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Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Award-winning author and poet Saeed Jones returns with another poetry collection. The state of the world is hard to summarize. Jones covers the pandemic, author tours, relationships, growing up Black and Queen in America, and stories about his mother. Painful, poignant, and searing, this collection draws a spotlight on grief, but reminds us that we are alive.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
The award-winning poet of Goldenrod returns with a memoir of her divorce. Told in lyrical snippets, she gives flashes of her life from when she met her husband to her deteriorating marriage. She makes herself anew with a spirit that could guide anyone.
One evening, Maggie walks downstairs and finds a postcard from her husband to another woman. She reimagines this scene, confronting him. not confronting him, and the eventual destruction of her marriage. She then takes us through every painful step of her divorce. She remembers her marriage and feeling stifled and the coldness of her husband. After the divorce, he moved 500 miles away from her and their children. How do you build back a life after that?
She finds inspiration in herself, and she calls upon the power of her own poetry, Good Bones, the poem that put her on the maps as a poet and speaks to the hardship of this world. It looks at the world like a realtor. There may be bad things, but there are good bones; you could make this place beautiful.
Favorite Passage:
One evening, Maggie walks downstairs and finds a postcard from her husband to another woman. She reimagines this scene, confronting him. not confronting him, and the eventual destruction of her marriage. She then takes us through every painful step of her divorce. She remembers her marriage and feeling stifled and the coldness of her husband. After the divorce, he moved 500 miles away from her and their children. How do you build back a life after that?
She finds inspiration in herself, and she calls upon the power of her own poetry, Good Bones, the poem that put her on the maps as a poet and speaks to the hardship of this world. It looks at the world like a realtor. There may be bad things, but there are good bones; you could make this place beautiful.
Favorite Passage:
Good Bones
BY MAGGIE SMITH
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Above Ground by Clint Smith
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
5.0
New York Times Best Selling author and winner of the National Books Circle Award Clint Smith returns with a new book of poetry. In Above Ground, Clint Smith explores the joys and possibilities of fatherhood with the slow realization of the terror that can accompany it. Finding strength through family, he looks to the future with clear eyes.
There is nothing like the fragility of being a parent. One moment, you are living the dream you never thought would come. At other times, you can feel like a fool bringing a child into this world. Its building community, family, and strong bonds that can see us through.
Favorite Passages:
“But some days, I worry
that we are welcoming you into the flames
of a world that is burning.
Some days, I am afraid that I am
more kindling than water.”
“I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies
that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.”
“the drone was once a scrap of metal the drone looks as if it might be a toy the drone is not a toy the drone could have been something else something other than a killing machine the drone could have been a house the drone could have been a spoon the drone could have been a swing the drone does not know who it is going to kill next the drone is going to kill next the drone has learned to disguise itself as a shard of sky the drone’s hum is a disembodied echo the drone was mistaken for a star once the drone renders itself celestial the drone scoffs at sovereignty the drone asks what is a border if you can fly right over it? the drone was built by a man the drone killed a man and a woman and a child the drone killed a child and did not see her face the drone does not see a face the drone sees a body and then the body is gone”
“I’m not sure what it means for us,
not to be the one to fire the bullet
but to behave as if the bullet always belonged
in that chest, and not our own.”
“It’s not that I don’t want people to tell me
I’m doing a good job it’s just I am praised for the sorts
of things no one ever thanks my wife for. I am adorned
in a garland of gold stars for simply being in this body.”
The Gun
the gun heard the first shot the gun thought it was a bursting pipe the gun heard the second shot and the third and the fourth the gun realized this was not a pipe the gun’s teacher told everyone to get on the ground the gun’s teacher went to lock the door the gun saw glass break and the teacher slump and bleed and fall silent the gun texted its parents and said i love you i’m so sorry for any trouble i’ve caused all these years you mean so much to me i’m so sorry the gun thought it would never leave the classroom the gun moved to a closet filled with several other shaking guns the gun texted its best friends in the group chat to see if they were okay the gun waited on a response the gun received one the gun did not receive another the gun waited for an hour the gun heard the door kicked open the gun was still in the closet and didn’t know who had entered the room the gun thought this was the end the gun thought of prom and graduation and college and children and all the things the gun would never have the gun heard more bullets the gun heard he’s down! the gun climbed out of the closet the gun put its hands on its head the gun walked outside the gun saw the cameras the gun hugged its sobbing mother and cried into her arms the gun heard thoughts and prayers the gun heard second amendment the gun heard lone wolf the gun texted its friend again the gun waited for a message the message never came
There is nothing like the fragility of being a parent. One moment, you are living the dream you never thought would come. At other times, you can feel like a fool bringing a child into this world. Its building community, family, and strong bonds that can see us through.
