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#books

554 posts427 participants22 posts today
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Em

#books -- Comedy Against Work by Madeline Lane-McKinley: I was really excited to read this one and really wanted to like it as someone who sees my own output as like, satirizing or joking about work to articulate an anti-work position. And the first few chapters were great on how comedy can both propose gradual reconsideration of the existing work-oriented capitalist order, reinforce it by offering a positive vision of "fun" or community at work, or just straight up blow a hole in its fictions. The section about the historical development of comedy clubs, and how commedians at one club held a somewhat successful strike even though most of them weren't being paid, and were expected to be thankful for the "education" they were receiving being allowed to perform, was also really cool to read about. But the middle third becomes a slog because it is dominated by the topic of high profile commedian cancellations. This was tough for me for two reasons: A) it seemed only tangentially related to to the topic of comedy in the sense that comedy is a workplace where sexual harrassment and hate speech and so on is exused due to seeing the work as "creative," "speaking truth" or coming from a place of "tortured genius." However, (and this part of the book spreads out to accomodate this) this is basically true of any "creative" career, academia, and even like, the self-conceptualization of middle management. And B) Even when I agree with the critique of, ie, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais, etc... all these cases have been discussed to death for better and for way way worse online, so it feels honestly like a better use of my time to never hear about them again. But these sections also have the weakest argumentation, imo, because it often relies on labeling the objects of its criticism with pop-psychology Bad Person dismissial terms (someone's ouvre is "narcissistic" or "toxic", a particular ideology or relation to comedy is a "disease") rather than actually articulating their specific elements, while also relying on the move of seeing the artistic output as something that either logically emerged from or logically resulted in that person being abusive, which is like, not a move I care to make! Sure, Ricky Gervais played an annoying, pomous, self-victimizing asshole boss on the UK version of the office and then became a weird self-victimizing "anti-cancel culture" warrior, but what do you say about Steve Carrell, whose reputation is (so far as I know) fine, but whose scrubbed up, friendlier version of the same character and framing of it in the US TV show is a much more demobilizing and problematic depiction of work rather than a critique??? I think the fact that you can't make broad moral claims or conclusions in this area is the whole purpose and task of arts criticism. But anyways. There was another chapter about skit comedy and netflix streaming as a type of "care work" in the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic which I also found really interesting and a good connection to make. A positive of this book is that it does consider housework and the normative reproduction of society in general to also be places where "work in comedy/comedy about work" emerges. This is hyperspecific but I kind of wish it did that wrt the work neurodivergent and disabled people also have to do to shore up others' self-esteem in public life, by not being "too abnormal" or making anyone uncomfortable. But the Chapter on Telehealth therapy over the same period being connected to the "therapeutic listening" quality of humor and self-help podcasts was kind of baffling (and again mostly more tangentially related to the topic): there was a nice wrap-up paragraph about how these things are all sustaining and helpful, so I expect to reach the second half of the chapter that will trouble this for obvious reasons (The use of mental healthcare as worker discipline at jobs and schools, the exploitative data collecting and advertising model of BetterHelp which is so entangled with those same podcasts etc) when I turn the page, but no, that's it, the end! The conclusion was like, fine, with some sort of by now uninspiring proposals about "play" and "collectivity" as the positive qualities of comedy, but I really wanted more analysis of comedic depictions of work or comedy themed around work itself, and more of a statement at the end.... idk! Read the chapters I thought were good if the topic interests you but I could really take or leave the others.

Public *
Dave Rahardja

I just finished Tom Nichols’ book “The Death of Expertise”. I feel like Nichols is one of those old-school conservatives (he clearly despises the Trumpist version of conservatism) who is worth listening to. Despite many rough spots in the book in which he comes across as curmudgeonly and condescending, the book’s central message is solid, in my opinion.

And that message is: experts know more about their topic of expertise than the vast majority of people, therefore you should give their opinion on that topic more authority than the layperson’s. This assertion is plainly true, but is perceived as deeply insulting by most USians today;“my ignorance is as good as your knowledge” may well be the tenet many people today cling on to.

