Book Reviews

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My Top 5 Books of 2018

1/26/18: Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, by Timothy Morton
“Dark Ecology” is an environmental philosophy book by Rice professor Timothy Morton. In this book, Morton attempts to convey a new framework through which to view the current climate collapse. This new method of thinking he calls dark ecology, and defines as a method of ecological knowing in which one is conscious not only of their being a part of ecosystems, but also that the very nature of ecology is in and of itself a strange and dark one. Further developing this through the remainder of the book, Morton draws upon Post-Kantianism, hyperobjects, and modern art to not only convey what a dark ecology is, but to awaken the reader themselves to the weirdness of such.

This book, more than many things I’ve ever read, walks a thin line between being a work of genius and being incomprehensible nonsense. In many ways it’s both, and for that reason it’s a book I’ll never be able to say with certainty that I actually “get.” Nonetheless, in my opinion it ultimately erred toward the side of genius, though it sure did bring a great deal of nonsense along with it.

Morton writes like an anthropologist that’s trying to be a philosopher. Meaning his work is infused with the very same critical theoretical jargon that in anthropology I find so nauseous, but without the ethnographic bit that makes anthropologists worth reading. Only making matters worse is that, alongside this, Morton filled this book with all manner of pop culture references, muddling an already muddled collection of cited literatures.

But much like the “joy beneath the sadness” that Morton in the last chapter declares so incremental to dark ecology, there shines beneath this book’s slough of words a treasure trove of ideas and concepts. Take agrilogistics, for example: here, introduced in the first chapter, is a concept of agriculture coming from a larger system of interconnected logics that determine the way we rationalize every facet of our world. And that’s just one of many of the genius frameworks which Morton brings to the table.

12/29/18: DMT: The Spirit Molecule, by Rick Strassman

Considered one of the primary texts to have ever been published in the realm of psychedelics research, Rick Strassman’s “The Spirit Molecule” chronicles the psychologists experiments with injecting various volunteers with various doses of DMT, a tryptamine know for producing vivid visions on par with the intensity of near-death experiences and alien abduction reports. More of a catalogue of reports and Strassman’s observations on them than a description of rigid data, this book serves as an interesting read for those interested in fields as disparate as phenomenology to astrophysics (yes, you read that right) to pharmacology. Ultimately, though, toward the end the book moves from theories and descriptions of DMT’s effects itself, to a narrative about why Strassman eventually left psychedelics research.

While reading about volunteers’ experiences with DMT and Strassman’s theoretical frameworks were absolutely electrifying, hearing him go on and on about his conflicts with colleagues (both in the field of pharmacology and, strangely enough, at his local Buddhist momentary) weren’t. What the doctor has in knowledge, he lacks in intrigue, and so oftentimes, especially toward the end, I found myself bored out of my mind and longing to return to the volunteer reports. Toward the very end, however, I’d say that Strassman redeems himself somewhat, moving finally back to a main idea in the last chapters: that is, the meaning of DMT and it’s naturally-occurring existence in our bodies, and what future psychedelics research should take to be most clinically-productive. Some of the ideas in the former seem completely and totally left-field, and more often than not reliant on vague metaphysical assumptions, but I don’t find any strong issue in that. Eccentric though they may be, his theories offer one more way of looking at DMT (and of my interests, alien abduction experiences), and with matters as confusion and subjective as this, few perspectives are necessarily “bad” perspectives.

11/04/18: The Portable Thoreau, by Henry David Thoreau (edited by Jeffrey S. Crammer)

A Top Pick of 2018

Anyone who’s spoken to me in the past two and a half years is likely to know this one thing about me: I am OBSESSED with Transcendentalism. And while this fascination has its original roots in Emerson’s essays and Whitman’s poetry, it was upon reading Thoreau that I really began to feel I found a kindred spirit.

Thoreau was one of the greatest thinkers to ever live, and as such it’s not really possible to do a goodreads-style review of his work, so that’s not something I’ll attempt. What can be reviewed, however, is the quality of this particular collection, and boy howdy is it good. At over 600 pages, I don’t think “portable” is the most apt descriptor, and yet I also don’t think this book could’ve been any shorter. Not only does it contain the full version of Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, but also some of Thoreau’s other landmark essays (Walking, Life Without Principle), and snippets of some of his less famous books. And all of this precluded by a beautiful introduction. The complete package makes for a work of art ready to initiate the uninitiated into this wonderful mind, and perhaps motivate those already familiar with Thoreau to dive a little deeper into his lesser-known works.

