Reviews and Comments

I love Patrick Freyne's column in the Irish Times and got this when it came out, then kept putting it down the list. It is now in my hands, ready to be read.

This book is a response to the Invisible Committee's previous work, The Coming Insurrection. It revisits some of that book, which I have not read and don't fully understand the links. However, as a standalone work, this is interesting if often overly dogmatic. Laying out the entanglements between political, technological and social power with a pantagruelist humour throughout. Not really eye-opening but it draws some interesting connections, the most interesting being the presentation of crisis as a political tool, something that feels increasingly relevant.

I love Lispector's writing and it has been a while since I read any of their work so got this out from the library.

Quoted in Moten & Harney's All Incomplete and I loved the quote so have added this.

This short book covers more ground than it ought to. In six chapters, Putnam draws connections between photographic media, camgirls, streamed acts of political resistance and COVID-19 performance artworks through online media. It is a breadth of information and interesting connections, underpinned by the socio-technological philosophy of Gilbert Simondon.

Putnam is a thoughtful author, and leaves scope for different readings and space for different bodies to understand this book. The relationship between artist->camera->transfer infrastructure->screen->audience as it has unfolded over the past 30 years is taken into consideration and leaves lots of room for thought. As a research project, it is comprehensive and clear, and an enjoyable read.

Starting this early. A Christmas present from my partner's parents, for the darker winter nights.

Heaney's most famous collection is split into two parts, written when he was young. The second is the one he is often best known for: poems of the Troubles in Northern Ireland that reveal the harsh realities of trying to live in those times. Most of these, and some more nationalist moments in the first part, haven't aged particularly well.

The ones that do work very well are the poems about nature, or those many about the lives of the humans that became bog bodies. These are amazing works that thrum with the voice of a poet who deserved every accolade.

Moten and Harney always bring me to new places with their writing. A friend told me this had come out a couple of years ago, and I put it on a list. I boight it last year so am finally giving it some time.

Excited to read this book, by an academic who I admire and a friend who I value.

I loved Ní Dochartaigh's Thin Places and looked forward to her next. My partner gifted this to me for my birthday in 2023.

Annie Ernaux explains how shame has influenced her life in a short memoir. It begins with the climax: 'My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon'. From there, Ernaux explores her rural childhood in a post-war French village, and how this event and the fear of community shame stayed with her even nearly 50 years later.

It's hard to criticise something so personal, but the language is a little mechanical, perhaps because of the numbness created over time. It is also hard to understand the motivation for the book being published (I often feel this with memoirs so it may be my bias), but it did paint an interesting picture of a community that lived on gossip and thus hid their lives, something I have seen in my own life.

Long-term fan of McCarthy and I loved the companion book The Passenger so got this from the library.