liquid modernity (wrongly, he argues, dubbed 'postmodernity' by some) is "the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty." Modernity is no longer about having reached a point of stability, perfection, and finality, but about the chronic status of progress and complete lack of a 'final state.' Liquidity can thus be seen as a consequence of prior solidity (or the quest for it within the realm of Enlightenment modernity), not a point of opposition. And furthermore, this has included a recognition of the fact that liquidity, or liquid urges, have always somewhat been at the core of the project(s) of modernity - human society, at least in its Western/'modern' variety, has always been partially imbued with a "fear of things that are fixed too firmly to permit dismantling." Acknowledging this as a crucial source in the movement of human history is hence integral to what Bauman deems to be the "liquid modern" condition and era. Reminds me, perhaps erroneously, of one of my many favourite quotes from Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' - “It's the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.�
]]>
<![CDATA[Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism]]> 28186184
The full magnitude of Benedict Anderson’s intellectual achievement is still being appreciated and debated. Imagined Communities remains the most influential book on the origins of nationalism, filling the vacuum that previously existed in the traditions of Western thought. Cited more often than any other single English-language work in the human sciences, it is read around the world in more than thirty translations.

Written with exemplary clarity, this illuminating study traces the emergence of community as an idea to South America, rather than to nineteenth-century Europe. Later, this sense of belonging was formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, through print, literature, maps and museums. Following the rise and conflict of nations and the decline of empires, Anderson draws on examples from South East Asia, Latin America and Europe’s recent past to show how nationalism shaped the modern world.]]>
229 Benedict Anderson 1784786756 astrid 4 theory 4.13 1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
author: Benedict Anderson
name: astrid
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
A bit of a tedious read at point, but certainly a necessary one with a significant impact on subsequent theorising regarding nations and nationalism. Anderson compellingly explores, making use of a plethora of small and non-European examples, the 'origin and spread' of nationalism - he decentralises Europe in this tale, proposing both the compelling definition of the nation as an 'imagined community' ('imagined' because people do not personally know most members, instead developing a sense of national consciousness through conceptualising shared identity with people they will never meet), and an explanation for the development of this rooted in print capitalism (with particular regard to language - print capitalism enabled the spread of new vernaculars which replaced local dialects, creole, hybrid languages, sacral languages like Latin, etc; as such, newspapers and the like could spread, resulting in the emergence and shaping of national identity and concerns). As much as the plethora of historical examples are no doubt necessary to effectively make Anderson's points, I can't say I massively enjoyed reading through them, but that likely says more about me than Anderson's skill as a writer. Overall, glad to have read, albeit perhaps more from the perspective of its usefulness academically than anything else...
]]>
The Myth of Sisyphus 612957
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.]]>
134 Albert Camus 0141023996 astrid 3 theory
Well, latent dialectician that I am, I love a good contradiction (here, that of the absurd, I guess - between the human search for life's meaning (perhaps a Westerncentric, often postmodern and atheist plight, but not exclusively) and the ostensible lack of said meaning (again, at least, if 'God is dead,' and our grand narratives increasingly crumbling - Camus talks of a general irrationality and meaninglessness of the universe at its core). Absurdism was one of my many attempted solutions towards my teenage grapplings with life's meaninglessness, which is no longer a question I tend to give masses of thought to - but maybe I do indirectly, if I consider its many corollaries. It comforted me somewhat then, and good to have finally read one of the key works associated with it. So, what's the answer? Rebellion against the absurd... "not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments." Don't kill yourself, constantly confront your own obscurity, imbue life with value through revolt, etc. "The point is to live," as Camus writes. Typing all this doesn't make it feel all that compelling, tbh, but at points it felt inspiring to read, and there is probably some joy to be found in defiance and self-mastery, right?]]>
3.99 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus
author: Albert Camus
name: astrid
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Well, latent dialectician that I am, I love a good contradiction (here, that of the absurd, I guess - between the human search for life's meaning (perhaps a Westerncentric, often postmodern and atheist plight, but not exclusively) and the ostensible lack of said meaning (again, at least, if 'God is dead,' and our grand narratives increasingly crumbling - Camus talks of a general irrationality and meaninglessness of the universe at its core). Absurdism was one of my many attempted solutions towards my teenage grapplings with life's meaninglessness, which is no longer a question I tend to give masses of thought to - but maybe I do indirectly, if I consider its many corollaries. It comforted me somewhat then, and good to have finally read one of the key works associated with it. So, what's the answer? Rebellion against the absurd... "not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments." Don't kill yourself, constantly confront your own obscurity, imbue life with value through revolt, etc. "The point is to live," as Camus writes. Typing all this doesn't make it feel all that compelling, tbh, but at points it felt inspiring to read, and there is probably some joy to be found in defiance and self-mastery, right?
]]>
Mythologies 7062955 'Barthes' purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture' The Times

