What have I read this week?
This is a YA novel about a young woman named Angel and a young man named Jimmy. Jimmy is in a band that Angel is a huge fan of, and she is going to see them in concert for the first time. I really liked this. The characters are interesting and believable, and I found the story interesting. I’d definitely read more by the same author.
What have I read this week?
This is a novel about a young woman named Alice who is asexual and meets a young man who gives her some very confusing feelings. I quite liked this. I found Alice a bit self-indulgent, but it was good to read something with an ace protagonist.
This is a contemporary fantasy novel about a young woman named Bailey who is working in a bar and gets involved with magic. I liked this; the world and the magical system are interesting, and I liked the characters. It was a fun read, and I would definitely read more by this author.
What have I read this week? Just one.
This is a nonfiction book about useless jobs, and the proliferation thereof, and why, and what that has done to our society. I found it really interesting, and felt like I learned a lot from it.
Most economists nowadays see the labor theory of value as a curiosity from the formative days of the discipline; and it’s probably true that, if one’s primary interest is to understand patterns of price formation, there are better tools available. But for the worker’s movement—and arguably, for revolutionaries like Karl Marx—that was never the real point. The real point is philosophical. It is a recognition that the world we inhabit is something we made, collectively, as a society, and therefore, that we could also have made differently. This is true of almost any physical object likely to be within reach of us at any given moment. Every one was grown or manufactured by someone on the basis of what someone imagined we might be like, and what they thought we might want or need. It’s even more true of abstractions like “capitalism,” “society,” or “the government.” They only exist because we produce them every day. John Holloway, perhaps the most poetic of contemporary Marxists, once proposed to write a book entitled Stop Making Capitalism. After all, he noted, even though we all act as if capitalism is some kind of behemoth towering over us, it’s really just something we produce. Every morning we wake up and re-create capitalism. If one morning we woke up and all decided to create something else, then there wouldn’t be capitalism anymore. There would be something else.
Ch. 6
One might even say that this is the core question—perhaps ultimately the only question—of all social theory and all revolutionary thought. Together we create the world we inhabit. Yet if any one of us tried to imagine a world we’d like to live in, who would come up with one exactly like the one that currently exists? We can all imagine a better world. Why can’t we just create one? Why does it seem so inconceivable to just stop making capitalism? Or government? Or at the very least bad service providers and annoying bureaucratic red tape?
Be this as it may, however, it opens the way to my second and final point. The first objection typically raised when someone suggests guaranteeing everyone a livelihood regardless of work is that if you do so, people simply won’t work. This is just obviously false and at this point I think we can dismiss it out of hand. The second, more serious objection is that most will work, but many will choose work that’s of interest only to themselves. The streets would fill up with bad poets, annoying street mimes, and promoters of crank scientific theories, and nothing would get done. What the phenomenon of bullshit jobs really brings home is the foolishness of such assumptions. No doubt a certain proportion of the population of a free society would spend their lives on projects most others would consider to be silly or pointless; but it’s hard to imagine how it would go much over 10 or 20 percent. But already right now, 37 to 40 percent of workers in rich countries already feel their jobs are pointless. Roughly half the economy consists of, or exists in support of, bullshit. And it’s not even particularly interesting bullshit! If we let everyone decide for themselves how they were best fit to benefit humanity, with no restrictions at all, how could they possibly end up with a distribution of labor more inefficient than the one we already have?
Ch. 7
This month’s word is incomplete, meaning “not complete; lacking some part”.
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I stared at my project, the thing I’d dedicated literal years of my life to. It felt… incomplete. I wasn’t sure why – I’d covered every base I could think of, researched and cross-referenced every angle I or any of my colleagues had come up with. Every i was dotted, every t crossed. And yet, it still seemed unfinished.
I looked at it from every angle I could find, couldn’t find anything missing. And yet…
I sighed.
I would have to destroy everything and start again. It was the only way.
Wasn’t it?
What have I read this week? Nothing, again, and it’s late, sorry.
What have I read this week? A bit late again, sorry!
Because everything I read this week is by the same author, rather than repeat the same things over and over I’ll just do a brief overall review of all of them up here. Anything specific to a particular book will go under its name.
I really enjoyed all of these. The worlds are fascinating, the characters are compelling and the plots are interesting. They avoid the pitfalls of a lot of fantasy where the characters don’t act like real people; I really believed in these characters as people. I also liked the way the main characters handle sex, as just another part of life and not something taboo or dirty. I would definitely read more by this author.
