Scan barcode
taicantfly's reviews
18 reviews
Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz
Did not finish book. Stopped at 80%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 80%.
i read this in custody lol
oh my god it was so bad i forgot. i last read alex rider when i was 13.
the writer is clearly disgusing his personal masturbatory hero fantasy in his little 14 year old boy protagonist. he endangers the lives of drug dealers, recklessly, he sneaks past armed guards, he saves helpless and weak women from trains running over them. i tjink this author needs mao zedong style reeducation for his views on women lol. he said a 15 year old character was "well-shaped. More like the woman she was to become than the girl she was" ew!!! bad. not a good book. sorry 13 y/o me, theres better YA
also: a dealer comes home to his lab all happy becuase he sold £100 worth of drugs to schoolkids. how are u chemist, supplier and dealer and making 100 a day. you fucking suck at dealing
oh my god it was so bad i forgot. i last read alex rider when i was 13.
the writer is clearly disgusing his personal masturbatory hero fantasy in his little 14 year old boy protagonist. he endangers the lives of drug dealers, recklessly, he sneaks past armed guards, he saves helpless and weak women from trains running over them. i tjink this author needs mao zedong style reeducation for his views on women lol. he said a 15 year old character was "well-shaped. More like the woman she was to become than the girl she was" ew!!! bad. not a good book. sorry 13 y/o me, theres better YA
also: a dealer comes home to his lab all happy becuase he sold £100 worth of drugs to schoolkids. how are u chemist, supplier and dealer and making 100 a day. you fucking suck at dealing
A Review of BF Skinner's Verbal Behavior by Noam Chomsky
funny
informative
fast-paced
4.0
this is meet the grahams by kendrick lamar for the psycholinguistics community. how did skinner have a career after this came out.
A Companion to the Crying of Lot 49 by J. Kerry Grant
challenging
informative
medium-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
3.25
Solid companion text, going over some symbolism I'd missed, expanding themes I hadn't with well compiled quotations, explaining entropy as a metaphor solidly, providing some literary context for the book. Very solid, but missing embellishment on some of the clues I found elsewhere (e.g. the book as a reading on JFK, the Torquato Tasso theory, the discussion of language's inability to reliably express reality), instead maybe overrelying on a reading that discusses allusions and mythology.
On a side note, I really liked the formatting?
On a side note, I really liked the formatting?
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I found this book confusing. At no point did I know roughly how much of it I "got", or if I even could "get" some singular thematic goal or authorial project. In my view, that means I felt as Oedipa did, confused by a web either constructed by Pynchon to mess with me (as constructed by Pierce to mess with her) or unrelated non-sequiturs to project a world onto, or some real and meaningful plot (as with the real and meaningful Trystero).
I adored the metaphor of entropy; the thermodynamic entropy, an increase resulting in the heat death of the universe, applying onto the United States' slip into cultural stasis, the suburban sprawl of the San Narcisos of the world blocking any possibility for meaningful self-actualisation. The informational entropy, an increase resulting in a tangled, complex and knowledge-rich network. To find this self-actualisation, slow the cultural decline, reverse the thermodynamic entropy, Oedipa acts as her own Maxwell's Demon, embarking on an informationally entropic quest (untangling Pierce's estate, which resembles the web of Trystero, which resembles her own mind) which may or may not be possible (Pynchon doesn't exactly posit whether or not Maxwell's Demon is a solvable paradox...) Our world is more and more rich in information and I think there's a lot more room to explore these themes, or to use this metaphor, which I'm interested in finding more allusions to.
The neo-noir "quest" was subverted really well here - at any point I thought I could predict the pacing, it threw me off, which I think was a weirdly nice feeling, and I still, on some shallower level, enjoyed her unravelling of the mystery the way you enjoy watching videos of slime on Instagram Reels, pleasantly surprised when it's interrupted because it makes you re-evaluate the medium.
I think I'd benefit from some further reading around the works relevant to this - Ulysses, Oedipus Rex, at one point I heard Heart of Darkness has some nice parallels between Kurtz and Pierce? One nice corollary of reading this was that it really encouraged me to read more, so I'm now working through a companion text to get some more contextual notes (and then an essay collection on it). And then Gravity's Rainbow soon ?! Hoping to get more out of Pynchon.
