carlin

took me a long time to read but glad I read it! definitely more rewarding the longer I read, and it totally helped answer some questions — why does capitalism necessitate an underclass? does money = capitalism? is claiming your traditional property as your own the same as private property? — and gave me more ideas to play with and think about — primitive accumulation, non-capitalist economies, markets as being naturally corruptive, improvement as the original sin, Ireland as a testbed of colonialisation, Scotland's part in that etc.

Wood's argument is elegant and powerful, and I found it's explictness — frequently re-elaborating — to be exactly what I needed to follow her argument.

The chief reason for the length of time it took me, was that I ended up using a lot of my energy getting through Part 1 which wasn't rewarding. I would recommend skipping it for almost everyone, as she's essentially gping through a bunch of arguments for the origin of capitalism and pointing out their holes. As I'm not familiar with these arguments (which she does largely explain), it didn't provide much use for me to go through them.

She provides quite a lot of historical context, but I did find myself wishing that I was reading a history book rather than an economic book. I find myself more drawn to history recently so maybe I'll try dabble.

so good!!!

I underestimated how good this would be but Alice Oseman really delivered through to the end. I've now read all of them outside during summer which was a great choice of me.

I will most probably re-read the books but I can't see myself rewatching the show/movie. Oseman has great strengths in making comics, but I think her strongest suit is her pacing. Her books flow so smoothly, which feels effortless but must be tricky

So happy for lgbtq youth to have this growing up <3<3

loved this! really smart and engaging, I appreciated the punchy writing style which felt appropriate for the story that it's telling. I can totally see blasting through this in a sitting or two

I was a little underwhelmed when I thought I knew where it was going for the middle half, but no, great subversion. Also my lingering critiques about the lack of specificity of the time war fell away by the end: it really is not that relevant what exactly the fight is about.

Edit: had no idea about how this was written! I would be interested in doing a letters-only re-read

Classic example of a book with one message that it repeats for 200 pages. The ideas are good, some great, but the book fails to interrogate it or apply it to more than its very narrow context.

Before getting into my critiques, I do want to commend the ideas that he surfaced, namely:

• banking pedagogy as an oppressive force, which sows passivity
• problem-posing inquiry between teacher-students and student-teachers
• the duality of the oppressed

I believe that he is more right than he is wrong, but the ideas weren't sufficiently developed for me

The book is commonly studied in education classes, however Freire is very clear that this is a manual for how to perform a cultural revolution, which is quite different to teaching a class. It is still a useful idea regardless, but it is interesting how people defang it from it's Marxist and revolutionary text.

For one, and I'm not being pithy or insincere, but why is this a book? Like genuinely, if the banking model of education is fundamentally oppressive, why would you present this as a book. Perhaps this should be a textbook in which you are able to come to your own conclusions. However in reality, perhaps it is because it's powerful (and scalable) for someone to do a bunch of thinking and convey it in the form of a lesson or a book, like he has done. Obviously this is fine, but it would be appreciated if Freire could similarly elaborate on what types of information are appropriate for different mediums.

For another, the worst part of the book is his conceptualisation of animals as essentially automatons. He genuinely contends that animals don't take risks as they are unthinking. This chauvanistic thinking must've been dated even at the time of publication, and not only is it eye-rolling to read him talk so blatently out of his ass, but it makes me doubt the soundness of his conception of human processes if he's unable to see the rest of the natural world as Subjects.

There are some truths here that I think are worth ingesting for the wanna-be revolutionary, but equally the idea of having to dialogue with everyone feels ... masculine ? Like if you have a house to clean and kids to raise do you have the time, energy, or care, to invest in this vocation? To be clear, sure they also should be liberated and everyone should be able to realise themselves, but in different parts of your life you want to be a sheep and in others a goat. Even in a utopia, not everyone would want to be a political philosopher.

In terms of the presentation of the book, I found the endnotes to be almost always be disruptive as they lacked relevance and so I ended up just reading them in a big block at the end of the chapter. I was also frustrated that there were blockquotes that were left untranslated.

In all, I think this endures due to it's memorable title and for naming something which is worth interrogating. It's a shame that this book is not definitive in any sense.

appreciated this a lot, it's refreshing to read challenging fiction

Complicity was my fav, and it worked really well for me. Debbies, however, much less so, as I left it not really having a good sense of who Debbie is.

