sioraide > Recent Status Updates

Using bread-and-butter provisions to position an organisation as the people’s friend to ensure their silent compliance with injustices carried out against “others” sounds kind of familiar

It’s hard to take an anarchist seriously when he’s so intentionally and blissfully unaware of the reality of systems of privilege and power. However, I take him up at his offer not to let his personal shortcomings mar the truth of his writing. Even the most insufferable genius shall speak words of fundamental truth now and then.

The heart of the matter is articulated with stunning clarity. The rest, I am afraid, even for his times, astoundingly ignorant and so arrayed out of a desire to elevate himself, even among other white men. But for my love of how he attacks the fundamentals of modern life, which is basically unchanged since his time, I would have stopped reading.

Devastated once again

Let me live here

Probably giving it 4 stars but the fault is all mine… I don’t quite understand the terms and many environments I’ve never been… such that not even a basic image is conjured as background to his wonderfully evocative writing… desert, Island, and the exact loch I know. But I spent so much time researching what even a moor is. Ridge, I am not sure if I know… but it all compels me to see more of the world.

I didn’t want to google the places except when I really didn’t understand what the hell they were like a moor… bit hard to understand because the phrases are so specific, but yet simple you know? Because this is the word for what they are… but enthralling, so many threads for me to pull at truth and feelings I myself have felt out in nature. the way he imagines himself walking in micro landscapes too lol

How does everyone in power always cede authority to the one woman who has always failed humanity at the critical hour again and again?!??! She’s just a witness and not an actor… her only 2 actions came at the start of the book (proposing the staircase project & sacrificing her friend who loved her). She sucks

SCREAMING

As we go further out in time it’s getting harder to relate to… but I’m glad the logical fundamentals are still very recognisable I.e. the circumstances are different but once they’re accepted, the social patterns that follow are logical and easier to understand etc

This is too insanely detailed, he’s definitely seen this world and came back. Even the racist inflections upon which modern society and international law is predicated is presented onstage, not posturing, not “raising awareness”, just is. And that’s on top of the insanely thoroughly researched hard science fiction. I am ridiculously impressed. I don’t know why I gave the first book only 4 stars

Im so in awe of what I’m learning… and I thought I would not like the format but it really works quite well… it’s just so crazy to think of how Humboldt was the first person to see these beautiful relationships in nature… he loved to see truths and patterns and was so piercingly clear about the way things are over the stories people tell… and his love for nature is so true and beautiful…

It really reads like a mind who’s gone to the frontiers of human experience and came back to report on the nothing and everything

“…the seeds of death got lost in the mess God made us”….!

The writing is so so beautiful… it’s such a surprising and surprisingly pleasant mix of twee sentiments and cringy masculinity mixed with unbelievably beautiful lines… e.g. the part about the planets shifting in Mr Lisbon’s classroom… and I think it describes quite well the confusion and sadness, the inability to draw a line from heart to heart, looking from the outside at suicide.

It’s getting a bit too cheesily serendipitous but I’m still into it… hanging onto all the “what if this could really happen”s and loving the cheesiness for what it is hahaha because the individual character storylines are really pretty good! They feel very authentic and told from life.

I find it quite pleasant despite some of the unimpressed reviewers… I guess it’s because I don’t read this sort of book often. At some parts I thought the plot was reaching, especially the way Mira and Jang communicated (how did they know each other left the message? How did she know the drink was for her?). But the sweetness and rightness of Mira’s family moving into Jang’s home made me forget it all…

He is so so compassionate… the stories just keep bringing tears to my eyes, this is just the kind of content I shy away from on the internet because it upsets me to see it, although I do always think about them and even share the stories to raise awareness. All the while, I can’t bear to linger a glance on them. I’m glad I get the chance to face it now.

It’s so painful to read… I feel headache and glimmers of trauma based off my own traumatic experiences, which no doubt cannot compare to the Darayans’ but is enough for me to feel nauseated and sick… it’s so powerful that much of the vignettes are told in verbose chunks from the interviewees, so real and powerful… I am so awed and inspired and feel more in love with the world.

Not used to reading books about modern political history that aren’t granular / nuanced to an approximate scholarly understanding. But the format is very engaging and visceral, we actually need more of such books to align ourselves with humanity itself at multiple levels including the emotional.