09/27/18: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, by Raj Patel

“Stuffed and Starved” by Raj Patel is a detailed yet concise overview of the global food system, its flaws, and the step necessary to build a more equitable future. While Patel looks at a kaleidoscope of food-related issues, from soybean production to the WTO’s destruction of local economies to rural suicide rates, the book always draws the attention back to its primary question: why is it that in today’s world we have the duality of both the rise of chronic obesity, and the perpetuation of mass starvation and food insecurity?

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Patel’s writing style can tend to veer from the bland to the sensational without any warning, but the information he imparts in such a process is critical enough that I’m able to turn a blind eye to such blunders. Secondly, this book is, unlike many others on the subject, not some esoteric academic text, but rather a call to action that can just as easily be read by the layman as the professor.

Patel also writes from a very specific frame of reference informed by Marxism, indigenous rights, and—of all things—farmer’s markets and organic foods. While the former two are stances I can get behind with relative ease, I remain apprehensive of his firm anti-GMO stance (which asserts that we have seen no agricultural improvements from GMOs) and of his claim that farmer’s markets are somehow less expensive than grocery stores. Still, his stance on markets is rooted in a strong sense of ethicacy, and his GMO opposition did open my mind to the issue of such technology being in corporate hands (example: “suicide seeds” produced by seed companies that keep farmers forever reliant on new seed supply), so even these views I find issue with still offer something up to the table worth thinking about.

08/11/18: Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram

A Top Pick of 2018

06/28/18: Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich

06/19/18: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by Shunryu Suzuki (edited by Trudy Dixon)

A collection of informal lectures on the tenets of Zen Buddhism by one of the main figures responsible for bringing Japanese Zen practices to the West Coast, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” offers an interesting take on not only the practice of zazen meditation itself, but also on the existence of the self, the meaning of enlightenment, and Buddhism’s place in the wider cultural sphere of the US (specifically young, educated, affluent peoples on the West Coast).

While I myself am not a Buddhist nor will I likely ever be, I’ve for a few month now have wanted to read up a bit on Zen Buddhism just so I could have a basic understanding of what it is and how it differs from other Buddhist sects that I know about. This interest was prompted by two separate occurrences in my life: First was becoming acquainted with the mindfulness craze currently sweeping psychology across the continent as a way to assuage anxiety and depression, and second was my own personal experience with DBT, in which mindfulness is one of the four main components, and whose creator herself actually went on to become not just a psychologist but also a Zen roshi.

This all being said, I found this book not only a wealth of knowledge on Zen, but also surprisingly concise and easy to read. Each lecture only lasting a few pages, the book is easy to go through in bits and pieces, and a vast majority of its contents I found relatable to my post-DBT take on life. Not a rigid philosophical discourse nor an academic text, “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” is a layman’s approach to Zen that discards all the ornaments of the religion and it’s history in favor of focusing on one thing and one thing only: sitting.

05/29/18: Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

One of 21st-Century cultural anthropology’s landmark works, “Mushroom at the End of the World,” by Anna Tsing, is part ethnography, part commodity chain analysis, and economic theory. In an effort to find hope in a world where, the myth of progress having failed us, things seem increasingly hopeless, Tsing looks to the Matsutaki—a rare mushroom which is prized in Japan as a culinary delicacy. By analyzing the mushroom’s journey through history alongside its journey from Oregon woodlands to Japanese markets, Tsing tries to encourage thinking “like a mushroom” and learning to live precariously in the face of uncertain futures.

While the work is every bit as monumental as I was led to believe, it is also extremely uneven in terms of quality. Many of the chapters are adaptations of articles that Tsing had previously written, and that is apparent in the book’s lack of flow and consistency. This made reading is a chore rather than a pleasure, as I never knew if the next chapter was going to move and inspire me, or bore me to tears. A necessary read, but not by any means an easy one.

