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kingofspain93's reviews
325 reviews
Black Looks: Race and Representation by bell hooks
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
i was exposed to bell hooks a lot at my very sanctimonious white liberal uni and so I expected that my disinterest in her was largely contextual. not so. this was boring as fuck. i got through the intro and the first essay and skimmed the second before realizing that she wasn't going to make any points that other Black artists haven't made better or more critically. she's appealing to normies who take voting seriously and want a non-threatening quote in Courier font for their Instagram. i gather she's written a whole book about how we should all just love each other? fuck off
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
5.0
though I'm sure this is but a pale shade of the original Japanese, McKinney's translation of Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book is spectacular. Sei lives in and masterfully evokes a world of color, elegance, and longing, where you can plan a special trip to seek the song of a certain bird and you can talk for hours with the most powerful people in the land about poetic allusions.
when we imagine what life can be, I think we stop far short of what it already has been at so many points throughout history. as a white guy I'll only ever catch glimpses of Sei's reality, but it is a useful reminder that I can dream up my own. this is a miraculous work of art.
when we imagine what life can be, I think we stop far short of what it already has been at so many points throughout history. as a white guy I'll only ever catch glimpses of Sei's reality, but it is a useful reminder that I can dream up my own. this is a miraculous work of art.
Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
3.5
Every man is a magician in his heart, but he only becomes a magician when he starts thinking less about himself and more about others, when his work becomes more interesting to him than simply amusing himself according to the old meaning of that word.
I thought at first that this was going to be a comedic farce, and in a lot of ways it is, but it very quickly reveals itself to be big-hearted and starry-eyed. it is the warmest of the Strugatsky books I’ve read and I think the most optimistic. I am used to their bleak (Roadside Picnic) and bitter (Hard to Be a God) stuff so this really surprised me. they are such good comedy writers! and props to Bromfield’s translation which captures an extremely precise and hilarious dry wit that must have been difficult to recreate in english.
I love stories about academia because I think it comes close to showing what a life free of capitalist motivation looks like: art and curiosity for the sake of pleasure, thinking as a distinctly social activity. obviously that's not really the case but in a novel like this it can be. I love the effortless blending of science and magic. the second and third parts are especially engaging.
the one inescapable drawback is that, like many classic sci-fi authors (the great Piers Anthony excluded), the Strugatskys clearly don't think of women as human beings. it weakens every part of this.
I thought at first that this was going to be a comedic farce, and in a lot of ways it is, but it very quickly reveals itself to be big-hearted and starry-eyed. it is the warmest of the Strugatsky books I’ve read and I think the most optimistic. I am used to their bleak (Roadside Picnic) and bitter (Hard to Be a God) stuff so this really surprised me. they are such good comedy writers! and props to Bromfield’s translation which captures an extremely precise and hilarious dry wit that must have been difficult to recreate in english.
I love stories about academia because I think it comes close to showing what a life free of capitalist motivation looks like: art and curiosity for the sake of pleasure, thinking as a distinctly social activity. obviously that's not really the case but in a novel like this it can be. I love the effortless blending of science and magic. the second and third parts are especially engaging.
the one inescapable drawback is that, like many classic sci-fi authors (the great Piers Anthony excluded), the Strugatskys clearly don't think of women as human beings. it weakens every part of this.
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya
4.25
my experience of the little philosophy I’ve read is that, if key questions are overlooked and fundamental assumptions made, it is in service of interrogating an idea or set of ideas that I have never before seen scrutinized. Setiya’s handling of the seemingly passé mid-life crisis continues this trend.
first, I think he misses on a few points. this is hilarious because I am massively uneducated but whatever. for example, I think he kind of glosses over things like the desire to live forever or seeking happiness through pure ego by stating something broad like “it’s silly and bad to want these things and we all know it” before moving on to whatever point he wants to make. regarding living forever, he doesn’t address how science has dangled achievements like this in front of us but capitalism/populism have prevented us from making the strides we could have by now. I guess my point is that I perceive him as ignoring things or cutting corners, but again it’s in service of a particular set of theses and I don’t really have an issue with that. he’s working to organize thought on a subject and I respect it.