I adored the metaphor of entropy; the thermodynamic entropy, an increase resulting in the heat death of the universe, applying onto the United States' slip into cultural stasis, the suburban sprawl of the San Narcisos of the world blocking any possibility for meaningful self-actualisation. The informational entropy, an increase resulting in a tangled, complex and knowledge-rich network. To find this self-actualisation, slow the cultural decline, reverse the thermodynamic entropy, Oedipa acts as her own Maxwell's Demon, embarking on an informationally entropic quest (untangling Pierce's estate, which resembles the web of Trystero, which resembles her own mind) which may or may not be possible (Pynchon doesn't exactly posit whether or not Maxwell's Demon is a solvable paradox...) Our world is more and more rich in information and I think there's a lot more room to explore these themes, or to use this metaphor, which I'm interested in finding more allusions to.
The neo-noir "quest" was subverted really well here - at any point I thought I could predict the pacing, it threw me off, which I think was a weirdly nice feeling, and I still, on some shallower level, enjoyed her unravelling of the mystery the way you enjoy watching videos of slime on Instagram Reels, pleasantly surprised when it's interrupted because it makes you re-evaluate the medium.
I think I'd benefit from some further reading around the works relevant to this - Ulysses, Oedipus Rex, at one point I heard Heart of Darkness has some nice parallels between Kurtz and Pierce? One nice corollary of reading this was that it really encouraged me to read more, so I'm now working through a companion text to get some more contextual notes (and then an essay collection on it). And then Gravity's Rainbow soon ?! Hoping to get more out of Pynchon.
The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free by Hergé
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
This was fun to read in one sitting - a Tintin that resembles the original in name and appearance only is reimagined as a young working class lad organising for better workplace conditions in a strike that becomes a full blown worker's revolution. Look, I'm a communist, I have no quarrel with the events depicted or the hopeful tone of the story, but the pacing made the escalation from wildcat strike phenomenon to worker's revolution really sudden, the characters served zero purpose in their own right, the dialogue is just too unsubtle in its communication - and I understand that the point of this is that it's lighthearted, distributable, recognisable agitprop, and that not everything has to be the richest work of art on God's green earth, but it just felt a little lacking. I would still recommend this gladly, partly because it's so fast to get through!
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The Class Nature of Israeli Society by Moshe Machover, Akiva Orr, Haim Hanegbi
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
חיבור מעניין. אפשר לראות שזה תוצר של תקופה שונה מההבדלים בישראל המודרנית (נגיד, האוכלוסיה החשובה של עובדים מחו"ל, הפיצוץ ההיי-טק הכלכלי ששם בקונטקסט חדש את הכלכלה הישראלית, חוקי המימון למפלגות פוליטיות שהשתנו באופן רציני מאז '69) אבל רוב הניתוח הוא חזק, מיודע היטב ומראה הבנה עמוקה לא רק בנושא של כלכלת ישראל אבל גם בנושא המטריאליזם ההיסטורי.
סך הכל אהבתי! אני לא יכול לתת לזה יותר כוכבים כי זה היה (בגלל האורך) יותר כמו הקדמה בסיסית מאשר רחבה , אבל אני בטח אקרא ספר רציני בנושא מתי שהוא כי החיבור הזה ממש עניין אותי!
(אפשר לקרוא את זה חינם בmarxists.org, ברוך השם שיש קומוניסטים לפזר אינפורמציה)
סך הכל אהבתי! אני לא יכול לתת לזה יותר כוכבים כי זה היה (בגלל האורך) יותר כמו הקדמה בסיסית מאשר רחבה , אבל אני בטח אקרא ספר רציני בנושא מתי שהוא כי החיבור הזה ממש עניין אותי!
(אפשר לקרוא את זה חינם בmarxists.org, ברוך השם שיש קומוניסטים לפזר אינפורמציה)
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
funny
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
I read this as a precursor to Infinite Jest(having been told that it'd familiarise me with both the footnote structure¹ and the rambling faux-profundity of DFW's writing) and devoured it in my Lisbon hotel room in two evenings.
This book is very whimsical, an over-intellectualising Amélie written with the odd matter-of-factness Bret Easton Ellis used for Patrick Bateman's character. My personal diary includes a section for "musings" daily which really resemble the ramblings of this book; at multiple points throughout I made a self-improving little goal of more regular, more creative, more light-hearted introspection². I found myself, regardless of the substance of the paragraph, personally connecting with the style and casual philosophical exploration (thoughts and observations are like analytic fractals: you can zoom in arbitrarily far and still find conceptual depth, so why should this intellectually masturbatory zooming be saved for topics deemed "profound" like ontology and ethics?) and I think if I were ever to write a novel it'd likely be so structurally influenced by this I'd have to find his home number, call him six times and receive no answer and shy away, fearing the answer of his widow.
