Reviews and Comments

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a bit bogged down in analyzing whether Marx was leaning away from productivism in his later years, based on reading his unpublished notebooks.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...

Interesting historical stuff, for example on the role of Cuba in the defeat of apartheid, but the real strength of the book lies in Akala's accounts of growing up in the UK.

Interesting stuff on eugenics, the anti-psychiatry movement and particularly its links with libertarian thinking, the history of neurodiversity, and the way disability and capitalism interact. The concluding chapter or two felt like an attempt to sketch out a way forward, but seemed a little too tentative for me.