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sunn_bleach's Reviews (249)

Indefensible Weapons: The Political And Psychological Case Against Nuclearism/ Updated Edition

2.25

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

Conceptually fine but I found the arguments not nearly as much an appeal to political theory as they were emotion. Which is totally valid, but the book’s authors felt like they set out for a different goal than what was realized. Still, at least I read this for an historical take on nuclearism.

Content Warnings

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

Amanda Montell

4.0

funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

This book genuinely got me to think of language and usage as a white man - a white man who likes to think he’s a feminist ally. But there’s so much to learn, and this super witty and well-written book is right there (though I would have liked more direct citations). All I can ask from an activist and language book like this is that it gets me to think about who I am and who others are, and this did it.

Content Warnings

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks

3.0

challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

Interesting but in a way I didn’t expect. This is very much a neurology book written in the early 80s, with all the language and paradigms that implies. The dead-serious use of the word “retarded” and unironic appeals to Freud and Luria are kind of shocking for 40+ years later. But I’m kind of struck at how much Sacks so obviously cared for his patients as people, not just case studies. That kind of narrative is important for humanizing the humans we treat.

Content Warnings

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

4.75

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

A classic for a reason, and with all the philosophical understatement that can only inspire. Wonderfully written with each sentence amazingly digestible yet poignant - the kind of book where a page takes two or three minutes to grok as a layperson.

Great Tales of Jewish Fantasy and the Occult: The Dybbuk and Thirty Other Classic Stories

Joachim Neugroschel

3.0

mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

30 stories of varying length and date that explore a huge variety of caballistic, hassidic, and Jewish history. Some are kind of “why did the editor choose this one at all”; others have immense significance historically and personally. Cool perspective.

Content Warnings

Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut

4.75

challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

An extremely prescient book to read in 2022 USA. And do not listen to anyone who calls this black humor or satire. It’s one of Vonnegut’s most acerbic, disgusted, and saddest impressions of human beings’ protagonist-centered morality.

Content Warnings

The Fall

Albert Camus

5.0

challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I like Camus's fiction far more than his actual philosophical writings. Here, the idea of the absurd is laid bare in how one man's realization of it catastrophizes his entire self-image. Ironically, Clamence ultimately rejects the absurd and falls (no pun intended) into the leap-of-faith considered by Kierkegaard. A great character-driving narrative about the internal complacency and duplicity (and complacent duplicity) of humans - especially those who are convinced of their righteousness and pomp.

Content Warnings

The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Kenneth Patchen

3.0

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A book whose influence I respect more so than I enjoyed reading it itself. With prose like the cut-up beat generation to come decades after, this is a bizarre allegory or war and the author as murderer. Though way more abstract and therefore disjointed compared to “Sleepers Awake”, it’s a hell of a book whose actual prose might be more attractive than any of its discursive content. Also interesting to read a book written during WWII but before the USA’s declarations of war. Beware of 1930s/1940s views on women, even if the violence “is the point” - it’s still its own host of problems.

Content Warnings

Sleepers Awake

Kenneth Patchen

4.5

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

A pre-beat work of art that straddles the line between prose and poetry. Dark surrealism meets continued themes and a narrative that does in fact exists, bubbling beneath the service. Words as art, and angry, subversive, desperate art.

Content Warnings

The Forever War

Joe Haldeman

4.25

adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Excellent book that’s like the ideological opposite to “Starship Troopers” in every way. Immensely sad in a way you can anticipate but still not be prepared for.

Content Warnings

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