The Children of Time is a fantastic piece of science fiction that addresses ecological concerns and explores terraforming on aMy top read of 2023!
The Children of Time is a fantastic piece of science fiction that addresses ecological concerns and explores terraforming on alien worlds. It considers the problems of colonization, empire, and the destruction of the natural world. All in all, it’s the absolute pinnacle of the genre and up there with science fiction greats such as Ursula Le Guin and Issac Asimov. I cannot recommend this book more highly or give it higher praise. It’s simply spectacular.
“Earth had been green in her day, though colors had faded since. Perhaps never as green as this new world though, where even the oceans glittered emerald.”
The imagination behind this book is incredible because the scale behind the story is so vast. It reminds me of a cross between Interstellar and Star Trek with giant spiders thrown into the mix. It’s a brilliant combination that weighs up societal progress with human folly. And it demonstrates that the human approach is not always the best one.
Indeed, the society the genetically modified spiders have created is far superior. Their society has learnt to be compassionate and would rather work with others than destroy them, and this is one of the main motifs of the book. We need to learn to get along rather than becoming tyrannical dictators or colonists. We must work together if we are not to repeat the mistakes of history. Earth in this universe has a bloody history that led to the destruction of its people and empire. The remainders became space explorers to find a new planet to live on whist the remnants of the old empire’s tech is scattered across the stars.
“Who knows what we might have achieved, had we not been so keen to recreate all their follies, he thought now. Could we have saved the earth? Would we be living there now on our own green planet?”
Naturally, this book has a strong environmental message as it demonstrates what excessive consumerism and war wreak on a planet. The survivors of humanity seek a new home across the stars as theirs has collapsed, and the novel focuses on their exploration across time. As the centuries pass, most of the race is asleep in chambers that preserve their age whilst a crew of key members wakes up during intermittent periods to keep the ship functioning. Centuries pass by and over time one of the key crew members makes a bid for control, to create a means to set himself up as the leader of humanity to dictate its progress (or lack thereof.)
“A life lived entirely at the whim of another is no life at all.”
Meanwhile an old empire experiment to breed a new race of humanoids goes wrong with the result being a colony of giant, yet intelligent and developed, spiders. The cultural clash and value clash between them and the remainder of humanity is fascinating to watch. And I can’t quite express how developed and well written this new species is. Tchaikovsky has a true talent for anthropomorphizing spiders and giving them a distinct character and culture. It’s brilliant! It works far better than it sounds. And I look forward to reading more of his books to see how he handles it with other animals as this seems to be a frequent theme throughout his work.
I’ve tried very hard not give any spoilers here, though this is a hard book to talk about without mentioning its ending and the future it sets up. So, I won’t say anymore on that, other than I’m very excited to read the rest of the series to see where this goes. I’m going to end here by saying this is a fantastic book that I think you should go read.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
I feel like I haven’t read a book quite this good in a long time.
There’s a certain sense of unfeeling, of numbness, in this work; it captures a woI feel like I haven’t read a book quite this good in a long time.
There’s a certain sense of unfeeling, of numbness, in this work; it captures a world viewed through a grey and colorless lens. Depression is often confused with profound sadness but, in reality, it is profound nothingness. It is a life without joy or sorrow: it’s just numbness and blankness. The Bell Jar captures this state incredibly well.
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”
The narrative is fragmented and retrospective; it is confusing and distorted: it captures a dark element of the human mind that is looking back at life without any sense of meaning or purpose. There is regret here and failed dreams, as the novel captures the crushing mundane reality that exists in their failure. It also captures a person who has not lived up to the expectations society has placed on her, and who cannot quite come to terms with who she is or who she wants actually be. It is told through the first person revealing a cold and depressed mind. It is intimate and direct.
In some ways the book highlights the dangers (and brilliance) of first-person narration. Sometimes it’s hard to know where Esther begins and Sylvia Plath ends. There are strong parallels between character, narrator, and author. I don’t want to get too much into the history of Plath’s life, but it’s plain to see when you read up on her biography.
"My heroine would be myself, only in disguise. She would be called Elaine. Elaine. I counted the letters on my fingers. There were six letters in Esther, too. It seemed a lucky thing."
Esther writes these words because she is also an author and I cannot help but see Plath here expressing this sentiment. The novel also focuses on Esther’s experience with men, none of which are positive and none of the relationships she does manage to have are particularly normal or healthy. They are superficial. There’s a lack of emotion in the writing and with her experiences. She just doesn’t seem to care, focusing only on direct perception rather than feelings because there is no feeling here.
“because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”
Nothing changes, nothing changes the mood no matter the location or experience. It is pure indifference. And it is sad to read about, to get a glimpse at a person this far gone and this unmovable that they think that suicide is the answer.
So, it is a tough read but an important one. It is a fantastic piece of writing, and one that we should all give a try.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
There’s a lot of hate leveled at Jordan Peterson for things he has said in interviews and in his media work. He has been labelled many things. I don’tThere’s a lot of hate leveled at Jordan Peterson for things he has said in interviews and in his media work. He has been labelled many things. I don’t want to get into the correctness of these labels here, nor do I want to engage with his political views (because that’s not what this book or review is about.)
I do take issue with Peterson’s diet choice, as he eats nothing but beef, but, again, that’s irrelevant here. Open mindedness is key when approaching any work of literature, as is trying to separate the value of the work from the author’s personal failings and opinions.
