GOD this was so good. It was more difficult to read for personal reasons, so I had a harder time picking it up while I was in the middle, but it was like obviously heart-wrenching for the more obvious reasons. But so many layers of it were so good--the culminations of all these stories together, the way ends were tied up and new stories fit in with the other stories... I don't want to spoil it, but holy shit what an ending to this story, and what a way to go out on it. Incredible, incredible, incredible.

Just so gorgeous. Each piece is so beautiful, different from one another but feels similar. I was worried it might read too closely to other stuff, but this is deeply different from [b:On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous|41880609|On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous|Ocean Vuong|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1552172553l/41880609._SX50_.jpg|61665003] in a lot of ways, while also feeling enough that it's clear they were written by the same person, in the best of ways. Just so many of the poems were so good, honestly picking one or two is really hard. "Seventh Circle of Earth" is incredible, though, as was "Ode to Masturbation."

Just really incredible. Abdurraqib is so insightful, and like half of the sentences in this are punches to the throat in the best of ways. The first four essays alone would give this book five stars, but the rest of the book keeps going, wades through all this time--it's also a piece of historical writing in some ways, on the precipice of the 2016 election and subsequent aftermath, without painting that moment as being the only bad thing happening at the time. His love of and appreciation for music in so many forms is incredible; he manages to weave together these stories to make his points that are so broad in their connections and yet make so much sense all at once. I'm seriously in awe. I want to buy this book (I borrowed it from the library) so I can mark it up properly and really dig into it, but it's still an incredible read even just reading it and trying to carefully copy out the parts that hit me in the moment.

This was still definitely a very fun romp in the world of Mitth'raw'nuruodo: Noted Blue Homosexual, but I think was not as fun about the first one? Part of my struggles were the two narratives which probably work really well for people who are not like me (ie smart people), but it made it feel sort of more splintered to me. It didn't NOT work, but it didn't flow for me as much as I wanted it to.

Regardless, this was just delightful; the larger plot is SO INTRIGUING and makes me want to shake Zahn for the next book in the best way. The frantagonism (friend-antagonism) of Thrawn and Vader was great, though honestly I wanted more of Thrawn's impressions of Vader? And the Clone Wars-era plot was good and interesting, and in a lot of ways this was pretty clearly a Middle Book in a Trilogy but it was also good and meaty in ways the first one wasn't honestly, and that was good too.

Okay so! Some critiques of this book are valid--Butler's engagement with people of color, for example, is extremely minimal, something she acknowledges in the preface to the edition I read. And sure, sometimes it took me a long time to get through certain parts of the text, primarily because I'm not as well-read in psychoanalysis as I might otherwise be when approaching Butler's arguments. But I really thought this was an intense and frankly valuable engagement in the question of gender and the problem it poses feminism. I think there are things to be hashed out, for sure, but the fact that I'm left chewing on her ideas about repetition and the possibilities for agency connected to stepping out of that repetition means frankly the book did what it was supposed to.

So I definitely recommend this if this question is something you're interested in thinking about, and if you are okay with engaging with Butler on this level. Otherwise I guess you can read Susan Stryker's introduction to the Transgender Studies Reader, because she does a pretty good job of summarizing the performativity argument in an accessible way.

I want to say, right off the bat, that this book has a lot of fairly graphic sexual violence in it. I didn't find it necessarily gratuitous, and it's not like SUPER graphic, but there were enough details that I was triggered reading it. Just want to be clear because I had no idea going in and might have been better if I had known going in.

That being said, this was still a good book--I enjoyed Alex as a character quite a bit, and the relationships she develops in the book. The magical parts are super compelling and interesting,

even though they are deeply rooted in violence against women.

I will say that's helped by the fact that the narrative is super aware of that fact, rather than it just being a background element of the world. I have a lot of thoughts actually about the way this has been framed by other folks versus how the narrative plays out, but it's a really compelling narrative and I'm definitely lookin forward to the sequel!

This is a really interesting text exploring women and the costs to women (the violence against women) inherent in shifts to capitalism, primarily in Europe (which we'll hit on later.) Federici is drawing together a LOT here, and in some cases, drawing together vast bodies of literature that don't speak very much to each other. In some cases, I was left wondering if her reach was too broad here, because I wasn't sure it all came together. At the beginning of the book, she discussed how, rather than focus on the titular Caliban, she was going to focus on the witch, but for me, the focus on European women overwhelmed the mentions of indigenous or African women, and how colonization deeply shaped not just developments of capitalism in Europe, but also ideas about womanhood more generally. Federici gestures at it sometimes, and works really hard to claim that poor women are demonized before colonization happens, but I'm not sure she really gives the claim as much weight or engages with it as much (especially thinking about African women and reproductive capacity, etc. etc.)

Which is not to say she's not making an impressive argument here, just that maybe I wasn't convinced by all parts of her argument. Regardless, I think this is a really fascinating look at the gendered aspects of the closures of the commons and beyond. I'm not sure I'm as well-read in Marxist history as I should be to approach this book, but I felt like I could mostly understand her arguments in spite of that fact.

There was a lot of this I liked quite a bit/wanted to read more about. Some of it felt disjointed or like the topics Brown was writing about/interviewing people about needed a little more focus. There are lots of good references for further reading in here, though, and I appreciated those a lot. I can't say exactly what didn't click with me; I believe in much of what is in the book, but I also don't know that it felt like it gave me very much to grapple with in the end. Maybe it's a book I would benefit from spending more, slower time with (I borrowed it from the library, so I had to get it back by the time it was due.) I guess ultimately it felt like a book that was good mostly for pointing to other books or ways of thinking/being, rather than being a book I hugely walked away from changed? But I definitely recommend it and think it's a really good intro to a lot of very good stuff.

This book is frankly worth it for chapter three, "Genetic Genealogy Online," where Tall Bear breaks down the pushback of social scientists by geneticists and other scientists who don't think social science or the humanities are "real work." I would fully frame the entire paragraph on page 122, and literally everyone should read that page, but also read the whole book--the title is maybe a little misleading, and there were moments when the actual science of it overwhelmed me, but ultimately this was such an important book to think about the claims we make about DNA and what knowledge of genetics/genetic testing can let us actually know. It's so well-written and connects across so many fields it's dizzying sometimes, but it's also such an important read, and I want to shove it at every single scientist I see (and frankly anyone talking generally about DNA and what it lets us know.) The explanations about how tribal enrollment can work in various systems was also deeply eye-opening as a white settler, and TallBear talks about those processes with such nuance, so that part in excerpt frankly could be huge for teaching.

This was really beautifully written and just so clearly full of compassion, care, and love. It's also a short read, and mostly kept my attention. I'm not sure it's a book For Me, not that it matters exactly, or that I read it at the time, but was still really beautiful. If anything, it feels almost too private to review and/or have an opinion about. I'm not sure it's something I would return to exactly, but I'm glad I read it.