05/17/18: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Richard Geldard

In “The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Geldard gives an overview of Emerson’s spiritual teachings and ideas, utilizing literature from Emerson himself, his forebears, and his contemporaries. Designed as a model by which the layman can interpret Emerson for use in daily life, this book tries to translate nineteenth-century ideas into modern sensibilities.

While many parts of this book struck a chord with me, just as many parts didn’t. Geldard has a bad habit of interpreting Emerson in such a way that his and Geldard’s philosophies align. This means skirting past Emerson’s Confucian influence and rather favoring his debt to Plato, Pythagoras, and the likes. Other times, however, he hits right on the mark, and Emerson’s spirituality is depicted in its true light. A worthwhile read as an entry point into Transcendentalism, but you’d be much better off reading Emerson himself and just trudging through the linguistic difficulty.

05/16/18: Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl, by Mary Mycio

“Wormwood Forest” by journalist Mary Mycio is one of the only and most detailed account of Chernobyl’s ecological impact and development, that is for people that aren’t professionals in the field of radioecology. Some 240 pages, this book gives a fairly comprehensive overview of the Ukrainian and Belorussian parts of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, analyzing everything from wildlife to water to resettled peoples. As anecdotal as it is informative, Mycio’s book offers a layman’s insight to what’s often considered a specialists’ problem.

If this weren’t the only book of its kind, I’d likely have given it three stars rather than four. But it is, and so it gets that extra star for its uniqueness. While Mycio has much in the way of information and riveting stories of wildlife encounters, her writing itself is very dry, and often swings from the overly-technical to the overtly personal, rather than existing in that happy medium between facts and opinion where most good journalism is. Even worse, the opinions she does express in the book are ones I often find disagreeable, though some readers may find otherwise. Still, the facts of it all make up for this, and the insight this book gives to one of the most unique places on the planet is invaluable.

05/02/18: Emergent Ecologies, by Eben Kirksey

A Top Pick of 2018

Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey is a work of multispecies ethnography that, marrying ecology with anthropology, seeks to look at the way life is thriving in landscapes generally thought of as forsaken to climate change. Examining ants in Panama, macaques in Florida, and a menagerie of many other colorful species relations, Kirksey paints a future for conservation science that, dismissing the popular apocalyptic narratives of current ecology, looks for the light at the end of the tunnel in the ways in which novel ecosystems are emerging in a shattered world.

Witty, engrossing, and insightful, Kirksey’s ethnography has many of the positives of the discipline, with few of the negatives. Though it still errs more than I would like on the side of abstract academia (we get it, you’ve read a lot of French dudes), I managed to juxtapose this with entertaining and informative thick description, and a language that allows one to grasp its arcane concepts with relative ease even if they are not familiar with them. Get past the jargon and this book will change the way you look at be current climate crises plaguing our planet. I know it changed perspectives for me.

04/01/18: Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey

A Top Pick of 2018

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey is another in America’s developing tradition of nature writing. Rather than the beauty of the mountains or the woods this time, however, Abbey’s words take us on an adventure through the deserts of Utah, exploring this unique world through the eyes of one whose politics lean toward the radical, whose philosophy is (for the most part) without spiritual embellishments, and whose language is simple enough for the meaning to not get lost amongst the jargon.

At the beginning of this book I had very low hopes, as from the get-go Abbey claimed that his account was going to try and get only at “the surface” of things. Fortunately for me, I learned as I read that this was a lie. With its scathing critiques against society, industrial tourism, cars, roads, and (though not as scathing as I’d like it) settler colonialism, Abbey’s account of his three seasons at Arches National Park is, right behind Walden, one of my favorite nature books that I have read to date. Written during the political upheaval and atomic fears of the 60s, Abbey is able to talk about big issues without using big words, and seems to embody much of the positives of the counterculture without many of the negatives. Maybe it’s because I’ve to date read so many authors who, erring on the liberal side, advocate for soft cookie-cutter capitalism free of civil unrest, but there was something invigorating about seeing right in the preface a call for active rebellion.

I don’t know, I don’t have much to say about this book. Except, of course, that it’s something everyone would be better off reading.