Favorite Passages:
“But some days, I worry
that we are welcoming you into the flames
of a world that is burning.
Some days, I am afraid that I am
more kindling than water.”
“I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies
that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.”
“the drone was once a scrap of metal the drone looks as if it might be a toy the drone is not a toy the drone could have been something else something other than a killing machine the drone could have been a house the drone could have been a spoon the drone could have been a swing the drone does not know who it is going to kill next the drone is going to kill next the drone has learned to disguise itself as a shard of sky the drone’s hum is a disembodied echo the drone was mistaken for a star once the drone renders itself celestial the drone scoffs at sovereignty the drone asks what is a border if you can fly right over it? the drone was built by a man the drone killed a man and a woman and a child the drone killed a child and did not see her face the drone does not see a face the drone sees a body and then the body is gone”
“I’m not sure what it means for us,
not to be the one to fire the bullet
but to behave as if the bullet always belonged
in that chest, and not our own.”
“It’s not that I don’t want people to tell me
I’m doing a good job it’s just I am praised for the sorts
of things no one ever thanks my wife for. I am adorned
in a garland of gold stars for simply being in this body.”
The Gun
the gun heard the first shot the gun thought it was a bursting pipe the gun heard the second shot and the third and the fourth the gun realized this was not a pipe the gun’s teacher told everyone to get on the ground the gun’s teacher went to lock the door the gun saw glass break and the teacher slump and bleed and fall silent the gun texted its parents and said i love you i’m so sorry for any trouble i’ve caused all these years you mean so much to me i’m so sorry the gun thought it would never leave the classroom the gun moved to a closet filled with several other shaking guns the gun texted its best friends in the group chat to see if they were okay the gun waited on a response the gun received one the gun did not receive another the gun waited for an hour the gun heard the door kicked open the gun was still in the closet and didn’t know who had entered the room the gun thought this was the end the gun thought of prom and graduation and college and children and all the things the gun would never have the gun heard more bullets the gun heard he’s down! the gun climbed out of the closet the gun put its hands on its head the gun walked outside the gun saw the cameras the gun hugged its sobbing mother and cried into her arms the gun heard thoughts and prayers the gun heard second amendment the gun heard lone wolf the gun texted its friend again the gun waited for a message the message never came
Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Working as a bookbinder and book repairer for the Met, Jen's work can sometimes be interesting but monotonous. When repairing a damaged book, she finds a romance novel cover with a German message. It unlocks a mystery. The hunt to find the message's origin takes her on a journey of her identity. Jen is also stuck in her own artistic expression. She just doesn't want to repair famous art and books, she wants to make her own.
Working in a post-11 New York the community still wears fresh scars. Jen searches for connection in her circle, in her community as well as searching the past for answers. I liked the combination of her history and identity and how the gay community was treated post-9/11 and in the 1940s.
Working in a post-11 New York the community still wears fresh scars. Jen searches for connection in her circle, in her community as well as searching the past for answers. I liked the combination of her history and identity and how the gay community was treated post-9/11 and in the 1940s.
a "Working Life" by Eileen Myles
challenging
slow-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
Eileen Myles has been writing poetry since 1991. They have been a LAMBDA Literary Award Winner, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and professor emeritus of writing and literature at the University of California San Diego. Ther new book of poetry, A working Life, focuses on the beauty of every day living and the importance of caring for another all told in short punchy prose.
My favorite poem was Friday Night. THe small words that give us big emotions to love, happiness, and being content. Sometimes, the short stanzas were difficult to read but worth it in many places.
My favorite poem was Friday Night. THe small words that give us big emotions to love, happiness, and being content. Sometimes, the short stanzas were difficult to read but worth it in many places.
This Woman's Work: Essays on Music by Sinéad Gleeson, Kim Gordon
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Essays by artists, writers, and musicians on the impact of woman musicians on their lives. Ann Enright writes about meeting her favorite musician and imagines eloquently expressing her impact on her, but instead finds herself stumbling over her words. Fatima Bhutto talks about the need for music for those in exile. She writes, "now dictators hate beautiful things like music since it inspires people and they cannot control it."
So many more experiences from Sonic Youth's Kim Jordon to the CEO of Subpop records.