Peterson is an intellectual. He has a great mind, despite some of his contentious viewpoints, and I think it would be extremely foolish to dismiss everything he has to say based on any personal misgivings and disagreement towards aspects of his rhetoric. This is, indeed, a very good book written by a Professor of Psychology who has some wisdom to share. Curiosity drew me to his words because of how much media attention he has received. I did not expect to take so much from his 12 Rules for Life. I did not expect to it to be quite this thought provoking. So this is going to be quite a long one.
These points are quite profound and actually very helpful, so here’s a breakdown of each one:
1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back
This is an important essay to start the book with. Essentially, it suggests that we must face the world and bring everything we have to bear. We must become the best versions of ourselves, and we must try as hard as we can. We have a duty- a moral responsibility – to develop ourselves as much as humanly possible. Anything else is a brutal lack of attention to the world around us and a waste of our potential, and we have a lot of potential to reach if only we were willing to reach for it. We must stand up straight and become the person we ought to be.
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
This one sounds quite simple, but in reality it is something we all often neglect. It’s very easy to look at someone else’s life and to see the behavior they need to change, though it is much harder to look at our own lives, and to be honest with ourselves, and to see the changes we need to make. We need to help ourselves. We have a responsibility to do so to become all that we might be. And we can do this by taking action and working towards pour goals and our vision. We can strengthen ourselves once we learn to help ourselves.
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you
This rule is quite challenging because, if enforced fully in the truest sense, it means losing people. Yes, these people may be bad for you. Yes, these people may drag you down and they may even be a bad influence. They may make you weaker than you are. This, however, does not stop you from loving them.
We need people who bring out the best in us, who challenge us and who make us work harder. Sometimes we have to ignore our instincts and understand that it is not our duty to keep people in our lives who disrupt our peace.
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
It’s so easy to get lost in life when we begin to compare. Some people become a massive success at a very young age. In the world of social media, it is easy to feel like a failure when we compare our lives to that of others. And that’s how we can become lost and detached from our own individual purpose. We become distracted with what others have achieved rather than focusing on what we can achieve. So, it’s important to go inwards and to look at our own lives. We must identify the bad habits and maladaptive cognitive functioning. We must strive to be better than the person we were yesterday because that’s the only way we can continue to grow.
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
I don’t have children so this one feels a little wasted on me. I do have a cat though if that counts? Well anyway, this one is quite straightforward: if you dislike what your children are doing the chances are, other people who are not related to your child will dislike those things more. We should all strive to be better parents and educators and help our children find their own paths.
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
This is a good one because it addresses something quite simple, making sure our own spaces are clean and tidy is important for our own wellbeing, but it is also important before we try to fix other people’s problems. How can we criticize the state when we cannot successfully run, organize or clean-up our own lives? There’s something quite profound here, a bit of wisdom that encourages us to be at our very best before we attempt to address bigger issues.
7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
The key to this one is sacrifice. We must sacrifice momentary gains and instead work towards achieving greater goals. Delay-gratification is crucial as well as understanding that success – true success in achieving our unrealized potential – takes consistent effort every single day of our lives without fail. If we want to live a meaningful existence, then we must pursue and become the greatest version of ourselves to help the world.
Again, we must do this at the most basic of levels first and strive to reduce any suffering we create in the world. Peterson’s use of biblical narrative here is at its most potent and relevant; it is articulated to such a creative and penetrating degree of wisdom that it is impossible not to be convinced of his arguments for their relevancy as instructive moral narratives – and this is coming from an agnostic.
8. Tell the truth--or, at least, don't lie
Lies are contagious and they grow out of proportion compared to the original falsehood. They also beget more lies until we are surrounded by our own denial of reality. Life becomes confusing as the lie is told over, and over, again. We begin to believe it and our own realities become warped: they become twisted and misshapen. So we must tell the truth and ground ourselves in the reality of our own beings. How can we improve ourselves if we don’t stand in the truth of who we really are?
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't
It’s important to check our arrogance sometimes and that we can learn something from everyone we meet. We all have different levels of life experience and knowledge of different things to share. It would be folly not to see opportunity in every exchange.
10. Be precise in your speech
This does not just mean articulating ourselves correctly and coherently; it also means accuracy in determining exactly what we want from life. We must have clear goals and a clear vision, and we must walk towards them. We must create a precise direction, one that is actionable and measurable. Precision in our thoughts, language and speech will allow us to aim up and find the right trajectory.
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
Sometimes a bit of danger is needed for growth. Sometimes children have to learn the hard way. Let them have fun.
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Because it would be just rude not to right? And it would also be rude to walk way from opportunities.
Final Thoughts
I took a lot from this one. It is a self-help book and it certainly got me thinking about many things and about how I could become better than I am. I took an extensive set of notes when reading this. I copied down quotes and passages and I feel like this will linger on my mind for a while. Let see if I can use some of these rules in my own life. ___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
Shelley’s poetry will always have a special place in my heart. His poems were the first I truly loved, and to be totally honest, I didn’t even enjoy pShelley’s poetry will always have a special place in my heart. His poems were the first I truly loved, and to be totally honest, I didn’t even enjoy poetry before I read his words. He was my gateway into a lot of things.
There’s just so much power, optimism and vision in his writing. I find his ethos fascinating and it’s the reason I’m even writing a PhD. His ideas were the gateway into my research topic because his arguments on the vegetable diet are strikingly relevant today. Recently I gave a paper on this at a research conference, linking his activism with his diet and view for reform. Essentially, I’m trying to say that I would not be at this stage of my academic career had Shelley’s words not reached me.
There’s so much I could talk about here and so many poems I could quote and discussions I could present in this review. And this is because of the huge wealth of Shelley’s poetry and prose: he wrote so much. Unique to him though, among the romantic poets, is the fact he rivalled his poetic output with essays and prose. He supplemented his poetry with facts and it acts to enhance the quality of it because he makes his political and philosophical stance so clear. In this sense his poems become quite direct in their intent, and they really were designed to affect the reader in a number of ways. Ozymandias is a good example.