03/15/18: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold

Published posthumously, Sand County Almanac is the seminal work by American conservationist Aldo Leopold. Divided into three sections, this book starts where the likes of Muir and Thoreau left off, with deep readings of immediate nature, though this time through the eyes of conservation rather than preservation: for Leopold the land is a utility, but one that must be respected. The final section, “The Upshot,” is a philosophical treatise that in many ways helps set the stage for modern conservation ethics and contemporary nature-concepts.

It’s not possible to give this book anything less than a 5-Star rating. Here Leopold bridges the gap between Emerson and becomes the 20th century’s first true ecologist. Here he teaches us that nature is something more to be admired for the sake of admiration, but rather exists as something we are a part of and wholly dependent on.

03/11/18: Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation After Nature, by Jamie Lorimer

A work of anthropology by an associate professor of geography, “Wildlife in the Anthropocene” offers an alternative framework through which one can view nature. Obviously influenced by “The End of Nature,” this book rejects the concept of nature as a static and pristine object “out there” in favor of fluid and dynamic frameworks that see nature and city as interconnected entities, where other organisms carry just as much agency as we do. This, for Lorimer, leads to the conclusion that conservation is not a matter of science or biodiversity, but one of biopolitics, marred with such subjectivities as charisma, vertebrate bias, and commodification.

While this book is full of 5-Star concepts, it’s theories are page-after-page distorted by the language Lorimer uses. Academic words are thrown around everywhere even when layman’s words could be used, and Lorimer’s Marxist interpretations (along with the vast majority of thinkers he name-drops, from Deleuze to Heidegger) are tenuous at best. If Lorimer had decided to leave the thesaurus and his copy of “Anti-Oedipus” at home, then this book could have been one of those revolutionary works of environmentalism, right there next to “Silent Spring.” As it is, however, this 200-page jargon machine doesn’t stand the chance of ever escaping the ivory tower of academia.

02/14/18: Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies, by Thomas G. Andrews

A practice of “Deep History,” Andrews' “Coyote Valley” chronicles the history of a small slice of the Rocky Mountain National Park area from its original indigenous population to the modern era. Looking at the Nuche, the miners, the settlers, the conservationists, and so on, the book stands above all else as a testament to the immense changes man can make in small spaces.

I don’t have too terribly much to say on this book. The content, while riveting, is marred by the bone-dry tone of the author. Coming in expecting a piece on nature, I was disappointed to see it erred more on the side of history. Still, I am nonetheless grateful that I read it, and grateful how it’s deep history perspective has allowed me to add some more nuance to my own present nature-concepts.

02/12/18: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

A Top Pick of 2018

Part scientific study of snails, part meditations on illness and the human’s relationship with nature, “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating” by Elisabeth Bailey is as much a beautiful work of art as it is a work of prose. Bedridden for nearly a decade by a mysterious virus, Bailey finds herself trapped in a world of utter isolation. That is, until, a caretaker brings her a snail from the woods outside. This snail, small and slow as it may be, becomes for a year her connection to the wider world and her source of meaning in a life that has become entirely sedentary.

This book, in my opinion, is the perfect expression of Emerson’s conviction that “every natural fact is the symbol of a spiritual fact.” It is by studying not only the habits of her lone snail, but snails as a collective, that Bailey is able to sketch a portrait of what it means to be ill, what it means to be alone, what it means to be human. The empirical observations of snail life are interspersed with philosophical musings in a way that beckons to the primordial nature writings of Thoreau (though much less pretentious).

The greatest part about this book, though, is that it’s short length means that every sentence is as savory as the last. Bailey knows what it means to cut the fluff, and so there is nothing in here that shouldn’t be. The thing is so short that one could finish it in a few hours, and yet the impact is so deep that upon turning that final page one will likely realize this is a book they’ll never forget.

02/03/18: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert

“The Sixth Extinction” chronicles the narrative of well, the sixth extinction, or the anthropocene extinction as it’s popularly becoming called. This extinction is caused by a multitude of environmental changes, but those changes all flow from a single source: us. I’m this book, Kolbert starts first with a historical perspective on the idea of extinction, and goes forward in time to our current era, and havoc we are wreaking on the world around us.