Favorite Passages:
There is liberty in musical dissonance. And where there is liberty, there will be mutiny. Tyrants hate music because no matter their force and their power, they will never, not ever, be able to control what is beautiful.
“Fruits of My Labor" is a song I most often turn to when I'm at sea in my desk chair with a blank page and the curtains drawn to trick myself into believing I'm writing at dawn. It's a reminder that I'm not the only person who has sat alone with my thoughts and wondered how life got so very confusing, wondered if I can be satisfied, wondered if I can regain the plot, wondered if I can work through my doubts and come out with some beauty.
Betrayal is a immanent risk. The disciplinary structure of language which announces its presence at many encounters—class, gender, race, national border—is a cancer endemic to any attempt at the command or disavowal of a language built to monitor scrutinize and direct expression and labor. This betrayal, or its risk, is a terror from which the only escape is a different register altogether.
When I witnessed that, I was convinced that music becomes audible when the musician is physically touching the instrument, but the music is already being played within that person. If the music you hear is made up of the vibrations being emitted from one person, layering multiple sounds on top of each other is an extraordinary phenomenon. Then you have an audience who comes to see that, and they bring that influence home with them. Music is vibration, so it enters people's bodies and souls like light. In order to be able to make the music audible that is already playing within you, you need to prepare yourself as a vessel to receive the music. You could say that that's my technique. It's all about keeping yourself light and putting yourself in the position to receive, rather than being tense.
So many more experiences from Sonic Youth's Kim Jordon to the CEO of Subpop records.
Favorite Passages:
There is liberty in musical dissonance. And where there is liberty, there will be mutiny. Tyrants hate music because no matter their force and their power, they will never, not ever, be able to control what is beautiful.
“Fruits of My Labor" is a song I most often turn to when I'm at sea in my desk chair with a blank page and the curtains drawn to trick myself into believing I'm writing at dawn. It's a reminder that I'm not the only person who has sat alone with my thoughts and wondered how life got so very confusing, wondered if I can be satisfied, wondered if I can regain the plot, wondered if I can work through my doubts and come out with some beauty.
Betrayal is a immanent risk. The disciplinary structure of language which announces its presence at many encounters—class, gender, race, national border—is a cancer endemic to any attempt at the command or disavowal of a language built to monitor scrutinize and direct expression and labor. This betrayal, or its risk, is a terror from which the only escape is a different register altogether.
When I witnessed that, I was convinced that music becomes audible when the musician is physically touching the instrument, but the music is already being played within that person. If the music you hear is made up of the vibrations being emitted from one person, layering multiple sounds on top of each other is an extraordinary phenomenon. Then you have an audience who comes to see that, and they bring that influence home with them. Music is vibration, so it enters people's bodies and souls like light. In order to be able to make the music audible that is already playing within you, you need to prepare yourself as a vessel to receive the music. You could say that that's my technique. It's all about keeping yourself light and putting yourself in the position to receive, rather than being tense.
There is a disconnect there and being in this position it makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes. But it's all a part of life. when I create music or art and express myself, in a way, I'm posing everything that is inside of me to the outside world. As soon as my expression makes its way into the world, the person Who receives it interprets it in their own way. The receiver will project themselves onto me, the source of the expression, and create their own mental image of me. All the different people who receive my expression will have different mental images of me, so in a way there are multitudes of "me" that exist. By the time a person receives my expression, I don't exist there anymore. So being the source of this expression, all I can do is be myself and express myself honestly. My job is to expose the sounds that are within me in a way that feels good to me, and be myself to the best of my abilities.
How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind by Regan Penaluna
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
When Reno Penaluma is sitting in her graduate philosophy class, her visiting professor speaks openly on how women do not have the mental fortitude for philosophy. Caught in the moment, instead of protesting it, she internalizes the remarks. Searching for a thesis, she finds connections to prominent women philosophers in history.
Damaris Cudworth/Lady Marsham, Mary Astell, Catherine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft all inspire her to redouble her efforts and help these neglected philosophers find new light. "Why have women been given intelligent souls if they cannot improve them?" (Astell) If men are born fee why are women slaves.
All these women wrote at a time when less than a quarter of women could even write. Yet, their writing would rival Ocke, Hobes, Rousseau, and many who would lay the foundation of modern thought and American Democracy. In their rediscovery, she discovers her own motivation, completes her degree, leaves her husband, and writes this book. A journey of discovery, these inspirational philosophers get a well-deserved review.
