Exhausted anarchist and school abolitionist who can be found at nerdteacher.com where I muse about school and education-related things, and all my links are here. My non-book posts are mostly at @whatanerd@treehouse.systems, occasionally I hide on @whatanerd@eldritch.cafe, or you can email me at n@nerdteacher.com. [they/them]
I was a secondary literature and humanities teacher who has swapped to being a tutor, so it's best to expect a ridiculously huge range of books.
And yes, I do spend a lot of time making sure book entries are as complete as I can make them. Please send help.
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This book addresses the tensions of existing theories and practices of inclusive education from an …
I don't have a lot of hope for this book because it's already off to a bad start with improper historiography and some questionable choices of phrasing.
Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its …
I cannot say that I enjoyed this novel, but I found the writing compelling enough to continue reading. However, the nagging feeling about how awful the representation of mental health is and its implications in acts of violence is a bit...
In a lot of ways, it is obvious that this negative perspective is the point of the perspectives these men have, but there's a lot of... I just can't square the circle, if I'm honest. I don't need an explicit statement telling me something is 'bad' or 'inappropriate', but it feels like very little was done within the narrative to speak to that fact? When it does happen, it seems to immediately flip back to stereotypical understandings and misrepresentations.
Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its …
... I don't know where this book is going with its narrative, but I am prepared for the worst.
Tokyo, 1869. It is the dawn of the Meiji era in Japan, but the scars …
One of the things I most appreciated is that this story is structured in a manner as to be multiple stories that all connect, so it feels like you're reading multiple short stories that initially appear mostly disconnected until too many connections keep making you (like the audience stand-in Kawaji) think that there's something more.
Some of the cases, however, don't seem possible to solve on your own with any of the information provided. A couple of them feel like there is foreshadowing, but others feel like there's just... no way to solve it using the information provided.
A collection of David Graeber's essays in a book.
Super easy to read this book when you've read all but one essay in it multiple times already. (Or, in some cases, have come back to the essay multiple times, skimming it for the piece of information you remember existing within its text.)
This book frustrates me, much like many of the David Graeber projects that have come out since his death. There's a hollowness to it that feels like someone trying to build a person up into some kind of Anarchist God (or Anthropologist God), and it's exhausting. Certainly, there must be more people out there than this one man who often and frequently neglected whole swathes of criticism that would've fueled his analyses. I'm sure there must be more people out there than the one guy who—though his work was engaging, sometimes insightful, and interesting—frequently extrapolated his more modern examples to beyond useless because he rarely looked at …
Super easy to read this book when you've read all but one essay in it multiple times already. (Or, in some cases, have come back to the essay multiple times, skimming it for the piece of information you remember existing within its text.)
This book frustrates me, much like many of the David Graeber projects that have come out since his death. There's a hollowness to it that feels like someone trying to build a person up into some kind of Anarchist God (or Anthropologist God), and it's exhausting. Certainly, there must be more people out there than this one man who often and frequently neglected whole swathes of criticism that would've fueled his analyses. I'm sure there must be more people out there than the one guy who—though his work was engaging, sometimes insightful, and interesting—frequently extrapolated his more modern examples to beyond useless because he rarely looked at the context in which those examples fit (a superb irony for an anthropologist who had careful consideration for the nuance of the past).
At best, his work regarding patriarchy was surface level, and I don't care how many people try to convince me otherwise while highlighting the works in which he showcases those very surface level critiques. "The Bully's Pulpit," which is present in this book, is a perfect example of not understanding how the targeting of Bosniak boys and men over the age of 15 is part of a patriarchal problem, nor does it really explore why it was that Bosnian Serbs could successfully target them and pretend they weren't engaging in genocide, but it is also a perfect example of how that that very idea he had around boys and men can be extrapolated and misattributed by the "male loneliness epidemic" manarchists.
There is one "new" essay, which I have not found anywhere online. It's "The Revolt of the Caring Classes." Perhaps someone should lift it and post it to TAL, ensuring that the collection is complete. Perhaps it's good as a free ebook that collates a lot of his most commonly referenced essays, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend someone pay for this (saw a hardback in my local bookstore for €32, which is a bit pricy for things that've been widely distributed multiple times). Other essays included were turned into longer works (such as "There Never Was a West," which fueled much of what became The Dawn of Everything and "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs," which became Bullshit Jobs).
It's baffling that this is the choice that would be made, either by the editors or the publisher. Certainly, it would've been more interesting to engage in his unpublished works over these often referenced pieces.
An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.
So much of what she writes can be easily broken down if you know even a glimmer of US history with regards to: child labour laws, the introduction of birth certificates, and the introduction of compulsory schooling. She wants to make some kind of point without any of that contextualisation, which is ludicrous.
This woman writes as if she believes that she's the modern day Mother Jones, which is pretty funny. Also, this book is so sparse on info in a lot of places that I haven't stopped feeling like it was a "make a quick buck on the pandemic topic" book.
An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.