The most impressive thing about this book, besides the obvious fascination of the subject itself, is Kolbert’s voice. A trained journalist, she fills the book with as much intrigue as the best of news articles. Next to that comes the science and history behind every case (the chapters are divided into “case studies” of sorts, with each case being a different extinct species) studied. The further through the book one reads, the closer to our time the extinctions become, until the last chapter where Kolbert speculated that our journey of destruction may end with us driving one final species to extinction: ourselves.

The Sixth Extinction is a book I’d recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in biology, geology, paleontology, ecology, or the philosophy of what it means to be human. Even if you don’t enjoy any of these subject, read it anyway, and Kolbert will teach you to find all of them just as fascinating as she does.

01/18/18: VALIS, by Philip K. Dick

Not quite a work of fiction, not remotely a work of reality, Valis is the first book in PKD’s trilogy, and, while masked as a science fiction story, is in many ways an account of Dick’s supposedly real-life encounter with the title character.

It’s hard to review this book simply because it is unlike any other work of fiction I’ve read. Only perhaps a third of it is plot and characters, while the other two thirds is a religious tract. Still, it was a thrilling read from beginning to end, even if at times I got bored of Dick’s exegesis excerpts.

12/14/17: The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, by Florence Williams

“The Nature Fix” by Florence Williams is a work of nonfiction that explores the loss of nature through urbanization, and what this loss means for us. She does this by looking at the effects nature has on the individual and how such effects change depending on how long one is in nature (for example, 30 minutes can be relaxing while a week retreat can be life changing). She does this through the lens of a deeply factual and scientific perspective, though that does not keep her from often waxing poetic about the smell of trees or sight of natural fractals.

The first thing that struck me about this book was how much I found the author’s tone unbearable. Williams, being a white, middle-class and middle-aged mother speaks from a point of privilege, and does so frequently, often ignoring in her analyses things like socioeconomic inequalities and institutionalized racism (things that keep large swaths of the population from experiencing nature) similarly, her adoration of Japan and Korea in he first few chapters comes off at times as straight fetishization, and she ignores completely the root causes of our current nature plight.

Despite these intense shortcomings, Williams redeems herself some in the last few chapters, especially the epilogue where she constructs a “Nature dose pyramid.” Likewise, the book shines through and through in one particular area: the facts. Williams draws frequently from surveys and scientific studies, thus solidifying her stance in rigid science. Pulling from these studies is the book’s greatest strength.

Overall “The Nature Fix” gives what it delivers, though that delivery is somewhat disappointing. It’s a quick fix if you’re looking for a comprehensive review of the subject, but you’d probably be better off reading the various authors and studies she namedrops instead (I know I would)

08/29/17: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris

"Waking Up" by Sam Harris attempts to examine religious experience through a sort of "middle path" between accepting such experiences and their metaphysical claims wholeheartedly (as religion tends to do), and outright dismissing them as nonsense that doesn't deserve attention (as can occur in the scientific community). To do this, Harris utilizes neuroscience, current conceptions of consciousness, and a multitude of Buddhist ideas to construct a framework through which to view ecstatic experiences, and reaches the following conclusion through that framework: the idea of a self is an illusion, and this is a fact that be realized directly through meditation, the use of mind altering substances, and near death experiences. While all three forms of experience are talked about in the book, meditation tends to take the main stage, as, according to Harris, it is the most effective way to realize the illusion of a self without falling into the trap of fictional metaphysical ideas. From this he goes on to construct a framework through which secular individuals can experience spirituality in their lives, but without the dogma of religion.

Before I say anything else about this book I feel like I should get something off my chest: I don't really like Sam Harris that much. I agree with many of the points he raises in this book and think he's a brilliant neuroscientist, but his opinions on religion are often grossly reductionistic and almost always offensive (not to mention his fetishization of "Eastern" religion in many parts of the book). That being said, I feel like there is a great deal of truth to what he says in this book, both about the self being an illusion and about how it's not only possible but that it's NECESSARY to divorce spirituality from dogma if we ever want to be able to coherently talk about religious experience. I felt in a lot of ways that this book summed up what I've for years been trying to say about such experiences but could never quite articulate. Harris uses his middle ground on religious experience to further another of the book's main points, a point that he claims can be realized when such transcendence is experienced outside the lens of religion: that by recognizing ego as an illusion of the mind, we can come to realize, through intensive practice and constant reminders, if there is no self then we are not our thoughts and therefore it is possible to let ourselves not be controlled by the things we think. And honestly, is there anything more liberating than that?

