It's been a busy week at work, so I didn't have time to post, though I did have some time to read.
I finished Zoo City on Monday. I liked, but didn't love it.
I continue to read Meera Nanda's Prophets Facing Backward, though I'm making slow progress in it because of the need to prioritize work. Since she includes the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in her discussion of neo-Hinduism, I'm linking to the Beatles again for the listening portion of this read. According to John Lennon, this song is about the Maharishi.
and this is a recently unearthed song he worked on before Sexy Sadie, with Yoko joining in.
I also started David Golumbia's Politics of Bitcoin which I had started in December, but didn't finish before the end of the year. It's short, so I imagine I'll be done with it relatively soon. I like it so far, it's a useful overview of cyber-libertarianism, which is a somewhat under-studied aspect of far-right politics today.
For work, I read, because, I use it to teach, the first 130 pages of Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book. This year's students liked it much better than previous students did. It's always interesting to see how different classes react to the same text, and how they adapt to each other's reactions in the classroom. For me, How to Read a Book is a useful guide for reading that can still be helpful to students or those outside academia who want to read difficult books on their own - which is its stated purpose. It is also a kind of classic text of cold war liberalism, as it links its particular style of reading and analysis with the maintenance of democracy. In many ways the book is quite hierarchical and promotes the kind of view of literature and knowledge in general that you'd expect from confident New Critics.
Day 5 challenge: if this, then that.
If you liked The New Jim Crow, try Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here, or for a more modern book, Understanding Mass Incarceration
I finished Zoo City on Monday. I liked, but didn't love it.
I continue to read Meera Nanda's Prophets Facing Backward, though I'm making slow progress in it because of the need to prioritize work. Since she includes the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in her discussion of neo-Hinduism, I'm linking to the Beatles again for the listening portion of this read. According to John Lennon, this song is about the Maharishi.
and this is a recently unearthed song he worked on before Sexy Sadie, with Yoko joining in.
I also started David Golumbia's Politics of Bitcoin which I had started in December, but didn't finish before the end of the year. It's short, so I imagine I'll be done with it relatively soon. I like it so far, it's a useful overview of cyber-libertarianism, which is a somewhat under-studied aspect of far-right politics today.
For work, I read, because, I use it to teach, the first 130 pages of Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book. This year's students liked it much better than previous students did. It's always interesting to see how different classes react to the same text, and how they adapt to each other's reactions in the classroom. For me, How to Read a Book is a useful guide for reading that can still be helpful to students or those outside academia who want to read difficult books on their own - which is its stated purpose. It is also a kind of classic text of cold war liberalism, as it links its particular style of reading and analysis with the maintenance of democracy. In many ways the book is quite hierarchical and promotes the kind of view of literature and knowledge in general that you'd expect from confident New Critics.
Day 5 challenge: if this, then that.
If you liked The New Jim Crow, try Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here, or for a more modern book, Understanding Mass Incarceration
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