Madeleine > Recent Status Updates

greece. might be too much greece? why am i reading a book about greece when i'm not terribly interested in greece??
i have so many questions.

thus far this is a bit of a trick.

if the goal is in part to make sense of US politics around both Israel and antisemitism: the absence of any meaningful discussion of the impact of white northern racism and settler colonialism on US politics and thought is a major shortcoming. HOWEVER the analysis of *European* politics and thought is fascinating! TLDR: I admire mazower for writing outside his scholarly comfort zone, also see the drawbacks to this.

Writing this is clearly of personal moral importance to Mazower and I greatly respect that. It is also pretty far outside his area of scholarly expertise (southeast Europe and in particular I think interreligious dynamics in Southeast Europe) and as a result it’s pretty uneven. The parts about Europe are great, the parts about the US are lacking.

i really like mark mazower after reading his book about the Balkans, aaaaand maybe if i listen to all his existing audiobooks someday someone will make an audiobook of salonica city of ghosts????

I should have skipped reading Balkan Ghosts entirely. I don't know what I was thinking. This book is very good, although listening to it is adding to my annoyance that no audiobook exists for Salonica City of Ghosts.

while i wait to get the molly crabapple book back someday so i can finish it. quite good, and continuing my USSR theme i suppose. i'm starting to think Julia Ioffe was actually *not brutal enough* in describing how horrific things were.

omg i don't care about these ppl and their horsecarts. this series may have run its course for me at this point.

I couldn't quite manage to finish this in three weeks (because it is SO GOOD and also SO HEARTBREAKING. and also because i went backpacking) and so now I'm currently waiting 10ish weeks for my hold to arrive so I can read the last 5%.

this needs to move to the currently reading slowly shelf so i can forget about it. seeing it on my homepage irritates me. i had SUCH high hopes.

Ok dude now you’re just making shit up???

Aggravating book remains aggravating. Robert is checking out some medieval paintings though.

this book is so good! thank you laura d for finding me this book.

I slightly started to write this mess off as a product of his time…and then I remembered when Joe Sacco published Palestine and Safe Area Goražde. 1993 and 2000. Same time.

oh my GOD why did the 90s produce so many irritating white men who wrote smug white man books about people they deemed backward????????? see also from beirut to jerusalem.

why would you write an entire book about people you view with such disdain? also, “travel writing” generally requires…writing about one’s own travels.

the audio (except Ypi's small parts) is so baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

random impulse buy.

i ABSOLUTELY need to STOP following my friends who like reading scary things into the pop-up bookstore that specializes in scary things. i do NOT like scary things.

already much much better than that "how to kill a witch" podcast to book pipeline nonsense.

may actually dnf this (and not due to the various disturbing events, which I was well aware of), which is...baffling and completely unexpected??? i pre-ordered this! i thought i had a huge amount of respect for mary cain.

simultaneously listening to two audiobooks that can't decide whether they want to be academic or popular books is...maybe a slightly aggravating choice i've made.

this was a banff mountain people festival awardee. i like it but every time i hear the phrase "the greater ranges" my ears itch.

honestly i'm basically done with this book and i still don't really *get* john green.

Started reading this because I am baffled by the phenomenon that is John Green. Status update: I remain baffled.

i was not at all prepared for the horrendous childhood trauma content, which is 100% on me for knowing nothing about this book in advance. may keep listening, may take a break and prepare myself and then resume.

Dude is politicizing enthusiastically about how humans have negatively impacted Mount Hood and he is so so close to recognizing that settler colonialism is at the root of this and he just. can’t. get there. I may throw my knitting across the room.

also some podcasts should stay podcasts.

this book really blatantly lacks any meaningful analysis or even acknowledgement of european hatred for the non-christian religious other. like, *mentioning* antisemitism would in no way take away from your critique of the particularly nasty white european flavor of sexism you're so rightly calling out??????