Reading for fun, threads over the years of scifi, history, social movements and justice, farming, philosophy. I actively work to balance out the white male default in what I read, but have a long way to go.
He/they for the praxis.
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Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every …
This will probably fly over my head, but it's a common ground from Donna Haraway to Bruce Sterling, and it's due back at the library in a few weeks.
Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every culture and every century. All …
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
Content warning tangent dragging the audiobook too
The audiobook makes a particular choice to use sound effect clips whenever a character makes sound effects, which is often in parts, and which added a flat layer of realism/annoyance of a radio play dramatization performed with a 90s DJ's sample effects board of sad trombone and fart noises. I think whether you'll like this is independent of whether you'll like the book, but it may have influenced my take.
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
Plenty to like here in environmental, more-than-human kin, queer and anti-capitalist themes in a fairly comic presentation. And yet it's really off as a paced story, as characters jut in or out or beep past, or as a deeply considered world or future confronting injustice, and the incoherence just built for me as emotions rose towards the end.
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A well-worked short study (with a dated feel) in ego-dissolution and recognizing our individualistic society's contradicting double-binds in defining progress, freedom, and love. Better to dance as one with the universe, but watch out for all the ways attempting to do so reinstates your sense of self...
A time capsule of vibrant youth-centered journalism: three sections of short articles, Science Reporting, Youth Activism, and Global Intersectionality. All these kids are growing old now.
Journalist memoir, revealing and honest and Phillipines-focused to frame global problems. The middle section is the strongest, in angrily recounting how Facebook actively sided with power rather than pro-social possibilities in 2011-2018. Hope for reclaiming shared bottom-up truth over loud loyalty of media to power is always ... possible.
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, …
loppear
boosted
The Glass Palace is a 2000 historical novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. The novel …
I have been on a search for books on Myanmar, especially those written by people of heritage there too. At the end of the book, the bio mentions in a quick sentence that he was born in India to Burmese parents, but I cannot find anywhere online if this is in reference to ethnicity or nationality. It is from stories of his family that send him on a five year research journey for this book. One must be careful to consider what is fact, what is fiction, and what we can only surmise because what has been lost.
At some points of the book, things felt way too drawn out, at others, it felt too short. But as someone who has not read a true storyteller's story in a long time, I began to find much joy and excitement from reading this book. If I had followed my plans, I …
I have been on a search for books on Myanmar, especially those written by people of heritage there too. At the end of the book, the bio mentions in a quick sentence that he was born in India to Burmese parents, but I cannot find anywhere online if this is in reference to ethnicity or nationality. It is from stories of his family that send him on a five year research journey for this book. One must be careful to consider what is fact, what is fiction, and what we can only surmise because what has been lost.
At some points of the book, things felt way too drawn out, at others, it felt too short. But as someone who has not read a true storyteller's story in a long time, I began to find much joy and excitement from reading this book. If I had followed my plans, I might have finished it in just over two months, and rather: I finished it in under one! With momentum I pushed forward. And it was brutal for so many days to feel such attachment to characters, so many who do not get any resolve. He covers a vast, rich history, where you encounter more than 5 generations of narratives.
Yet, in many ways it was also a relief, a time to reflect on histories and the momentum that has existed while current news about home leaves me so disabled and numb. I think this book was good for me to read in this time in my life in a way I could appreciate it. While I may not be a strong literary critic, I cannot go without saying there is power in his writing. In some ways, I am a bit abashed to even share it. But I think it did something good for me, to have someone acknowledge how complex it can be to have so many people whose lives are constantly intertwined yet their worldviews might be so vastly different. These are not stories that could be easily passed on at such a level to me by my parents and grandparents. A part of me knows they have been so affected that there are stories that they could never bear to reach my ears from their own mouths. Still, I have a desire to know, I see the edges curling around the makeshift walls they've placed along my path and I can't help but peel them back and see the path for myself so I can go beyond.
@pixouls everything I have read by Ghosh has that true storyteller power, fiction or non. I'll put this one on the list.
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
Destry's life …
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In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative …
What a joyful blending and interweaving of feminist, more-than-human, art-science-speculation, and anger at capitalism's depletion of our capacity to think in relational terms.
"The anthropocene is more of a boundary event than an epoch ... what comes after will not be like what came before. I think our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge."
From the award winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor …
Mixed feelings of metaphor and memoir, beautiful in its small attentions, for me the impact lessened as I approached the end.
Trust Kids! weaves together essays, interviews, poems, and artwork from scholars, activists, and artists about …
If we want a world without domination, how do we rethink our relations with kids? Collection of connected authors of all ages recollections and motivations in unschooling, alternative schooling, and living as and with kids as trusted peers.