Ozymandias
Percy Shelley saw the world for what it was, and what it will be. He saw through the cracks of civilisation and human greed; he saw what man has become and will always be unless he changes. Ozymandias is a simple homage to human power, to human corruption and to human ruling. This is a poem with true universal value.
"I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
[image]
Ozymandias is not remembered. For all their monuments of human suffering and power, they achieved nothing. A statue does not define success; a stone likeness is not tangible to Godliness. All it does is evoke man’s own blackened heart. Human structures are futile. They are temporary, brief and finite. They will shatter and break like the men who built them. But nature, nature remains. Indeed, “the lone and level sands stretch far away” and will continue to stretch long after man ceases to walk them.
Notably, this poem has a strong afterlife, and it permeates modern culture because it is such a powerful allegory. Shelley argued that poets were "the unacknowledged legislators of the world" as they were those who tried to create changed through their words as they captured the problems of society through them. And this is precisely what Ozymandias does, it demonstrates how foolish humans can be and how empty our monuments are.
There's so much to say about this piece of writing, and this is just one of Shelley's works. There's so much more I want to add here but I know that if I really went into the topic of Shelley's work I'd go way beyond the character limit. So I will end by simply saying that I don't think I'll ever be finished with Shelley's words and ideas. His writing is certainly something I will be revisiting many times through my lifetime.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
This is a compelling case that links climate change with colonial history. Indeed, The Nutmeg’s Curse is scholarly, erudite and straight to the point This is a compelling case that links climate change with colonial history. Indeed, The Nutmeg’s Curse is scholarly, erudite and straight to the point and this really is quite surprising considering how it links together ideas that are far apart in time but couldn’t be closer in concept.
Mindset is important and understanding how destructive imperialistic behaviour can be. Empires always have a dark history, but the ideas discussed here go far beyond people, races and history. They transcend time because unfortunately they have become an intrinsic human value. It’s about attitude, the wrong attitude: it’s about the misguided sense of superiority humans have towards the landscape, each other, and the earth.
"To see the world in this way requires not just the physical subjugation of people and territory, but also a specific idea of conquest, as a process of extraction.”
A sense of entitlement and ownership pervades our interaction with the world and this has led to much bloodshed and the destruction of natural land. In this Ghosh links colonialism with climate change, cultural annihilation with terraforming and through this he very firmly establishes that we are still making the same mistakes. We still have not learnt. And that’s terrifying because we continue to treat each other and the earth as a commodities.
“The project of terraforming enframes the world in much the same way that the Banda Islands came to be seen by their conquerors: this is the frame as world-as-resource, in which landscapes (or planets) come to be regarded as factories and “Nature” is seen as subdued and cheap.”
Renaming is another way of conquering the landscape because it erases the meanings behind the original inhabitants and locations: it eliminates cultural past. When the Banda Islands were conquered in the 1621, the original inhabitants were massacred and the European invaders began to change everything: they made it their own. They altered the island so they could extract and harvest Nutmeg, an extremely valuable resource at the time. They cared nothing about the consequences of their actions: they simply wanted wealth and resources regardless of the death and damage they caused. Ghosh parallels this parable with climate change and our continuous plundering of the natural world. And this narrative device works extraordinarily well.
Ghosh wrote this during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and on the cusp of the Black Lives Matters protests, and I found his personal experiences of both quite moving. Part of his own personal grief comes through in the writing as he laments historical cases of colonial injustice. Crucially, Ghosh understands that the pandemic was completely our fault. It’s our own warping and twisted of the natural world that allowed such a virus to be born. This piece of information is vital moving forward because if we continue to treat nature and animals as a mere commodity then we will continue to make the same horrific and damaging mistakes. The same can be said about the spark that lit the protests, we simply cannot treat other people in such an unjust and cruel way. It is this misguided sense of superiority and ownership that continues to create problems.
"As we watch the environmental and biological disasters that are now unfolding across the Earth, it is becoming even harder to hold on to the belief that the planet is an inert body that exists merely in order to provide humans with resources."
Ghosh is a very impressive writer. I found his case here so engaging that I went out a bought three more of his books after reading this. I will also be keeping my eye out for whatever else he may write on these themes. I feel like Ghosh is describing something here that has not been quite written down before or theorised at any length, and it’s quite ground-breaking the way he puts these themes and ideas together. I feel like a learnt a great deal from this book.
These are, indeed, very important words; they strike at the heart of reality and reveal the truth of not only colonial injustice but environmental catastrophe: they are one and the same.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
The Grapes of Wrath is the kind of book that pulls you in and refuses to let go.
There’s just something completely gripping about the way the narrativThe Grapes of Wrath is the kind of book that pulls you in and refuses to let go.
There’s just something completely gripping about the way the narrative begins and the way each sentence is put together, it pulls and pulls with its expertly rendered descriptions that do wonders at capturing a landscape and a people undergoing great change. I didn’t want to stop reading, but I also took the time to savour each chapter because I knew that I could only read this for the first time once. So, I stretched it out, I made it last longer than I wanted to, and for me this is one of the surest signs that I was reading a truly great novel.
There’s so much to talk about here. There’s so much brilliance to discuss and so many themes, characters and motifs that warrant reflection. But I want to keep it simple. I want to talk about the things I liked most about the writing. Firstly, I like the naturalness of it. I like the way Steinbeck’s words felt authentic and real. Now let me explain, he does wonders at capturing the essence of time and the ever-changing nature of it. And he is also remarkably talented when it comes to capturing the bigger picture.
