Critiques et Commentaires

Oops, I proposed this again for another bookclub. Time for a re-read!

Women-led, funny and enjoyable, a familiar-feeling quest to right wrongs and make friends and save the day.

Guo's commentary project as presented is to invert and unify Taoist contrasting themes of social norms (naming) and spontaneity (nature), in a foreshadowing influence for Chan/Zen, to de-emphasize Non-Being as a numinous origin of Being, to ground all things as self-creating in a self-negating "vanishing into" in this translation. Whether this is compelling or utterly circular, Ziporyn does a lovely job mirroring that in steady direct attention to Guo's imagery and language and argument, with only the lightest references to contrasting or comparative philosophical interpretations.

Soul-searching memoir essays peering through and interrogating analogies in deep sea science for growing up on many outsides, finding queer community, and clear-eyed reflection on sexual assault.

darkly humorous sci-fi novella on structures of oppression and exploitation and liberation in capitalism and academia.

Wow, a fantastically-informed world and engrossing story of strong women. Update 2024: still outstanding, complex and revealing narrative on oppression and community and power.

Uncategorizable and deeply examined. Elements of anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism, other ways of being and more-than-human, self-examination and introspection, personal stories of academia indigeneity and systemic harms, care and careful humility and sober reflection on our dependence on exploitation. To face and embrace modernity within yourself and in the kindest sense of hospice to sit with it through an uncertain death. If or when this is for you, strongly recommended.

A great rant on compulsory coercive educational institutions vs learning. Still entirely relevant on testing, ranking and grading, and the non-learning societal purposes of schools, but you can hear the exhaustion of repetitive railing against the system. Several inspiring models for alternative learning from specific teachers and model small institutions tucked in the middle, with that tired realism about whether education itself can center learning.

Marvelous personal stories of deep friendships that challenge and enliven how we think about care, intimacy, and partnership. "We weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them." Covers a lot of varied ground from these accounts, from growing old, to disentangling masculinity's sexualization and stigmatizing of intimacy, to friend family and co-parenting, to the grief and pain of loss of platonic love without the artificial finality of "a break-up", to the monopolization of legal rights afforded to marriage.

More bookclubbing.

Fantastical afro-detroit superhero saga referencing a thousand comics, myths, and philip k dick. Really it's too much, an explosive chromed graphic novel given all the word count of ditching the visuals, and fairly raunchily enjoyable for all that.

A mix of frontier knife fights and sci-fi encounters with reality-bending concept pieces, a strong collection of not very likeable or comfortable stories.

A clear history of opium trade's encouragement, enforcement, and implications, mostly India to China under British imperial control but with heavy threads of American exploitation and wealth laundering up to our current opioid crisis. Entangled slightly with more-than-human agency and literary overlap with Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy historical events, I found this straighter history and less mentally rearranging than I expected.

Re-read after a long while for a bookclub.

Lighter and more liberally uplifting than I expected, though not all strong, the late chapters on the shifts in society as we ceased to treat schizophrenia, epilepsy, etc as personal moral failings stand out. From mostly neuroscience cases and psych experiments lens pushes at any gaps for spontaneous decision making separable from our histories of a second, an hour, a year, a millennium. Then moves into implications for society, primarily our societal morality and justice system's injustices built on individual responsibility.