Reviews and Comments

Mouffe’s latest is a call to combine the struggles against authoritarianism with the struggle to save the planet. A new author for me. Looking forward to it.

A really enlightening read detailing how the culture we are born into profoundly influences our interpersonal relations, our personal space, our priorities, even how we think. Bridging gaps between cultures can be an almost insurmountable task, though it must start with becoming more fully aware of our own. Thought provoking, even 48 years after it was first published.

An anthropologist, Hall’s work sheds light on how individual cultures communicate by use of body language and other non-verbal communication, their use of personal space and how their identity is influenced by their culture. His work was thought to aid in cross-cultural communication and was respected in both anthropological and psychological fields of study. Beyond Culture was included in a list of books which were recommended by Brian Eno. You can find the list on openculture.com.

The author has a talent for weaving myriad, seemingly unrelated observations into a fairly cohesive whole and tying them together with thought provoking final lines. Within these poems are vignettes of economic hardship in his native Greece, existing as an other in a world which doesn’t welcome him, and just getting by in a rather bleak landscape where the biggest threat to your existence might be the cost of living or it might be the person who lives next door.

We are all complicated and bring our baggage along wherever we go, and Ari Banias has deftly acknowledged his while steadfastly not giving up his pursuit of living life on his own terms.

An excellent examination of Capitalism. Its origins, how it works and often, how it doesn’t work. The author takes what could be a dense, inacessible topic and produces a text that’s enlightening and compelling. Seen through the lens of Marxist economic thought, Capitalism is shown as an imperfect, brutal force with an insatiable greed for more.

Just ordered this from Verso. 60% off this month. Free e-book, too. 👍

Yay me! 😊

Continuing my education

Very much looking forward to this one. The movie with Bowie in the lead role is so compelling.

I think the takeaway with this tale is to never stop trying, to never give up. There’s no promise of something better, just the very human decision to will yourself forward. That if a better place is indeed out there, it can only be reached through effort, one step at a time.

A father and son trudge on through a profoundly desolate and lifeless world, vulnerable, barely surviving. Makes me think about the real world to come. Will it seem oddly familiar when it arrives?

Not only did I enjoy the prose in both of these stories, but having the original French on the left and the English translation on the right helped to teach me a smattering of French. I could go back and forth, line for line, paragraph for paragraph. I enjoyed the experience so much, I spent time identifying other dual language books to read. Definitely thumbs up.