It would be easy to talk about the plot here and what pushes the story forward, though that is just half of the power the writing possesses. Steinbeck interposes his narrative with chapters that capture the heart of a nation: they capture the essence of America and the great American dream. They help to weave together a sense of collective consciousness that establish exactly what the characters are feeling against the backdrop of the Great Depression. He is setting the scene in a way that creates a sense of what the characters and people of this time were experiencing on a large scale. And its intoxicating. It’s a storytelling device that brought the novel to life in an incandescent way.
Aside from this, reading The Grapes of Wrath from an ecocritical perspective is quite rewarding. Above all it is a novel of migration, of discovering new landscapes after mass crop death: it is a novel of changing environments and changing circumstances. It’s also about ecology, about man’s ability to continuously affect his environment in largely detrimental ways. And because of this there is a stress on social community, on working together and learning to coexist and fit into the ecosystem and society at large.
Consider me thoroughly and completely impressed. Now I knew how great Steinbeck was from reading Of Mice and Men but I never really liked the sound of any of his other novels enough to pick one up. They just didn’t sound very interesting to me, but this appeared on a list of eco-fiction reads so I was quite curious to see how it fit the genre. And it seems to me this (important) aspect of the novel is a little overlooked, though (admittedly) there are many other significant themes to consider that do dominate the narrative and take centre stage.
More Steinbeck for me in the future! ___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
The Lost Spells is a celebration of the natural; it is a collection of prose poetry about foxes and trees and birds and rabbits and flowers: it is an The Lost Spells is a celebration of the natural; it is a collection of prose poetry about foxes and trees and birds and rabbits and flowers: it is an elegy to what we are losing and what we must try to retain.
It’s educational; it’s a book we should give to our children and to our adults to help them see the sense of wonder that is outside, and its captured perfectly though the power of words and the beautiful illustrations.
I write these words as our green spaces are reducing, as more land is given over to housing and native animal populations plummet even further and perhaps even into memory itself. I wonder what the world will be like in fifty years. I wonder if the only way people can learn about the natural world is through books rather than observing her directly. Sure, there might be reserves, or isolated pockets, but I think one day there will be nothing natural left about modern life (if there is, indeed, anything natural about it now.)
I loved this book; it’s a book I will revisit and a book I will encourage others to read because despite increasing decline and modernisation, the natural world is still on our doorstep: she is still there if we are willing to look and to appreciate her. Lets make an effort to understand her magic and (better yet) keep it alive.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
“Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so
“Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so.”
Jane Goodall is a shining beacon of light in a dark world; her words radiate hope, wisdom and integrity: she is nothing less than an inspiration.
I find her story truly remarkable. As a young woman, with next to no qualifications or experience, she found herself in a position many would dream of. Because of her strength of character and belief in the intelligence of non-human animals, she was granted the opportunity to observe Chimpanzees directly in their natural environment. Her discovery, the fact that they use tools like humans, awarded her a PhD and led to multiple campaigns directly addressing the use of animals for vivisection.
Jane has been a lifelong vegetarian and recently turned vegan (hurrah!) She understood the consequences of eating meat on the planet and eventually made the decision to ditch animal products entirely. This is monumental because not only is she a person of great influence, but the move also fully matches her actions with her beliefs. It signifies so much and it suggests that you are never too old or too set in your ways to change your behaviour and better represent your own morals. This gives me hope. And for those that claim to love animals, Jane is an excellent example to follow.
“If everyone starts to think about the consequences of what we do, for example, what we buy – and I am including young people thinking about what they ask their parents to buy from – if we all start to ask whether its production harmed the environment, or hurt animals, or is cheap because of child slave labour or unfair wages – and, if so, we refuse to buy it – well, billions of these kind of ethical choices will move us to the kind of world we need.”
Jane has worked so hard to affect change and to educate people; she has dedicated her life to improving the welfare of others through multiple initiatives. Fundamentally, she hopes for a kinder a fairer world and she has changed these hopes into action. The young generation hold the key to change. Jane writes these words as a rallying cry; she wants the young generation to act, as she did; she wants them to work for a better world for all living beings. Jane is also deeply spiritual. She believes, well she knows, that her path was one of purpose and it was chosen for her. She had a calling and she answered it with all her enthusiasm. She simply knew what she must do with her life; she knew what change she could affect if she tried, so that’s precisely what she did: she gave her work her absolute all, and she has done so much good in this world.
I especially like the way in which she gets her message across. She is clever and careful and uses stories to represent her beliefs. Rather than telling people her point, she shows the facts to them through a narrative and attempts to sway the reader (or listener) to her cause when they are presented with simple facts. Education is the key to change. And this can be difficult when the ones you are educating are the cause for problems you are so opposed to. Patience and understanding is the key.
“Its main message: every single individual matters, has a role to play, and makes an impact on the planet – every single day. And we have a choice as to what sort of impact we will make.”
I cannot quite express how important this idea is. We each have an individual part to play, and we are each individually responsible. I have read so many environmental books that believe the power to affect change belongs only with governments, and our key to affecting change is to get them to act. It’s not that simple. We must each individually make conscious decisions with our consumer habits. We cannot expect others to act for us. If we hope for a better world, then we must each do something about it. If anything, this is the key to Jane’s message and one of the most important pieces of advice you could ever listen to.
