Andrew

A goofy mess that occasionally hits the nail on the head. While arguably better than what Kropotkin called “Authoritarian Communism,” his own “Anarchist Communism” is at worst self defeating, at best silly. He claims that it will be a governmentless society, driven by cooperative action and decision, that will push society forward and provide the needs of every person; yet, he throws his hands up in the air for representational government. What exactly is the difference between the communal election of representatives versus the communal selection of guild leaders? Kropotkin has merely created bureaucracy with more steps and less internal communication.

However, the chapters on how scientific advancements should eradicate poverty are just as provocative today as they were when Kropotkin original wrote. The simple fact is, we've come much farther technologically than he ever could have imagined in terms of automation and technology, and yet rampant poverty is still the norm. He is correct that the greed of a few rich people is ultimately what holds back society. He's also, I believe, correct that most people would gladly work jobs if the jobs were meaningful, fairly compensated, and fairly scheduled. His utopian bent appeals to me, but lacks the thoughtfulness of more modern approaches, with concepts like UBI and mixed economies.

It's all the expropriation stuff that's concerning to me. I just don't have the communist blood in me; especially if representative government has to be thrown out along with ownership of production. I'm a socialist perhaps, but a democratic socialist, perhaps; but certainly one who believes the freedom of well-regulated markets (ie, capitalism with the tack and saddle firmly affixed to it), run by a representative government, with a well-educated citizenry, is the best way to go. But that government should also spend its money bettering the lives of its citizens, not its billionaires. If that government is not seeking to improve the well-being of its citizenry, then those folk should get up and throw a fit, which seems very democratic to me.

The problem then is not capitalism, but the rampant, unfettered crony-capitalism at work in the world today. Many European nations have achieved systems of functional democratic capitalism, with heavily state-funded systems of social welfare and service. And they all have representative governments. There is no need today for private health insurance, or the privatization of communal goods like the electric grid or water services, when living in a highly developed, highly wealthy nation. When living in the richest country in the history of the world, a country that routinely spends money on defense while cutting spending on social welfare programs, the only reason poverty continues to exist beyond the absolute margins of society is because the wealthy have decided exploitation is better for their bottom dollar. A well-fed, well-tended, well-educated citizenry is unlikely to be exploited because they not only know better but expect better.

Kropotkin and I agree that authoritarian government is one of the greatest plagues upon humanity, we just disagree with what to do about it (and perhaps disagree on what constitutes authoritarianism). He says less government achieved by force of the people; I say better government by the same measure. Certainly, in the day-to-day lives of the average American, the state does not come into play very often beyond the standardized laws that we interact with (seat belts, speed limits, taxes). The government need not be abolished but reformed, quickly and heavily, with a vicious hand that has the average person in favor rather than the elite. This requires the citizenry to vote in their own best interests however, which is sometimes difficult to convince them to do (because in American exceptionalism, according to the American dream, everyone is a kind of Schrodinger's millionaire, should only they work hard enough).

I admire Kropotkin for what he's aiming for, but find him kind of silly in how he goes about his arguments. Really, in The Conquest of Bread, there are no arguments at all, just rhapsodizing about a utopian society that should exist but doesn't, a society that will magically spring into existence without any kind of organizational force or forethought, if only the working-class would spring up and throw down the shackles of organize society. But the simple fact is anarchism will have its limits in terms of development because that society will be inefficient. Kropotkin makes good moral arguments but not reasonable ones, and beyond that never explains how his ideal society is to be achieved without any kind of centralized communication or regulatory system in place. Karl Marx, even for all the warts and problems with his brand of communism and theories thereof (some of which even he disavowed later in life), was not only a more compelling and convincing figure, but a better writer.