In this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, Barthes elegantly deciphers the symbols and signs embedded deep in familiar aspects of modern life, unmasking the hidden ideologies and meanings which implicitly affect our thought and behaviour. This early classic of semiotics from one of France's greatest thinkers may irrevocably change the way you view the world around you.]]>
187 Roland Barthes 0099529750 astrid 4 favourites, theory 3.86 1957 Mythologies
author: Roland Barthes
name: astrid
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: favourites, theory
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity]]> 20744 176 Erving Goffman 0140124756 astrid 3 theory 3.80 1963 Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
author: Erving Goffman
name: astrid
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Forced to read 75% of this for an essay so decided to commit to the bit and just finished it. Kind of underwhelming tbh, but it does have some useful insights, metaphors, frameworks, persistent frames of analysis etc... wish he got more structural with it though.
]]>
Selected Works 57845014 154 José Carlos Mariátegui astrid 3 theory 4.21 Selected Works
author: José Carlos Mariátegui
name: astrid
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Pretty classic Marxist writing in many ways, so many of my critiques/hesitations/frustrations with that hold true, but also possessing a number of more unique and specific insights to Latin America and the Peruvian Gamonalismo/Latifundia system of land ownership. Thus, I think Mariátegui outdoes key Western contemporaries on points of colonialism, racism, and indigineity, and should be read more by present Marxists to understand these aspects of the anti-capitalist struggle (which, while perhaps outdated (IMO like many crucial aspects of Marxist theory if we do not seek to build on and advance beyond initial framings and articulations of it), are essential for tapping into local communities, the grassroots, and cultural understandings outside of Europe). Many of the political takeaways and recommendations are still pretty commendable, and no doubt Mariátegui is a compelling and useful thinker, especially within the context of this specific struggle. Highlights for me were his essays on 'The Problem of Race in Latin America' (although I did not necessarily agree with all of it), 'Nationalism and Vanguardism' (a more positive/ambivalent approach to nationalism... reminded me of Benedict Anderson), and 'Pessimism of Reality, Optimism of the Ideal' (Gramscian 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'?). I also particularly liked this line in 'Nationalism and Vanguardism, amidst others - "while Peruvian literature retained a conservative and academic character, it could not be truly and profoundly Peruvian." I'm sure at least one of the people reading this review will understand what I mean by that... Bolívar Echeverría and the baroque... speaking of, feeling very tempted to spiral further and read some Echeverría after this. But maybe I should instead veer away from Marxism for now, which altogether doesn't really 'do it' for me like it used to. I digress - despite my skepticism, I am grateful to Noakes for translating and making more Latin American socialism available to the Anglophone world. I wonder what is lost in the translating process and imagine it is definitely something, but hopefully not too much.
]]>
Totemism 30178814 128 Claude Lévi-Strauss 0807046809 astrid 3 theory, ethnography 3.83 1962 Totemism
author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
name: astrid
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory, ethnography
review:
Interesting... I think structuralism has some compelling insights, but begging Lévi-Strauss to actually get out in the field and do some real ethnography instead of just comparing other people's material. Furthermore, very ironic that he complains about the way in which other anthropologists focus excessively on theory at the expense of rich social reality, or are overly selective about their examples to match their desired theoretical argument... some self-awareness needed perhaps, as these are things structuralism is overly renowned for
]]>
Islands of History 28253 200 Marshall Sahlins 0226733580 astrid 3 theory, ethnography i mean. i am a hater but maybe i do love social theory
shit kind of based
structure/agency is so 80s but like... never gets old for me
maybe it does but doesn't stop my engagement with the #literature"