Jane Goodall gives me hope: this book gives me hope.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are"
Everything we read, watch or listen to is food: it is material we are choosing to consume a
"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are"
Everything we read, watch or listen to is food: it is material we are choosing to consume and pollute our bodies, minds and environment with. Naturally, we should be quite selective of this material because mindful consumption can save the planet.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) was a vegan Buddhist monk and spiritual teacher and through this book he discusses the impotence of Zen in changing the world for the better. Mindfulness is needed on so many levels. Mindful actions and mindful consumption are required to create a peaceful environment. We must first change ourselves if we want to encourage others to live a kinder life. And I cannot quite stress enough how important this is. So many people look to others to create change, such as governments and politicians, but we must first make active attempts to change individually.
“When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing.”
If we wish to save the planet and act in an environmentally sustainable way, then we must first act. We must make changes to our diets and our habits, and we must encourage others to do better. Thay’s words are important and insightful; they are an indictment for peaceful living and a peaceful word. They're so desperately needed, and I wish more people would listen to them. To put it simply, if the entire world did listen to them the Earth would be reformed.
Thay passed away last year, but I think it's fair to assume what his current stance would be regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Thay would encourage peace, conversation and a kinder approach because the planet is at stake. We must always strive to do better and to be better. Achieving change is possible in the world, and I'm inclined to agree with his Zen approach that suggests we must first change ourselves before we can affect change at large. We must be beacons of peace and we must teach others the errors of their ways.
I absolutely loved this book. It is so inline with how I think and feel about advocacy, climate change and our environmental responsibility. I could not rate it any higher. I highly recommend this to other activists because it's insightful, energetic and entirely altruistic across species lines.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________ ...more
This is a compelling and highly symbolic feminist retelling of an Ancient Greek story that I recommend most highly.
I’m always impressed by the writingThis is a compelling and highly symbolic feminist retelling of an Ancient Greek story that I recommend most highly.
I’m always impressed by the writing of Madeline Miller. Her first book The Song of Achilles was a powerful and imaginative retelling of The Iliad. Her second novel Circe, however, was at a completely different level: it was simply fantastic in every way.
As such, I had extremely high expectations going into this and I’m very pleased to say they were met entirely. First off though, it’s important to note that this is a short story but it packs a very hefty punch. Galatea is a literary adaptation, a taking of an established story and retelling it and here it is done from a strong feminist perspective. Miller takes a piece of Ovid's Metamorphoses and gives it new life and agency.
Indeed, she takes an otherwise silent female character and gives her a voice and a story. Galatea was made from stone by a sculptor. He created her and prayed for her to come to life and his wish was granted by the gods. In Ovid’s version they get married and live happily ever after, but his narrative is problematic. What about Galatea wishes? Miller gives that consideration here. Galatea was physically made and sculped to be one man’s ideal: he made her to serve his every whim. It never occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, she might want something different from life.
What follows is a story of desperation and entrapment. Galatea, quite naturally, wants to escape from her overbearing creator and jailor. In this, he is the ultimate expression of the suffocating patriarchy which he represents. And without giving away the plot conclusion, it’s a forceful indictment of the terribleness of treating women like objects. I was impressed by the story’s closure. It was symbolic and it left a lasting image. Here Miller shows that her writing is on par with the likes of Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter when it comes to adapting stories and ideas.
So, this is a very strong short story. I would love to see more like it from Miller, a collection of them would certainly be great. For now, I will continue to read everything she writes. ___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
This has such a loaded title, and it has offended a lot of white people. Ironically, these same people are the ones that need to read the book the mosThis has such a loaded title, and it has offended a lot of white people. Ironically, these same people are the ones that need to read the book the most. Case in point, just look at the second highest rated review on Goodreads.
It actually made me cringe.
When Eddo-Lodge says “I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race” she is not closing the conversation, as she has been often accused. Instead, she is opening it; she is challenging people to understand her frustration when dealing with ignorance. The problem is, as a black feminist, she was constantly faced with a viewpoint that completely excluded, downplayed and was deaf to her own ideas and experience. It’s easier to deny the suffrage of others than admit you may be part of the problem and cause. The title is a strong indictment, and white people need to make the effort to understand it.
“Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can't afford to stay silent.”
So, there are two issues at play here which Eddo-Lodge presents eloquently. There is the race issue and then there is the feminist issue. The legacy of slavery is still apparent today. This is a fact. History cannot be erased nor can systemic racial prejudices that do, indeed, linger (despite the denial whites often display.) The biggest problem here is this strong (almost offended) denial by whites and the shutting-down of black voices not to mention a complete ignorance about the truth of black British (and American) history. Eddo-Lodge has completely got to the heart of the matter here. Speaking as a white male, we need to listen and we need to do so much better.
The feminist issue is two pronged and more complex. Within a social justice movement fighting for women’s rights, Eddo-Lodge found herself faced with white activists who only represented and cared about some women’s rights. Within organisations, there was a clear disparity about which women were being liberated from the yoke of misogyny. And this is problematic. Here was an example of an unintended, yet still blatant and inexcusable, structural form of racism. Simply put, this is white privilege.
“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”
This absence is down to a matter of perspective and a lack of understanding, empathy and thought about the perspective of others. It’s easy to deny what we haven’t experienced. It’s easy to ignore a problem we are causing. And this is something we all need to come to terms with fully. This isn’t an issue that can be brushed off. It’s something that needs to be tackled full on. The only way to do that is through education, through learning where the problems originated from, how they persist and then from there we can work towards removing them.
My point here is that Eddo-Lodge is a fantastic educator. As with Edward’s Said’s Orientalism this is mandatory reading for everybody in our modern world and especially for those that wish to understand race relations (which should be everybody.)
