Critiques et Commentaires

Such a promising disturbing start, At The Mountains of Madness vibes with new layers, and then goes on somewhere that's fine but not there.

It seems everyone read this when I lived in Chicago except me, but the true crime hook turned me off then. Turns out it's mostly about architecture and temporary facades of respectability, and engagingly told as popular history. Satisfyingly travel-back-in-time-to-Chicago.

Or, "Are we smart enough to change our behavior from a path of ecological destruction, recounting a small intellectual gathering on cybernetics in 1968”

Where I am right now, after an overlapping decades-long journey through computability, animal and ecological intelligence, finding human humility after capitalism's techno-categorizing-hubris. Seeking an answer to how technology, how participation in understanding, should adapt to a collaborative-multiple-perspective de-centering of humanity and our binary truths. This sticks to a deep middle, the claims Bridle makes for "opening up to the more-than-human world" are broad, pointed in good directions, and avoid anger or hopelessness while staying critical. My recommendations for adjacent reading would be Frans de Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are", Emma Marris' "Wild Souls", Richard Power's "The Overstory", and a lot of Ursula K LeGuin, but the bibliography has a whole stack of new reading lined up for me too.

Nice to be reminded that Chambers can weave her deeply attentive human and social reflections into compelling longer form, and live up to high expectations for unconventionally but quite comfortably answering what matters in a story or a culture.

Witty low stakes riff, not so noir - the vibe is more 5th Element romp given the cruise ship setting, and the mystery bends to suit - but true to the original in prominent stiff drinks, and comfortably egalitarian in gender roles.

This is such a satisfying wondrous summation of my last decade of reading, I love how many diverse threads are in the bibliography and new encounters in the text suggest a good year's reading project could be just to read through the rest of the bibliography. Possible overlapping new highlights there: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Donna J Haraway, Eva Meijer, Andrea Wulf, Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Thoroughly grim and unredemptive, there are some beautifully evoked unpleasant truths in people's minds here, but I can't recommend reading them.

Does a lovely job portraying a decentralized, nerdy, queer, ecologically-attentive near future both recognizable and made deeply alien through first-contact... even as a semi-utopic didactic depiction, I wish it were a better story, the stakes and conflicts wobble erratically between gray and absolute to an overall weaker place.

A solid early start, tying Ahab's totalitarianism to American capitalism and the neurotic disassociation it produces in the intellectual class and middle management. As it spins out to broader Melville background and comparative lit, I cared less.

Heard this interview with Ressa today and very moved by her deep sense of the global moment's interconnections. "Inspiration spreads as fast as hate." the1a.org/segments/maria-ressa-on-social-media-authoritarian-regimes-and-preserving-democracy/

A low-stakes nonsensical romp in the hallways and discipline strictures of a Soviet research university... a wonderful blend of Pratchett and Vonnegut.

An uneven and hopeful set of essays on the history and promise of Usenet as a democratizing and generative space for global discussion. The pre-history of ARPAnet is valuable and inspiring, as is the central warning that coming commercial control and influence would distort and reduce the forms of communication from creatively sparking new ideas through conversations to merely consuming information.

An effective thematic collection of essays (1975-2011) that aren't too repetitive and yet each stands alone well, arguing from an anti-exploitation feminist perspective for housework and carework to a) be recognized as an unpaid foundation of capitalist society, b) organize and refuse being atomized and devalued under this society - from rejecting earlier feminist/leftist legitimizing of only workforce participation to globalization's outsourcing and industrializing of the home, and c) be understood as a collective social responsibility integrally valued in reproducing the society we want. A lifetime's vibrant perspective.

Sharp satire about hubris and business and PKD's mind-bending doubts about what is real and what is in your mind quite explicit here, aged better than most things of this era... and I ultimately didn't care much about where the story went.