So much of what she writes can be easily broken down if you know even a glimmer of US history with regards to: child labour laws, the introduction of birth certificates, and the introduction of compulsory schooling. She wants to make some kind of point without any of that contextualisation, which is ludicrous.
An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.
I am really struggling with the introduction to this book. In my most charitable, all I can say is that she wrote it hastily in order for her and her publishers to meet a deadline that would best allow them to profit from pandemic books.
But there are some lines and paragraphs that really stick out like sore thumbs, like how we're fortunate that hundreds of children died because it could've been much worse. Idk, I think any children dying to a pandemic is awful. I would've also thought she'd put some numbers up next to those for how still-living children were impacted by the loss of their caregivers because they died (which maybe she'll do... at some point?).
But there's a lot of attempts to justify the existence of schools because of all the responsibilities they have (but shouldn't) without even a glimmer of asking whether that makes any …
I am really struggling with the introduction to this book. In my most charitable, all I can say is that she wrote it hastily in order for her and her publishers to meet a deadline that would best allow them to profit from pandemic books.
But there are some lines and paragraphs that really stick out like sore thumbs, like how we're fortunate that hundreds of children died because it could've been much worse. Idk, I think any children dying to a pandemic is awful. I would've also thought she'd put some numbers up next to those for how still-living children were impacted by the loss of their caregivers because they died (which maybe she'll do... at some point?).
But there's a lot of attempts to justify the existence of schools because of all the responsibilities they have (but shouldn't) without even a glimmer of asking whether that makes any sense or what we could do instead.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of …
Content warning I just have to spoil some things in order to actually talk about the few interesting elements in an otherwise obnoxious book.
I find this book... frustrating. The ending it has just feels like it comes out of nowhere, like the story just... stopped because the author was over it, like it was the last chapter in a fanfiction that someone wanted to stop because they were tired but kept persisting because someone else bothered them to do so.
And I find the use of the characters' secrets a bit... boring. Many are predictable in ways that kind of make me want to roll my eyes, while others are predictable in a manner of it not being telegraphed well in advance but the expected response is still, "Oh, of course that's what happens."
If anything was less frustrating it was the fact that liberal-coded values weren't upheld as being inherently positive. The final plan that the main cast enacts fails completely because they are... too beholden to doing justice that is just so toothless. "We'll call for a press conference and drag every media outlet into one place!" They even invite someone who claimed she was 'used' by the villain, telling her exactly what the plan was! Just so she could "also face some justice" that would never come, and that person works with the villain to help slaughter every person in the room so they could never report on it. The plan is an entire failure, and I kind of wish there was some kind of conversation around that point...
... but you can't have a conversation when it feels like you just threw the book at the publisher because you didn't want to write it anymore. I don't even want an explicit conversation, but having at least one scene where there is even a glimmer of recognition for the failure that could happen... Sometimes you need that, especially when that failure might be the point.
It's so annoying. I love the concept for what this story is, but I also just... kept feeling like I didn't know why I should care about anything. I wasn't invested in the relationships I was told to be invested in; I wasn't invested in the characters that I probably should've been (especially when they're going to be outed as being the most terrifying of vampires and the person who was made into the reason for a huge part of the plot)... I could barely care about Jin and Flick's little blossoming romance because I just... couldn't really see why I should care about them? And part of it is just that everyone felt so flat and boring and tedious.
Edit: Oh, I see. It has a sequel, which explains its poor ending. But even for a sequel, this did not make me have a desire to read the next one.
From Goodreads: Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of …
I mean, it's obvious that this man is an excruciatingly racist piece of shit, but holy shit.
In 2011, we knew that the Broken Windows Theory was wrong and that Wilson/Kelling had misrepresented it with full intent to support racist policing. Pinker doesn't seem to care that Zimbardo's original experiment never supported the Broken Windows Theory and talks about it as if it were truth. Granted, this chapter is also one in which he cites Charles Murray and Francis Fukuyama, so I can't be surprised he's a fan of it.
In terms of history, he has never engaged with anything beyond what little he seems to have learned from coffee table books (which he even explicitly points to as his inspiration for a chapter on torture). We knew in 2011 that the use of the Iron Maiden and similar contraptions, like the Virgin of Nuremberg, were largely believed to be …
I mean, it's obvious that this man is an excruciatingly racist piece of shit, but holy shit.
In 2011, we knew that the Broken Windows Theory was wrong and that Wilson/Kelling had misrepresented it with full intent to support racist policing. Pinker doesn't seem to care that Zimbardo's original experiment never supported the Broken Windows Theory and talks about it as if it were truth. Granted, this chapter is also one in which he cites Charles Murray and Francis Fukuyama, so I can't be surprised he's a fan of it.
In terms of history, he has never engaged with anything beyond what little he seems to have learned from coffee table books (which he even explicitly points to as his inspiration for a chapter on torture). We knew in 2011 that the use of the Iron Maiden and similar contraptions, like the Virgin of Nuremberg, were largely believed to be myth because we could find no contemporary evidence of their use... just a lot of things from later historical periods after that claimed it existed or was used. Pinker doesn't even bring this up.
