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marginaliant's reviews
1060 reviews
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
4.0
Excellent, well-researched and well-written. Also highly recommended for use as a little litmus test: if people claim it's a healthy representation about bdsm and polyamory, you know to stay away.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot by Rachel Pollack
5.0
This isn’t a “pick up and leaf through mid-reading” kind of book, I’ll say that flat out. Instead Pollack prefers to study the occult symbolism and psychic significance of each card (to the point where, memorably, she went on at length about horse symbolism in The Chariot. Esteemed review-reader will note that there are no horses in the chariot card, only implied horses. This is the level we are operating on.) She draws from a ton of different resources, from Waite’s texts to Hermetic philosophy to Kabbalah to Jungian psychology and Hindu myth. Nothing is off the table here. While this wouldn’t be my first choice to introduce someone to reading tarot, since I’ve been trying to increase my understanding of the cards it’s been an incredibly useful tool.
Who's Afraid of Contemporary Art? by Jessica Cerasi, Kyung An
2.0
I’m struggling, my dudes.
If you know anything about contemporary art, this book has nothing new to offer in terms of insight or perspective. If you know the names Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, and Marina Abromavic you’ve basically got it down.
If you don’t know anything about contemporary art, you’re going to be frustrated by the haphazard layout of the book (it takes a cutesy ABCs approach which means that the subject matter jumps all over the place, you don’t get any historical basics to go off, no coherent argument or point is made, and it’s just confusing.)
Only good chapter is W (for WTF?, naturally.) The takeaway that could be printed on a business card is that the world of contemporary art is huge, that looking at one contemporary artwork and not getting it doesn’t make you or the artwork stupid, and not to chalk up to stupidity what can easily be chalked up to differences in taste.
Now you don’t have to buy the book, congratulations.
If you know anything about contemporary art, this book has nothing new to offer in terms of insight or perspective. If you know the names Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, and Marina Abromavic you’ve basically got it down.
If you don’t know anything about contemporary art, you’re going to be frustrated by the haphazard layout of the book (it takes a cutesy ABCs approach which means that the subject matter jumps all over the place, you don’t get any historical basics to go off, no coherent argument or point is made, and it’s just confusing.)
Only good chapter is W (for WTF?, naturally.) The takeaway that could be printed on a business card is that the world of contemporary art is huge, that looking at one contemporary artwork and not getting it doesn’t make you or the artwork stupid, and not to chalk up to stupidity what can easily be chalked up to differences in taste.
Now you don’t have to buy the book, congratulations.
Khan: Empire of Silver by Conn Iggulden
3.0
Anticlimactic ending but the bulk of the book is excellent, and I should really check if the book I pick up at random is the fourth book in a series before I get 100 pages in. Whoops!
Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
2.0
Pamuk celebrates terrible ennui and boredom by publishing a well-written but boring book that fills me with ennui. Odd how that works. Why do people who give Literary Prizes like to be miserable?