A really incredible book that stems from a dark portion of history. No-No Boy is maybe the angriest book I've ever read and has one of the strongest authorial voices; it's a shame Okada never had another book published (apparently he wrote more, but his widow burned them), because he had what writing needs, he was just a bit too early, and maybe a bit too angry for when this book was published. The scars of the second world war, the scars of the ways people of Japanese ancestry who lived in America were treated, were all still too fresh when this book came out. The other issue is the book seems to reel against American exceptionalism, and the national narrative that America saved democracy, saved the world. And if America saved the world, then anyone who refused to fight was a coward and a monster, a criminal: even if they had been asked to fight while prisoners in concentration camps, while American citizens denied the fundamental rights and privileges thereof, even if they had been born here, had never seen Japan, didn't speak the language, didn't know the customs, and only carried with them a tenuous connection to that place through parents who left that place to come to America.

In a modern world, where institutional racism is being dragged out into the open for public discussion, a book about a young man who was victimized by his own government because of his ancestry is an important book to read. But it's not just important, it's more than that; No-No Boy is a great book, and it's one that needs to be more widely read.

This is such a frustrating book. On the one hand, Boyd does an excellent job of laying out how violent events in the Old Testament often have other, underlying, implicit things going on which are not at first obvious. On the other hand, Boyd delves into some straight universalism and white-washing of the Old Testament portrayals of God. That said, his chapters where he interprets stores like the Red Sea Crossing and Elisha summoning bears to kill a bunch of kids are top-tier in their approach to the scripture from a culturally-contextual point of view. The simple fact of the matter is that the Old Testament was written in the context of other Ancient Near-Eastern myths and religions, and it often interacts with those myths and religions in interesting and non-obvious ways. Today we have so sanitized and westernized the Bible that we miss half of the cultural subtext and therefore grossly misrepresent what it says.

Any book, when separated from its cultural context, may be made to say whatever you want. Furthermore, any book, when properly place into its cultural context, may not always say what you expect or think it should.

Boyd attempts to put the Bible in its context, but then chooses his own feelings over the more obvious answers. And for a book which aims to interpret all Biblical violence in light of Christ on the cross, it is very odd and annoying to me that Boyd never deals with Jesus cleansing the temple or the prophecies of his return where he slaughters armies. It's a case-in-point example of cherry picking and hoping the audience doesn't think about those stories because they're inconvenient to deal with.

Was Jesus pacifistic? Yes. Would Christians today do well to be more pacifistic and like Jesus? Absolutely. Does Boyd make a good argument for God's preference for pacifism? I think so. But when the pacifistic character of the sacrificial Christ is our interpretive lens (and it's a good one, to be sure) for all scripture which seems to contradict this character, what do we when the sacrificial Christ himself acts in violence? Reading this book will not answer this question because Boyd never deals with it.

Also, Boyd is so wishy-washy on whether or not scripture is inspired as to cause eye-rolling. How can the scripture be both inspired and (in places) inaccurate? But Boyd is certain this is the case, since anytime violence is attributed to God it is the mistake of the author (based on their worldview). So was the author inspired or mistaken? Can they be both? How does that work? If the author was wrong about this (pretty fundamental) understanding of God's character, then what else might they be wrong about? Boyd never addresses this (and, to be fair, such is outside the scope of his book), but it leaves a gaping hole in his book that is otherwise well researched, sourced, and (at times) even well reasoned.

As an apologetic text, this book is somewhat successful (only somewhat). It also opens the gate to a better cultural understanding of the Bible, which is highly helpful, even if a significant portion of what Boyd writes is only half-baked or entirely unbaked altogether. But it is so fundamentally uneven and annoying that I can in no way recommend it as anything except a bibliography of better books and papers on the same subject matter.

This is a tough book to rate because of what it is: a work-in-progress from the late 1800s when there were only the first signs and findings of non-Judaic ancient near eastern cultures. Smith thought he had really knocked it out of the park, though: Genesis was a plagiarism, a monotheized rendition of other Mesopotamian myths. The scholarship on this hypothesis largely fell into suspicion by 1910 (Thorkild Jacobsen) and is now largely dismissed (David Tsumura). Instead, it's now clear that these ancient near eastern myths and stories (this includes the Bible) were all operating within a shared set of genres, themes, styles, and oral traditions that predated any of the cultures we know about and even significantly predated written language.