Nichols wrote this book in 2017 and eerily predicted what would happen if we continued in this trajectory: a takeover by politicians who coddle and promote the ignorance of the uninformed masses at the expense of the prestige of expertise.

#books #bookReview

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Public
Richard Lea

Thinking of the #editor Matt Weiland, who says that publishers 'make public, and that involves a lot of jumping up and down and waving arms and honking'.

So #JumpingUpAndDown about Susanna Clarke returning to the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

#WavingArms that she's throwing new light on The Raven King.

And #honking that her short story is exclusively in @fictionable

fictionable.world/stories/the-

#books #reading #writing #publishing #ShortStories #fiction #bookstodon @bookstodon

www.fictionable.worldThe Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City by Susanna ClarkeWhen the Raven King arrived in northern England at the head of a fairy army, he found a country divided. Susanna Clarke charts shifting allegiances between English, Norman and fairy
Public
Jon Sparks

#WordWeavers 26/4: Does your MC have good or bad luck?
Much of life is stochastic. ‘Everything happens for a reason’ is an illusion, like ‘there’s no such thing as coincidence’. But fiction is more satisfying if things do happen for some kind of reason rather than the roll of dice, unless you’re writing about an actual gambler.
Jerya often describes herself as very fortunate, but she’s a good enough mathematician to know what that means—and what it doesn’t.
#books #writing #writersofmastodon

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Arachnid Press

A city at peace in a world at war. ‘The Stockholm Run’ is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland and Sweden during World War Two. It uses many real settings, transported eight decades back in time.

This modern photograph shows the building in Stockholm that served as the headquarters of the Swedish Security Service during the war. It has a background role in the strands of the story set in Sweden.

Find out more on our website:
arachnid.scot/book-tsr/index.h

The image shows a view along a city street lined with large buildings. In the centre of the frame is a beige stone red-roofed building that has five main storeys and two more set into the roof. It comprises two similar blocks. On the left of the frame is a large brick-built building with a cyclist passing it. A white van is parked on the right of the street. The front cover of 'The Stockholm Run' is shown in the bottom right corner.
#Books#Bookstodon
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Dr. Zalka Csenge Virág

Two amazing cozy short story and poetry collections I have read recently:

Everyday Aliens by Polenth Blake (an ecologist) is about diverse non-humanoid aliens doing their slice-of-life things: eating, courting, changing, exploring, etc.

Bittersweetness & Light by Anne Nydam is about hope and kindness. It's not cliché or empty positivity, rather a collection of well written stories that have a joyful note.

Cover of Everyday Aliens. It is a tangle of rainbow colored plant and animal patterns on a black background
Cover of Bittersweetness & Light. It is a print of a black and blue background, depicting a white seed pod releasing fluffy seeds
#books#bookstodon#CozyReads
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Julia S.

THE SEARCH FOR A FORGOTTEN ACTIVIST—Marty Goddard, pioneer of the modern forensic “rape kit”—takes a deep dive into the vagaries of the US justice system and the many ways it grinds down the most vulnerable, including Ms. Goddard herself. A MINUS

barnesandnoble.com/w/the-secre

@bookstodon

Barnes & NobleThe Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story|PaperbackMarty Goddard dreamed up a new crime-solving tool—a kit that could help rape survivors fight for justice. This thrilling investigation tells the story of the troubled, heroic woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity."Astonishing ....
#book#Books#bookreview
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CodeByJeff - Now with AI!

"The Old Man Who Read Love Stories" - Luis Sepúlveda

My first time reading Sepúlveda - this is a short novel with wonderful character development & description of the Amazon of Ecuador, with a not very subtle environmental message underneath

Greatly enjoyed and will read his other works!

bookwyrm.social/book/39780/s/t

bookwyrm.socialThe Old Man Who Read Love Stories - BookWyrmSocial Reading and Reviewing
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