labyrinth_witch's reviews
549 reviews

Teaching Matters: A Guide for Graduate Students by Aeron Haynie, Stephanie Spong

hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

This is a short and accessible primer for graduate students who are beginning to shape their teacher identities and shape their practices. Great resources and templates throughout the book and structured so it’s easy to go back and reference them. 

Would also recommend for professionals who have to give workshops or learning & development trainings. As many of the skills and tools cross over with many professional contexts. 

Highland Dragon Warrior by Isabel Cooper

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The Seven Circles by Chelsey Luger

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

As with most anything, motivation is key. While it may look like it took me nearly two years to read this book, I unfortunately started it when I was very fatigued of self-help books. I picked it back up this December because I was thinking about goals. I had done an analysis of four years of goals settings exercises done over the course of 8 years, and suddenly I felt bereft. Was this it? These goals that’s kept showing up, was this what was really important to me? I have been reading  much indigenous literature over the past several years, but listening to Collins and Luger’s podcast I was struck by their statement that Americans know how to practice ill-being but not well-being. So I pulled out this book to try to orient myself to a new perspective on “goals” for the coming year. In truth, I finished it in four days- and that only because we had a lot going on so I couldn’t continuously read it. 

First, this book, while part of the wellness genre, is much less self-help than one might expect. It does provide a graphic at the end of each chapter showing how each circle intersects with all the other circles along with suggestions for how to nourish this aspect in your own community with a “Learn-Engage-Optimize” section. However, what was most refreshing to me was the model and concept of wellness. For those of us steeped in capitalism, it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around. But I find value in attempting to do so, despite the sensation of my world tilting on its axis. For my goal setting purposes,  I was half way through chapter 4 when I realized with a start that there is no “work/career” circle in the model. If one reads white-oriented self-help enough (of which I have read hundreds), career is always front and center. In this model it is not. It took me a day or so to work through this revelation and come to some insights as to the impact of it not being centered. I’m curious- if you’ve read it, what shifted for you?

If Women Rose Rooted: The Power of the Celtic Woman by Sharon Blackie

inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Providing a counter mythos to the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell, Blackie provides a map of the Heroine’s Journey. Rich with myth and memoir, poignant sayings and sensations, the book will make you shiver with awareness and recognition. For those of us whose orienting myth is the Selkie myth, this entire book is oriented around it. 

*despite the dates, it did not take me 2.5 years to read it. It was a book I would pick up, read a bit, and then contemplate over long stretches of time. Finally, needing the full map because of the particular stage of life I found myself in, I listened to the audio book and annotated my favorite passages in the physical book. I highly recommend this method, as the audio book is narrated by the author and the lyrical way she relays the myths will awaken the ancient feminine in you. May you find wholeness on your journey.* 

Apples Dipped in Gold by Scarlett St. Clair

adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The second installment of Scarlett St Clair’s fairytale retelling was phenomenal. I love how she blends a lot of different, old, and original fairytales together to create her story. This one in particular felt like an old fairytale- it had all the gruesome elements, the impossible tasks, the inability to speak truth until released, suspicious fairy balls- all the right notes! And the fox! It was a proper fairytale fox! Everything about it was delightful. Tender and loving romance.

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This is an excellent collection of essays and speeches on the wages for housework movement, the struggles and stagnation in feminism, and how the feminist agenda has to include an international dimension that includes fighting against structural adjustment programs, austerity programs, and war. Feminist should also advocate for free higher university and a collectivization of reproduction. Arguing against the “equality” campaign, Federici instead asks that we fight for a post-capitalist world and an end for exploitative labor practices and extractive processes to liberate us all. 

A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences by Alice Kessler-Harris

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

For anyone who is interested in social history- or, like myself, are just perpetually frustrated by the glass ceiling when it comes to your pay- this book has your answers. And reading this type of history will piss you off, so be ready to rage. Ultimately, Kessler-Harris is arguing that the wage is socially constructed and not “simply” a product of supply and demand. She used the notion of the “woman’s wage” to demonstrate her argument. Chapter 1 argues for how male wages were conceived as a product of the value of the job, while women’s wage rates were predicated on a needs-based assessment of basic sustenance. This time period produced the myth of the “independent women” or “lone woman” who only had her self to consider. She further shows how the arguments were never applied to “single men” and are there for social mythology. Next, chapter 2 covers the early movement for the minimum wage, including the debate between free labor and freedom of contract. Chapter 3 discusses the conceptualization of who is a “I provider.” By the say, did you know that it was married women working that causes the depression. Lol, read the sarcasm and then the chapter to find out why working married women were the scapegoat of the era. Chapter 4 traces how the slogan of equal pay for equal work went from a threat to family to a means of upholding the family over the course of 4 decades. Chapter 5 introduces the history of comparable work and its potential to delegitimize gender lines in labor. And finally, Chapter 6 discusses where the movement is stalled today, including introducing the social wage, the welfare rights movement, and the perpetual attempts to reconcile motherhood and work. 

Viscount in Love by Eloisa James

emotional funny reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This first installment captures the difference between what it means to love someone and what it means to respect someone, asking the question “how can I love them if I do not respect them?” Featuring a heroine unable to read (not dyslexia, I think, but an inability to recognize letters) and a hero who had the softness mocked out of him. The entire cast provides a different perspective on strangeness and finding those who love you as you are in your strangeness. No fabricated drama, but two characters misunderstanding each other and exorcising the ghosts of other people’s voices in their heads and echoing from their mouths in anger. A relatable story, one which all of us can recognize ourselves within. A beautiful author’s note admonishes readers to consider their own words carefully when spouting epitaphs of “fool” or “idiot” or “ill-bred.” 

Paradigms and Fairy Tales: An Introduction to the Science of Meanings by Julienne Ford

informative slow-paced

4.0

I love the style and voice of this volume. I’m glad I read it after the first two years of my doctorate. It would have been difficult to understand if I had read it before, but at this moment, it’s consolidating the last two years of instruction into a more holistic understanding of theoretical construction and the design of studies. I enjoy books like this that provide the birds-eye view of a theoretical debate/conversation that spans the last 150 years. And I love that she presents it as a mad hatter tea party. Recommend for graduate students and theorists who have finished course work. 

Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill

inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

I love the way Nikita Gill retells the full generational cache of Greek myths, starting from chaos and ending in present day. She takes the goddesses and the heroines, emboldening them and giving them voice. The myths are told from their perspective, and in that frame, their actions make sense. Gill also plays with narrative- how wrong are the original stories? Do we know what is true? Have the gods disappeared or will they return? 

Of course the myths are full of brutality and violence, but Gill is careful to balance these themes with healing and soft love. To fully contextualize the characters. Even some of the male characters. 
It makes you want to honor the goddesses of these tales- to make offerings to the Oceanides, to Persephone, to Hestia. It makes you want to envision every librarian as the modern embodiment of Athena. 
It makes you long for the mystery cults of the goddesses once again.