There's also this BS idea someone keeps bringing me that the Biblical character of Nimrod is based on the Babylonian Gilgamesh (or vise-versa). Thankfully, I now know that this idea originates (it seems) with this book and maybe I can finally put this idiotic idea to rest and get this person to leave me alone about Nimrod.

I skimmed this book, but I'll be coming back to it (unfortunately).

This is not a book review, it is the ramblings of a disgruntled, annoyed, and tired Christian who is a political liberal-moderate and happens to live in America. Also, I guess there are spoilers? Can you spoil a book like this? Either way, this book is good.

When did abortion become a top-tier issue for American Christianity and the Republican party? Roe v. Wade was ruled upon in 1973, but it was ‘78-‘79 before abortion became a voter issue. This was on the heels of conservative Christians coming out in force to oppose the IRS's battle with the evangelical Bob Jones University over integration: BJU was proud it had no black students, so the IRS took away the school's tax exempted status. This was the first time conservative Christians came out in numbers as a voting bloc. This group had largely relegated itself as an isolationist group, uninterested in the politics of the world. The movement to vote came because Christians in conservative circles saw the IRS's threat of tax exemption over not integrating as a violation of their isolationism.

The Christian right, which was hardly even a thing yet, was fine to leave alone and be left alone. Until they were told by the state that their organizations could not exclude blacks, anyway.

It is telling that early in the 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution acknowledging that abortion was necessary:

under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother

“Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”

We were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our ‘unjust pro-abortion government.'

is

checks notes

We were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our ‘unjust pro-abortion government.'

DNF'd
UGH. I was hopeful. I really wanted to read a book set in Ravenloft/Barovia, which is my favorite D&D setting, but when this started in Waterdeep/Forgotten Realms, I knew I was in trouble. I hate generic fantasy, and the Forgotten Realms is as generic as it comes: it lacks personality and “feel” because it takes the “kitchen sink” approach to content. On top of this, the book is just poorly written. Maybe I was expecting too much from 90s tie-in fiction, but I had my hopes. Unfortunately, at every turn this thing was cringe inducing or took the approach of tell-don't-show. But the WORST part (this is a very, very mild spoiler) is how the main character is a vampire who is more experienced as a vampire than Strahd himself.

Strahd is meant to be a dark force to be reckoned with, a Dracula-like, super-genius monster in human form, but in this book the author takes every opportunity to undermine Strahd's presence and character. It's utterly bizarre since “I am the land” is a major theme of Strahd's character. It's just a terrible book and I'll admit that I didn't finish it, but I read 1/3rd of it, which, I think, is giving more than its fair shot. Also, if you're at all familiar with the Ravenloft setting or Strahd, the twist will be visible from a thousand miles away. I'd avoid this one. One of the worst books I've ever picked up.

Here's the thing. This isn't the most interesting book as a whole, because not every essay is interesting (to me); however, there's a lot of neat stuff in here. It's just annoying that this is the second time I've been asked to read this book for a class, which isn't a big deal. I'd just like something a big meatier at this point.

A shortish book (really, more of a longish pamphlet) about Japanese film narrators. They were one of the most powerful unions in the country, and staved off the advent and wide adoption of “talkies” until nearly the 1940s (the silent era lasted longer in Japan than, I believe, anywhere else). Really fascinating stuff. The book is light on essays about the art and craft and heavy on biographical information about silent films, the benshi themselves, and even silent-film movie theaters. Probably could have done without the catalogue of films, and yet those sorts of lists are indispensable for a historian. A good little book, all in all.

