mmcloe's reviews
239 reviews

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

emotional funny hopeful informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.0

Like a baby version of Roland Barthes' Mythologies but it was still rather charming! John Green was always someone I found to be a little grating but reading this opened up a lot more empathy for him as a person. He's not a genius, as he readily admits, but he's kind and thoughtful which is certainly more than enough. 

I would've liked more insight beyond the basic Wikipedia-level facts but the personal aspects to each essay were sweet. 

The Enchanted Isles or The Encantadas by Herman Melville, Margaret Drabble

adventurous challenging funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.75

Very very bizarre little novella about the pale of nature and the ways humans try to make our marks therein through violence, through control, through storytelling, through communion, through taxonomy. 
A misty and blurry view of what have may as well been an alien planet at the time. Simply excellent prose. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Slavery

Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale by Herman Melville

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is as good as it gets folks. A book seemingly about everything - a book that, in many ways, is America itself, that doomed and evil monster. 

What does it mean for us to encounter God? What does it mean for us to kill him? What does it mean for him to kill us? 

Would love to write/see written an analysis of the novel using Deleuze's theory of agencement. Fascinating how many things can resonate together at once and be lit aflame by a slight change or new introduction. 

The Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-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

Marxism is a process of experimentation, self-reflection, collective engagement, and perseverance. It's a miracle this book exists and that it's made its way to an English language audience. Rafeedie does a fascinating job teasing out the ugly, failed, and contradictory elements of a man amidst an attempted and failed revolution - documenting the psychological and interpersonal sacrifices one makes in pursuit of a leap of faith. Would love to see a woman's perspective on a similar ideological and political setting. 

Also an excellent historical primer on the first Intifada and surrounding geopolitical context. 

The Confidence Map: Charting a Path from Chaos to Clarity by Peter Atwater

1.5

This was not good. Neglects the social aspects of confidence, sets up a strange binary between "confidence" and "vulnerability," does not consider the role of class or identity much at all, has weird charts, and doesn't cite any sources other than other self-help books. I could see this being helpful for middle managers trying to make their employees feel better about layoffs or pay cuts, but that's about it. 

Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge by Tom Lowe

Really fascinating how even some of the more radical understandings of student engagement are still rooted in a performative metric of what is achieved and what isn't. Embrace the sociomaterial!!!! The granular!!! The messy!!! Student life is messy and weirdly communal with the human and nonhuman. 

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

adventurous emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-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

4.25

Lovely micro-picaresque through a handful of the major Institutions of mid-century France (the prison, the hospital, the home, the workplace, oh my!) and how these institutions can shape our selfhood through direct contact and indirect hauntings. 

The language was slick and its quite a shame Sarrazin died so young - I could see her becoming a big hit

The Ruse of Repair: Us Neoliberal Empire and the Turn from Critique by Patricia Stuelke

I'm not completely convinced of Stuelke's binary opposition of repair and critique and I think there's space for the mingling of both towards something generative and destructive at the same time (Cruising Utopia is a good example of this, shame she doesn't cite it much). That being said, this was a needed intervention into a lot of scholarship that has become a little too reckless in its optimism and a little too accepting of the precarious conditions that created the need for repair.

Also, this was a stellar example of interesting American Studies work - I loved the diversity of sources, topics, and targets of critique towards the same goal. 

A Small Apocalypse by Laura Chow Reeve

adventurous dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Really charming debut with many excellent stories written in breezy, slightly humid prose that captures a lot of the joys and sorrows and mundanities of community-building, especially amongst Southern queers 

I particularly enjoyed the circling entanglement around Rebecca's group of friends and her never resolved death. 

I was anticipating a bit more magical/speculative realism? The magic of the every day is good too, I suppose. 

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

There's a brand of French existentialism that positions the singular perceived "outsider" as being the central point of reflection on the human experience. We see it in Camus and Sartre all the time and we see it in this novel as well. Reducing an individual to the most absurd conditions possible can be really helpful for thinking through some of the major questions about what it means to be a human on this strange little rock. I don't know if Harpman tackles these issues super well - there's a major lack of any kind of conflict or struggle against anything other than boredom, which can be profound but mostly when coupled with other kinds of conflicts. The focus on the individual also eliminates much of the communal, the divine, and the ecological that makes existential thought so intriguing. 

I don't see this book doing much that Angela Carter or Ursula LeGuin can't do ten times over. That being said, this is technically the writings of a person only raised on astronautics books and intro existential literature, so maybe it is an accurate depiction.