Critiques et Commentaires

From the perspective of birds experience of extinction, these five case studies prompt deep questions about the more-than-human basis of caring, story telling and sense of place, mourning; about the intricacies of our entanglement with species around the world; in conversation with Haraway, how to live in discomfort with our best choices' complications.

An indirect travelogue of places in conflict, places divided, places holy and touristy, around a central theme of whether paradise is over there, in here, quiet and individual, or bustling and cosmopolitan.

Essays of humor and humility and care, a sense of observation that stretches from the microscope to scientific inquiry to social obligation, and in a dozen different ways asks us to consider perspectives of place, belonging, and generosity from other being's vast or tiny differences. It's been a while since I read Braiding Sweetgrass, but I think this collection is no lesser for nominally having more of a narrow entryway through her world of moss.

Journalistic stark account of precarious migrant labor of would-be retirees, especially post-2008 but many stories and paths to being unable to afford housing and able to scrape by with some sense of independence as long as your body holds up to exhausting physical labor of cleaning outhouses, amusement parks, warehouse fulfillment, or beet harvesting.

Oddly satisfying, surveys of outdoor living and gardening space in poor rural south in 1990, detailed planting census and interviews covering aesthetics, materials, goals. Historical analysis of influences of colonizing and slavery and sharecropping and land ownership - throughout, emphasizes the ephemeral nature of gardening as a built environment, always on the cusp of changes in function or technology - indoor plumbing, lawn mowers, big box stores.

An unintended Earth Day pick, straight through with the audiobook read by the author though I will get the physical book as it is implied there are aesthetically setting illustrations. It's been a while since I read Braiding Sweetgrass so comparisons are sketchy, but this was incredibly good too.

Highlighted as inspiration by ceramicist Syd Carpenter in the PBS "Craft in America: Home" episode, and geographically and culturally close to our home.

A very Holmes-ian mystery to me, set in rural Japan with a declining aristocratic family, the retelling pieced together tidily from a number of accounts and viewpoints.

Elite capture conscripts non-elite into propagating the structures of the elite. Riffing on "regulatory capture", colonial capitalism's constant simplification of rich relationships to consumptive signalling, and weaving in accounts of Guinea-Bissau's liberation from Portugese rule, this emphasizes the need to return "identity politics" to "alliance across difference" and not accept the shape of the rooms we're given that are more "did this or that brand post a #BLM tweet quick enough?" than "what would societal structural changes look like to hear the marginalized?"

Dark interior struggles of a young couple, conflict over marriage and family obligation, heat and desperation in poor rural Tamil life.

Quiet novella on aging and conscientious care and consent - two careful characters, used to dissimilar routine, find joyful surprise in the other.

Time is a population-level phenomenon, physics that has focused on integrable time-reversible solutions has discounted the aspects of dynamics that help us understand self-organization, creativity, and life, all bound up with the chaotic entropic uncertainty that time's arrow creates. As expected even in this "pop" treatment there's a lot of math I'm ill-suited to evaluate.

The "Bro!" translation, less rudely modernizing than you'd think, a joyous and hilarious full sweep of English language in all its boastful vigilant possibilities.

A lovely plain and readable translation, I'd entirely forgotten how much the story is of human hospitality, deceit and its dangers when surrounded by capricious gods. Even arriving home, the ancient Greece portrayed is far and foreign from us.

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.