08/09/17: "A", by Louis Zukofsky

"A" is a 24-part epic poem by Objectivist (not Ayn Rand objectivism) poet Louis Zukofsky, in which Zukofsky tries to create an experimental work which captures his life as it is lived. As a consequence poem is filled to the brim with references to Zukofsky's multiple interests, ranging from the writings of Marx and Adam Smith to the music of Bach and Handel, and ends with "A 24," which is four different pieces of Zukofsky's writings set to the music of Handel.

I honestly don't have much good to say on this piece. The two-star rating expresses more than enough that I didn't really enjoy it (as does the fact that it took me so long to finally finish trudging through). While at first many of the poem's experiments with language feel exciting and the insight into Zukofsky's life illuminating, after some 50 pages or so it becomes stale, and the writing just feels superfluous, self-indulgent, unnecessarily esoteric, and for the most part nonsensical (seriously, there are whole sections that read like the predictive text on an iPhone). In his attempt to capture the world he lives in, Zukofsky falls prey to a bad case of intellectual masturbation that leaves much of this poem unreadable (either that or I have missed some fundamental point of the poem). Even section 24 seems in my eye to fail at its goal, being as it requires five separate readers for it to be realized in its fullest (one for each of the four voices, then I fifth for the sheet music), though the concept itself seems a brilliant one.

It isn't all bad, though. Certain portions of the poem (such as section 11) feel beautiful and are a joy that I could read again and again. The differences between these sections and others are that, while still heavily experimental, they offer just enough clarity to decipher the tenderness they contain. Unfortunately, portions such as this are few and far between.

07/31/17: The Complete Poems, by Walt Whitman (edited by Francis Murphy)

I first encountered Walt Whitman through my reading of a first-edition version of Leaves of Grass back in April. What captivated me then captivates me now, and that is the pure personality behind Whitman's tradition-defying poems. This book offers the "Deathbed" edition of Leaves of Grass along with other non-Leaves WW poems. While when Whitman shines he shines like no other, reading his complete works has taught me that he is also capable of boring one to sleep. Given however that he wrote some 400+ poems I believe it can only be expected that some will be duds, and besides the great poems far make up for the ones that are lacking.

Perhaps just as important as the poems, in this book are the some 200 pages of notes in the back and an introduction in the front, both of which shed light on the history of each poem and allow the reader an insight into how as Whitman aged and the nation changed (this being the period of the Civil War) so did the intentions and meanings behind his poems.

While I have several issues with Whitman and those aspects of him expressed in some of his poems (such as his praising of an America that at the time deserved no applause, and his rampant egoism), I also believe that there is a reason he's been remembered the way he has. Whitman, despite all his faults, was able to, in perfect Transcendentalist praxis, break away from the trappings of the old world and create a work that was truly original, and in the process help cement for America its own poetic legacy. And while his poems did not overturn organized religion and create a religion of Personality, nor did they free the culture from patriarchy and the suppression of sex, I believe that the best of Whitman's works accomplish easily at least two of his numerous goals: they stir life within the reader, inspiring instead of lecturing, urging the reader to find within themselves that which is their truth, and secondly they document in complexity the life and thoughts of a single soul living at a single point in time. Whitman's poetry was an effort to reach out across space and time and make a connection to the reader, and with his leaves he has done that and so much more.

07/06/17: The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin (introduction by David Priestland)

Conquest of Bread is a book by Peter Kropotkin in which he establishes the vision of a future anarcho-communist society, and defends from criticism how such a society would function and sustain itself without use of state or market to incentivize and organize work.

