books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

Harlem Renaissance, published in 1929, unreliable narrator, stream of consciousness, that direct and indirect speech vibe…

This felt like Mrs. Dalloway. Except about race.

Because the titular “Passing” referred to a Black person passing as white in segregated America. Specifically, one woman who passed as white occasionally for convenience (to get a seat on a train, to get served at a restaurant) having her life railroaded by a woman who permanently passed as white (and even had an extremely anti-Black racist husband who thought she was white 😬).

This book was pretty shocking, actually. And it was a good reminder to me that people in the past weren’t any less transgressive. I don’t know why I thought a 1929 publication date would mean this book wouldn’t be very taboo, but I was definitely wrong.

It took me a while to figure out why it was a four star and not a five star for me (because it was extremely well written) and I think it’s this: it was ambiguous. An unreliable narrator, likably unlikable characters, more questions than answers… when I think what I was craving was certainty. So it was just a mood mismatch, for me.

The memoir of the Black Lives Matter movement founder. It was good. But it made me want to read Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics… let me explain.

There were two main elements:
✨ her deeply personal relationship with the over-policing of Black bodies
✨ how to start a movement

Her personal story was compelling. Her movement building gave me hope. And pointing out that, like Angela Davis (who wrote the Forward) and Assata Shakur (who was quoted throughout), they’re going to call you a terrorist felt… timely.

It had a flaw though, imo. I wish it had been more intersectional—particularly with wealth inequality and critiques of capitalism. Without that, this felt incomplete and susceptible to elite capture.

I loved this book so much. It reached directly into my brain.

I'd just finished When They Call You a Terrorist and (though a really interesting memoir) I'd had a vague feeling that that version of a BLM movement was susceptible to elite capture and then this book told me EXACTLY WHY—in a particularly clear and well-argued way (I’d expect nothing less from a Philosophy prof).

Basically, identity politics focuses on the ‘politics of deference’, ie the strategy of deferring to the own-voices of the most marginalized person in the room. And this is susceptible to elite capture because:
✨ deference is not liberating (à la Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire) and even has authoritarian tendencies
✨ and it ignores the question of ‘what kinds of privilege and power get you into the room in the first place?’

It was almost eerie how often this book preempted my thoughts. It covered Paulo Freire (who I just read), Franz Fanon (even quoting the exact quotes I put in my reading journal), wealth inequality and Brazilification (I read that Thomas Piketty book the other week), even the privatization of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s water by Bechtel (those riots began in 1999 and I’m still not over it).

And then! He actually had a solution—love when philosophers do that. Constructivist politics, let’s go.

Really interesting premise. Loved the pining. Loved the action-y plot and adventure. The characters were great.

I only just wanted more romance plot angst. That part of the story ended up being sweeter than I was in the mood for.

This was a pleasant surprise! It was all about the classic (at least, I’m calling it a classic) premise: an alien society with no more lady aliens, invades earth to find their fated human mates.

There was a lot to love in here:
✨ the world building was next level (TW for occupation tho)
✨ the plots and characters were gritty and complicated
✨ there was a science-y twist to the fated mates thing that felt new

I especially liked how mistakes and morally grey behaviour were written. First, because it had less of a cartoonish evil vibe, and more of a Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” vibe—which is not only ontologically onto something, but more interesting story-wise. And second, I appreciated how questionable stuff, particularly between our MCs, was written as ‘bad’ not as ‘kinda hot’—which is really at the crux of how down I am for bad behaviour in my romance books.

So why not five stars?

For the first book, just one thing kept it from being perfect. You know Book III of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates describes (probably facetiously) his ideal society: where children are taken from their parents at birth, raised communally, and and divided into different job-based social strata in early childhood?

This lady-less alien society raised their boy aliens like that. And the humans were like, “heck no, kids should be raised in loving families.” Which was great. But sometimes a hint of “a child needs a mother” crept in. And rather than blaming Plato, we were blaming the lack of parents-with-vaginas for their alien social structure, which was meh.

Pappé’s nonfiction writing style—measured, no stone left unturned, primary source heavy—was the best way to cover this topic. This was so detailed. But it was worth it!

My favourite part of this book was its emphasis on understanding the origin of the Zionist lobby. Because, well before Israel existed, this lobby was fully entrenched in the upper echelons of our governments.

✨ And the origins of the Zionist lobby (from the 1800s to mid-1900s) were NOTHING like you’d expect. Early lobbyists for Zionism were mostly not Jewish. In fact, they were mostly antisemitic. The early Zionist lobby was an alliance between anti-immigrant types (who wanted to redirect Eastern European Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms to somewhere besides the UK) and British imperialists who coveted parts of the soon-to-crumble Ottoman Empire. With some Evangelical Christians who wanted to bring about Armageddon sprinkled in. And later some rightwing anti-communists who antisemitically associated Jews with the Bolsheviks (looking at you, Churchill).

