historyofjess's reviews
2117 reviews

The Last Man by Mary Shelley
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.

I am fast learning that I just really don't have the patience for a lot of classic literature. I like a lot Shelley's ideas (as I did with Frankenstein), but I just struggle with the actual story in the midst of all of it. It's super dull and soapy and filled with a lot of the same stuff I've always struggled with in writers of that era.

Capitalism & Slavery by Eric Williams, Colin A. Palmer
Did not finish book. Stopped at 22%.

This is a very dry (and, based on the forward and introduction, old) historical text. It seems like it was quite revolutionary at the time, but reading it now feels a bit out of date, as well as being dense and hard to get through. 

Tree Magic: Connecting with the Spirit & Wisdom of Trees by Sandra Kynes

medium-paced

3.0

While I'm always happy when an audiobook version of a book is available, sometimes it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and this is one of those cases. Most of this book is a bunch of "tree profiles" of various trees and their magickal correspondences. That makes for a fine flip-through/reference book, but, as an audiobook listen, it's not super helpful to have someone reading off lists of things about trees in alphabetical order. So this might be a fine reference book for someone that wants to do a lot of magickal work with trees, but as an actual read, it's not that great.

Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered

challenging hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

This is going immediately into my “I really need everyone to read this” pile. Sered does an amazing job of illustrating what restorative justice can look like and, while it begins as a case for restorative justice as an alternative to our current carceral system, as the book goes on, it makes the case for societal restorative justice that had me going, “fuck yes, this is the world I want to live in.”

I’ve actually read a few prison abolition books in the last week and, while I was head nodding with a lot of the points being made and stewing over all the horrible stories of what incarceration does to our society, this is the first that had me pumping my fist and actually feeling motivated to do something about it.

Highly recommended read.

Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness by Alisa Roth

challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.0

This book does not claim to be an abolitionist text, but it 100% is in its content (it cited some of the same Charles Dickens quotes that a prison abolition book I read earlier this week did) . It's a rough read because every single story included in here is tragic and harrowing and is a massively illustrative example of not only how awful the carceral system in the United States is, but also how awful we are at caring for the mentally ill across the board. These failures are horrendous in so many ways, such that I can't really recommend people read it unless they think they can stomach the truly awful reality of these injustices.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Excrement, Police brutality, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Injury/Injury detail

A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics by Hadas Thier
Did not finish book. Stopped at 65%.

It's just so dry and dense. The title makes it seems like this is an accessible volume, but it's very thick with economic jargon that seems to repeat itself over and over.

Radical Belonging: How to Survive and Thrive in an Unjust World (While Transforming It for the Better) by Lindo Bacon

hopeful inspiring medium-paced

4.0

This is such a breath of fresh air after having read other, less ambitious, self-help books. I really appreciate that bacon not only shares a lot about her own experiences that have brought her to this work, but that she has a larger goal outside of personal, individualized self-help, but threads those concepts through with making the world a better place and always with an eye towards intersectionality. She covers a lot of the topics I've read in books written by well-known authors like Brene Brown (who she does cite a few times), but I found the way they she approached them to be far more accessible and less naval-gazey.

Witch Hunt: A Traveler's Guide to the Power and Persecution of the Witch by Kristen J. Sollee

dark reflective medium-paced

3.0

While I liked this a bit more than the other books I've read from Sollee, I was perplexed by some of her writing choices. The book kind of a travelogue through historical places where witches (and sometimes people she considers to fit the witchy archetype) existed or were persecuted. The parameters are a bit loosely defined, which is especially clear when you get to the chapter about The Vatican. But what really threw me were the sections where she would be detailing her trek somewhere and then fade into something of a vision quest where she can see and even attempt to interact with a deceased witch. It's odd to have something so fanciful in the midst of a bunch of citations. Is this a well-researched book about actual witch hunts or is it this author's vacation through history? It's a bit disjointed.

Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others Are Demanding Their Rightful Place in Public Life by Jay Wexler

hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.0

While this was an interesting collection of stories of both alternative religions (as well as non-religions) making their case for assuming some of the same benefits that Christianity has in the U.S., I found myself a little lost in the author's overall message. Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy for a text that's going to give the Supreme Court a good ribbing, but Wexler's argument is very fixed on all faiths and non-faiths having a place "in the public square" without a satisfactory description of what that actually means or would look like. It ends up being a bit of a naïve call that takes away from the interesting stories he's telling.

Water Witchcraft: Magic and Lore from the Celtic Tradition by Annwyn Avalon

hopeful medium-paced

3.0

I was surprised by how much of this book was actually a summarization of folklore (largely Celtic and Arthurian). There is a chunk of practical craft, though a very large portion of it seemed to be focused on the ocean/sea, despite the author leading off by saying that you can be a water witch with any kind of water. As someone who lives on the Great Lakes, I was a bit disappointed that the chapter on lakes had nothing practical in it and was exclusively focused on Celtic mythology and creatures associated with lakes. There may be some stuff that could be of practical use in here, and I did very much appreciate the author encouraging the reader to make anything within the book their own and not feel the need to practice it to the letter. But I ended up being a bit disappointed with it.