Kind of tedious at points but I think the last chapter is an interesting contribution to debates and a meaningful corrective and addendum to more orthodox structuralist theorising. Idk how to feel about the whole 'Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was the god Lono' thing... need to read Obeyesekere to get up to date on the discourse...
]]>
3.79 1985 Islands of History
author: Marshall Sahlins
name: astrid
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory, ethnography
review:
"just proposed a 'naive phenomenology of symbolic action' to counteract stagnant structuralism and binaristic oppositions in anthropological theory (also mark of old school structuralism... #saussure)
i mean. i am a hater but maybe i do love social theory
shit kind of based
structure/agency is so 80s but like... never gets old for me
maybe it does but doesn't stop my engagement with the #literature"

Kind of tedious at points but I think the last chapter is an interesting contribution to debates and a meaningful corrective and addendum to more orthodox structuralist theorising. Idk how to feel about the whole 'Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was the god Lono' thing... need to read Obeyesekere to get up to date on the discourse...

]]>
<![CDATA[Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments]]> 85812 Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.

The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.

Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.

This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.]]>
304 Max Horkheimer 0804736332 astrid 3 theory 4.11 1947 Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
author: Max Horkheimer
name: astrid
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1947
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Tbh, I skipped the notes and sketches, but did read the bulk of the book, so we're counting as finished. Found parts of it pretty incoherent frankly, but gets some points for being the origin of critical theory despite the issues with readability and some of the arguments made (agency-loving current me is skeptical of their account of the culture industry, their disdain for pop culture, their account of Enlightenment as a unique + conjunctural break from something that preceded it, and their reduction of many a 20th Century horror to the Enlightenment and instrumental rationality). I was discussing it in relation to whether the (first gen) Frankfurt School has too "pessimistic" an account of Enlightenment, which I am more reserved about as a point of contention... is it purely pessimistic (cf Precarious Happiness, Amy Allen)? Is the pessimism excessive or unwarranted? I don't know, but hey, this wasn't my primary issue. Nevertheless, as a critic of modernity like most social scientifically oriented folks, this is probably a predictable position for me to hold...
]]>
Righteous Dopefiend 6614135 392 Philippe Bourgois 0520254988 astrid 5 theory, ethnography 4.47 2008 Righteous Dopefiend
author: Philippe Bourgois
name: astrid
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory, ethnography
review:
Cried reading this. Public, applied, critical, involved anthropology! That's what I'm talking about. Utterly harrowing, utterly crucial.
]]>
Liquid Modernity 168787
This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meanaing.

Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today.]]>
240 Zygmunt Bauman 0745624103 astrid 3 theory
(p216) "There is no choice between 'engaged' and 'neutral' ways of doing sociology. A non-committal sociology is an impossibility. Seeking a morally neutral stance among the many brands of sociology practised today, brands stretching all the way from the outspokenly libertarian to the staunchly communitarian, would be a vain effort. Sociologists may deny or forget the 'world-view' effects of their work, and the impact of that view on human singular or joint actions, only at the expense of forfeiting that responsibility of choice which every other human being faces daily. The job of sociology is to see to it that the choices are genuinely free, and that they remain so, increasingly so, for the duration of humanity."]]>
4.16 1999 Liquid Modernity
author: Zygmunt Bauman
name: astrid
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: theory
review:
Mid overall. Lacking empiricism. But a kind of cool and useful metaphor, I like Bauman's humanistic sociology (even though it's often a pain in the ass to read) and enjoyed the last section ruminating on sociology...

(p216) "There is no choice between 'engaged' and 'neutral' ways of doing sociology. A non-committal sociology is an impossibility. Seeking a morally neutral stance among the many brands of sociology practised today, brands stretching all the way from the outspokenly libertarian to the staunchly communitarian, would be a vain effort. Sociologists may deny or forget the 'world-view' effects of their work, and the impact of that view on human singular or joint actions, only at the expense of forfeiting that responsibility of choice which every other human being faces daily. The job of sociology is to see to it that the choices are genuinely free, and that they remain so, increasingly so, for the duration of humanity."
]]>
Dysphoria Mundi 60795957
Tel est le point de départ de ce livre de « philosophie documentaire » où l’auteur, malade du covid et enfermé seul dans son appartement, emprunte à tous les genres (essai, fiction, journal) pour raconter à sa façon un monde dont les différentes horloges se sont synchronisées au rythme du virus, mais aussi du racisme, du féminicide, du réchauffement climatique� et de la rébellion à venir. Une manière de carnet philosophico-somatique d’un processus de mutation planétaire en cours.

