Spent November partly on two episodes of honeymoon (Brno – Vienna – Mariánské Lázně), in Orlické hory, Hamburg and Norway, parts for work, parts for fun. That means plenty of time to read while travelling and longer reflections on books, especially the Caliban and the Witch. The thumbnail for the month comes from Norway.
Giuffre’s memoirs were a brutal read and there was no clear “best book ever” in November. At the same time, no „oh I would rather avoid this“ – at least I was forced to do some research and disagree in an informed way, nice.
Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Virginia Roberts Giuffre
So much pain, confusion, hurt, disappointment…feels like this book is to be discussed in person after quite some study and going through other sources, not reviewed. Also made much more acute by recent “revelations” in Epstein files.
Abundance
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
I am not sure who is the target group of this.
If you are already a fan of pro-growth, solution based mindset, you get an actually interesting look into particulars like „how science works in US“ or „how were covid vaccines made and distributed“. It is interesting, it is good, but there is hardly anything above that you will learn. And it will not change your opinion or give any clear steps „do this“ (which it probably should not, but it is also posing as a manifesto of sorts, so..).
If you are degrowth/ donut enjoyer, than this is straight up not for you – and the authors do not actually engage with these narratives in a meaningful way. Degrowth gets some mentions that I find hard to gauge properly (really not a fan myself, might be biased), but the more nuanced takes like Raworth´s are not confronted at all.
What is bigger problem is that the book does not actually confront most of the „reasonable scarcity“ challenges. Overproduction, micro-plastics, scarce resources and ecological limits are a real problem that _is_ imho most realistically adressed by pro-growth policies, but we do not get any of that. The book focuses solely on the succesful, moonshot projects of past decades and on the depressing, frustrating and boring slowness and mire of most things on both sides of the pond now, especially in comparison with China. And it IS depressing, clearly, but it´s far from being the only problem we are facing.
However, the book succeds in one thing: it is a hopeful, rallying cry „we can do things, please let´s do things“. Much more than a thoroughly argued case, this is a plea for help and suggestion that at least some of our problems can really be solved quite easily if we stop being tied down by our self imposed stagnation. We need voices like that, sure.
I would just maybe like them to be a bit more thorough and…intelectually honest?
1000 Storms
In October, I started a review of The Sofa and the Corpse with “I just like Sandoval”. This still applies: I adore Sandoval´s art style, I really do. It´s consistent and yet still changing, haunting and funny at the same time. I usually tolerate or even like the stories: but this one is sadly an exception.
Sandoval´s stories usually feel like a fever dream and are mostly centered around teen/ preteen people. That is all good and well, however, here it was a major miss for me. The story goes nowhere, the plotlines are meandering and honestly the choice to include quite a lot of intimate scenes and full frontal nudity of a girl supposedly around 13 just feels wrong. It does not serve any point in the story, it is just…there somehow.
I will remember some of the panels for a long time, but overall, I do not think this sparks joy.
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England’s Kings and Queens
David Mitchell
Well, this is…genuinely funny, with some surprisingly reasonable insights and solid research and of course nearly no academic rigor, but a lot of „common sense“ (in the best possible meaning of those words) in looking at the past, even distinguishing between past and history.
Great bedtime reading.
There Is No Antimemetics Division
qntm
Did not work at all.
The concept of memes and anti-memes is interesting enough, the SCP background usually works for me and I do not mind disjointed narratives that need to be puzzled together.
But in the end, it was all just a big gimmick, quirk of „wow there are predators eating memories and concepts“. I love a good story about power of stories/ idea/ ideologies. Sadly, once again, the whole metaphor and idea here seems to be „WOW WHAT IF THE IDEAS AND ANTI-IDEAS WERE LITERALLY THINGS EATING PEOPLE/ existing entities“. I knew what I was getting into and actively wanted to like it and accept the premises to get into some core of the idea, but it is so on the nose, so straightforward and empty of any meaning that it just did not work for me.
The form is complex, the content is just not there.
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
Silvia Federici
While somebody might be turned off by the basic viewpoint „capitalism is inherently exploitative“, I do not consider that necessarily a problem for the sake of the argument.
The problem is the combination of ultra hot takes with very little substance, like attacking Foucault and Marx – I am really quite sure that Marx is not saying that capitalism brings _the emancipation_, but that it brings the conditions for possibility of further emancipation. At the same time, the whole construction is built on the idea that witch hunts are somehow critical component of the growing capitalism and a world wide phenomenon which completely brutalised whole gender.
Witch hunts are horrible and a legacy of some of the worst tendencies in humanity and yes, seems obvious they are part of the patriarchal structure. We _need_ to see them as the low, low point of humanity and something that has no defense. However, at the same time there is an issue of quantity and reach. And the fact is that while the author tries to pass of the witch trials as something that completely changed social makeup and gender relationships in whole societies across the entire world, the entire world here is once again „Western Europe and it´s colonies“ (with wildly differing degrees of seriousness even inside that region!) and the numbers are, well: https://www.eurasiareview.com/0209201…. There is clearly a period where these systematic crimes against humanity were rampant in places, but even with the worst offender (Switzerland) we have some 980 trials per 100 000 people, with approximately half of them being just trials. After reading the book, it would be easy to imagine decimations of entire villages: but the truth is very much different here.
And we are not even getting into the case of „how this necessary step to capitalism worked out in the Habsburg monarchy, or, you know, Eastern Europe“.
It is a bold theory, but it is a bold theory with massive holes – which gets a bit problematic when it keenly attacks other authors for mostly imagined mistakes with arguments made by omission. It also brings out some important call outs against other historians (like the attempts to pose witch trials as something nearly positive), but then adds in quite a few hot takes like „these women had the secret powers of healing“, which get mixed with much more interesting and grounded takes like male take over of the whole „production of children“. Which is obviously a very problematic element and an interesting find: but it is hard to believe after some winks at „magic might be working“ and „people hated magic because it is against capitalism“.
If you are interested in feminist economics/ history, I can only recommend Claudia Goldin or Victoria Bateman.
I considered writing a wider review, but it is not needed. Yes, this is a good summary of how regimes operate, what they target and how. Yes, we are witnessing it today directly, with Trump retconning even the Jan 6th history and completely reframing that. It sucks.
Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity
Jaroslav Švelch
Great intro to monstrosity studies in video games. Wanted to get to know much more on the process of turning human-oid characters into obstacles/ monsters and got only a passing reference, but that is very much my problem.
Some discourses felt open to discussion – we are certainly living in an age marked by anxiety of plague, „monster within ourself“ and somehow even climate change (though that is not universally shared anymore), but at the same time we are seeing widespread de-humanitisation and radicalisation of politics, including widespread attempts to portray opponents as degenerate or sub-human. It is thus quite hard to agree with some of the conclusions: or it makes them less descriptive and more as wishful thinking.
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
Captivating study into morals and principles of corporate management in the 80s, with lots still obviously very much on point. Still reads mostly like a series of anecdotes without a clear methodological framing or hypothesis.
The 20.th century update was mostly a let down honestly, with an eye for wide USA-level information and ideas, but mostly just meandering around. Still, worthy reading, especially to reflect.