the second big miss is that he doesn’t really address how the mid-life crisis is a very very gendered (and I would guess racialized and class-based) phenomenon. he acknowledges that such an evaluation is beyond his scope but I think there are philosophical implications to the mid-life crisis as a white male experience that could have been interesting to explore.
overall though his attempts to draw “rules” for resolving/treating crisis from the existing philosophical literature are engaging and promising. they are good jumping off points for further thought. his most compelling argument is for the division between telic and atelic activities and the different kinds of meanings associated with them. that chapter is the strongest of the book and is beyond a doubt my biggest takeaway for dealing with existential dread. probably it is applicable across time, but it feels especially relevant now in the toxic era of projects, hustles, and self-improvement ushered in by social media. certainly I was raised to value telic activities and I would like to rewire.
first, I think he misses on a few points. this is hilarious because I am massively uneducated but whatever. for example, I think he kind of glosses over things like the desire to live forever or seeking happiness through pure ego by stating something broad like “it’s silly and bad to want these things and we all know it” before moving on to whatever point he wants to make. regarding living forever, he doesn’t address how science has dangled achievements like this in front of us but capitalism/populism have prevented us from making the strides we could have by now. I guess my point is that I perceive him as ignoring things or cutting corners, but again it’s in service of a particular set of theses and I don’t really have an issue with that. he’s working to organize thought on a subject and I respect it.
the second big miss is that he doesn’t really address how the mid-life crisis is a very very gendered (and I would guess racialized and class-based) phenomenon. he acknowledges that such an evaluation is beyond his scope but I think there are philosophical implications to the mid-life crisis as a white male experience that could have been interesting to explore.
overall though his attempts to draw “rules” for resolving/treating crisis from the existing philosophical literature are engaging and promising. they are good jumping off points for further thought. his most compelling argument is for the division between telic and atelic activities and the different kinds of meanings associated with them. that chapter is the strongest of the book and is beyond a doubt my biggest takeaway for dealing with existential dread. probably it is applicable across time, but it feels especially relevant now in the toxic era of projects, hustles, and self-improvement ushered in by social media. certainly I was raised to value telic activities and I would like to rewire.
Rough House: A Memoir by Tina Ontiveros
4.0
Missy and I had this cheap, beat-up chest in our room. It held our toys. Calling it a toy box is generous to both the box and its contents. But there aren’t always the right words—I find that true when I want to describe the tossed-off things that are gathered up by the poor.
rough house is a rewarding read because of Ontiveros’ developed class, gender, and racial consciousness. she can write intimately and lovingly about her father without losing any of the horrifying violence that was also a significant part of his personality, and I think it's because she knows that he both produced and was produced by his environment. he's never let off the hook but his circumstances, the realities of being poor in america, are never forgotten either. this is the work of a woman who is unpacking her life and while I would never put myself on display like this I am glad she did so I could read it.
rough house is a rewarding read because of Ontiveros’ developed class, gender, and racial consciousness. she can write intimately and lovingly about her father without losing any of the horrifying violence that was also a significant part of his personality, and I think it's because she knows that he both produced and was produced by his environment. he's never let off the hook but his circumstances, the realities of being poor in america, are never forgotten either. this is the work of a woman who is unpacking her life and while I would never put myself on display like this I am glad she did so I could read it.
Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
0.75
uh-oh i hate social satire. it's as though authors think it frees them from the obligation to write a plot, real characters, setting, tension, etc. of course I'm just some white american dumbass so this really isn't intended for me at all.
why couldn’t this be a story about kappa? what’s up with famous japanese authors from this period hating women and killing themselves?
why couldn’t this be a story about kappa? what’s up with famous japanese authors from this period hating women and killing themselves?
Sundial by Catriona Ward
3.75
very hard to put down. made me feel bad. I like stories about people who commit compulsive violence that humanize (or at least complicate) them (e.g., Thoroughbreds, Stoker). I’m starting to think that everyone has or is a fucked up sister.