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
There's something truly haunting about this book and I often find myself thinking about it during quiet moments. Life is Second Read - August 2022
There's something truly haunting about this book and I often find myself thinking about it during quiet moments. Life is strange and it can take us down many unexpected paths and diversions, but there's something all consuming and distracting about how many of these paths and alternate timelines there could have been in our own lives.
Life often leaves you wondering "what if?" but it's important to remember that we only have the now so we need to learn to embrace it. I find the idea behind this book quite profound. Matt Haig is a very intelligent and sensitive writer and I would recommend this book to just about anyone. Be warned though, there's lots of triggers!
First Read - October 2021
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
There’s a great deal to talk about here……..
If we think about the power of words, the power they have to move us and make us think and imagine, then The Midnight Library is a very powerful book indeed. Each book in the library offers a glimpse into an alternative reality, an alternative life we could have lived if we had made different decisions. How cool is that?
But if you’ve ever felt suicidal, depressed or like you’re not living the life you are “supposed” to be living, then this might be a very hard read because it makes us consider alternatives and the importance of small choices. We could quite easily be living a different life based upon a very small action. There’s something terribly consuming about regret, and if we’re not careful it can take over as we wonder where we could be. So tread lightly because there’s a lot of emotional triggers here even if the book has a understandably positive outcome.
Matt Haig is not subtle. This isn’t a book that’s going to leave you guessing or wondering what it’s all about: his message is very clear. Regret is pointless. Just because we are not what we might be (or we are not living as we could be) it doesn’t mean we will be happy or fulfilled. Every life is filled with problems. To invoke a cliché: the grass is not always greener on the other side. And this is important to remember. There are many paths we might take and they can lead us anywhere. The key here is to move forward the best we can and to remember that life is always worth living because there will always be new opportunities.
Matt Haig is a self-help author, naturally much of his positive rhetoric appears in this novel. It’s his novel. It’s to be expected. And as such the ending was expected. His moralising and ideals would only allow the story to end on a certain high note. Artistically, this sacrificed some of the narrative tension, but it gives the message of the story a little added weight and authority. Matt Haig infuses his writing with his stark knowledge about depression and mental illness. He’s lived it. He knows what toll it can take. And he understands that healthy thinking and actions can change much about one’s present situation.
Life is about perspective and sticking around long enough to see that it can change and develop. The Midnight Library explores this idea beautifully well.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
I recently met Ed and got my booked signed. I had a chat with him about my PhD thesis. Such a humble guy!
[image]
Review
I’ve been vegan for twelve yeaI recently met Ed and got my booked signed. I had a chat with him about my PhD thesis. Such a humble guy!
[image]
Review
I’ve been vegan for twelve years and if you’d told me at the beginning of my journey that I would one day see a book about veganism advertised on billboards and by bookstores, I simply wouldn’t have believed you.
For me, this just demonstrates how much the world is finally starting to talk about veganism and to take these arguments seriously. The truth is people are waking up; things are changing and there are more of us now than ever. And we really need to keep talking because this is a conversation that has the protentional to completely change the world. The future is vegan, it must be.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for this book (or a book like it) for a very long time. It’s really a pivotal piece of writing. And it’s written in such a way to be accessible to both vegans and non-vegans alike. This is a book written to make you think. It’s not written to demonise you for your choices or to make you feel judged. It wants to challenge you. And it wants you to consider the reality of animal agriculture.
In this, Ed sees the big picture. And that’s why his writing and advocacy is so powerful. He understands that changing our perceptions, the way we see and think about animals, will fundamentally alter our behaviour and eating habits. Breaking down barriers is the key. Becoming educated about the reality of our food choices and the consequences of them is essential in understanding the truth of animal exploitation. Simply put, we live in a world where we don’t have to inflict cruelty on another sentient being every time we go to the supermarket. We have a choice. And we need to make the better one.
“Every time we eat, we have the power to radically transform the world we live in and simultaneously contribute to addressing many of the most pressing issues that our species currently faces: climate change, infectious diseases, chronic disease, human exploitation and, of course, non-human exploitation. Every single day our choices can help alleviate all of these problems or they can perpetuate them.”
Without turning my review into too much of a regurgitation of these arguments that I clearly agree with and uphold, I want to establish once more just how significant the decision of what we chose to consume is. We can either chose to live and consume in an ethical way or we can continue to support industries that are destroying our planet and causing death on an unimaginable scale. It’s really that simple. Please choose the kinder option. Please go vegan.
And now I want to talk a little bit about how Ed has impacted my life. His words at the London Animal Rights March in 2019 are a large part of the reason I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to the movement. I remember sitting on the floor of Parliament Square, surrounding by thousands of other vegans, and coming to the realisation that if we want change then we must work for change. We cannot be silent. The animals need us.
This is Vegan Propaganda demonstrates perfectly why change is necessary.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
I find these words really moving because they are simple and true. Even during our darkest times, when life feels overwhelming and our plans go awry, it is important to appreciate the beauty of life and our surroundings.
This past year has been a strange one for many of us, and for me the beauty of nature has got me through it. Going for walks and runs has been essential for mental balance. Taking photographs of trees has been helpful too. Matt Haig suggests that we keep our thoughts focused on these elements to remember that life is, indeed, still worth living.
What makes this book particularly helpful though is the honestly and sincerity that has been poured into it. It’s a genuine book, one written to inspire you and to keep you moving. It tries to inject colour back into your life when perhaps it has become a tapestry of dull motionless greys. It’s a book that understands depression and one that also understands that moving out of it is very difficult, but it can be done with the right advice and actions.
For me, this isn't a book to be read just once: it's a guide to come back to when help is needed. __________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
The Overstory is very green, very vibrant and very important.
