Joshua > Recent Status Updates

I am LOVING this book so far. Saylor does wonders as a historical writer. The change in voice as eras pass is brilliant. I’m looking forward to finishing it while simultaneously wanting it to never end.

My initial thought on this book is that there is too much effort and too little substance, even for YA.

Picked this up again because I needed something that wasn’t going to require my entire attentional capacity on a commute via public transportation. Being that this is my third read through, my familiarity helped me stick through the narrative despite all the distractive elements surrounding me.
Also, I fucking love this book.

Upon completing chapter one, “Etymology of the Sun,” I found the book intriguing, if a little wild. The chapter made sense. Moving into chapter two, “Etymology of the Moon,” however, leaves much to be desired. The biggest problem is that Kat’s attempts to draw connections between historical ideas of race and currency with the Moon are tenuous at best. Many statements are either poorly or entirely unsupported.

“The abstraction of the Sun was often represented as sight.”

The idea of the Sun as a political symbol of power, authority, and surveillance certainly casts a very specific … light … on this element in astrology. Very interesting.

On a separate note, the concept of a panopticon originated with Jeremy Bentham in 1791, not with Foucault, as the author suggests.