Kev Nickells (Author of Taylor Swift for Adults)

Kev Nickells wants to read Sermons of Meister Eckhart by Meister Eckhart	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 09, 2026 01:42AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Sermons of Meister Eckhart by Meister Eckhart. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Sermons of Meister Eckhart by Meister Eckhart <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells wants to read Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jul 03, 2026 03:54AM · like
Kev Nickells rated a book really liked it Correspondence, 1939 - 1969 by Theodor W. Adorno	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
So from the top I should probably say this is largely for academic use. I'm a big fan of Adorno but in terms of getting under the skin of his work, the personal touch in correspondence throws less light than his own works. I don't know Scholem but I' ...more
Jul 01, 2026 02:28PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Correspondence, 1939 - 1969 by Theodor W. Adorno. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Correspondence, 1939 - 1969 by Theodor W. Adorno <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells liked Commodius Vicus of’s status update Commodius Vicus of Kawasaki wants to read A Perfect Vacuum
Jun 27, 2026 12:34AM · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells wants to read My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jun 21, 2026 08:54PM · like
Kev Nickells rated a book it was amazing On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace (Vagabonds) (Volume 5) by Phanuel Antwi	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Enjoyed this a lot. Well 'enjoyed' is an odd word to describe it but it's a great book. Read it as part of a book club which meant going through it slowly and precisely, which was a great help. It's a very stylish book - insofar as the Antwi uses dif ...more
May 24, 2026 10:37AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of On Cuddling by Phanuel Antwi. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — On Cuddling by Phanuel Antwi <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells rated a book it was amazing A Quick Ting On Grime (A Quick Ting On) by Franklyn Addo	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It's called a quick ting on Grime but it's a fair bit broader than that - it's a fairly exhaustive approach to black British culture from the 00s to present through the lens of Grime music. Plenty of bits about the industry, the shifting culture as t ...more
May 16, 2026 05:25AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Quick Ting On Grime by Franklyn Addo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Quick Ting On Grime by Franklyn Addo <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells rated a book it was amazing Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It's a historical book and germane to our times, exhaustively researched. But also it's not an academic book - Crabapple is too personal, too full-bloodied for the dessicated academic tone. Which I liked a lot. I'm going to frontload a criticism upfr ...more
May 11, 2026 02:57PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Kev Nickells wants to read Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter: Two Heroes and Martyrs for Jewish Socialism by Samuel A. Portnoy	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 11, 2026 02:48PM · like
Kev Nickells wants to read Arkady Kremer, Vladimir Medem, and the ideology of the Jewish "Bund" (Jewish social studies) by Koppel Shub Pinson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 04, 2026 07:30AM · like

Kev Nickells wants to read

Sermons of Meister Eckhart
by Meister Eckhart

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Kabbalah
by Gershom Scholem

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Kev Nickells rated a book really liked it

Correspondence, 1939 - 1969
by Theodor W. Adorno

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So from the top I should probably say this is largely for academic use. I'm a big fan of Adorno but in terms of getting under the skin of his work, the personal touch in correspondence throws less light than his own works. I don't know Scholem but I' ...more

Kev Nickells liked Commodius Vicus of’s status update

Commodius Vicus of Kawasaki wants to read A Perfect Vacuum

Kev Nickells wants to read

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
by Amos Tutuola

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On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace (Vagabonds) (Volume 5)
by Phanuel Antwi

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Enjoyed this a lot. Well 'enjoyed' is an odd word to describe it but it's a great book. Read it as part of a book club which meant going through it slowly and precisely, which was a great help. It's a very stylish book - insofar as the Antwi uses dif ...more

Kev Nickells rated a book it was amazing

A Quick Ting On Grime (A Quick Ting On)
by Franklyn Addo

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It's called a quick ting on Grime but it's a fair bit broader than that - it's a fairly exhaustive approach to black British culture from the 00s to present through the lens of Grime music. Plenty of bits about the industry, the shifting culture as t It's called a quick ting on Grime but it's a fair bit broader than that - it's a fairly exhaustive approach to black British culture from the 00s to present through the lens of Grime music. Plenty of bits about the industry, the shifting culture as the UK descends into Tory misrule, London life, production, DIY aesthetic etc. It is pretty London-centric, which is probably reflective of its size - I'd hope for a sequel several times larger which takes in Grime (or more broadly, UK rap culture) from Birmingham, Manchester etc. Given this is a debut book I should imagine a publisher wouldn't be so keen to give Addo that space - but based on this I've no doubt he could fill a few hundred more pages with 'the full story'.

