Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII

[sophie]

Erving Goffman, "On Face-Work"
Michel Foucault, "Lecture Two: 14 January 1976"
Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power"
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, "Mapping and Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color"
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
Dupont de Nemours, "On the Origin and Progress of a New Science"
François Quesnay, GRAINS, from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours on Political Economy
Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy
Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
Leora Auslander, "Beyond Words"
Deborah Cohen, "We We Look the Way We Look Now"
Suzy Kim, Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution

 

[Traitorfish]

Found myself pretty disappointed with this. There's no clear structure or direction to the book, and the author seems by turns amused and bored by his topic more often than he does genuinely passionate. The first couple of chapters deal with specific flags- the United States and British flags, respectively- but the subsequent chapters are broad regional overviews, tied flimsily together by a theme that even the author doesn't really seem to believe in. (The Venezuelan flag is a "flag of revolution" but the Egyptian flag is merely "Arabian"; the English flag is a "crusading" flag, but so, somehow, was the Soviet flag.) The first two chapters begin with a brief summary of the design and introduction of the flag, and then a bundle of anecdotes about its contemporary use, and the following chapters follow that in a compressed form. There's very little that you couldn't learn from Wikipedia, and while the book is written in a more accessible style, it's one which I often found to be gratingly smug, and gave the book the feel of a series of broadsheet filler-pieces stapled together rather than an actual, coherent book. It's also woefully under-illustrated; for a book which is about something as essentially visual as flag, visual aids are limited to simple reproductions of maybe half of the flags which are discussed, with no attempt to show how flags develop or are contextualised.

The author comes close to saying something substantive when he talks about the disputes that arise around the use and display of flags- but always seems to pull back at the last minute into condescension or sentimentality, seemingly depending on the whim of the moment. The author seems to want to say something big about flags as a general Thing, but isn't willing to spend the time working through examples in enough to get there, hoping instead that if he throws enough of them at you, something will just happen all by itself.

The basic problem is, it's a book about flags for people aren't particularly interested in flags, one written by an author doesn't seem to be particularly interested in flags, and I'm not sure what is the point of a book like that, except to provide light holiday reading for people who can't bring themselves to just buy a Stephen King door-stop and give up halfway through, like a normal person.

 

[Kyriakos]

Spoiler :

While I've liked this series, my feeling here is that the author makes the mistakes others have in raising the stakes of each story too far and too fast. So there's eventually no place further up to go.

A green octopus doesn't really come across as intimidating

 

[Cutlass]

A green octopus doesn't really come across as intimidating

It's one of Cthulhu's tentacles.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's one of Cthulhu's tentacles.

The allusion to Lovecraft would be impossible to miss, but they should have done at least a stylized version of the tentacles, and not have them so out of the way either. Cause now the cover features something more like what you'd expect in a restaurant's catalogue

 

[Zkribbler]

The allusion to Lovecraft would be impossible to miss, but they should have done at least a stylized version of the tentacles, and not have them so out of the way either. Cause now the cover features something more like what you'd expect in a restaurant's catalogue

That's the plan for the sequel: The Calamari Brief.

 

[Birdjaguar]

"The Rise and Fall of DODO" was a great read. Not heavy or earth shaking, but a great story that was well written. It kept me going through all 750 pages. It has an interesting time travel plot without major Sci Fi elements.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Just read Animal Farm in one sitting and.. didn't care for it too much. Really seemed like he was writing just to create an anti-communist strawman instead of writing because he genuinely wanted to tell a story. Never liked Orwell too much, not 1984 neither his stuff about the Spanish Civil War. Some things were reallly good, the song for example was very well-crafted and some of the prose was neat. Still not enough to include it in a high school curriculum, IMO

Currently reading:

Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (partial re-read)
Foucault: Discipline and Punish
Durkheim: Suicide: A Study
Dante: Divine Comedy

 

[JohannaK]

How was Discipline and Punish? I still got to read that one.

 

[sophie]

How was Discipline and Punish? I still got to read that one.

Super good. Def should read.

 

[Lexicus]

I picked up The Archaeology of Knowledge over the summer, haven't started reading it yet. But I'm reading Economy and Society by Weber for the first time (in translation of course), and I'm rereading Maurice Dobb's Studies in the Development of Capitalism.

