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pdotb@wyrms.de

Joined 3 years, 8 months ago

Bookish version of pdotb@todon.eu

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pdotb's books

To Read (View all 5)

Alison Cochrun: The Charm Offensive (2021, Atria Books)
Wayne Price: Value of Radical Theory (2013, AK Press)
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Anne Walthall: East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History (2008)

Currently Reading

Roger Luckhurst, Bram Stoker: Dracula (EBook, 2011, Oxford University Press)
David Loye: Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis (2019, Wisdom Publications)
Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin: Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (Paperback, 2019, Penguin Classics)

Read (View all 346)

Thomas Homer-Dixon: Commanding Hope (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)
Jason Hickel: Less Is More (2021, Penguin Random House)
E.S. Yu: Human Enough (NineStar Press)

2024 Reading Goal

Success! pdotb has read 118 of 52 books.

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reviewed Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal

David J. Skal: Hollywood Gothic (2004, Faber and Faber) 4 stars

Comprehensive, perhaps a little too much?

4 stars

Bit of a kitchen sink feeling to this, as it covers in (sometimes excruciating) detail the history of Dracula, first the novel and then the various stage and film adaptations. Some interesting highlights, such as a description of where the title of 'Nosferatu' came from, but too much of the book felt like it was bogged down in the back and forth of negotiations over stage and film rights.

reviewed House of Mirrors by Yves Engler

Yves Engler: House of Mirrors (Paperback, 2020, Black Rose Books) 4 stars

Nothing changed

4 stars

I was aware that Trudeau's Liberals had done precious little to improve on the dismal environmental performance of the Harper government, but Engler's book covers the many other ways that the Liberals created the illusion of being more progressive, while largely continuing (or, in some cases, worsening) Canada's foreign policy. The same underlying principle -- support authoritarian governments as long as they represent Canadian/US interests, and especially support the mining sector -- was just given a more appealing face.

quoted House of Mirrors by Yves Engler

Yves Engler: House of Mirrors (Paperback, 2020, Black Rose Books) 4 stars

Similarly, the Liberals released a letter about the mining sector during the 2015 election that noted, "a Liberal government will set up an independent ombudsman office to advise Canadian companies, consider complaints made against them and investigate those complaints where it is deemed warranted." Trudeau's government waited nearly four years to set up Canada's Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) to supervise Canadian mining companies' international operations. The ombudsperson had yet to take on a single case by the end of 2019. CORE's initial six-year budget was slightly more than one million dollars annually and the Liberals appointed a former oil lobbyist, Sheri Meyerhoffer, as the initial ombudsperson. All 14 union and NGO representatives on the government's "multi-stakeholder advisory body on responsible business conduct" resigned in May 2019 after their concerns about the ombudsperson were disregarded.

— House of Mirrors by  (Page 157)