The book collection of @PublicHealthInnit@sciences.social
Love a good mix of fiction and non-fiction. I like to keep learning and keep reading different types of stuff!
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Helen Lewis: Difficult Women (2020, Penguin Random House)
Well-behaved women don’t make history: difficult women do.
Feminism’s success is down to complicated, contradictory, imperfect women, who fought each …
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted …
Firstly, despite the overwhelmingly popular review on here, this is not Pride and Prejudice for socialists. There is not an ounce of socialism in this book - the general message is that the masters of industry know best and are hard done by, but that they should still be nice to their workers. It’s not terribly inspiring.
Generally, I found myself more disengaged and bored than anything. For all the deaths in the story, they’re peculiarly lacking in emotional depth so it’s hard to care. The romance, such as it is, is hard to relate to and the resolution feels obvious. None of the peripheral characters feel real, just literary devices.
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes …
In 1960s Nigeria, Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, goes to work for Odenigbo, a radical university professor. Soon …
I found this a constant mix of enlightening discussion and frustrating waffle. There is much to take away in arguments for particular policy solutions to climate change. However, it also reads as super-defensive, needlessly antagonistic, and at times condescending and hypocritical. Mann has no time for people who disagree with him on any point, particularly if they are at all on the left of the political spectrum. If you agree with anybody who disagrees with him, e.g. you see a link between climate justice and social justice, you are either a shill for fossil fuels, a Russian bot, or as a last resort you could be a well meaning idiot.
It’s also strange to read of the danger of identity politics (not at all defined) and outrage that somebody could accuse him of mansplaining... shortly followed by an accusation of mansplaining of others who disagree with him. Now the accusation …
I found this a constant mix of enlightening discussion and frustrating waffle. There is much to take away in arguments for particular policy solutions to climate change. However, it also reads as super-defensive, needlessly antagonistic, and at times condescending and hypocritical. Mann has no time for people who disagree with him on any point, particularly if they are at all on the left of the political spectrum. If you agree with anybody who disagrees with him, e.g. you see a link between climate justice and social justice, you are either a shill for fossil fuels, a Russian bot, or as a last resort you could be a well meaning idiot.
It’s also strange to read of the danger of identity politics (not at all defined) and outrage that somebody could accuse him of mansplaining... shortly followed by an accusation of mansplaining of others who disagree with him. Now the accusation may be true in both, one or neither of these cases, but without any contextualisation, it reads as hypocritical.
Having said all that, I did get a lot from the discussion and get some good nuggets of info from a climate expert. I’m definitely going to have to read a book from one of those pesky people who want social justice with their climate justice though to get the other side of the argument.
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome …
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing …
I wanted to give modern sci-fi a proper go and where better to start than the book that won every single sci-fi book award? I was pretty disappointed and a bit baffled by the wide praise it’s received.
The book has some grand ideas about individual vs. collective identity and a society where gender is ambiguous. However, these ideas aren’t really taken anywhere interesting or challenging and it just feels like there’s no follow-through. All that might be OK if the plot was engaging and the characters engrossing. I found the dialogue unbelievable and the characters two-dimensional.
I’ll not give up on trying modern sci-fi just yet, but I’ve certainly not been converted to it.
The Feast of the Goat (Spanish: La Fiesta del Chivo, 2000) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in …
A deep book about Courage, Compassion and Connection; these are decisions (mind sets) to lead …
I read another of Brene Brown’s books about five years ago and enjoyed it. Maybe I’m at a different stage of life right now, but I found this one pretty painful. There are kernels of truth in there which are interesting, but they’re somewhat drowned out by new age and religious jabber that doesn’t really mean much. And make no mistake, this is a religious book. A typical extract:
“Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments- often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we’re too busy chasing down extraordinary moments. Other times we’re so afraid of the dark that we won’t let ourselves enjoy the light... I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration and faith.”
I’m not really sure what I’m …
I read another of Brene Brown’s books about five years ago and enjoyed it. Maybe I’m at a different stage of life right now, but I found this one pretty painful. There are kernels of truth in there which are interesting, but they’re somewhat drowned out by new age and religious jabber that doesn’t really mean much. And make no mistake, this is a religious book. A typical extract:
“Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments- often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we’re too busy chasing down extraordinary moments. Other times we’re so afraid of the dark that we won’t let ourselves enjoy the light... I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration and faith.”
I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do with that.
This title tells the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded …
A really interesting look at the various campaigns to battle scientific fact using smears, lies and doubt. Nobody who’s been paying attention will be surprised by the work against climate science or public health; what’s really enlightening is the individuals and organisations common to each campaign. The same dodgy scientists representing climate change denial, supporting tobacco nonsense etc. The book does flit between really good reporting and poorly structured rambling, but definitely worth a read.
War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, romanized: Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: Война и …
So obviously the elephant in the room is that this book is huge, it’s pretty daunting. You’re 500 pages in and realise you’re not even halfway. However, I’ve read 200 page books I’ve wanted to finish sooner. Tolstoy’s rambling opinions on different views of what history should be so become tiresome towards the end, but the actual story is pretty gripping and enjoyable. There’s some bonkers romances as happens in these kind of books (people fall in love completely randomly), but still a good read!
An interesting, short summary of the idea that feminism and anti-capitalism must be intertwined to effect either’s aims. In substance, it’s pretty good - I found the postface the most enlightening bit. Unfortunately, I think it falls down in a couple of areas. Firstly, it doesn’t really offer any solutions and tends to preach to the converted. The second and bigger problem is that it’s clearly not written for the 99%. The language is not broadly accessible and requires some understanding of academic ideas not generally discussed in broader society. Still definitely worth the couple of hours it takes to read though.