 

[JohannaK]

I got a mangled and scribbled hardcover for 1 AUS$ in Melbourne but I didnt have time to read it then and its been sitting on the shelf since.

 

[Zkribbler]

Just read Animal Farm in one sitting and.. didn't care for it too much. Really seemed like he was writing just to create an anti-communist strawman instead of writing because he genuinely wanted to tell a story. Never liked Orwell too much, not 1984 neither his stuff about the Spanish Civil War. Some things were reallly good, the song for example was very well-crafted and some of the prose was neat. Still not enough to include it in a high school curriculum, IMO

Ironic. When I was in high school, I devoured everything by him I could get my hands on. You're spot on re Animal Farm. Orwell had fought for the communists in the Spanish Civil War, and they were on the verge of winning when Stalin betrayed them. Orwell was crazy-anti-communist after that.

Dante: Divine Comedy

I almost got through Inferno, but the unceasing tortures finally wore me out.,

 

[JohannaK]

No. The Communists were never close to winning in Spain. They did manage to almost completely take over the Republican side, which on one hand made the red scare Fascists right but at the same time was made possible because the democracies bought the scare in the first place.

Ironically enough Stalin disn't intend to take over the Republic, as it was trying to take the Soviet Union out of pariah-statehood and saw support for the Republic as a tool for that. It was the Spanish communists that purged the Trotskyists that Orwell fought with as well as the anarchists.

I personally found Animal Farm masterful satire, though I could reconsider upon rereading.

 

[Zkribbler]

All I know about the Spanish Civil War, I got from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. I walked away with the impression the Republicans were winning until Stalin sold them out to get better relations with France. I could be mis-remembering, or Orwell's views may have been skewed.

 

[JohannaK]

Nah, that just sounds bizarre. Stalin had nothing to do with the "May Events" as they are called, whereby the Communists with full support of the Spanish government gutted the Trotskyist and anarchist militias that autonomously held power in Catalonia alongside its government: it was Madrid and its Communists cracking down on autonomies to unify the war effort.

I understand that the full picture is hard to see from Orwell because he was in the middle of it, but I seem to remember it captures the stalemate in Aragon and the infighting, without any sense of impending victory.

 

[Lexicus]

Orwell was crazy-anti-communist after that.

He was anti-Bolshevik. But he was a socialist. Don't make him out to be a capitalist running-dog, please.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Exoplanets: Extant Life? is a short text by Dieter Rehder on the scientific aspects of the question of life on recently- and to-be-found exoplanets. Taking a chemistry-focused approach, it starts with the astronomy of stars and planets before talking about the possibilities of life. Of interest are buildup of organic precursors on ice particles, methanol as an alternative to water, and the role of clay particles in initiating life.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Looking at some of those reading lists one might think we at OT really are Intellectuals.

Currently I am rereading the Chronicles of the Dragonlance. Lord of the Rings introduced me to the wonder of fantasy. Dragonlance to its enjoyment. Have fond memories of it and was curious how it would hold up these days.
Well it's tropey and constructed. It was awkward how head-first the story dived into the company-of-heroes-to-save-the-world-
narrative and how ready the characters are to accept this sudden, dramatic and implausible turn of events as just that narrative.
However, as hamfisted and hackneyed so many things are, the company of heroes is well constructed. Very much constructed, as so many things, but still well constructed. More so than in many other fantasy novels I have read. Right from the start, you wonder what the deal is with each of them (not quit each), and everyone seems to have a special and interesting back story, but which you will only learn as the story progresses. The resulting tension and conflicts within the group are cookie-cutter, but again, they are still set out well.
The story itself is extremely fast-paced, jumping from one wonder to the next adventure. And it works. In spite of all the flaws I see now as clearly as never before (and that also includes the plain craftsmanship of words), it still is a fun ride.
It is very flawed, but it does some essential things right, and better than a lot of other fantasy, even if that other fantasy may be more mature and refined.

The Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization is a series of essays about alternative approaches to societal organization other than market-oriented capitalism. Two important points made by the book are the importance of creating alternatives and that alternatives already exist alongside the orthodox structures. Some of the essays suffer from a lack of concrete detail, preferring to focus on semantics and theoreticals.

Sounds intriguing. Looked it up on Amazon.

....
200€ for the book.
122€ for the kindle version

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

My degree might not have gotten me a job I wanted, but I do get to read really expensive books for a nominal yearly fee. Totally worth it.