The only thing I actively disliked about this was the political passivity - Baker's inability to direct his wonderful wit at anything structural or systemic - but I can't expect every author to tint their works with the ink of a Marxist polemic. Also, the cultural reference points may have missed their marks at times, but that's more attributable to my having been born a few decades too late.
Overall I would really recommend this to anyone who is looking for an inconsequential but also unexpectedly consequential little summer read and I hope it resonates with you as much as it did with me!
¹ "...William Edward Hartpole Lecky's History of European Morals (which I had been attracted to, browsing in the library one Saturday, by the ambitious title and the luxuriant incidentalism of the footnotes)", followed by Baker's explanation of his aesthetic leanings towards the footnote, perfectly mirror my decision to read Infinite Jest and my personal inclinations towards brackets, something that is painfully obvious upon repeated interaction with my writing style and the source of many scoldings from my Philosophy professor.
²Meta-analysis of my thought patterns and flaccid declarations of commitment to their improvement have a periodicity, for me, of about 1500.
This book is very whimsical, an over-intellectualising Amélie written with the odd matter-of-factness Bret Easton Ellis used for Patrick Bateman's character. My personal diary includes a section for "musings" daily which really resemble the ramblings of this book; at multiple points throughout I made a self-improving little goal of more regular, more creative, more light-hearted introspection². I found myself, regardless of the substance of the paragraph, personally connecting with the style and casual philosophical exploration (thoughts and observations are like analytic fractals: you can zoom in arbitrarily far and still find conceptual depth, so why should this intellectually masturbatory zooming be saved for topics deemed "profound" like ontology and ethics?) and I think if I were ever to write a novel it'd likely be so structurally influenced by this I'd have to find his home number, call him six times and receive no answer and shy away, fearing the answer of his widow.
The only thing I actively disliked about this was the political passivity - Baker's inability to direct his wonderful wit at anything structural or systemic - but I can't expect every author to tint their works with the ink of a Marxist polemic. Also, the cultural reference points may have missed their marks at times, but that's more attributable to my having been born a few decades too late.
Overall I would really recommend this to anyone who is looking for an inconsequential but also unexpectedly consequential little summer read and I hope it resonates with you as much as it did with me!
¹ "...William Edward Hartpole Lecky's History of European Morals (which I had been attracted to, browsing in the library one Saturday, by the ambitious title and the luxuriant incidentalism of the footnotes)", followed by Baker's explanation of his aesthetic leanings towards the footnote, perfectly mirror my decision to read Infinite Jest and my personal inclinations towards brackets, something that is painfully obvious upon repeated interaction with my writing style and the source of many scoldings from my Philosophy professor.
²Meta-analysis of my thought patterns and flaccid declarations of commitment to their improvement have a periodicity, for me, of about 1500.
How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I have mixed feelings about this book. It's largely well researched, well reasoned and well written, explaining the author's proclivity towards militancy in a way that feels both emotionally justified and intellectually pragmatic. But Gelderloos' (self-admitted, as per the last chapter) vitriol towards pacifists sometimes makes this read more like a frustrated polemic than a genuine exploration of how nonviolence protects the state.
Some chapters ("nonviolence is statist", "nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior", "nonviolence is delusional") do a fairly good job at providing evidence for the fairly assertive claim in the chapter name. Others feel like a bit of a stretch: e.g. "nonviolence is patriarchal" mainly being isolated examples of pacifist movements underrepresenting women or more gender essentialist feminist movements claiming that being violent is an inherently male act. This doesn't really extend to the conclusion given in the chapter name as easily (and I'd be willing to bet a good majority of pacifists would gladly discredit both the misogynistic exclusionism and the gender essentialism spouted by other pacifist movements).
The biggest strength of this book is, I feel, in how well-read its author is. Constant references to the history of organising and direct action, almost excessive quotation of Ward Churchill and Frantz Fanon, citations of random blog posts and newspaper articles, all littering the footnotes (of which there is, on average, more than 1 per short A5 page). As a springboard for further reading, this text is excellent, and I found myself highlighting so many things to add to my reading list to the point where if I were looking for a book to read I could just flip through my copy and look at the green highlighter.