This is a fantasy novella about a group of goblins who end up in enemy territory during a war.
This is a fantasy novel about a young girl named Mona who is a wizard who works in the medium of bread.
This is a horror novel about a woman named Melissa who is clearing out her late grandmother’s house. It is a bit creepy though, but then it’s meant to be.
This is a fantasy novel about a teenage girl named Rhea who becomes engaged to a local lord. I really liked the hedgehog.
This is a retelling of the Snow Queen about a girl named Gerta who goes in search of her childhood friend who has been taken by the Snow Queen.
This is a fantasy novel about a man named Stephen who is a paladin whose god has died and a woman named Grace, who is a perfumer.
This is a fantasy novel about a young girl named Summer who travels to the land of Orcus. My favourite character is probably Reginald the Regency hoopoe and the valet-birds.
This is a collection of short stories and poetry which are retold fairy tales.
This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, about a woman named Bryony.
What have I read this week?
This is a nonfiction book about the company WeWork and its founder, Adam Neumann. I found it interesting, even though the writing was a little annoying in places (a weird obsession with people’s relative heights, for example).
These are fantasy novels about a woman named Slate who is on a suicide mission to find out about the Clockwork Boys so that her city can fight them. I enjoyed this; the world is interesting, the characters are believable, and it’s a fun read, if a bit dark in places. I’ll definitely be reading more by this author.
This is a fantasy novel set in the same world as The Clocktaur War, about a woman named Halla who inherits a sword with a man bound to it. I enjoyed this; it was a lot of fun and I really liked the characters.
This is a fantasy novella about a young boy named Oliver who is a minor wizard and is forced from his village to find them rain. I enjoyed this; it’s a fun read and I really liked the armadillo.
What have I read this week?
This is a fantasy novel about a woman named Ivy who is a private detective who is trying to solve a murder at a magical school that her estranged sister works at. I quite enjoyed this; it’s an easy read.
This month’s word is water, meaning “a transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, freezing at 32°F or 0°C and boiling at 212°F or 100°C, that in a more or less impure state constitutes rain, oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.: it contains 11.188 percent hydrogen and 88.812 percent oxygen, by weight” or “a special form or variety of this liquid, as rain”.
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It was wet. That hard pounding kind of rain, that seems to come both vertically and horizontally. I was soaked, after only moments outdoors, and I was still wondering what had possessed me to leave my warm dry bedroom and come out in it.
Surely I didn’t crave chocolate that much.
I laughed hollowly. Of course I did. I’d crawl over hot coals for my favourite chocolate bar, and my stash had run out. It was my own fault for coming home drunk last night and scarfing the lot on a whim. I was normally very good at keeping myself stocked up, but, well, here we were, taking a long walk to the one and only local shop that stocked my fave.
I could, of course, get chocolate closer, but it was inferior, and I was unwilling to allow it to sully my taste buds.
So here I was, completely sodden, and miserable, but determined not to turn back. After all, I was wet already, right?
How much worse could it get? I thought, only to curse myself seconds later as a car sped past me, spraying me head to foot with dirty water – and most annoyingly, down into my shoes – as it drove through a gigantic puddle. I was pissed off at having my feet wet, but even more so that my knee jerk reaction was still to superstitiously blame myself for tempting fate by saying that.
But the shop wasn’t much further, and it would be a shame to turn back now. I trudged onwards, mentally berating my drunken self from last night.
“You just had to eat it all, didn’t you? And now I have to deal with the conseoquences.”
The rain starts to fall even harder, and a strong wind blows it directly into my face. I pull my hood tighter around my face and keep walking. I can feel water sloshing around inside my shoes. It’s an unpleasant feeling. But I’m so close now, I can see the block where the shop is up ahead.
I can almost taste the chocolate slowly melting in my mouth. I close my eyes to savour the experience and promptly fall over, twisting my ankle. I get back up and limp on towards the shop. Nearly there, nearly there, I remind myself.
I can barely see through the driving rain, I’m navigating purely on instinct as I reach the door of the shop. I reach out and grope for the handle, then turn it. It doesn’t budge. I shake it a few times to no effect, then wipe water from my face so I can see.
There’s a sign on the door.
“Closed indefinitely due to flooding”.
What have I read this week? Just one, and it’s late, sorry..
This is a novel about a woman named Korede whose sister has a habit of killing her boyfriends. I liked this – the characters were interesting and I found the Nigerian setting fascinating. I’d definitely read more by this author.
Random Ramblings 