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22@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

Literary gadfly. Profile photo from Ruri Miyahara, “The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior”, volume 5: an ink drawing of a person spacing out with one hand on their cheek, under dappled shade.

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David Graeber, David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything (2022, Allen Lane) 4 stars

A breathtakingly ambitious retelling of the earliest human societies offers a new understanding of world …

A synthesis whole reverberations will be felt for decades

5 stars

Few books have both educated me (about the wonderful recent work of archeologists) and simultaneously made me hopeful for the future. I look forward to a lifetime of seeing the impact of this synthesis unfold. To the scholars profiled here, especially the Indigenous scholars who brought us gold about Kandiaronk the Wendat orator, a profound thank you.

David Graeber, David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything (2022, Allen Lane) 4 stars

A breathtakingly ambitious retelling of the earliest human societies offers a new understanding of world …

Few books have both educated me (about the wonderful recent work of archeologists) and simultaneously made me hopeful for the future. I look forward to a lifetime of seeing the impact of this synthesis unfold. To the scholars profiled here, especially the Indigenous scholars who brought us gold about Kandiaronk the Wendat orator, a profound thank you.

Moto Hagio: The Poe Clan, Vol. 1 (2019, Fantagraphics) 4 stars

The Poe Clan: a race of undead that feeds on the energy of the living, …

Review of 'The Poe Clan, Vol. 1' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that was as atmospheric as this. Hagio is a master of the medium. The fog. The flowers. The dark—all pop out of the page, propelled by an incredible story. Like Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, this manga is also epistolary, and the interwoven stories and narrators and timelines feel incredibly fresh and modern. Rachel Thorn’s translation slaps.

I usually read manga as an ebook on a big tablet but I’m very grateful I picked up the physical book. It is decadently luxurious.

reviewed The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty (The Daevabad Trilogy, #1)

S. A. Chakraborty: The City of Brass (2017) 4 stars

"Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty--an imaginative alchemy …

Review of 'The city of brass' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Sometimes you do something that feels like your whole life has organized itself to appreciate that thing. The one special class. That crazy trip. This spectacular book.

As usual I have no idea how much of a clone of me you’ll need to be for this book to land. But, a childhood steeped in North African and Arab and Persian and Indian cultures. A taste for multilingualism and cosmopolitanism. A deep desire to understand colonialism—and wasn’t the Arabs did to the Persians those centuries ago, mirrored by the Geziri takeover of Daevabad, just that? Loving Amitav Ghosh’s memoir of studying in Egypt and al-Fustaat (old Cairo). All these conspired to hook me on the first page till the last.

So pardon me, I have a second volume to devour.