I'm willing to cut Gelderloos some slack for his shortcomings given his self-awareness. Maybe there needs to be a militant text harshly critical of pacifism to counteract the many pacifist texts harshly critical of militancy. Maybe there need to be personal anecdotes from an author heavily experienced with direct action and organising (with an even wider web of contacts with even more personal anecdotes) that can document cultures of racism and misogyny in the pacifist organising of the intellectual white middle class. And he acknowledges his personal biases and the subjective nature of some of his supporting evidence - while lampshading all the book's flaws doesn't immediately dispel them, it's reassuring that Gelderloos doesn't believe himself to be making some objective and analytic bible but rather just giving some fairly authoritative perspectives that I hadn't had the chance to really explore before.
Overall this book was very interesting! I found myself agreeing with it by the end much more than I had expected to at the start, and I'm sure many others who are hesitant to abandon nonviolence will at least be convinced into a less dogmatic pacifism (if not to, as he puts it, reject the dichotomy of violence and nonviolence). I'm looking forward to reading more of his work - especially the more recent stuff, seeing as he wrote this when he was 24!
Some chapters ("nonviolence is statist", "nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior", "nonviolence is delusional") do a fairly good job at providing evidence for the fairly assertive claim in the chapter name. Others feel like a bit of a stretch: e.g. "nonviolence is patriarchal" mainly being isolated examples of pacifist movements underrepresenting women or more gender essentialist feminist movements claiming that being violent is an inherently male act. This doesn't really extend to the conclusion given in the chapter name as easily (and I'd be willing to bet a good majority of pacifists would gladly discredit both the misogynistic exclusionism and the gender essentialism spouted by other pacifist movements).
The biggest strength of this book is, I feel, in how well-read its author is. Constant references to the history of organising and direct action, almost excessive quotation of Ward Churchill and Frantz Fanon, citations of random blog posts and newspaper articles, all littering the footnotes (of which there is, on average, more than 1 per short A5 page). As a springboard for further reading, this text is excellent, and I found myself highlighting so many things to add to my reading list to the point where if I were looking for a book to read I could just flip through my copy and look at the green highlighter.
I'm willing to cut Gelderloos some slack for his shortcomings given his self-awareness. Maybe there needs to be a militant text harshly critical of pacifism to counteract the many pacifist texts harshly critical of militancy. Maybe there need to be personal anecdotes from an author heavily experienced with direct action and organising (with an even wider web of contacts with even more personal anecdotes) that can document cultures of racism and misogyny in the pacifist organising of the intellectual white middle class. And he acknowledges his personal biases and the subjective nature of some of his supporting evidence - while lampshading all the book's flaws doesn't immediately dispel them, it's reassuring that Gelderloos doesn't believe himself to be making some objective and analytic bible but rather just giving some fairly authoritative perspectives that I hadn't had the chance to really explore before.
Overall this book was very interesting! I found myself agreeing with it by the end much more than I had expected to at the start, and I'm sure many others who are hesitant to abandon nonviolence will at least be convinced into a less dogmatic pacifism (if not to, as he puts it, reject the dichotomy of violence and nonviolence). I'm looking forward to reading more of his work - especially the more recent stuff, seeing as he wrote this when he was 24!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
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? It's complicated
3.5
This book is undoubtedly very witty in a kind of time capsule way. Very Monty Python-esque (I think Adams mentioned Flying Circus as a big influence in his humour?) and absurd, it doesn't place its environment nor plot within the confines of the suspension of non-belief, which means Adams can explore a huge variety of his ideas in a way that feels like a sketch show but is still linear and cohesive.
I think it is a bit grating after a time, not really exploring a lot of its philosophical ideas in detail - however not all sci-fi has to be high concept and this nicely fulfills the desire for an easy-to-read, fast paced (~2.5h) and silly book. It's also maybe a bit Reddit-y, but not really through any fault of its own; this book pretty much set the precedent for the kind of humour Reddit users would badly duplicate.
My favourite bit was this passage:
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
My least favourite bit was probably the ending with the cops coming after Zaphod. I forgot about that plot point and, when reminded by the book, realised I didn't care.
I think it is a bit grating after a time, not really exploring a lot of its philosophical ideas in detail - however not all sci-fi has to be high concept and this nicely fulfills the desire for an easy-to-read, fast paced (~2.5h) and silly book. It's also maybe a bit Reddit-y, but not really through any fault of its own; this book pretty much set the precedent for the kind of humour Reddit users would badly duplicate.
My favourite bit was this passage:
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
My least favourite bit was probably the ending with the cops coming after Zaphod. I forgot about that plot point and, when reminded by the book, realised I didn't care.