Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- reading:start [2023-01-01 23:24] – [Currently reading] asdf
+++ reading:start [2023-06-25 05:57] (current) – adjusted heading titles asdf
@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 Not all of the works listed here are present because I agree with or endorse their contents. Many are, but several are here in a "know your enemy" capacity, so to speak. Where applicable, I have assigned such entries an estimated "spiciness" rating.
-<WRAP center round todo 60%>
+===== Present =====
-Migrate tables to the struct plugin.
-</WRAP>
-===== Currently reading =====
 ---- struct table ----
 schema: readinglist
@@ Line 15: / Line 10: @@
 headers: Title, Author, Summary, Subjects
 filter: status = reading
+sort: author
 ----
-===== To read =====
+===== Future =====
 ---- struct table ----
 schema: readinglist
 cols: %title%, author, summary, subjects
 filter: status = to read
+sort: author
 ----
-<datatables paging="false">
+===== Past =====
-^ Title ^ Author ^ Description ^
-| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou | |
-| [[The Origins of Totalitarianism]] | Hannah Arendt | I've been meaning to read some of Arendt's work. This is as good a place to start as any other (not least because I now have a copy). |
-| [[The Bell Jar]] | Sylvia Plath | |
-| [[Authority]] | Jeff VanderMeer | |
-| [[Acceptance]] | Jeff VanderMeer | |
-| [[Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents]] | Lindsey Gibson | |
-| [[Folklorn]] | Hur | I'll be honest, I picked this up because of the cover endorsement from Celeste Ng. |
-| [[The Histories]] | Herodotus | This seems like one of those essential reads, right? I've heard plenty //about// it, and I think it's time I actually read it. |
-| [[Danubia]] | Winder | A history of Habsburg rule of Europe. (I probably thought I was getting the author's other book, //Germania//. I'll start with this one and look into the other later.) |
-| [[The Coming of the Third Reich]] | Richard J. Evans | The first in his //Third Reich Trilogy// and likely to be the one I find most useful today. I'd like to take particular care to compare it against //The Death of Democracy//. |
-| [[The Third Reich in Power]] | Richard J. Evans | |
-| [[The Third Reich at War]] | Richard J. Evans | |
-| [[The Civil War as a Theological Crisis]] | Noll | An examination of Civil War-era theological schisms resulting from American slavery. I suspect/hope it will provide an interesting perspective on the "queer question" in today's church. |
-| [[New England and the Bavarian Illuminati]] | Vernon J. Stauffer | Not at all what it sounds like, I swear. It's a doctoral thesis on the history of the original group calling themselves the Illuminati, and according to Hofstadter, it's "the most vivid account of the hysteria over revolution and infidelity that followed the French Revolution." |
-| [[Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain]] | Gerard | A discussion of cryptocurrency from a decidedly critical angle. Takes the position that the story of cryptocurrency is more psychological than technological. |
-| [[Libra Shrugged]] | Gerard | The story of Facebook's short-lived Libra project. |
-| [[Topology]] | James Munkres | A thorough dive into general and algebraic topology. |
-| [[All About Love]] | bell hooks | |
-| [[Our Missing Hearts]] | Celeste Ng | Set to be released in October 2022. I enjoyed Ng's two previous novels, so I expect I will like this one. |
-| [[Bullshit Jobs]] | David Graeber | |
-| [[The Great Risk Shift]] | Hacker | |
-| [[Applied Abstract Algebra]] | Lidl & Pilz | |
-| [[How Democracies Die]] | Levitsky & Ziblatt | Examines the falls of several liberal democracies across the globe and promises insights into the future of ours. This was written in the midst of the Trump presidency, and while I do agree with the authors that he was no good, I am hoping for more of substance from their recommendations than "Trump bad, electoralism good". |
-| [[A Libertarian Walks into a Bear]] | Hongoltz-Hetling | Possibly a tiny bit spicy. I have doubts that the author fully grasps the ideological deficiencies of right libertarianism. We shall see. |
-| [[Neoreaction]] | Sandifer | |
-| [[Neuromancer]] | William Gibson | |
-| The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | Shirer | Yet another account of Nazi Germany. While popularly acclaimed, it has been panned by professional historians for its entire existence. |
-| Eichmann in Jerusalem | Hannah Arendt | |