Si la modernité disciplinaire était hystérique ; si le fordisme, héritier des séquelles des deux guerres mondiales sur la psyché collective, était schizophrène ; le néolibéralisme cybernétique, lui, est dysphorique.
L’hypothèse centrale de cet essai : les événements qui se sont produits pendant la crise du covid à l’échelle mondiale marquent le début de la fin du réalisme capitaliste.

Sommes-nous condamnés à croire tout savoir et ne rien pouvoir faire pour changer le cours des choses (paranoïa conspirationniste) ou continuer à tout faire de la même manière mais sentir que plus rien n’a de sens (dépression individualiste) ? Non : il est possible de franchir le pas vers une autre épistémologie terrestre. Encore faut-il refuser la nouvelle alliance du néolibéralisme numérique, des rhétoriques néo-nationalistes, l’explosion des inégalités économiques, des violences raciales, sexuelles et de genres, la destruction de la biosphère pour initier un profond processus de décarbonisation, de dépatriarcalisation, de décolonisation : c’est l’� hypothèse révolution » dont ce livre pose les prolégomènes…]]>
592 Paul B. Preciado 2246830648 astrid 0 to-read 4.22 Dysphoria Mundi
author: Paul B. Preciado
name: astrid
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Rules of Attraction 9912 From the bestselling author of American Psycho comes this satirical black comedy about the death of romance.

Set at an affluent liberal arts college during the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction follows a handful of rowdy, spoiled, sexually promiscuous students with no plans for the future—or even the present. Three of them—Sean, Paul, and Lauren—become involved in a love triangle of sorts within a sequence of drug runs, "Dressed to Get Screwed" parties, and "End of the World" parties.

As Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at the self-consciously bohemian Camden College, treating their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion, he exposes the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.]]>
283 Bret Easton Ellis 067978148X astrid 0 to-read 3.74 1987 The Rules of Attraction
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: astrid
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas]]> 92625 Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.

The story 'Omelas" was first published in 'New Dimensions 3' (1973), a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story.

The work was subsequently printed in Le Guin's short story collection 'The Wind's Twelve Quarters' (1975).

Ursula K Le Guin (1929�2018) was an American writer who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry & four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, and more. She was known for her treatment of gender ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), 'The Matter of Seggri' (1994)), political systems ('The Telling' (2000), 'The Dispossessed' (1974)) and difference/otherness in any other form.]]>
32 Ursula K. Le Guin 0886825016 astrid 3 to-read 4.38 1973 The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: astrid
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World: Portraits and Revelations]]> 39672764 "The sensibility of a magician, a trickster's dark humor, and a formidable musical and literary erudition."� The New York Times Joseph Keckler's signatures are his magnificent three-plus-octave operatic voice and the mesmerizing stories he tells. Combining original pieces with material from his acclaimed performances, Keckler confirms his storytelling mastery, revealing still more of himself on the page. In these tales, one can't easily draw a line between reality, embellishment, and fantasy. Odd jobs and odder what is it like to work for a blind man who runs an art gallery? Or for an aging club kid who administers a university classics department? These outré characters make an artful spectacle of daily life. Some strive to be center stage and others struggle to be seen, but all soldier on in the margins. In this world, you may board a familiar bus or train and find yourself in some shady netherworld, or skipping past midnight on New Year's Eve. There is sex with ghosts. And the incessant GPS voice that mocks the last moments of a longtime love. A celebration of the ridiculous and a tour through stations of longing, this diverse collection will thrill devotees and new fans alike.]]> 240 Joseph Keckler 1885983255 astrid 0 to-read 4.57 Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World: Portraits and Revelations
author: Joseph Keckler
name: astrid
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[One Way Street And Other Writings]]> 149401 392 Walter Benjamin 185984197X astrid 0 to-read 4.20 1928 One Way Street And Other Writings
author: Walter Benjamin
name: astrid
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Letters to a Young Poet 29491487 'What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.'

A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself.