In case that seems like a subtle dig - this is a great book; if the only criticism you can muster of a book is that it's too short then you've got a banger on your hands. From my perspective I've known most of this material for a while - I've been into Grime for a long time - so there isn't much in the way of surprises. But it's a properly serious look into Grime, its history and cultural standing, one that the genre has long since deserved. Better still, there's a comprehensive bibliography and playlist at the back, which hopefully will make this a gold standard book for the history of Grime.

Worth saying also that Addo is very positive about Grime - typically media (especially 00s) would render Grime in discretely racist ways - emphasising the sorts of criminality which pop up in council estates in inner-city London. So he takes the approach of treating it as a serious artform - he's not ignorant of the way that poverty criminalises people but he's also stressing that music is a way out of the grind and often reflects those realities. In that sense I'd put this book next to Deeping It (Adèle Oliver) which deals with UK Drill music in a similar fashion.

Having mentioned Drill, Addo does a good job of putting Grime in a broader musical context - so there's some mention of Drill, Afrobeat, UK Garage etc. And (critically for me as a music nerd) Addo has a good sense that Grime isn't merely influence by US hip-hop and that Dancehall soundclash culture is just as important - and conretely perhaps moreso, given the large Jamaican population in the UK and their building of sound system infrastructure following windrush.

Summary then - I enjoyed this a lot as someone who knows a fair amount about Grime. I'd still recommend it for someone looking to find out more about the genre. But importantly, this isn't just a music book, this spreads its view over a whole world of black London culture. Hard recommend. ...more

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Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund
by Molly Crabapple (Goodreads Author)

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It's a historical book and germane to our times, exhaustively researched. But also it's not an academic book - Crabapple is too personal, too full-bloodied for the dessicated academic tone. Which I liked a lot.

I'm going to frontload a criticism upfr It's a historical book and germane to our times, exhaustively researched. But also it's not an academic book - Crabapple is too personal, too full-bloodied for the dessicated academic tone. Which I liked a lot.

I'm going to frontload a criticism upfront - and I don't think it's Crabapple's fault so much as the editors. A decision has been made to Anglicise (or Latinise) spellings here, which is fair; however, Polish names are rendered in nearest-English equivalent. Meaning that Łódź (IPA /ˈwut͡ɕ/ ) is rendered as 'Lodz'. Łódź is a fairly common gotcha - 3 of 4 letters having diacritics. But it is in a Latin alphabet. Those orthographical concerns are minor but they can be misleading - given how many Polish names there are here, it's a shame to not render them properly.

I suspect that editorial decision is emblematic of a side to this book - while it's exhaustively researched, it's written to appeal to a broad audience - not merely (say) leftist historians.

I've been reading a few things in this area of history and this area of Europe and it fits with a general perspective I'm forming about the turn of the century in what would become Soviet Europe. The perspective I was raised with was the of a singular Leninist Soviet sphere of influence - now I'm seeing a world of socialists and anarchists all at odds with what became the USSR. This book forms an important part of that - there was a substantive and influential socialist element to the Jewish minorities in Poland, Russia, Ukraine who were well-organised and influential. Critically to this book (and also this book at this moment in time), the bundists who live and laugh and fight in Crabapple's book are part of a confluence of resistance to Zionism. That Zionism may not be the same as the one we see today in Israel (there's an enormous difference between the Zionism that seeks national power and the Zionism that exerts national power). But this book does a great job of illustrating that, despite the depredations of the pogroms and Soviet misrule, there were plenty committed Jewish socialists as averse to capitalism and authoritarianism as they were averse to becoming colonialists.

Crabapple's writing is brisk but gentle - there's a sense that each of the characters she brings forward were living, breathing people. As much as it's important to assert the strength in leftist organisation, it's equally important to humanise the people doing that organisation.

I'd say this book is imperative at a time when we're threatening to dissolve all of Jewish identity into a perspective on the current nation state of Israel; it is far from inevitable that Jews become a monolith underneath a bastard nation state. Perhaps finally I should say that Crabapple very clearly loves Jews, her familial forbears, and crisply articulates their lives and anxieties. ...more

Kev Nickells wants to read

Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter by Samuel A. Portnoy

Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter: Two Heroes and Martyrs for Jewish Socialism
by Samuel A. Portnoy

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Arkady Kremer, Vladimir Medem, and the ideology of the Jewish... by Koppel Shub Pinson

Arkady Kremer, Vladimir Medem, and the ideology of the Jewish "Bund" (Jewish social studies)
by Koppel Shub Pinson

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	Taylor Swift for Adults: Taking Swift Seriously 3.56 avg rating — 32 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Open Polyversity #2 by Zali Krishna (Editor), Adrian Carter (Goodreads Author) (contributor), Edmund Davie (contributor) 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2018	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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