-| On Revolution | Hannah Arendt | |
-| Ur-Fascism | Umberto Eco | |
-| Laziness Does Not Exist | Price | Examines the paradox of modern work: people today work far more than most have historically, yet they still feel insufficiently productive. |
-| The Ethical Slut | Easton & Liszt | Supposedly a foundational work on polyamory, which is a topic I wish to better understand. |
-| Anti-Semite and Jew | Sartre | |
-| Terror, Love, and Brainwashing | Alexandra Stein | |
-| The Reactionary Mind | Corey Robin | An examination of the history of conservatism. A major theme is that conservatism does not exist without a liberatory movement to oppose. The conception of politics as a venture in which the average citizen //could// participate only emerged from the ashes of absolute monarchy. A monarch's authority is tautologically justified: he is the king because he is the king. Only when the populace began to challenge this notion was something more substantial needed, and thus was born what we know today as conservatism. \\ \\ Similar dynamics are at play today. As marginalized voices receive greater attention, reactionary movements rise to uphold the status quo. This is not to say that movements for equality are to blame for conservatism; rather, reactionaries view gains for egalitarianism as threats to their own positions. |
-| The Age of Surveillance Capitalism | Zuboff | Just a tiny dash of spice: Zuboff believes that capitalism would be fine if not for the surveillance capitalists. I strongly disagree, but I am sure the book contains many other valuable insights. |
-| Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut | |
-| Understanding Analysis, 2ed | Stephen Abbott | I bought this largely because I didn't pay enough attention during my two (!) semesters of real analysis --- which used this as their text --- and want to prove to myself that I can do better. |
-| Only Revolutions | Mark Z. Danielewski | As with all of [[writing:mzd|Danielewski's work]], //Only Revolutions// will take some effort to get through. Initial passes give the flavor of //Finnegan's Wake//, only with a greater proportion of English.|
-| The Divine Comedy | Dante | I need to read this. |
-| Wonderbook | Jeff VanderMeer | |
-| Von Menschen und Mensch*innen | Fabian Payr | This one might be a tad spicy. Judging by the subtitle (//20 Gute Gründe, mit dem Gendern Aufzuhören//) and a few snippets I picked up while skimming it, the author wishes to do away with gender-neutral conventions like the gender star. I haven't read far enough into it to know whether he proposes an equitable alternative or simply wants to halt efforts of linguistic inclusion. Only one way to find out! |
-| Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said | Phillip K. Dick | |
-| Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | |
-| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | |
-| I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream | Harlan Ellison | I've heard it described as "a tone poem, where the tone is 'poison'." |
-| The Fourth Political Theory | Dugin | Very spicy. Supposedly Dugin's works have informed much of Russia's current policy. |
-| [[Alt-Ameria]] | David Neiwert | I may need to start this one again unless I can locate my original notes. |
-| American Conspiracy Theories | Parent & Uscinski | |
-| A Culture of Conspiracy | Barkun | |
-| Ugly War, Pretty Package | Jaramillo | |
-| Beyond Fear | Schneier | |
-| God's Own Party | Williams | |
-| The Pol Pot Regime | Kiernan | |
-| The Heyday of American Communism | Klehr | |
-| The Myths That Made America | Heike | |
-| Unit Operations | Ian Bogost | |
-| Quiverfull | Joyce | |
-| American Corrections | Clear, Cole, & Reisig | No idea how spicy this might be. |
-| [[The Elements of Computing Systems]] | Nisan & Schocken | |
-| The Elements of Statistical Learning | Friedman, Hastie, & Tibshirani | |
-| Special Relativity | Woodhouse | I may actually have studied enough mathematics to understand this. |
-| Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics | Serway & Jewett | |
-| Ordered Sets | Schröder | |
-| Corsets and Crinolines | Waugh | |
-| Not Without My Sister | Jones, Jones, & Buhring | |
-| Islands of Abandonment | Flyn | |
-| Are Prisons Obsolete | Davis | |
-| The Evangelicals | Fitzgerald | |
-| Final Destination: Disaster | Jehn | The fall of Eastern Airlines. |
-| Brief History of Neoliberalism | Harvey | |
-| The Giver | Lowry | |
-| The History of White People | Painter | |
-| Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria | | |
-| I'm Thinking of Ending Things | Reid | |
-| How to Read Donald Duck | | |
-| All the President's Men | Woodward & Bernstein | |
-| Against the Fascist Creep | Ross | |
-| And the Band Played On | Shilts | |
-| Accelerando | Charles Stross | |
-| The City & The City | China Miéville | |
-| As Nature Made Him | Colapinto | |
-| Black Skin, White Masks | Franz Fanon | |
-| Bowling Alone | Putnam | |
-| The Computer Boys Take Over | Ensmenger | Hopefully this covers the roles of women in early computing and their eventual displacement. |
-| Conservatives without Conscience | Dean | Should be somewhat spicy along the same lines as the end of //The Authoritarians//: "conservatism would be fine if not for a few weirdos!" |
-| Cringeworthy | Dahl | I forget why I originally wanted to read this. |
-| The Darkest Web | Ormsby | |
-| The Death of Expertise | Nichols | Should be an interesting companion to //Anti-Intellectualism in American Life//. |
-| Debt | Graeber | |
-| [[Ratfucked]] | Daley | |
-| Embassytown | China Miéville | |
-| The Demon-Haunted World | Carl Sagan | |
-| Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism | Case & Deaton | |
-| Democracy in Chains | MacLean | |
-| The Entrepreneurial State | Mazzucato | Promises to debunk the myth that the private sector is the only innovator. |
-| Manufacturing Consent | Herman & Chomsky | |
-| The Forest and the Trees | Johnson | |
-| Failed States | Chomsky | |
-| How to Survive a Plague | France | Covers the AIDS epidemic. |
-| An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States | Dunbar-Ortiz | |
-| Messengers of the Right | Hemmer | |
-| Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) | Tavris | |
-| Nixonland | Perlstein | |
-| Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers | Faderman | |
-| The Plutonium Files | Welsome | |
-| Prairie Fires | Fraser | |
-| Orphans of the Sky | Heinlein | |
-| Postcapitalism | Mason | |
-| Profit over People | Chomsky | |
-| A Queer History of the United States | Bronski | |
-| A Scanner Darkly | Phillip K. Dick | |
-| The Shock Doctrine | Naomi Klein | |
-| Sisters in Hate | Darby | A profile of women in the alt-right. |
-| Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory | Bob-Waksberg | |
-| Stonewall | Duberman | |
-| Suburban Nation | Duany | |
-| This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed | Cobb | |
-| Troll Nation | Marcotte | Hard to say how spicy this will be. |
-| The Utopia of Rules | Graeber | |
-| When Prophecy Fails | Festinger, Schacter, Riecken, & Aronson | |
-| The Will to Change | bell hooks | |
-| Witches of America | Mar | |
-| A Wizard of Earthsea | Ursula LeGuin | The first in the Earthsea series. |
-| Dune | Frank Herbert | I keep seeing references to this franchise, so I'll need to read some of it eventually. |
-| [[Stamped from the Beginning]] | Ibram X. Kendi | A history of the development of racism in America. |
-| Raising Racists | | |
-</datatables>
-===== Read =====
 ---- struct table ----
 schema: readinglist
 cols: %title%, author, summary, subjects
 filter: status = read
+sort: author
 ----
-<datatables paging="false">
-^ Title ^ Author ^ Description ^
-| [[The Handmaid's Tale]] | Margaret Atwood | |
-| [[House of Leaves]] | Mark Z. Danielewski | |
-| [[The Death of Democracy]] | Benjamin Carter Hett | |
-| [[The Authoritarians]] | Bob Altemeyer | |
-| [[The String Diaries]] | Stephen Lloyd Jones | |
-| [[2312]] | Kim Stanley Robinson | |
-| [[The Alice Network]] | Kate Quinn | |
-| [[Annihilation]] | Jeff VanderMeer | |
-| [[Everything I Never Told You]] | Celeste Ng | |
-| [[Little Fires Everywhere]] | Celeste Ng | |
-| [[The City in the Middle of the Night]] | Charlie Jane Anders | A young woman struggles to survive in a highly regimented city on an unforgiving planet. |
-</datatables>
-==== The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood) ====
-==== House of Leaves (Danielewski) ====
-My all-time favorite novel, //House of Leaves// almost never leaves my head. If you hang around me long enough, I'll eventually pull out my copy and talk at length about the text.
-I take away something different each time I reread it. On my first read, I wondered about the nature of the monster stalking Johnny; after the second, I questioned its existence as something separate from his own mind. With my latest read, I am confident that the "monster" is nothing more than Johnny's (and Navidson's) self-destructive habits.