You could even say that it is a celebration of the natural world and the power she poss The Overstory is very green, very vibrant and very important.
You could even say that it is a celebration of the natural world and the power she possesses, but that would be a drastic oversimplification. The novel equally explores (but perhaps not celebrates) human nature and our failures to act and care in the face of ecological collapse. So few people are willing to do anything and extend empathy beyond their immediate lives. And here you have the crux of the novel: environmental frustration.
The natural world has called certain people to defend her; they feel compelled to change destructive behaviours: they have been awakened to nature’s desperate plight and they are ready to act positively for much needed change. And they are met with ridicule, greediness and people too ignorant to understand the importance of trees in our lives.
“The most wonderous products of four billion years of life need help.”
Trees are silent sentinels witnessing the passing of generations, as human families are characterised in tree years through parts of the story. In this the pervading power of the natural world is contrasted against the fragile nature of human existence. Our environment has evolved drastically, but we haven’t. We still have many innate animal behaviours that are completely unsuited to the modern world. We are ill adapted to our concrete environments. There’s a reason why we feel a sense of peace and tranquillity when we visit a forest or an open landscape. It’s where we belong.
The need for change is fuelled by a strong undercurrent of scientific progress and academic discovery, but that can only achieve so much. It is the act of storytelling itself that becomes the best tool for change:
“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
The book is a heavy hitter. Powers creates a huge cast of characters with overlapping stories in order to bring these themes home. It’s a book that is easy to become lost in but is pulled together by its central and unifying motif of ecological concern. It is a marvellous piece of writing though it is undeniably difficult in places. It is challenging and it will make you think, but most importantly it is best described as a book that drastically wants us to consider how important trees are.
We really need them. We can't survive without them.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
"It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learned while we are at our lowest."
This book is fresh air. "It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learned while we are at our lowest."
This book is fresh air. It is a sunset on a summer’s evening, and it is a cold shower on a very hot day. It is a book written to help you understand yourself and it is also a book written to help you heal and appreciate life.
True growth comes during our worst times, during moments when we feel like we have no more to give but carry on anyway. Our mindset is everything, and here Matt Haig draws on stoic philosophy to understand his own experiences and impart the wisdom he learnt through a crippling bout of suicidal depression.
It is a short book, but it is also one that understands the power of words and the act of writing itself. What we think, what we do, what we reflect on through writing, is what we begin to manifest. And it is extremely important we make active choices to engage in things that bring us comfort, hope and stability.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
Walden is a phenomenal piece of writing that has the power to completely alter your way of thinking and the way in which you see the world.
To put it Walden is a phenomenal piece of writing that has the power to completely alter your way of thinking and the way in which you see the world.
To put it plainly, I feel like I have been looking for Walden (or a book like it) for my entire life. It is a book a about a man who has had enough of society and all its trappings; it is a book about a man who understands that modern life is inauthentic and false: it is not a reflection of how we ought to be living as per our biology and our natural animal instinct. And to regain some sense of authenticity, he goes to live in the woods by himself.
He builds his own home with his own hands; he grows his own food; he practices frugality and minimalist living; he turns his back on materialism, consumerism and society at large: he tries to live in way that is completely true to himself. His motivations for doing so were quite simple: he wanted to feel alive and that when he reached his death bed, he would not feel like he had wasted his life (as so many others will):
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
What is also strikingly powerful about Walden, a book published in 1864, is how modern it is and how awake it is. Reading this today as a vegan and an environmentalist with a mind attuned to contemporary ecological concern, reveals just how important books like this are. Back then Thoreau understood how easy it was to live off plant-based food. He understood that it was cheaper, cleaner, and not detrimental to his health. And he wanted to be totally off-grid. I find historical examples of this fascinating because they are examples of how some writers understood exactly what was needed for the development of humanity.
“I have no doubt that is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”
I feel like many writers, philosophers and poets have known this fact for a long time. And here, as in many cases, eating plant-based food is utilised to become more natural and to, as Thoreau puts it, eat like the animals do. I feel like Thoreau has been reading the work of Rousseau here, but he never mentions him. Despite this, Thoreau does also hunt and fish in the book, but his mind always turns back to the animals involved and what harm his actions are causing them. He knows it is time to change and to move forward.
It is worth mentioning here that Walden is quite dense, and the archaic prose and lofty descriptions will scare away many an immature reader. It is the main criticism levelled at the work here on Goodreads. But I think it is really worth sticking with because there is some true wisdom in its pages.
And I'd like to end my review by quoting a little bit more of it:
“There can be no black melancholy in him who lives in the midst of nature."
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
“My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then
“My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed ourselves first. There are no forests left on my Earth.”
The Dispossessed is a phenomenal novel and there are many important aspects of it that warrant a thorough discussion; however, the above quote really stood out to me and will become the focus of my review.
It is important because it shows Le Guin’s preoccupation with ecological thought. And this is a constant theme through her work. The character in question has witnessed environmental collapse and understands exactly why it has happened; it has happened because there were no restrictions placed on appetite, indulgence, and violence. Resources became a commodity, and all the forests were destroyed. Humans did not adapt, learn or grow. They continued down their destructive path and it led to their demise. (I think she's trying to tell us something here, don't you?)
Le Guin establishes this by demonstrating that humanity is doomed to fail because of the divisions we have. She portrays two worlds diametrically opposed in their values. Urras is the crux of consumerist and destructive capitalism, and Anarres is an anarchist utopia in which no government reigns and every person is born equal. The former is driven by ideas of wealth and expansion, the latter by ideas of socialism. And although the alternative appears attractive to each counterpart, both have their own limitations because they cannot quite be reached in their pure state.