One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.]]>
52 Rainer Maria Rilke 0241252059 astrid 3 4.26 1929 Letters to a Young Poet
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: astrid
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1929
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:
Nice! I'm afraid Rilke's letters didn't speak to me as profoundly as they evidently did for many readers of this volume, but that's okay. I'm just a cynical bastard and didn't think the calls to sit in my solitude and let myself experience the power of all emotions, negative included, was particularly groundbreaking. Nevertheless, what I maybe appreciated more than any individual insight was the cute, nourishingly dialogical nature of the whole thing. Really reminds me of some of the emails I've received from academics at university, and some I've seen others receive... the kind, reflective mentoring letter lives on for those with eyes to see! I think it would've been nice, considering this dialogical aspect, to have Kappus' letters also included; it would've helped to see exactly what triggered Rilke's ruminations.
]]>
Ultramarine 177617090 143 Mariette Navarro 1739751574 astrid 0 to-read 3.73 2021 Ultramarine
author: Mariette Navarro
name: astrid
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Eastbound 60853075
â€The fever burning through this story, its suspense and its lyrical escapes don’t curb its sensuality, and precision. [Kerangal’s] language has an incredible driving force. It is both like a stone made up of many crystals, mixing registers with fluidity, and juxtaposing the poetic and the trivial. The whole thing has a unique rhythm, a sense of breathless speed: the sort of graceful rockslide that only she can pull off. In flux between interior and exterior, this is the perfect voyage.â€� â€� Le Monde des Livres]]>
140 Maylis de Kerangal astrid 0 to-read 3.94 2012 Eastbound
author: Maylis de Kerangal
name: astrid
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung: Mao’s Little Red Book Original Version]]> 35744272 26 Mao Zedong 1547154357 astrid 0 to-read 3.70 1964 Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung: Mao’s Little Red Book Original Version
author: Mao Zedong
name: astrid
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Succession: Season Four: The Complete Scripts]]> 124932974
Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Season Four feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.]]>
821 Jesse Armstrong 057137977X astrid 5 4.84 Succession: Season Four: The Complete Scripts
author: Jesse Armstrong
name: astrid
average rating: 4.84
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves:
review:
Took my sweet time finishing this one because honestly I wanted to savour it after kind of speeding my way through the first three seasons' worth of scripts. Finished re-watching today and it felt very right to sit in that finale. Like the others, it was phenomenal and enhanced the already fantastic experience of watching the show. Seeing the cuts, the internal monologues, the ambiguities, the amendments, the riffing of actors... it's all so fucking good, Succession I will love you forever and I don't know what to do with myself
]]>
The Sluts 51587 The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.]]> 263 Dennis Cooper 0786716746 astrid 0 to-read 3.79 2004 The Sluts
author: Dennis Cooper
name: astrid
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[My Cocaine Museum (Carpenter Lectures)]]> 146410
Combining natural history with political history in a filmic, montage style, Taussig deploys the show-and-tell modality of a museum to engage with the inner life of heat, rain, stone, and swamp, no less than with the life of gold and cocaine.

This effort to find a poetry of words becoming things is brought to a head by the explosive qualities of those sublime fetishes of evil beauty, gold and cocaine. At its core, Taussig's museum is about the lure of forbidden things, charged substances that transgress moral codes, the distinctions we use to make sense of the world, and above all the conventional way we write stories.]]>
336 Michael Taussig 0226790096 astrid 0 to-read 4.06 2004 My Cocaine Museum (Carpenter Lectures)
author: Michael Taussig
name: astrid
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Angels in America 34993151 352 Tony Kushner 1848426313 astrid 5 favourites 4.43 1995 Angels in America
author: Tony Kushner
name: astrid
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/28
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: favourites
review:
Just unfathomably obsessed with this play. It will never grow old for me, it's one of the most resonant pieces of media I've ever consumed, etc etc. Will maybe add to this review when I'm more awake.
]]>
Queer 10287367
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141189918]]>
150 William S. Burroughs astrid 2 ]]> 3.39 1985 Queer
author: William S. Burroughs
name: astrid
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:
Like (probably) many a recent reviewer, read this after watching the Guadagnino film adaptation, which I enjoyed immensely. Alas, this was a bit of a disappointment - the Editor's introduction was great, and I found it to be a pretty compelling portrait of addiction (or, perhaps more aptly, withdrawal), loneliness, and desire. But all in all, just a lot of excruciating pining which played more appealingly in film, for me at least. This is combined with noticeably bizarre politics, racism, and some deeply unpleasant scenes featuring Lee (or should I say, Burroughs?) lusting over young boys. Having watched the film, I also find it underwhelming and a little narratively disappointing that they never actually take ayahuasca. Makes the book feels like it just... trails off? Where is the climax, the emotional rupture, the grotesque self-exploration, and then the running away from oneself? I think film also allowed for special effects to take scenes with more trippy potential to a higher level, which I found missed descriptively in prose. Oh well! I don't regret reading it, at least...