Most Jews weren’t onboard with the early lobbying efforts. And the speech Pappé included *against* the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the only Jewish member of Parliament at the time is something I can’t stop thinking about—especially because he’s said to have been “close to weeping” as he spoke 😢

This book felt like the other side of the coin of Pappé’s history of Israel books—it answered the “But how are they getting away with this?!” question.

Yes, we went into detail (and I mean DETAIL) about how the lobby promoted politicians they expected to give carte blanche to Israel’s actions and punished politicians they expected wouldn’t.

But this book wasn’t a story about: “how has Israel, a foreign government, gained so much control over our democracies?” No, the story was: how is this lobby a uniquely British and American phenomenon? Which brought so much clarity to this particular political problem. Loved it.

I love how cozy and slice of life these Risdaverse series alien romances are—no overarching series plot, just intimate little humans-in-space stories with just the right amount of camp.

But, although this premise was great (second chance, she pursued him, he was giving demisexual vibes), sometimes our pursuer heroine went a little too hard? Crossed the line in a few small ways? I wished we had handled his emotional needs with a bit more grace.

Not that it’ll stop me from picking up the next book in this (very long 😆) series.

Here’s my thesis: this book wasn’t a romance, it was a tragedy.

(and if Tolstoy had written it, Gigi would’ve been hit by a train)

This was the classic: a messy marriage in trouble romance. Nothing like filing for divorce to get the band back together 😆

And so much of this book was top-tier.
▪️ the writing was flowy, lovely, and even funny
▪️ there was an elegance to how the drama of the two timelines mirrored each other
▪️ the setting felt rich, with a late Victorian jadedness to these histrom nobles (bonus points for the profusion of post-HRE impoverished European titles)
▪️ and there was a romance sub-plot in here involving the heroine’s widowed mother that I enjoyed (not least because it included a lot of Homer and Plato references)

There were some unpopular tropes that I personally love (for the angst) like miscommunication, cheating, thoroughly unlikeable characters.

But. It wasn’t a romance.
▪️ there wasn’t even a gesture towards a romance plot. It was “love at first sight” (actual quote), no on-page falling, and we never took off from Instalove-Landia Airport despite all the drama
▪️ this story showed me a thousand ways that these MCs were incompatible. And I just wanted to see them work through ONE problem. Just a little one. Because I don’t think this couple would survive even the simplest IKEA furniture building collab 😅
▪️ remember how I said the timelines elegantly mirrored each other? As elegant as it was, it’s also the reason this was a tragedy—the plot structure was too “A to B to A” with the sad parts just remerging at the end

By the midway point, I was nervous I wasn’t going to get the grovel and/or love-demonstrating reconciliation finale I wanted. And then I was genuinely disappointed.

But maybe the end isn’t the point, it’s the angsty tropes we meet along the way?

This memoir was multi-faceted amazing-ness. Assata Shakur is just so dang cool. Her reflections on activism were considered so dangerous by the US government that they bugged her apartment, framed her for bank robbery and murder in 1979, and sentenced her to life in prison. Except she immediately escaped and fled to Cuba. And she was first woman placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, in 2013. It was a lot!

And one of those “super dangerous” thoughts on activism she talks about? Education. Encouraging critical thinking, giving marginalized communities a fighting chance in the classroom (with things like breakfast programs), and resisting the silo-ification of education. Because:

“It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.”

It’s a shame that I knew more about Noam Chomsky than Assata Shakur before this—because they’re so similar. Except Assata is way better.

This memoir was such a unique book. It was dual timeline—part personal history, part true crime courtroom drama—and so well written that it would periodically burst into poetry. And ofc, this memoir felt super relevant to this moment. Assata didn’t begin life as a politically engaged activist. Instead, she was radicalized by this exchange about the Vietnam War:
✨ “Someone asked me what i thought. I didn’t have the faintest idea... I said, “It’s all right, i guess.” All of a sudden there was complete silence. “Would you mind explaining, sister, what you mean by ‘it’s all right, i guess’?” The brother’s voice was mocking. I said something like “You know, the war we’re fighting over there, you know, for democracy.” It was clear, from the expressions around me, that i had said the wrong thing.”

The moment was giving ‘they have a right to defend themselves’ and watching her grow from there was so compelling.

“the way i’m invested in this relationship is unhealthy at this point”

This comment, which had almost 250 THOUSAND likes (!) on Webtoon, basically sums up my reading experience of this graphic novel. I am so invested in Navier and Heinrey. It’s kind of a problem.

I just love this graphic novel:
✨ I love the way the first scene hooked me and then we went back and explained how the story got there
✨ I’m starting to think graphic novels are the best way to convey court drama plots
✨ this slow burn was slow burn-ing
✨ these characters were the furthest thing from cartoonish
✨ Navier and Heinrey have my heart