Shevek, the protagonist and a brilliant physicist, comes to terms with the unattainableness of true freedom due to the fickleness of human nature: it is an impossible goal. He, the only man to witness the limitations of both political ideologies, understands that neither are enough to save or to benefit humankind by themselves. The ideology of Annares and its emphasis on universal survival, through altruism, is certainly the most attractive to me (and to him), but its system is the easiest to exploit by the corrupt minded. This idea, for example:
“We don’t count relatives much; we are all relatives, you see.”
This is a great concept because it extends the notion of family to every single person. Blood does not matter. Relation does not matter as we should look out for every single person regardless of our connection to them. This basic notion is innate and a moral principle for those born on Anarres. It is a simple requirement of society and it is there to ensure the survival of humanity. Everybody is here together, and they should work together. The ideology pushes universal altruism over individual aggrandisement, but if one deviates from this there are no repercussions. Trust is the key, but not everyone is trustworthy in life.
And this is where the story begins to become complex. The freedom discussed here pertains to the notion of individual expression and argument. Both planets believe that their system is best and will benefit human advancement if all embraced it. They close themselves off. They close their minds off. Shevek, as a scientist, wants his idea to benefit all. It’s not about political ideology: it’s about benefiting humans, all humans, as a whole and not taking sides.
The undercurrent of ecological concerns articulates this perfectly: we're all in this together and we must adapt, change and grow together so that we do not spoil our planet(s). We must not destroy our own humanity first because if we do then we will destroy our world, our forest.
Two years later, these ecological concepts would be expanded upon in the equally as phenomenal The Word for World is Forest (note the title and its link with the quote here.) And it's after reading these two works that I consider Ursula K. Le Guin not only one of my favourite novelists, but also one of the most important writers of the late twentieth century.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
“That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.”
I have been reading this for five years, reading one volume every six months or “That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.”
I have been reading this for five years, reading one volume every six months or so. I have paced my reading out, staggered it, delayed it and put it off completely at times. Why? Because I never wanted the story to finish, so I tried to hold back the inevitable. For me this says a great deal: The Sandman was so good that I did not want to read it because I would never be able to read it for the first time again.
I can think of only a handful of times that a story has affected me so. The first time I watched Lost and when I found out the sequel To Kill a Mocking Bird was to be released are the only comparisons that come to mind. Sometimes when greatness is established very early on, there is a worry that as you continue to read (or watch) it will begin to lose its spark and crumble as it falls short of the potential it originally established. I have seen it happen so many times in books, films and even music.
Gaiman is one of my favourite writers and this is Gaiman at his absolute best; he retains the brilliance here to the very last page, to the final act: to the closing of the curtain. I do not want to talk about the plot here or even the characters. I do however want to remark how powerful the concepts that drive it are, concepts that have captured my imagination for many years.
How everything ends here is pure poetry because it's not really an ending, it is just the finalisation of a point of view. I imagine Gaiman laughed as he wrote, knowing just how clever he had been. I shall say no more other than finishing this was extremely difficult.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree. __________________________________...more
progriss riport 1 I reed this book and I liked it and I should rite down what I think. Its a story about how a boy got smart. I dont remembir I should progriss riport 1 I reed this book and I liked it and I should rite down what I think. Its a story about how a boy got smart. I dont remembir I should reed it again.
progriss riport 2 So the boy got smart and then went stupid and its important cause it was about how we shouldn’t mess with nature and test on people because it effects other things we don’t get yet. It also had a mouse in it. I dont remembir much more I should reed it again.
Progress Report 3 Its easier to understand each time. I learnt how to spell better because the book has lots of big words that sound all sciency though the book doesnt quite read like other sciency books I tried to read. Its more like a case study that questions what it is to be human in a world that demands we be smart when not all of us are but we are still people no matter how we think. I dont remembir much more I should reed it again.
Progress Report 4 I remember much more this time. This book is very clever and I like it more and more each time I read it. I remember all the characters that affect the boy’s life and a mouse called Algernon that mirrors his own journey through the narrative. It’s almost like the writer is trying to tell us something but I can’t quite say what it is just yet. I should read it again and pay closer attention to the themes and how the boy failed to develop emotionally despite his intellectual growth.
Progress Report 5 It’s all starting to fall into place, the sexual themes, the deep rooted psychological trauma, the questions about how we treat other people with disabilities: it is all making perfect sense. This book is brilliant and it has made me feel so smart. I even wrote a full paper about it that I am going to submit to a university journal. I showed it to my mother and she was amazed that I had written it. From here, I am going to read so many books so I can analyse them properly and make full use of my transformation.
Progress Report 6 I rested today then I got drunk because the book left me feeling sad and I feel sorry for Alergonon and the boy. The alcohol stops me from feeling anything and it makes my mind go slow again for a short while. I had sex with a stranger I met because she made me feel relaxed and I could forget about the book for a little while.
Progress Report 7 Becoming absent minded. I haven’t read for a while and I forget what it is I am supposed to do with my life. I wander the streets thinking about Algernon’s story and I know I should keep reading to try and keep my mind sharp. But is becoming harder again and I can't remember the book much or all that it taught me.
Progress Report 8 I read through my earlier reports today and my paper but I couldn’t quite understand everything I said about the book. I want to read the book again but I cant keep focused on it.
progriss report 9 I tried to rite about the book today but I havent red it in a while and words are hard again and make my head hurt and I feel angry when I cant remembir the book.
progriss riport 10 I should post my riports on goodreeds so I don’t forget about a mouse called Algernon and a boy who got smart....more
Sean Barrs
>
Books:
5-star-reads
(179)
Loading...