For such a short book, this was exhausting to read. I'm definitely experiencing some mid-semester burnout (and college burnout in general), but I think this book is just a pain to get through. John Edwards likes long, plodding sentences of the sort that I was taught never to use in text because they're exhausting and force the reader, who is surely going to get tired of subordinate clauses being strung together rather haphazardly, as though the sentence were an infinite chain of nouns and clauses and ideas, and as though I had never once before heard of the period, to try and remember what the heck the author is talking about.

Hashimoto gives plenty of hot takes in here (are Kurosawa's latter films really that bad? I don't think so), but there's also an interesting perspective on the whole Kurosawa filmography that makes the book worth reading. It's also just an enjoyable read overall, and the translation is very clear and easy to read.

Bazin's obsession with realism is a bit annoying, but he was also writing in a particular time and place. Overall, the writing is fine and none too difficult. The only essays that left me cold (cold enough I skipped through them) were the two comparing the cinema and theater. As with most film theory/criticism books, this book is most enjoyable when you are reading about films or filmmakers that you're already familiar with.

It's odd to rate a book both 4/5 and mark it did-not-finish, and yet here we are. Wood is insightful, his writing is lucid, and when he's socially/culturally interpreting films he's riveting (especially when it's a film you know). The problem is simply that Wood and I exist on different planets. I'm pretty liberal, but I'm not a communist and Wood is explicitly one. I have the same general issue with Wood that I have with most Marxists by the way: they are phenomenal at diagnosing societal issues, but they are terrible at prescribing solutions. That being said, I wish Wood stuck more to interpreting films in light of culture and society: his writings on the horror film are easily the best I've ever read on that genre (how monsters are stand-ins for white people's fear of otherness, the way women are objects of violence at the hands of men, and, furthermore, how all of those distinctions break down). I mainly got tired of being told that I'm actually a repressed bisexual and that Freudian psychology is the secret to understanding human actions...ehh, sorry, Wood, but I'm not so sure on either of those two points.

This Robin Wood guy was a nut, but he understood the way movies are used to express ideology really, really well.

As I think back on the books I read this year, this one stands out most clearly in my mind. Alter's premise is simple: English translations of the Bible are bad, not because they are inaccurate, but because they owe too much to various theological traditions (Protestant? But what kind? Methodist? Baptist? But what kind of baptist?); furthermore, while the King James Bible might be the peak of English literature, and while it might be the best we have it's nevertheless an abysmal translation of the bible. So what's the solution? We have to change gears and start seeing the Bible for what it is: a literary text with styles, genres, motifs, and wordplay. We have to move beyond our theological ideas and accept the text; if you're religious and a more accurate (see: literary) translation of the Bible butchers your theology, then your theology wasn't in the Bible to begin with.

Now, Alter is writing primarily from the standpoint of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), but everything he says is largely true of parts of the New Testament as well (namely the Gospels-Acts, and Revelation). When a piece of the Bible is being translated, the translator would do well to think about how it sounds in the original language and to try and replicate that as best they can in English. This means (1) don't try to clarify an unclear text, (2) when the grammar doesn't make sense, let it not make sense, (3) rhyme and sound and rhythm are more important than meaning, (4) stop interpreting for the reader and just start translating.

That last point is really the kicker: our Bibles do the heavy lifting for the reader, trying to tell them what a text means by the way they translate it. It's bad. And it's also (to an extent) unavoidable. But it's something to be aware of and to push back against.

Finally, Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible (a separate volume from this one) is absolutely stunning and should be checked out. His translations of Genesis, Job, and Esther are incredible works.

I don't think this is a particularly great book, although there are nice insights into Lee's films (especially his themes); it's just terribly uninteresting and dull, even though the author clearly knows her stuff, both in terms of the cultural, political, and historical aspects/contexts that surround these very complicated film.