Favorite Passages:
This book tells the story of how I lost myself in philosophy and then, through my discovery of these early feminist philosophers, found a path back to myself. Despite the centuries that separated us, we were united by our love of philosophy and our frustration, sorrow, and anger. What does a woman do when she’s told that she doesn’t belong or that she’s not as smart as a man because of her sex? Some let it roll off their backs, knowing their worth regardless of what they’re told. I admire these women, but I’m not like them. I can’t maintain that level of equanimity. I struggle, I doubt, but above all, I need answers—or at least attempts to explain what is happening to me and why. In this, I feel a kinship with these four philosophers.
To help her readers see women anew, she borrowed language from the new science. She wrote that women were unaccustomed to thinking for themselves and were in an important sense indistinguish- able from automatons. They move and speak, but they are mostly following orders from without and have an “unthinking mechani- cal way of living.”55 Here she invoked Descartes’s division of reality into two substances: the mind, which is immaterial and thinking, and matter, which is its opposite—material and unthinking. These substances were governed by different laws, and the motion of mate- rial things was due to physical forces, whereas the activity of mind was rational. For Astell and many other early modern philosophers, reason was essential to freedom. To follow the commands of some- one else was to be not truly free. A person must earn her own path to salvation. But Astell argued that women lived as if they were only matter in motion, as if they were just “Machins” devoid of mind.56
This reminds me of something the philosopher Irigaray once said. She asks what a philosophy of woman’s nature would look like that didn’t derive from the belief that women are inferior and des- tined for motherhood: “But to what reality would woman correspond, independently of her reproductive function?”113 It’s an open ques- tion and one that Astell was also motivated by centuries ago. Astell’s answer was that a woman’s sex should not be her defining feature if she does not want it to be, because humans are foremost rational persons. Even if a woman were to participate in a traditional female role, it should not be because of necessity but rather because she freely chose to do so. A sentiment that—despite her conservatism in other areas—is strikingly modern.
A friend wrote that in Astell’s final moments of life, she asked to have her coffin placed next to her bed and to be alone, contemplating the afterlife.
She saw the minimal investment in her intellect as symptom- atic of a cultural force inhibiting the minds of women. In these early years she didn’t set forth a path to freedom for women. Instead, she absorbed this oppression and then spun it out into a description of the world as suffocating and harmful to women’s intellects; it was a place where women would live and die, vulnerable and without much control over their own thought.
It’s often a tougher path for a woman, because society can be a hostile place for her to cultivate her subjectivity. It was true in the seventeenth century, and it was true for me. Maybe, then, the com- mon experience of being a woman in philosophy is to be effaced: your feelings, your opinions, your presence, your life, your works, your impact are belittled, glanced at, or ignored. The psychological hurdles are one reason why today there are fewer women than men in graduate programs across many disciplines, and even fewer who rise to the top of their class, and why some women seem to come into their own at a slower rate than men. Only years later, when men have outpaced most women in their careers, will women begin to discover how they nearly snuffed themselves out. Just like I was doing. I took Masham’s recommendation to be: Do not retreat. A woman’s path to self-knowledge requires her to risk losing herself to find herself.
Damaris Cudworth/Lady Marsham, Mary Astell, Catherine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft all inspire her to redouble her efforts and help these neglected philosophers find new light. "Why have women been given intelligent souls if they cannot improve them?" (Astell) If men are born fee why are women slaves.
All these women wrote at a time when less than a quarter of women could even write. Yet, their writing would rival Ocke, Hobes, Rousseau, and many who would lay the foundation of modern thought and American Democracy. In their rediscovery, she discovers her own motivation, completes her degree, leaves her husband, and writes this book. A journey of discovery, these inspirational philosophers get a well-deserved review.
Favorite Passages:
This book tells the story of how I lost myself in philosophy and then, through my discovery of these early feminist philosophers, found a path back to myself. Despite the centuries that separated us, we were united by our love of philosophy and our frustration, sorrow, and anger. What does a woman do when she’s told that she doesn’t belong or that she’s not as smart as a man because of her sex? Some let it roll off their backs, knowing their worth regardless of what they’re told. I admire these women, but I’m not like them. I can’t maintain that level of equanimity. I struggle, I doubt, but above all, I need answers—or at least attempts to explain what is happening to me and why. In this, I feel a kinship with these four philosophers.
