loppear reviewed The Civil War in France by Karl Marx
historical analysis, immediate and later reflections
3 stars
If you find yourself engaged in a civil war, don't be so civil about it.
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Reading for fun, threads over the years of scifi, history, social movements and justice, farming, philosophy. I actively work to balance out the white male default in what I read, but have a long way to go.
He/they for the praxis.
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loppear reviewed Pale fire by Vladimir Nabokov
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's …
Wish for more layers of wrinkles
4 stars
Absurdly wonderful, manipulative without being a mystery, adventurous and so mundane.
the girls might yet save us all
4 stars
Perfect popcorn reading, 80s nostalgic and sci-fi time travel in quick sarcastic bites. (I read the next two too, which wraps it all up in 30 issues, and this review will do for them all.)
loppear reviewed Vectors and Smoothable Curves by William Bronk
here for the first half
4 stars
Reality is indefinitely separate from our actual experience, our senses of progress and our identities. The short "The New World" essays are stunning philosophical reflections, the bulk is summary commentary on Thoreau, Whitman, and Melville as they conceive of human society which was more dependent on my taste for those voices but still smart.
loppear reviewed Economy of the unlost by Anne Carson
to say more is gracious
4 stars
Poetic commentary (now I love Carson's analytical voice too) on value, money, gratuity, loss, and negation.
loppear reviewed Permutation City by Greg Egan
The story of a man with a vision - immortality : for those who can …
I love the 90s scifi cover, "people on a chip" is not really what this is at all, although it is too.
5 stars
Speaking my language at 14 or 40, hard implications for immortality and self-redefinition in computationally simulated brain scans and artificially evolved life.
loppear reviewed Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of …
tbd i will read the next one
4 stars
As it says on the wrapper, part one of an epic fantastical adventure based in pre-columbian mesoamerica-ish with high priests and dark magic and factional intrigue and primarily women and enby characters.
loppear reviewed The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell
made for me
5 stars
A year's meditation on the same nearby square of forest floor, as short essays by a biology professor relating and explicating the changing now to biological and evolutionary processes at all scales. Philosophical throughout, regularly upending the distinction between observer and subject, dissolving the objective stance for an interdependent understanding.
loppear reviewed The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
trying for so much
3 stars
Sweeping space opera, buddy adventure, close meditations on time and distance and chosen family, epic struggle for the galaxy, didn't all gel for me but still accomplishes more than mismatched genre.
loppear reviewed Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin
constraints on justice vs corruption
4 stars
Beautiful, angry, clever.
loppear reviewed Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
great collection
4 stars
These are all powerful, painful, and intricately constructed for short stories, all on themes of Haiti and immigration, relationships gone awry, lives distorted.
loppear reviewed Trade Wars Are Class Wars by Matthew C. Klein
wonky but clear enough
3 stars
Clearly titled, global financial crises and gluts are not primarily due to rational investor pursuit of productive capacity but excesses of central bank liquidity, capital mobility, and savings by elites (that is, depressing wages and consumption domestically), and trade imbalances are pulled by foreign demand for investment/assets inexorably. Convincing data and histories, though the writing often jumps to details before giving the point.
loppear reviewed Broken Fevers by Tenea D. Johnson
inventive, no standouts?
3 stars
Speculative, creative, gruesome, queer and color across a wide spectrum of precarious dystopias.
loppear reviewed Bewilderment by Richard Powers
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual …
crushing
4 stars
An intimate parental dive into the wonder of the natural world and urge to activism in the face of our wide-eyed trance walk to species destruction. This felt narrower and less rounded than The Overstory, which may be fitting to cataclysm, and the traumas and some obvious referents may irk (mostly they didn't interfere here). The middle half's beauty justified it all for me.
loppear reviewed Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North
mostly dark, but not dystopian?
4 stars
A solarpunk setting for grim reactionary political intrigue. Somewhere between "Psalm for the Wild-Built" and "Ministry for the Future" in several directions.