If, before reading this book, my interest in anarchy was minuscule, fleeting interest is no longer the case. Kropotkin explains with efficiency and simplicity nearly all conceivable issues one could raise, and along with this the book, despite being over 100 years old, has aged so well in terms of its references to science and technological advancement and labor automation that it almost reads as if it could've been written today (though it does lack any real compelling intersectional theory). I believe that if this were the famous radical text that was known by all rather than the Communist Manifesto, then there would not only be a great deal more people enthused at leftism, but also there would be far less people who hear the word "communism" and recoil with the terror Cold War era propaganda has instilled in their heads. And in a world that's becoming more and more disenfranchised with not only capitalism but political bureaucracy on the whole, in a world that has ability to harness both wind and solar energy and emancipate ourselves from fossil fuels, in a world where bioengineering has made the idea (if poverty is removed and equity established) of food scarcity absurd, in a world as connected as ours is in this age of information, Kropotkin's work is more relevant than ever as a vision of a future that, though utopic, is very much achievable if passion for change were strong enough.

06/24/17: Infinite Jest, by David foster Wallace

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a gargantuan novel which doesn't so much have a plot as it has narrative fragments of (dozens of) character's lives. The three main characters that we follow are Hal, a tennis prodigy attending an academy for tennis prodigies; Gately, a recovering opiate addict who helps manage a halfway house next door to the tennis academy; and Remy, a Canadian in search of the master copy of a film which is deadly in its addictiveness. The book weaves in and out of these lives and many others without much a point other than to watch them unfold.

This is a very hard book to review, and an even harder book to give five stars (though I also can't bring myself to give it a lower score). It is by no means a perfect book. In fact it's one of the most flawed books I've read in a long time. Wallace's writing is so purple it's nearly unreadable at times, and about 250 of the book's first 300 pages could've easily been cut without doing any harm to the novel's splendor. There is, also, the issue of Wallace's frequent sexism and even more frequent racism in the novel (for example, in a handful of scenes Wallace commits what could only be considered the literary analogue of blackface).

Bar all these enormous flaws I still give this book 5 stars because when it shines it SHINES, and does so unlike any other work of fiction I've read. While at its worst Infinite Jest is reprehensible, at its best it is a faultless mirror of our own humanity and all our flaws and all our gaps and all our attempts to repair those flaws and bridge those gaps. At its best Infinite Jest is Wallace bleeding with sincerity and emotion onto page unlike any other author. And Infinite Jest's lack of a plot, though at times confounding, is part of what makes it so great: without any grand goal to work toward the characters of the novel reveal themselves not in heroic acts, but rather in living their lives as they are on a day-to-day basis. Though not always the most thrilling read, this makes them much like us in that we also have no true goals besides those we set for ourselves, and sometimes upon achieving those goals (as happens too to some of the novel's characters) we find that they weren't really ever what we wanted, that there still exists within us that aching hole of desire for a thing we can't name. Infinite Jest acknowledges that hole through its lack of closure or predicable narrative, and in doing so makes us feel less alone in our aching, makes us feel more human.

05/30/17: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margret Atwood is a dystopian novel which takes place in a hyper-religious, hyper-patriarchal society which many right-wing politicians would likely find utopic, and tells the story of Offred, a handmaid whose job it is to provide a child for her commander.

The book provides not only one of the more realistic (though still improbable) ideas of a dystopian future, but also insightful commentary on gender politics of the current day and of the time of the book's publication (1985 I think). Through interesting use of flashbacks to the days that brought about this dark future Atwood manages to create a world that, despite being contained only in 300 pages, seems every bit as vivid as those crafted by fantasy authors.

While it's setting and history are astounding, this novel also has the fatal flaw found in all dystopian novels in that nothing really happens. We follow along uninteresting characters as they go through their uninteresting tasks, just willing them to do something to advance the plot rather than sit there passively and let the plot advance them. In this department The Handmaid's Tale is another in a long line of historically significant but rather boring dystopians, ranking up there with books like 1984 and Brave New World, which also give us cardboard-cutout characters and little to no plot just so they can spend all their time crafting a spooky future.

05/23/17: The Ego and Its Own, by Max Stirner (edited by David Leopold)

Ego and It's Own by Max Stirner is an essential read for anyone interested in leftist politics. In this book Stirner attacks just about every human institution from God, Man, morality, state, and even altruism, stating that nothing in this world truly exists but the world itself and us, our egos. This advocates for an anarchist way of living in which one disregards all senses of collectivism and common good for pursuit of the individual wants and needs, culminating to Stirner's stance that property is that which one can aptly defend, and that what one has might over belongs to them if they wish to take it.