To help her readers see women anew, she borrowed language from the new science. She wrote that women were unaccustomed to thinking for themselves and were in an important sense indistinguish- able from automatons. They move and speak, but they are mostly following orders from without and have an “unthinking mechani- cal way of living.”55 Here she invoked Descartes’s division of reality into two substances: the mind, which is immaterial and thinking, and matter, which is its opposite—material and unthinking. These substances were governed by different laws, and the motion of mate- rial things was due to physical forces, whereas the activity of mind was rational. For Astell and many other early modern philosophers, reason was essential to freedom. To follow the commands of some- one else was to be not truly free. A person must earn her own path to salvation. But Astell argued that women lived as if they were only matter in motion, as if they were just “Machins” devoid of mind.56
This reminds me of something the philosopher Irigaray once said. She asks what a philosophy of woman’s nature would look like that didn’t derive from the belief that women are inferior and des- tined for motherhood: “But to what reality would woman correspond, independently of her reproductive function?”113 It’s an open ques- tion and one that Astell was also motivated by centuries ago. Astell’s answer was that a woman’s sex should not be her defining feature if she does not want it to be, because humans are foremost rational persons. Even if a woman were to participate in a traditional female role, it should not be because of necessity but rather because she freely chose to do so. A sentiment that—despite her conservatism in other areas—is strikingly modern.
A friend wrote that in Astell’s final moments of life, she asked to have her coffin placed next to her bed and to be alone, contemplating the afterlife.
She saw the minimal investment in her intellect as symptom- atic of a cultural force inhibiting the minds of women. In these early years she didn’t set forth a path to freedom for women. Instead, she absorbed this oppression and then spun it out into a description of the world as suffocating and harmful to women’s intellects; it was a place where women would live and die, vulnerable and without much control over their own thought.
It’s often a tougher path for a woman, because society can be a hostile place for her to cultivate her subjectivity. It was true in the seventeenth century, and it was true for me. Maybe, then, the com- mon experience of being a woman in philosophy is to be effaced: your feelings, your opinions, your presence, your life, your works, your impact are belittled, glanced at, or ignored. The psychological hurdles are one reason why today there are fewer women than men in graduate programs across many disciplines, and even fewer who rise to the top of their class, and why some women seem to come into their own at a slower rate than men. Only years later, when men have outpaced most women in their careers, will women begin to discover how they nearly snuffed themselves out. Just like I was doing. I took Masham’s recommendation to be: Do not retreat. A woman’s path to self-knowledge requires her to risk losing herself to find herself.
Art, philosophy, and literature tell us a different story. That the brief time we are here matters, that it is meaningful and contains beauty. We’ve learned to talk to ourselves in this expansive and dark vacuum to keep ourselves company, so that we can transcend our finite, perplexing condition—if not in fact, then in our imaginations. We’ve learned to free ourselves—if only for the duration of a poem, an equation, a book, a prayer—from our despair.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A father (Juan) and son (Gaspar) go on a road trip to spread their mother's ashes, who recently died in a car accident. His family is insistent they stop to see them. The trip is arduous due to Juan's heart condition. Furthermore, there are hints that all is not what it seems. Juan is actually a medium. He can summon the dark forces of hell on command. They are traveling to see his family, who have been guardians of this ritual for hundreds of years. A family greedy with power with the hopes that this ritual will make them immortal and wealthy. With Juan's ill health, they want to continue to use him to open the portal. Their hopes are that his five-year-old son will take on the legacy, but if he doesn't develop powers, they plan to transfer Juan's consciousness into his son. Juan has difficult choices to protect his son against these dark forces.
With horror at its center, Enriquez brilliantly makes allegories to power and corruption in Argentina. The Dirty War was a dark time in the nation's history, including mass executions, disappearances, and other atrocities. It is these very atrocities that tie into the order's power. Juan being near death and the country in a sort of near-death open portals to hell, with Enriquez suggesting Hell on Earth and Hell is only as thin as a door. There are also aspects of community shame in both instances. A father lamenting he cannot share things with his son, his share of night.
Favorite Passages:
The Darkness asked for bodies—as the excuse she gave. But that wasn't true. The Darkness didn't ask for anything, and Juan knew it. In the Order, Mercedes was the firmest believer in the exercise of cruelty and perversion as the path to secret illumination. Juan believed, moreover, that she considered amorality to be a mark of class. The further away she got from moral convention, she thought, the more apparent her inborn superiority became.
Ghosts are real. And the ones who come aren’t always the one you’ve called.