Man this book is dull. Every other chapter is memoir-ish, while the in-between chapters are inside-looks at Orthodox practice (the bit I was interested in). I also think the book is bizarrely dense for as thin as it is in terms of length. It's okay, and some of the insights are nice, but I wouldn't recommend it. All that being said, Eastern Orthodoxy is super interesting, and entirely foreign to anyone (like me) who has grown up in a more westernized, protestant Christianity.

I've never been an avid reader of memoir. As a genre, it simply holds little interest for me. But this book is superb, drawing a clear (but concise and brief) picture of what it is like to experience having your own country treat you like a criminal and imprison you when you are only a child and for no reason other than your heritage. The final chapters of this book are wonderful.

With every passing word, The Divine Comedy becomes more and more impenetrable. The first part, Inferno, is magnificent and even at times funny. The second, Purgatorio, is where things begin to fall apart; around halfway through this second section, the book turns into musing of philosophical ideas, long speeches by characters extolling their ideas (Dante's ideas) on universal truths, how the universe works, and by Hell, Purgatory, and Life are arranged as they are. The third part, Paradiso, is only more of these long speeches and dialogues, but lacks the element that made the first two parts so entertaining: Virgil, the Roman poet, who serves as Dante's guide through hell and purgatory, who is not allowed to usher him through heaven because he was a pagan (although the best sort of pagan). The third section replaces Virgil with Beatrice, a woman with whom Dante seems to be in love (more on this in a second).

Fundamentally, this book is an excuse for Dante to make fun of people he doesn't like (by putting them in the various, deeper sections of hell and purgatory) and to laud people he does like (by putting them, like Virgil, in the “best” part of hell, or on planets in the solar system more close to God's throne). Really, this is just Dante's way of poking fun at contemporary politics and near history to his day, and when the purpose seems to be satire and mockery the poem works exceptionally well. This all comes to a head when Beatrice is introduced, a woman from Dante's real life whom he was smitten with before she (apparently) died, who guides Dante through heaven, is more beautiful than anything else he has ever seen, and is revealed to be a woman so holy that she gets to stand next to the Virgin Mary.

That's right, this whole book is just a setup for Dante to simp for a dead lady. SPOILERS, right? I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed on this thin.

I didn't hate this, but I didn't love the last two-thirds of it, either. It gets three stars because the Inferno was a ton of fun. Also, this book is illuminating where the medieval worldview is concerned. The various theological themes, the way the zones of each of the three books are separated, the depictions and imagery, the alignment and ordination of the solar system...it's all fundamental stuff, if one want to try and make sense of medieval theology or culture. For that reason, I'm definitely glad that I listened to this. Also, the narrator was incredible.

I want to like this more because I want to be well-read and smart. But maybe being smart is overrated.

A short little story, but I only read a chapter or two a night (and skipped some nights), so it took a while to get through. This little vampiric story is older than Dracula, and more sexual/erotic in its content (in this way, it has more in common with likely earlier drafts of Stoker's novel, which may exist in various foreign versions of Dracula). Overall, I liked this a lot. It's moody and shocking for its day, and I'm certain any mother or father who read this would have been appalled by it, which is a good mark of horror fiction. The vampire is a predator, obviously, and usually the vampire is coded as a sexual predator (or lover, in certain instances, if not abuser), but the vampire is almost always male. Count Dracula is fearsome because he plays into some Victorian notion of women and young girls falling prey to lecherous but suave men; but here, the main character, a young girl, falls prey to a female vampire, thus turning the whole trope on its head in an unexpected way. As a horror novel making use of mythological motifs in a specific cultural context, Carmilla asks if anyone is safe, since anyone can be a predator; furthermore, is the book about a father's attempt to suppress his daughter's developing homosexuality?

So the book is certainly interesting in those ways. Where I think it fails is in a few plot points that do not make any sense at all. The book leaves some things open-ended, but not in a mysterious way, only a frustrating way. For instance, who was Carmilla's mother? Another pet peeve of mine is the introduction of heroic characters in the last act, who sweep in to solve the narrative problems. Very, very annoying.