Reviews and Comments

Enjoyable survey of queer Gothic. Now I have a bunch more books to read!

The first book of queer theory I've read, so it feels a bit odd reviewing it as I don't have anything to compare it with. I got a lot out of it, though, and, apart from one chapter that went full-on post-structuralist (which rather went over my head) seemed pretty accessible.

Not really a book to read through, but instead a source book for the study of vampires. Includes, among other things, Polidori's "The Vampyre" and newspaper/magazine articles about supposed real-life vampirism. Probably the last half of the book is entirely plays and poems about vampires, at which point I checked out.

It would probably have been healthier if I'd given up on this 700-page monster at any of the many points at which I commented to others that it was like Dan Brown wrote a vampire novel. It just goes on and on. What's more, it's written in an odd first-person that has three (two? three? I forget now) narrators, which is resolved by making all but the teenage daughter's occasional appearances just the reading out of letters from older characters. Epistolary novels obviously have a fine heritage in the Gothic, most notably in Dracula, but at least those feel like real letters. These are letters that go on for twenty pages of excruciating detail. The only reason I can give for why I actually finished this is that I'm on a bit of a gothic/vampire 'thing' at the moment, but that's probably not actually a strong enough argument.

It's been a while since I read Carmilla, but this felt just a bit too similar. An enjoyable book all the same, and the places where it differs from Le Fanu's are largely improvements, but something still felt a bit off about it.

Hard to put my finger on quite why this wasn't working for me, but perhaps a bit more academic than I'm really up to at the moment.

Helpful introduction to the topic of conspiracies in modern life. Mostly thematic chapters (e.g., climate change denial, sovereign citizens, and covid), but the last numbered chapter and the conclusion were particularly effective. The former talks about how to challenge conspiratorial thinking, including how to get friends and family members out of the rabbit hole, while the conclusion tackles the way conspiracies have seeped into mainstream political discourse and the dangers therein.

Pretty good introduction to the life and work of Rosa Luxemburg. Suffers a bit from cramming lots of text into the graphics. Nice touch, though, is that the text is related to her writings, either letters or books, as indicated in the endnotes.

Apart from the problematic takes covered in my earlier comment, and a couple of chapters that went way, way over my head (maybe if I was a polisci graduate, they might have made sense?), mostly good stuff. Particular highlights for me were the chapters covering countries outside Europe and North America, such as an explanation of the relationship between the BJP and RSS, or the history of the right in Japan. Also enjoyed the chapter that drew parallels between Rob/Doug Ford, Stephen Harper, and the Front Nationale :)

Up to about the halfway point I was thinking to myself that I've really got to stop reading these short introductions to environmental politics. It's certainly one of the better ones, though I'm not sure it stands out in the way that other books of Wall's that I've read have done. All of a sudden, though, there's a sharp turn into some pretty heavy social movement theory, and the remainder of the book is much more compelling. Chapters on the methods of denial of the right, on the psychology of convincing others, of the failings of the state, and so much more round out the book. There's only really time to skate over these topics, as it's a pretty short book, but a good starter for deeper reading.

I've seen this book paired with "Unmasking Autism" which feels like a slightly odd choice. While that book felt like more of an actionable book, this feels more educational for people who don't know much about autism. I think it fills that role better than Silberman's book, which always seems to be held up as the 'first book you should read', partly because it's written 'from the inside', as it were, and partly because it doesn't suffer from that book's unfortunate perspective on Asperger. Still pretty useful, especially in its coverage of support needs and feeling comfortable requiring accommodations.

Reads like the undergraduate textbook it's probably intended to be...