"...he took Gaspar's face in his hands, leaned down to look him in the eyes, and caressed his hair, the box on the ground between them, and he said, You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn't cursed, I don't konw if I can leave you something that isn't dirty, that isn't dark, our share of night." p 232
Being and orphan meant bearing ashes p 307
What I learned over the years is that the nation of affluence is monotonous. The properties, the land, the companies that others manage for us, the old, dark houses and the new, luminous ones, the leather skin of women who spend summers in the south of France or Spain or Italy, the silver, the Gobelines tapestries, the paintings, the art collections, the gardens, the people who work for us about whom we know nothing. Doesn't matter if Buenos Aires or London. It doesn't matter either that our families are founders of the Order. Being rich makes us like all rich people. Being founders of the Order differentiates us from the whole world. p245
That is also what it is to be rich: that contempt for beauty and the refusal to offer even the dignity of a name. 245
All fortunes are built on the suffering of others, and ours, though it has unique and astonishing characteristics, is no exception. p 245
Only the mediums can summon this Darkness that speaks and that will help us live forever, help us walk like the gods. Mortals are the past, Florence once said to me. It took a long time for the method of survial to be revealed, and it is, of course, repugnant. I should also add that, so far, it's not only repugnant but also a resounding failure. There is no arguing with faith, though. And it's impossible to disbelieve when the Darkness comes. So, we trust, and we go on. At least, many of us do. Others are sick with doubt.
With horror at its center, Enriquez brilliantly makes allegories to power and corruption in Argentina. The Dirty War was a dark time in the nation's history, including mass executions, disappearances, and other atrocities. It is these very atrocities that tie into the order's power. Juan being near death and the country in a sort of near-death open portals to hell, with Enriquez suggesting Hell on Earth and Hell is only as thin as a door. There are also aspects of community shame in both instances. A father lamenting he cannot share things with his son, his share of night.
Favorite Passages:
The Darkness asked for bodies—as the excuse she gave. But that wasn't true. The Darkness didn't ask for anything, and Juan knew it. In the Order, Mercedes was the firmest believer in the exercise of cruelty and perversion as the path to secret illumination. Juan believed, moreover, that she considered amorality to be a mark of class. The further away she got from moral convention, she thought, the more apparent her inborn superiority became.
Ghosts are real. And the ones who come aren’t always the one you’ve called.
"...he took Gaspar's face in his hands, leaned down to look him in the eyes, and caressed his hair, the box on the ground between them, and he said, You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn't cursed, I don't konw if I can leave you something that isn't dirty, that isn't dark, our share of night." p 232
Being and orphan meant bearing ashes p 307
What I learned over the years is that the nation of affluence is monotonous. The properties, the land, the companies that others manage for us, the old, dark houses and the new, luminous ones, the leather skin of women who spend summers in the south of France or Spain or Italy, the silver, the Gobelines tapestries, the paintings, the art collections, the gardens, the people who work for us about whom we know nothing. Doesn't matter if Buenos Aires or London. It doesn't matter either that our families are founders of the Order. Being rich makes us like all rich people. Being founders of the Order differentiates us from the whole world. p245
That is also what it is to be rich: that contempt for beauty and the refusal to offer even the dignity of a name. 245
All fortunes are built on the suffering of others, and ours, though it has unique and astonishing characteristics, is no exception. p 245
Only the mediums can summon this Darkness that speaks and that will help us live forever, help us walk like the gods. Mortals are the past, Florence once said to me. It took a long time for the method of survial to be revealed, and it is, of course, repugnant. I should also add that, so far, it's not only repugnant but also a resounding failure. There is no arguing with faith, though. And it's impossible to disbelieve when the Darkness comes. So, we trust, and we go on. At least, many of us do. Others are sick with doubt.
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
informative
slow-paced
3.0
It feels as if we are constantly running around. Our time is not our own. Jenny Odell's groundbreaking book, How to Do Nothing, demonstrated how to take back our time. In this new book, Saving Time, Odell continues this conversation. Are we a slave to the clock, or is there another way to measure time and make it our own?
I didn't like this one as much as How to Do Nothing. That book was an epiphany into the realization that we constantly think about monetizing ourselves. In Saving Time, she jumps off this idea, but it is less focused. It seems to imply moving oneself to an earth clock, a seasonal clock rather than a capitalistic one, but easier said than done. A good reminder again to take back one's time.
I didn't like this one as much as How to Do Nothing. That book was an epiphany into the realization that we constantly think about monetizing ourselves. In Saving Time, she jumps off this idea, but it is less focused. It seems to imply moving oneself to an earth clock, a seasonal clock rather than a capitalistic one, but easier said than done. A good reminder again to take back one's time.