Reviews and Comments

The first half of the book consists of pretty much a chapter per century, starting with the original sources and then walking through Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Malory, and so on. This part seemed consistently excellent, to me. The second half is much more patchy, consisting of chapters on different themes in Arthurian literature, such as the relationship between Christianity and magic or the attempt to map the Arthurian legend onto the real geography of Britain. Some chapters are really interesting and others... less so.

Such a fun read! Action-packed, almost breathlessly so, with much less of the exposition that I think slowed down the later novellas, still plenty of humour, but also deeper relationship-building. Murderbot (aka 'SecUnit', when it wants to be less, I don't know, murderey) remains easily the most relatable character in today's fiction.

TBH I'd be hard pushed to say I enjoyed this. It's the first time I've read anything in Middle English (though my understanding is that it's closer to Early Modern than, say, Chaucer) and it felt like a bit of a slog. Glad I've read it, but even more glad I've finished it!

Worth reading for the first chapter alone, which plots Starmer's move from a remarkably left-wing lawyer (I had no idea he was involved in the McLibel case, for example) to a marked authoritarian, starting with his involvement in Northern Ireland and ramping up during his time as DPP. How you feel about the second chapter probably depends a lot on how you feel about Lexit, though arguably there are patterns emerging here that remain through the rest of Starmer's career. The remainder of the book covers the period of Starmer's rise to leader of the party, and really continues the theme of moving towards greater authoritarianism and watering down any left-wing policies. Eagleton is obviously not a fan, and that rather mars much of the book, but the first chapter is pretty breathtaking as a character study.

Some fun stuff in here, but it felt too much like a random collection of just anything related to either Dracula or Transylvania.

Good on assessing/criticizing 'green growth', left-accelerationism, SDGs, and the like. Also good on discussing Japanese thinkers and whether Japan's lost decade(s) count as degrowth. Gets a bit bogged down in analyzing whether Marx was leaning away from productivism in his later years, based on reading his unpublished notebooks. Sketches out a pretty plausible model for what degrowth communism could look like, but then gets a bit wrapped up in Chenoweth's 3.5% as all we need to achieve our ends :(

Not sure why I was dissatisfied with this the first time around. There's perhaps a little more exposition than I'd like, but otherwise a fun story.

So I've apparently goofed on my library holds and got this before Network Effect and , while entering it into Bookwyrm, discovered that I read it only a year ago! Still hoping for a good experience...

I always thought "All Systems Red" was an absolute standout. Funny, and relatable, and thought-provoking in somewhat equal measure. The remaining three novellas felt somewhat flat after that, but this re-read has significantly changed my opinion. The first is still much funnier than the other three, but I now see their strength in developing the depths of Murderbot's character, becoming, if anything, even more relatable.

While the endpoint of the book is Brexit, it does such a good job of tracing the way the proletariat has been split, first through offering voting rights, but only to certain segments of the working class, and then during the twentieth century, by leaning on racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. Also good on the way Labour has generally acted as a diversion from anything more radical, and the way that the shift to the right under New Labour opened up space for nationalism. In Scotland this manifested as the SNP who occupied a position left of centre, but still to the right of Old Labour, but in England this led to the rise of first the BNP and then, when they imploded, UKIP.

Skillfully melds the fear of living in an oppressive dystopia with the melancholy of the loss of memories and, first, the objects they're tied to. Tends towards feeling pretty dark, leavened only by the obvious love between the main characters.

I haven't read a lot of noir, probably because it's always seemed just a bit too cynical. 'These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart' translates noir into a dystopian near future with an anarchist commune and a trans MC, still feels like it has a lot of the key components of noir, but has so much more heart as it wrestles with what it is to be human, particularly a flawed one trying to find one's way in the world.

Collection of somewhat dark short stories (and I'm not sure 'Toddler-Hunting' is even the oddest), but when you get past the shock value there's lots to reflect on concerning topics such as marriage, childhood, illness, and death, but particularly through the lens of a woman in Japan in the sixties and the choices available, or not.

Hmm. Thirty pages in and we've already had two or three quotes from Paul Kingsnorth. Not sure I like the way this is going...