-==== The Death of Democracy (Hett) ====
-An examination of the Weimar Republic's final years. Accounts of this period I've previously heard (i.e. high school history) didn't even mention Weimar. It's especially important, given today's political climate, to study how fascist movements have consumed nations in the past. A running theme of Hett's account are the ways establishment conservatives sought to use Hitler to strengthen their own positions and ended up handing him the reins of the nation. It's a painful lesson that when you cooperate with fascists, you are helping them win.
-Summary and notes coming soon.
-==== The Authoritarians (Altemeyer) ====
-A highly accessible and frankly enjoyable introduction to authoritarianism, written by someone who has studied the topic for decades. Perhaps the most important takeaway is that authoritarian followers are driven by one major desire: to appear "normal". This feature of their psychology is highly exploitable, both by reactionary leaders and progressive movements. If we want to make the world a more equitable place, we need to stop asking for their permission. Make the world better around them, and they will adapt even faster than we will.
-Altemeyer is, however, something of a centrist. He argues toward the end that the main problem with the American Right is not its conservative ideology but its high concentration of authoritarians. I obviously disagree with that point, but I find the rest of his observations highly illuminating. In particular, it has helped me to see that many apparent contradictions in conservative belief are not in fact contradictions. To put it most succinctly, "don't try to examine it through the lens of facts. It's all about loyalty."
-==== 2312 (Robinson) ====
-I would describe this novel as a beautiful painting. I have never longed for space the way I did while reading it. The asteroid terraria in particular captured my imagination --- imagine a landscape sloping upward away from you in both directions to meet overhead. It must be dizzying to look up and see the tops of trees. How about Terminator, a city on rails constantly skirting Mercury's gray line to stay ahead of the deadly sunlight? What if gender and sexuality were widely accepted as continuous spectra rather than discrete, disjoint categories?
-The primary protagonist, Swan Er Hong, is petulant, uncooperative, self-destructive, a tad feral --- surprisingly juvenile for someone over 100 years old. Yet somehow I still found it easy to sympathize with her, even as I was constantly exasperated by her antics. Equally frustrating, but likely prophetic, is the intense fragmentation of humanity's off-world colonies, the so-called Balkanization of the solar system. Nothing could be more human than senseless tribal feuds.
-The primary plot is an investigation into what can only be described as an attempted mass murder: the track carrying Terminator is destroyed by a coordinated attack of tiny projectiles flung from different parts of space. The story climaxes with a similarly coordinated cross-solar-system sting that happens almost entirely off-page, which is extremely lackluster given the stakes. The perpetrators (a collection of quantum computers in humanoid bodies) are given a brief trial and ultimately flung into deep space. Swan and Wahram are wed, and the book ends.
-This is why I call the book a beautiful //painting//. The concepts at play are fascinating but often seem like stage props in search of a script. Some oddities of formatting in my copy lead me to wonder whether it was missing a key chunk (such is the peril of bootleg ebooks...), so I may revisit this book in print at some future date.
-==== The String Diaries (Jones) ====
-A fun ride undercut by its infuriating ending. A mother, newly widowed and desperate to save her daughter, ends a centuries-long battle by sacrificing herself in a gasoline explosion. It is a painful but satisfying (dare I say badass) endpoint for her story. And then, out of nowhere, one of the side characters declares that she can be revived on a technicality --- and so she is, at the comparatively minimal cost of her eyesight and the life of a character the reader barely knows. It's a very fanficcy ass-pull of a plot point. I have no idea how this man knew her heritage, why he withheld that information //for the entire plot//, or how this magical revival improves the story.
-There is a sequel focusing on the daughter, and I have purposely ignored it due to the bad taste this book left. I have, however, considered rereading //The String Diaries// to see whether the ending's stupidity was properly foreshadowed by earlier stupidity.
-==== The Alice Network (Quinn) ====
-==== Annihilation (VanderMeer) ====
-I read this whole book in a single afternoon, and even though I finished it no more than an hour ago, I'm struggling for the words to describe it. Most of all, I wonder how it could sustain two sequels. It's not that I think the concept is exhausted by the end; far from it. But //Annihilation// is such a personal story and its content so dreamlike that I worry a follow-up, especially one focused on the Southern Reach itself, would cheapen it. That's not going to stop me from reading the other two---if this one could take me on such a ride, then I look forward to the ones to come.
 ---- struct data ----
 readinglist.author   :