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Alexander

Alexander@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

@A_W_M@troet.cafe

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2024 Reading Goal

40% complete! Alexander has read 16 of 40 books.

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GennaRose Nethercott: Thistlefoot (EBook, 2022, Anchor) 4 stars

In the tradition of modern fairytales like American Gods and Spinning Silver comes a sweeping …

Enjoyable

4 stars

Enjoyed the setting and what Nethercott was getting at with this story. Interesting storytelling and world building with themes of personal, familial, generational, and cultural trauma. It can get dark but didn’t feel too heavy. The folklore tie-ins felt especially well done and I wish there was more exploration of the world, but it wasn’t that kind of story.

And look, I hated Isaac. Almost quit reading because of the character. Then eventually I saw parts of my past trauma responses reflected in his behavior and it clicked why I hated him so much. I still feel his backstory required me to give him too much of a pass, but hurt people hurt people and we all react and hurt differently.

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Brian Massumi: What animals teach us about politics (2014, Duke University Press Books) 4 stars

Thinking through animal play

4 stars

Brian Massumi presents a theory on how play works as language and as a substitute for violent action in animal and human actions. It's a fun treatise, well presented in a longer first section before three other supplements that look at praxis of the ideas presented. The first of these is a pure joy to read.

This book is very dense philosophy, and at times it feels preposterously filled with jargon even if Massumi felt that language was necessary for accuracy. Yet it is also full of wonderful moments and deep thoughts that challenge human exceptionalism and create ways to consider other-than-human engagement from a nonhuman frame. It draws heavily from Deleuze and Guattari and often the writing feels like their more playful style, pushing the boundaries of what language can do. This is best illustrated in the supplementary chapter 'To Write Like a Rat Flicks Its Tail', which thinks …

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Bertha Eckstein-Diener: Mütter und amazonen (German language, 1932, A. Langen) 3 stars

review Mütter und Amazonen

3 stars

Eckstein-Diener, behind the penname Sir Galahad, gives you a survey of the knowledge about history and forms of matriarchic societies of her time (that is a about 1930 ). interesting points : the language or style of Oswald Spengler, omnipresent in the whole book. it's an interesting thought for a study to follow the roots and branches of this kind of speaking and hot headed discussing throughout humanities the chapter about the spartans is kind of funny in a lewd way. it's all '300' in a fanfiction, but pretending to be science.

but be warned, it has the careless racism of it's time and doesn't shy cruelty in the name of traditions, which you have just to understand properly.

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