From Goodreads: Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of …
I mean, it's obvious that this man is an excruciatingly racist piece of shit, but holy shit.
In 2011, we knew that the Broken Windows Theory was wrong and that Wilson/Kelling had misrepresented it with full intent to support racist policing. Pinker doesn't seem to care that Zimbardo's original experiment never supported the Broken Windows Theory.
In terms of history, he has never engaged with anything beyond what little he seems to have learned from coffee table books (which he even explicitly points to as his inspiration for a chapter on torture). We knew in 2011 that the use of the Iron Maiden and similar contraptions, like the Virgin of Nuremberg, were largely believed to be myth because we could find no contemporary evidence of their use... just a lot of things from later historical periods after that claimed it existed or was used. Pinker doesn't even bring this up.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of …
I'm not entirely ... disliking it, but I'm still getting a very large "You fucked me over, so I'm going to fuck you over using this system" vibe that I'm just not keen on.
Am hoping for some kind of examination of the illogical structure of maintaining the colonial structures, even when done in a "decolonial" manner.
From Goodreads: Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of …
The number of dog whistles is just... So fucking many. This is not surprising, but it is just... whew.
He managed a citation that included BOTH Fukuyama and Murray. Not only did he cite them both INDIVIDUALLY, but one of the citations is them AT THE SAME TIME. What the hell.
And it's a serious citation. It's not a critique-based citation. It's a citation to prove the point and just... WHAT.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of …
Concept seems cool, but some writing feels really obnoxious in some regards. Like, lower-class vampires are really being used as as an allegory for some kind of marginalised demographic, and I'm guessing... queerness? Though it also sometimes seems to be race... But overwhelmingly, it's giving me a vibe of "any," but queerness comes to mind with the fact that two non-vampires are running a teahouse that also caters for vampires and creates a "safe space" for them to be themselves (like gay bars) and profiting off them. While it also does a lot of anti-colonial writing? And it hasn't really hit any notes to point out that this is an inherent contradiction?
Also, I'm kind of tired of the "we'll get ours" kind of stories that end up with people working simultaneously within the system and outside of it, since the former seems to be the most important and receives …
Concept seems cool, but some writing feels really obnoxious in some regards. Like, lower-class vampires are really being used as as an allegory for some kind of marginalised demographic, and I'm guessing... queerness? Though it also sometimes seems to be race... But overwhelmingly, it's giving me a vibe of "any," but queerness comes to mind with the fact that two non-vampires are running a teahouse that also caters for vampires and creates a "safe space" for them to be themselves (like gay bars) and profiting off them. While it also does a lot of anti-colonial writing? And it hasn't really hit any notes to point out that this is an inherent contradiction?
Also, I'm kind of tired of the "we'll get ours" kind of stories that end up with people working simultaneously within the system and outside of it, since the former seems to be the most important and receives the most focus, not the actions outside the system (which also get written off as "I know it's bad but also we need to").
Also, after six or so chapters, it keeps doing perspective switches between two characters who are mostly in the same place, and that's... weird? Because other than the two chapters where, so far, they haven't been in the same place... The writing between two perspectives has been near identical? Like, I at least expect some slight differences between Arthie and Jin's points of views, but they seem like they may as well be the same person when they're in the same place.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of …
Concept seems cool, but some writing feels really obnoxious in some regards. Like, lower-class vampires are really being used as as an allegory for some kind of marginalised demographic, and I'm guessing... queerness? Though it also sometimes seems to be race... But overwhelmingly, it's giving me a vibe of "any," but queerness comes to mind with the fact that two non-vampires are running a teahouse that also caters for vampires and creates a "safe space" for them to be themselves (like gay bars) and profiting off them. While it also does a lot of anti-colonial writing? And it hasn't really hit any notes to point out that this is an inherent contradiction?
Also, I'm kind of tired of the "we'll get ours" kind of stories that end up with people working simultaneously within the system and outside of it, since the former seems to be the most important and receives …
Concept seems cool, but some writing feels really obnoxious in some regards. Like, lower-class vampires are really being used as as an allegory for some kind of marginalised demographic, and I'm guessing... queerness? Though it also sometimes seems to be race... But overwhelmingly, it's giving me a vibe of "any," but queerness comes to mind with the fact that two non-vampires are running a teahouse that also caters for vampires and creates a "safe space" for them to be themselves (like gay bars) and profiting off them. While it also does a lot of anti-colonial writing? And it hasn't really hit any notes to point out that this is an inherent contradiction?
Also, I'm kind of tired of the "we'll get ours" kind of stories that end up with people working simultaneously within the system and outside of it, since the former seems to be the most important and receives the most focus, not the actions outside the system (which also get written off as "I know it's bad but also we need to").
Also, after six or so chapters, it keeps doing perspective switches between two characters who are mostly in the same place, and that's... weird? Because other than the two chapters where, so far, they haven't been in the same