]]>
On Bullshit 385
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.]]>
67 Harry G. Frankfurt 0691122946 astrid 0 to-read 3.58 2005 On Bullshit
author: Harry G. Frankfurt
name: astrid
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
The Trial 822733 178 Franz Kafka 0141182903 astrid 0 to-read 3.82 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: astrid
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]>
454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 astrid 0 to-read 3.86 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: astrid
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Time Is a Mother 58582927 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
]]>
114 Ocean Vuong 0593300238 astrid 0 to-read 3.94 2022 Time Is a Mother
author: Ocean Vuong
name: astrid
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Succession � Season Three: The Complete Scripts]]> 79330742 The complete, authorised scripts, including deleted scenes, of the multiple award-winning Succession .
'The smartest, cruellest, funniest show on television.' Irish Times
'The most thrilling and beautifully obscene TV there is.' Guardian
'Miraculously funny yet mind-blowingly intense.' Empire

** Winner of nineteen Emmys, nine Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and a Grammy. **
With an exclusive introduction from Lucy Prebble.
'Love'. You're coming for me with love?

In the wake of an ambush by his rebellious son, Kendall, Logan Roy is in a perilous position, scrambling to secure familial, political and financial alliances. A bitter corporate battle threatens to turn into a family civil war.

Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Season Three feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.
'The best TV show in the world.' The Times]]>
789 Jesse Armstrong 0571384021 astrid 5
"Roman heads towards Kendall and Shiv. In their own private worlds of betrayal and pain. But they are together."

"Shiv's face falls. She crumples, emotionally. Kendall sees. He supports her.
Tom heads on in to find the three siblings together. A hand held there. A bit of support there. Broken but together." ]]>
4.80 Succession – Season Three: The Complete Scripts
author: Jesse Armstrong
name: astrid
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
Season 3 has me all apart, blown into a million pieces... finale is psychologically ruinous actually. Emotional climax like no other. Kendall breaking down and being comforted by Shiv and Roman... the end confrontation with their father... Also, on a separate note, Too Much Birthday, which is a devastating microcosmic depiction of Kendall's whole S3 arc. Siblings, power, breaking apart and pushing back together. Fuck!

"Roman heads towards Kendall and Shiv. In their own private worlds of betrayal and pain. But they are together."

"Shiv's face falls. She crumples, emotionally. Kendall sees. He supports her.
Tom heads on in to find the three siblings together. A hand held there. A bit of support there. Broken but together."
]]>
<![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]>
416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 astrid 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: astrid
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media]]> 2474084 Benjamin’s famous 'Work of Art' essay sets out his boldest thoughts--on media and on culture in general--in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin's explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the 'Work of Art' essay the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin's observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin's best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays--some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin's media theory can be fully appreciated.

]]>
448 Walter Benjamin 0674024451 astrid 0 to-read 4.10 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
author: Walter Benjamin
name: astrid
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Outline 21400742
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]>
249 Rachel Cusk 0571233627 astrid 0 to-read 3.68 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: astrid
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance]]> 72252
A compulsively readable and thoroughly researched exploration of social deviance and the application of what is known as "labeling theory" to the studies of deviance. With particular research into drug culture, Outsiders analyzes unconventional individuals and their place in normal society.]]>
224 Howard S. Becker 0684836351 astrid 0 to-read 3.98 1963 Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance
author: Howard S. Becker
name: astrid
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Succession � Season Two: The Complete Scripts]]> 79330741 The complete, authorised scripts, including deleted scenes, of the multiple award-winning Succession .
'The best TV show in the world.' The Times
'Just about the best thing I've ever seen on television.' New Statesman
'The best television around.' Guardian

** Winner of nineteen Emmys, nine Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and a Grammy. **
With an exclusive introduction from Frank Rich.
I wonder if the sad I'd be from being without you might be less than the sad I get from being with you?