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
4.25
Ypi covers a lot of ground. Free goes a long way towards demystifying the lived reality of millions of people who currently straddle a historical divide between socialism and post-socialism. this whole book should be a sobering reminder to the american reader, with their sense of unbroken lineage and narrative consistency, that the actual geopolitical world is constantly in flux. countries and economic systems rise, are reshaped through use, are broken, change. in the West and particularly in america we think ourselves untouched by the vicissitudes of rebellion and the messiness of shifting borders, studiously unaware of our current status as a colony, of the island nations we have militarily invaded and taken over in the last 150 years, and really of anything that is not immediately comprehensible and easily palatable. how many of us would admit to the existence of secret police in the United States, despite this being an objective fact? how about the shadow state that is the Central Intelligence Agency, which can and does literally wage wars of which the primary government is officially and legally unaware? Ypi’s memoir (it is a memoir, just one by a political scientist) should shake us up and show us that socialist countries are/were simply countries like the U.S., and that democracy as we know it is no better or worse than the single-party systems (or monarchies) that we so readily decry as unjust. of course any attempt to scrutinize america as a shifting country located within a historical context immediately reveals the need for total decolonization or (if you’re a coward) extensive reparations/repatriations. also, it would be an acknowledgment that any government/economy can just be overthrown, that the constitution can just be scrapped and rewritten from scratch, an idea so un-american that I literally needed to be taught it in my 20s.
I’m making this a lot about the U.S. when it really isn’t, but Ypi is clear-eyed about the failings of the Albanian government under single-party socialism AND under democracy and a logical application of her insights to any political situation is damning. I think one of her most interesting points is that the majority of people, even people who are extremely educated like her father, actually don’t know what they think the ideal form of government is. at our point in history it is temporarily easier to go all-in on the american conceptualization of democracy but that will change in 200-300 years and we’ll all have just hopped onto the next platform. there is no virtuous, irreproachable mode of government that stands out above all others.
another thing she points out is that countries where emigration is restricted tend to be condemned when they are the targets of Western criticism, but Western countries are savage about border control and the reality of people immigrating is actually completely objectionable to them. think of the literal heat rays they wanted to install on the U.S.-Mexico border.
oh final thought apparently kids growing up in Albania in the 1980s under socialism were waaaaay more educated than american kids at any point in history. the amount of education about world politics, science, and literature vastly outweighs what we attempt in america. by itself outlawing religion gives everyone an intellectual advantage lol
The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy by Augustus Y. Napier
3.75
an engaging read, largely because it was written at a time when therapy appears to have been more theoretically driven and less… narcy? like in 2024 the main priorities of therapy are to 1. appeal to TikTok users and 2. make the human experience intelligible to bureaucracies via pathologization. your thoughts, feelings, and history are a billable code, and that’s it. meanwhile Carl Whitaker is out here in the 1970s wrestling a tween boy and it fixes the boy’s relationship with his dad. it sounds unhinged, and it is. it’s also a much more interesting foray into the vastness of relational possibility than couch-talk. don’t get me wrong, there are no good ol’ days of therapy and I don’t think Napier and Whitaker are, like, good people. using family systems theory to analyze a family’s relationships is interesting. reading this book is like watching Days of Our Lives to think through why my parents hate me (complimentary).
Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
3.0
Briggs has written a fun pulpy supernatural urban fantasy series where… “damn” is considered a swear and the main character is like actually religious in the boring narc way that real humans are. kind of saps the fun out of it once you realize that Briggs is juggling violent werewolf murder and deep religious repression. dissonance isn’t sexy. it’s a shame because with just a little less sexlessness I would read this whole series.
oh and also all the male characters’ names are indistinguishable. for example, here are the ones I remember:
oh and also all the male characters’ names are indistinguishable. for example, here are the ones I remember:
- Kyle
- Ben
- Carter
- Samuel
- Adam
- Charles
- Darryl
- Warren
- Tad
- Mac
- Stefan
- Gerry
probably these are just Briggs’ church friends and that’s why they all sound like child molesters.