User Profile

Esther

selfawaresoup@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years ago

Queer goth lady in Berlin, buying more books than I find time to read

Some leanings: political philosophy, psychology, queer lit, sci-fi, fantasy, horror

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2024 Reading Goal

83% complete! Esther has read 5 of 6 books.

Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy: The New Bottoming Book (Paperback, 2001, Greenery Press (CA)) 2 stars

Two books that fell out of time

2 stars

Just like The New Topping Book by the same authors, which came out after this but I read first, this book very much shows its age. It is from a time when online resources like Fetlife were far more scarce than today and someone coming newly into kink would have had real difficulty finding any useful material. That is no longer the case and these books today read like someone did maybe a week’s worth of internet research to compile them.

They cover a lot of the basics quite well, but if you already have some experience, even just a little, and especially if you had even just a halfway decent mentor who introduced you to kink, they don’t offer much new insight.

I’m sure they were useful 20 years ago but I wouldn’t recommend them today.

They also have a few issues that you’d expect to see in books …

Sarah Berger: Wen es etwas angeht (Paperback, Deutsch language, 2022, Herzstückverlag) 4 stars

​​»Ja, die sind echt, also echten Genitalien nachempfunden, also echten Genitalien, von Menschen, echten Menschen, …

Ausstellung einer Ausstellung einer Ausstellung einer …

4 stars

Eine Ausstellung von Menschen in und um eine Ausstellung in der sie sich alle, ebenso wie ich als Lesende, ständig bewegen, nie lange genug stehen bleiben um ihre Fassaden ind Abgründe vollständig zu erfassen, was so vielleicht auch besser ist.

David Graeber: The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy 4 stars

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is a …

Bureaucracy, Games, Capitalism, and Batman

5 stars

What an incredible book. A poignant look at how and why bureaucracies are created and maintained, how they are a form of game that’s opposed to actual play, how each of us has a responsibility to actively imagine a better world and create the conditions under which it can come into existence, and a surprise analysis of Christopher Nolan’s film “The Dark Knight Rises” which (trust me) makes sense in this context.

A clear recommendation for anyone who wants to look critically at how we as a society run the world. It’s also not too dense (as opposed to some other political philosophy works) and written in a very approachable way.

Dan McQuillan: Resisting AI (2022, Bristol University Press) 4 stars

I think I set myself for a little bit of a disappointment with this book by spending the weeks and months before reading it with a lot of the same ideas through articles and podcasts, so the book itself repeated a lot of the things I was already aware of, which isn’t the book’s fault.

It’s still a very good critical analysis of “AI” from an anti-fascist-perspective. Especially the chapters about the connections of “AI” to eugenics and about the politics of the original Luddites had a lot to offer for me, as well as the final chapter on constructing alternatives to current “AI”.

It s a good read and I’ll gladly recommend it.