Kendall Roy is dealing with fallout from his hostile takeover attempt of Waystar Royco and the heavy guilt from a fatal accident. Shiv stands poised to make her way into the upper-echelons of the company, which is causing complications for Tom, which is causing complications for Greg. Meanwhile, Roman is reacquainting himself with the business by starting at the bottom, as Connor prepares to launch an unlikely bid for president.

Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Season Two feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.]]>
865 Jesse Armstrong 0571384013 astrid 5 I love Succession 4.86 Succession – Season Two: The Complete Scripts
author: Jesse Armstrong
name: astrid
average rating: 4.86
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:
I love Succession
]]>
Epistemology of the Closet 85766 258 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 0520078748 astrid 0 to-read 4.11 1990 Epistemology of the Closet
author: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
name: astrid
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Succession � Season One: The Complete Scripts]]> 79330740 The complete, authorised scripts, including deleted scenes, of the multiple award-winning Succession .

** Winner of nineteen Emmys, nine Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and a Grammy. **
With an exclusive introduction from creator Jesse Armstrong.
'The most thrilling and beautifully obscene TV there is.' Guardian

'Extraordinarily entertaining and incisive.' Empire

'One of the most relentlessly paced shows on television.' Rolling Stone

Everything I've done in my life is for my children.

When Logan Roy, the head of one of the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerates, decides to retire, each of his four grown children follows a personal agenda that doesn't always sync with those of their siblings -- or their father.

Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Season One feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.
'Monstrous, near-Shakespearean perfection.' New Statesman]]>
840 Jesse Armstrong 0571384005 astrid 5
Was extremely good to see the characters' internal monologues, the stage directions, stuff that made it into the show, stuff that got cut, stuff that was clearly added ad hoc, or contributed by actors in their individual performances. Had a very fun (and distressing) time feeding my already substantial addiction.]]>
4.85 Succession – Season One: The Complete Scripts
author: Jesse Armstrong
name: astrid
average rating: 4.85
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
Succession you will always be famous... why did I just spend the weekend reading 800 pages' worth of scripts instead of doing any work for my degree. No regrets.

Was extremely good to see the characters' internal monologues, the stage directions, stuff that made it into the show, stuff that got cut, stuff that was clearly added ad hoc, or contributed by actors in their individual performances. Had a very fun (and distressing) time feeding my already substantial addiction.
]]>
The Crack-Up 16893 347 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0811212475 astrid 0 to-read 3.93 1936 The Crack-Up
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: astrid
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Sensuous Scholarship 450909
In Sensuous Scholarship Paul Stoller challenges contemporary social theorists and cultural critics who--using the notion of embodiment to critique Eurocentric and phallocentric predispositions in scholarly thought--consider the body primarily as a text that can be read and analyzed. Stoller argues that this attitude is in itself Eurocentric and is particularly inappropriate for anthropologists, who often work in societies in which the notion of text, and textual interpretation, is foreign.

Throughout Sensuous Scholarship Stoller argues for the importance of understanding the "sensuous epistemologies" of many non-Western societies so that we can better understand the societies themselves and what their epistemologies have to teach us about human experience in general.]]>
184 Paul Stoller 0812216156 astrid 0 to-read 4.29 1997 Sensuous Scholarship
author: Paul Stoller
name: astrid
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Meditations in an Emergency 139871
Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.� This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.�
]]>
52 Frank O'Hara 0802134521 astrid 0 to-read 4.14 1957 Meditations in an Emergency
author: Frank O'Hara
name: astrid
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 12749 In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way.]]> 468 Marcel Proust 0142437964 astrid 0 to-read 4.12 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: astrid
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1913
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Angle of Repose 292408
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.]]>
569 Wallace Stegner 014016930X astrid 0 to-read 4.24 1971 Angle of Repose
author: Wallace Stegner
name: astrid
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]>
331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 astrid 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: astrid
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>
House of Leaves 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]>
710 Mark Z. Danielewski astrid 0 to-read 4.11 2000 House of Leaves
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: astrid
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>