I got a preprint of this wonderful novel from the author, and I finally got around to reading it. I enjoyed the book immensely: it is hopeful and imaginative and will appeal to anyone interested in alternative visions of our climate crisis future. I was especially a fan of the co-housing developments that appear throughout.
Summer Reading: Life is Short
I had high hopes for this one, but found it pretty jargon-filled and inaccessible. Thankfully, it was actually quite short.
Summer reading: The Idiot
My daughter has been pestering me to read this for months and I finally got around to it. It took a while for me to warm up to it, but in the end I fell in love with the narrative. And now I must start the sequel…
2023 Reading Challenge: Laudato Si'
So, wow, I just love it that the Pope weighed in on climate change, and I can understand now why so many American bishops hate his guts. The latter chapters in this Encyclical Letter are a scathing critique of capitalism and consumerism. Some of this stuff was so on point. I will never agree with the Catholic Church on everything, but I think this little letter is a masterpiece. Getting conservative Catholics to recognized that the climate crisis is real and human caused is no small feat. I only regret that I had not read it sooner.
2023 Reading Challenge: Arwa Mahdawi's Strong Female Lead
A thoughtful look on how feminine characteristics (or those characteristics that girls are socialized into cultivating more than boys) makes for effective leadership.
2023 Reading Challenge: On Hope by Pope Francis
“Hope is the ability to go beyond human reasoning, wisdom, and prudence of the world, beyond what is normally considered common sense, to believe in the impossible. Hope opens new horizons, making us capable of dreaming what is not even imaginable. This hope invites us to enter the darkness of an uncertain future and to walk through and into the light. It is beautiful, the virtue of hope; it gives us great strength to walk in life.”
2023 Reading Challenge: The Patriarchs
Such a great read from the amazing science journalist Angela Saini. I devoured this one in almost one sitting. An essential guide to understanding the origins and persistence of patriarchal power in the world today.
2023 Reading Challenge: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
A wonderful salvo by the incomparable David Graeber! This was the last book I taught for my anarchism class, and I wish we had had at least three class periods for discussion.
2023 Reading Challenge: Gaudete et Exsultate
So I decided to dive into this book by Pope Francis, because I love his implicit (and sometimes explicit) critique of capitalism and consumerism. It’s nice to have a spiritual perspective on many of the secular questions that I am grappling with in my own work and writing.
2023 Reading Challenge: The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin
I have dipped in and out of this book for decades, but I finally sat down and read it cover-to-cover. There’s so much to process in this book, and so much that is still very relevant to the present day.
“A revolution is more than the destruction of a political system. It implies the awakening of human intelligence, the increasing of the inventive spirit tenfold, a hundredfold... It is a revolution in the minds of men, more than in their institutions”
2023 Reading Challenge: Wide Sargasso Sea
I had to read this for one of my book clubs, but it was a real disappointment. It provides a back story to Jane Eyre, and boasts a weird and sometimes confusing shift in perspective that has a sort of Rashomon effect. I hated the stereotypes and essentializing, and even the prose, though sometimes beautiful, felt self-indulgent. Not a fan.
2023 Reading Challenge: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
One of my favorite books of all time, I just reread it for my class on Anarchism and I can see the influence of Godwin, Goldman, Bakunin, and Kropotkin everywhere. So much to discuss with this book, and I am so excited for teaching my class today. There are days where I just really love my job.
2023 Reading Challenge: God and the State
Okay, so I am technically rereading this one, but the last time I read it all the way through was back in 2004, so this definitely feels new. And I am reading it for my class, but I think it still counts toward my reading challenge because I did reread the whole book. It’s scattered and bombastic, like Bakunin was scattered and bombastic, but there’s a lot to chew on in this short tract. I’m actually looking forward to my lecture tomorrow.
2023 Reading Challenge: The Overstory by Richard Powers
So I need to limit the number of 500-page books that I read if I am ever going to make my reading goal for the year, but I’ve been meaning to get through this one for a while.
Trees. Trees. Tress. All I can see now is trees.
2023 Reading Challenge: Klara and the Sun
Such a beautifully-written and thoughtful book.
2023 Reading Challenge: Left is Not Woke
This is an advanced galley of a book that is coming out in March. It’s a slim little volume, but it packs a powerful punch. Here’s the full blurb I wrote for it:
“Susan Neiman’s provocative book is an impassioned and accessible defense against the corrosive particularisms that have eroded solidarity and cooperation on the left. To face the many challenges of the 21st century, she argues that we must reclaim those strategic universalisms that historically helped to forge diverse coalitions of activists in shared struggles for social progress. To build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world, we need to acknowledge the victories of our past, recognize the contingent malleability of our present, and embrace a radical politics of hope for our future.”
2023 Reading Challenge: Red Star
I wasn’t sure if I was going to include books that I am reading for my class this semester or books that I am rereading, but I so much enjoyed revisiting Bogdanov’s Red Star that I am going to count it toward my reading goals anyway. This amazing novella was written in 1908 and offers a fascinating perspective on what socialism might have looked like in the 20th century had Bolsheviks like Bogdanov prevailed. I particularly love the discussion of Martian love and marriage included in this text since Bogdanov and Alexandra Kollontai were comrades and friends.
2023 Reading Challenge: Four Thousand Weeks: Times Management for Mortals
Absolutely loved this book, and basically read it cover to cover in less than a day. Lots of food for thought and great advice on the value of not being productive and the “right to be lazy.” I have a complex relationship to time and am what the author calls a “productivity geek,” but since becoming the chair of my department, I have come to realize that there will always be more tasks than I can ever actually accomplish. What’s worse, the more efficient I get at doing tasks, the more people give me new tasks to complete. Burkeman advises “strategic underachievement.” I have lots of great quotes underlined, but I am not going to type them up because Burkeman has convinced me to take the rest of the evening off.
2023 reading challenge
I’m not usually a big fan of new year’s resolutions, but this year I have one that I am really going to stick to. I’ve decided that I need my brain to focus on one thing for long periods of time, and so I am committing to reading 25 fiction and 25 non-fiction books in 2023. That’s about a book a week and I am very excited to delve into the ever growing pile on my nightstand. This week I finished Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts, a dystopian vision of a possible near-future USA. This book was chosen for one of the two book clubs I’ve joined to help keep me on track with my reading.