I think this is a neat introduction to New Narrative/cut up fiction

Every summer solstice for the past few years, I've attempted to read a book in its entirety during the day (as it is the longest day). The first year I read Battle Royale, and this year I was contemplating reading Much Ado About Nothing, but with the upcoming Nolan film, I decided that this was a more apt (and readable) classic option

Unfortunately to say, I found this to be underwhelming even accounting for this being a very old text with foreign modes of storytelling.

In terms of stuff I appreciated, Wilson's translation is really great: very readable while still preserving the beauty and the strangeness of the text. I also did really like how much emphasis there is on hunger being a burden and something we all have to fend off. And as such there is a lot of emphasis on meal times with washing hands, mixing wine, preparing food etc. Finally I loved how emotional all the guys are all the time, just openly sobbing.

However my main grudges with the text are that it is so repetitive (and yes, I know that it's an oral tradition, however how many times does it need to be explained that Penelope weaves and unravels the cloth every day for three years) and there is a lot which seems pointless/overly long winded. And while the former maybe is a benefit to it being spoken, I'm really surprised that all of it was preserved from generation to generation. I would skip whole books if I was the one orating it. To elaborate about the pointless/long winded sections, cunning Odysseus gives multiple extended false backstories to different people (pointless) and we spend 4 books with Telemachus asking people where his dad is (they don't know) and another 4 where Odysseus and Telemachus talk about killing the suitors but actually don't (long winded). And to be fair, I'm sure they all had more resonance to the people of the time when they were hearing the story, but it made the experience of reading the book drag.

In terms of the arc of the narrative, I had assumed that Odysseus would face all these labours on his way home, however his way home is actually very straight-forward. All the famous stories are things that he tells as a guest of honour to his hosts. Which means that there's not really much stakes, as all the stories are in the past tense, however maybe this is a false standard to hold it to given that we are dealing with the Gods and prophecies. Anyway, the mode of the story is not always conducive to the narrative, and I am pretty eager to see how Christopher Nolan navigates his adaptation.

As someone who loves both Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, and hasn't read Dykes to Watch Out For, this was underwhelming and not my thing.

For one, Bechdel is satirising her own life, and I don't care for it (I'm not a fan of docudramas and I don't see why autofiction would have me feeling otherwise) and for another this is much less intricate than FH/AYMM due to the different genre — maybe the closest comparison i can give is between comic books vs graphic novels. For example, in this the pacing would occasionally jank as a scene ran out of steam after three pages or we have an unannounced time skip. I think what made this more uncomfortable for me, is this is her first (afaik) book fully coloured and shaded and so it feels like it should have a higher value due to the greater resource investment.

I also side-eye her outlook as a lottt of these jokes are about non-binarity, leftism and vegans...

The best part of the book is when it focuses on the other couple navigating their new realtionship (with their child). This was fun, but again parts of it make me be like what is the joke here? (there is a lot of focus on his sexual fantasy which I feel like is meant to be self-evidently funny). Idk it just feels like if this came out 15 years ago there would be an attack helicopter joke.

I think there is a generational problem with my enjoyment of this, as I relate most strongly with the characters in the generation below instead of Bechdal's generation. A flip side version written by JR about their mom etc would probably work better for me (in the way it wouldn't if Bechdel was to read it).

Overall, not for me. I continue to hunger to read books by communists

I loved Pillion, and I became a lot more interested in reading the book when I heard that Colin is fat in it

I enjoyed the voice of Colin (our narrator) and of course the story itself. I feel like my enjoyment is a bit diminished by the subtitle "A Story of Low Self-esteem" as it is redundant and colours the way I feel the author intends the relationship (or Why of this story)

I think the movie is an overall major improvement on the book story-wise, as the relationships between the characters are richer (the parents in particular are a highlight of the movie for me, and here they just kinda are). I do of course prefer Colin being fat, but it doesn't do all that much here besides providing yet another thing for him to be self conscious about.

This is of course a Fitzcarraldo Edition and I must say they do a very enjoyable presentation for reading with nice type-setting and the over generous margins at the bottom and opposite spine. Want to read more, but will unfortunately have to read the blurbs for them to find ones I'm interested in ahaha