Reviews and Comments

possm

possm@bookwyrm.tilde.zone

Joined 1 year, 8 months ago

silly little guy he/it

My languages in order of proficiency: German French English Chinese. The reason I read so much in English is only because most pirated epubs are in English. I have no consistent grading system, the stars are based on vibes, don't read into it. I am not a critic; my "reviews" simply document what it was like for me to read the book in question.

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bell hooks: All About Love (EBook, 2018, HarperCollins Publishers) 5 stars

All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness …

I know I'll come back to this book again and again

5 stars

All About Love is everything Radikale Zärtlichkeit fails to be. Courageous, risky, introspective. As usual, bell hooks' writing is clear and deep.

Şeyda Kurt: Radikale Zärtlichkeit (German language, 2021, HarperCollins) 3 stars

What's radical?

3 stars

For the hype this book has gotten among leftists, it is pretty underwhelming. The best way I can think to describe it is: risk-averse. Too cowardly for hot takes, just the mildest, tamest takes, no deep interaction with other texts, only shallow commenting and paraphrasing (of Marx, Fromm, hooks...), no originality. I did like the autobiographical bits; if those had taken up more space, if Kurt had taken the risk of getting more personal, more introspective, that would have made up for the theoretical shallowness of the text.

Severe case of libfem

4 stars

The author's liberal views are annoying, but besides that this is a good read. She deconstructs the myth that Alice Schwarzer has built around herself. She is good at contextualizing Schwarzer's views in the broader field of feminist theories. The book also offers a fairly detailed and entertaining history of (esp. German) feminism.

Verena Stefan: Häutungen (German language, 2015, FISCHER Taschenbuch) 3 stars

Personal intimate 2d wave feminist literature

3 stars

This book meant a lot to me when I first read it as a young 20-something coming to understand my lived experience through a feminist lens. Rereading it now, it feels less intimately connected to me but remains an interesting piece of 70s feminist literature.

reviewed Affinität und informelle Organisation (Hourriya. Internationalistische anarchistische Pamphlets, #2)

Affinität und informelle Organisation (Paperback, German language, 2017, Hourriya) 3 stars

Partly interesting ideas, bad form

3 stars

A small collection of insurrectionalist texts. I found them interesting. One thing I find valuable about insurrectionalist theory is its radical critique of organization. I may not agree with the conclusion they arrive at, but the process of really questioning why we need organization, which aspects of organization are useful and which can be discarded, is valuable in my opinion. The texts are well selected I think. But the form is lacking. Either the translation is really bad, or the texts were badly written to begin with. It's more likely that the problem lies with the translation, since all three texts have this problem.

Alexander Neupert-Doppler: Utopie (Paperback, Schmetterling Verlag GmbH) 3 stars

Good historical overview

3 stars

History of the idea of utopia within (mostly German) leftist thought, from the early socialists to Habermas etc. The focus on German thinkers is justified because the book's target audience is the German Left. I would have liked more connection to political praxis. The intro and the outro reference praxis, but the rest of the book stays within the realm of theory. It's not super fun to read, but pretty good and educative.

reviewed Judentum by Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Religionen der Welt)

Dan Cohn-Sherbok: Judentum (Paperback, German language, 2001) 3 stars

Good primer on the history and practice of Judaism

3 stars

I read this little book hoping to patch up my general knowledge about Judaism, and I feel like my expectations have been met. The larger half of the book is a history of Judaism. It does its job quite well and is reasonably well written. The second, shorter half is concerned with religious practice, this part is a little less entertaining, a little more chaotic, it feels like the author was struggling deciding what to include and what to leave out. All in all this book met, but did not exceed, my expectations. Solid 3/5 stars. Also little sidenote: the author is weirdly concerned with demographics and birthrates. You'll find sentences like: "mixed marriages lead to a loss of thousands of Jews every year" like my guy that is some crazy phrasing. Anyway. I'd like to find a similar little book for the other world religions, especially Islam which I …

Feng Youlan: A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (1997) 4 stars

Classic

4 stars

It's not that short. There's some very early-20th-century theories: for example, one explains the differences between the Greek and Chinese philosophical traditions being the result of geographic and economic conditions (maritime merchants vs landbound farmers). When taken with a big grain of salt these sorts of theories are fun to read, I simply take them as storytelling and not as scientific. The book is geared towards an audience that knows the Western philosophers and is discovering the Chinese.

Jörg Bergstedt: Suizidalien (German language, 2015, Seitenhieb-Verlag) 2 stars

Pretty bad

2 stars

This is a story written by an anarchist, set in a near-ish future where assisted suicide is legal. The protagonist is spending her last few days alive in an enclosed facility where everyone gets to wait three days for the date of their assisted suicide. The facility is described as a utopian space where social relations are kind and free, with the protagonist wondering why society outside can't be the same way. Bergstedt obviously wrote this story for the purpose of describing his ideas about how society should and shouldn't be. It's a very 18th century kind of approach but ok, why not. The problem is that Bergstedt isn't Voltaire and his prose is pretty bad. His dialogues suck because he gives all his characters the same voice, they all talk the same. His worldbuilding is muddled: the world outside the suicide space serves as its negative counterpart because the …

Isabelle Robinet: Histoire du taoïsme des origines au XIVe siècle (French language, 1991, Editions du Cerf) 3 stars

Another history of Daoism

3 stars

Reading this right after the Kohn one, it's impossible not to compare. This one covers much of the same ground but in more detail, it is less didactic and more centered on texts. I enjoyed it well enough but did find some passages tedious. I think it is more interesting for people deeper in the material; less beginner friendly.

Umberto Eco: Wie man eine wissenschaftliche Abschlußarbeit schreibt. Doktor-, Diplom- und Magisterarbeit in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Paperback, German language, UTB Uni-Taschenbücher Verlag) 4 stars

Entertaining and instructive

4 stars

Fascinating seeing how the academic research and writing process worked before personal computers and the internet. Even if much of the more specific advice in this book is obsolete in the digital age, it is still worth knowing e.g. the logic behind a bibliographical entry (even if nowadays you'll get Zotero to generate it for you). The more general, broad advice on how to write, how to find a topic, what attitude to have towards your work and others' works that you cite, etc, is still applicable today. Eco uses tons of examples, real and fictional, that really help get an idea of what a dissertation in the humanities actually is. They help make the whole book tangible and entertaining. Good book all in all, would recommend to pretty much every humanities student.

Livia Kohn: Daoism and Chinese Culture (Paperback, University of Hawaii Press) 4 stars

Good introduction to religious Daoism

4 stars

I read this book as research for a class. It serves as a good thorough intro to the history and contents of Daoism viewed as a still-ongoing current of religious practice. The editing is pretty bad in this edition, there's a lot of typos. I didn't find that too distracting though.