While many of Stirner's points about the social construction of the world around us are in fact true and significant, a bit more of his work than I am comfortable with dips into territory later explored by Ayn Rand. More specifically his statement that it is the fault of the poor that the rich are rich is one which seems to ignore the complexities that go into the dividing of rich and poor. While I feel that many of the things he says are true I don't agree with all of them, but rather find myself thinking that certain lies (such as humanitarianism) are better than certain truths.

04/05/17: Leaves of Grass (1855 Edition), by Walt Whitman

Every now and again you come across a book that, once finished, you realize will have a permanent impact on how you view the world. Leaves of Grass is, for me, the first book in a long, long time to do that. In eleven short poems (and one long one) Whitman manages to capture the thrill of existing better than anyone else, while at the same time shattering all barriers that separate our conceptions of life and death, existence and nonexistence. Maybe it's just cause I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, but reading Leaves of Grass felt more like an exploration of the human experience than a set of unmetered poems.

04/02/17: The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx (introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones)

It feels strange to write a review on a book like this, impossible even, so I'll keep things relatively short. Three stars for the manifesto itself and a fourth star for the 200-page introduction which gives the reader more than enough insight on the manifesto's creation.

As for the manifesto itself, I found the first two sections equal parts compelling and important. After that, though, it felt somewhat underwhelming. Nonetheless it's the essential must-read for anyone getting into leftist politics given how much has taken from it.

03/11/17: The Secret History of Twin Peaks, by Mark Frost

Not much to say on this one. Not the most well-written book by a long shot (so much of it just dragged), but still decent and an absolute must-read for fans of the show.

01/08/17: Bird Box, by Josh Malerman

Bird Box is one of those thrillers that once it gets going it's hard to put down. Taking place in a world where to see is to die, the novel places the reader in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is both more frightening and more familiar than disease, nuclear winter, or good old-fashioned zombies.

While pacing and setting and plot are all areas which the book excels at, I found it's characters to be a bit of letdown. Though not two-dimensional they're not quite fully three-dimensional either, existing somewhere between cliches and authentic human beings (I could tell, for example, which role each character was mean to fulfill almost as soon as they were introduced). This leads to a lot of predictability in their motives and action which detracts some from the suspense of the book.

Nonetheless Bird Box remains a fantastic read, adding something fresh to a genre that has been exhausted of just about every trope imaginable. Be warned, though: once you pick the book up you won't want to put it down till you reach the end.

01/02/17: Roadside Picnic, by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky

A hauntingly bleak novel which manages to avoid the pitfalls of science fiction at the time while delivering a dark, ironic message about human nature. Rather than bringing humanity to the forefront of greatness and elitism as most SF novels do, Roadside Picnic focuses on mundane characters and takes an approach more in the vein of Lovecraft's cosmicism to tell us that no, we are not all-powerful, that in the grand scheme of things intelligent life would regard us as no different than we regard animals, that we should fear not some invading race but rather the impulses of our own species.

This book has few noticeable flaws, and many of the flaws which I did come across could be attributed to the limits of translation rather than fault of the text itself. At times I found myself wishing it was longer, that it went into more detail about the Visit and the Zone and all the other mysteries it only hints at. In the end, though, I think this lack of explanation works in the novel's favor no matter how frustrating it is. Sometimes in life horrific things happen without a why or a how, and no matter how hard we try to rationalize these disasters there is no way to do so without putting our own anthropocentrism at risk. Roadside Picnic is a depiction of just that.

12/15/16: The Giant's House, by Elizabeth McCracken

The Giant's House reads more like a character study than a novel, and I mean that as a compliment. Every face introduced in the book seems real enough to touch and the ways they interact with one another are magical. This makes it unfocused at times in terms of plot direction, but then again so is life. The best way I can describe this book is that it offers a wonderful world of people for the reader to get lost in. A vacation into others' lives, and a great one at that.

12/06/16: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxely

Though there are many points which Brave New World addresses that I find both profound and significant, the prose style itself, much like 1984, leaves something to be desired. Should it be read? Yes, but only for its social significance, not for the quality of the writing.