Reviews and Comments

This book’s title was rattling in my head for years and years and I finally decided to find where it’s from: a book about someone from the Blue Ridge who moves to Germany to discover himself and the world and comes home to find that he, and therefore the world, has changed.

I wonder why it appeals to me so much.

Done with #68 on the Modern Library Top 100 list. 100 years old and remarkably relevant and relatable. A book about both the impossibility and inevitability of the American dream, Lewis’s prose is remarkable, and the book is a witty satire of middle American culture.

Know your history

Ich vermisse Prag :(

Ich habe vor ein Paar Jahren in Prag dieses Buch gekauft. Weil ich meine Wohnung ausräume, möchte ich es schell lesen und meiner Freundin schenken.

I met the Women* in Exile group at a digital safety training I hosted some months ago. They were selling this book of stories of migration as a fundraiser, and it’s amazing.

A nice long form essay, but it is more a review of Institutional Critique than a piece that really envisions a world of art that must—or gets to—exist without institutional influence.

This was… not great. It wasn’t awful. There were some gems inside if you can Butler’s needless wordiness. The book could have been much shorter. But the final chapter on nonviolence is a worthy read.

Picked this up at the Missread book fair a couple weekends ago in Berlin

Going through some books before donating them, this was below my reading level by the time I got to it but it was fun and I learned something from it nevertheless. I’ll donate it to my office library for the next learner.

Picked this book up at a photo exhibition in Amsterdam last year. It’s a nice little collection of photos and an interesting coffee table piece.

On to #68 on the Modern Library list. The opening chapter of this book is so vivid and beautiful, it’s prose is wonderful. I can’t wait to read it.

Butler wrote these essays between 2004 and 2008, and published this paperback before Chelsea Manning’s revelations. Yet, having read the introduction so far, it looks to still be a relevant text, and I’m excited to read it, even if it’s not Butler’s best known work.