LuisVilla rated Mexican Gothic: 4 stars

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes this reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel, a story …
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From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes this reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel, a story …
back to the 90s, in a good way
People in tech sometimes say we overestimate change in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. On page after page of this, I kept repeatedly thinking "oh, I've underestimated the impact of the internet on humanity" — because the book does an amazing job showing how much we underestimate the many impacts of the printing press.
(It's also long, and snarky, and yet maybe too short. I can't do it justice in this space.)
This book deserves a better review than I can give right now, but here goes nothing.
Suffice to say that while I was reading the book, I thought of a lot of people who I wanted to send copies to, because it touches on problems of human autonomy in a digitally mediated and increasingly digitally constrained age. In other words, it is relevant to pretty much all of us (including a lot of us who don’t think that automation and AI will come for them). It builds a compelling argument that (if nothing else) we should be thinking hard about why and how people actively break technology. I was less convinced by the book’s ultimate conclusion that we should be going substantially backwards in technology, for a variety of reasons—but those reasons deserve, and might even get, a whole essay. And that ultimately feels like quibbling—the core thrust of …
This book deserves a better review than I can give right now, but here goes nothing.
Suffice to say that while I was reading the book, I thought of a lot of people who I wanted to send copies to, because it touches on problems of human autonomy in a digitally mediated and increasingly digitally constrained age. In other words, it is relevant to pretty much all of us (including a lot of us who don’t think that automation and AI will come for them). It builds a compelling argument that (if nothing else) we should be thinking hard about why and how people actively break technology. I was less convinced by the book’s ultimate conclusion that we should be going substantially backwards in technology, for a variety of reasons—but those reasons deserve, and might even get, a whole essay. And that ultimately feels like quibbling—the core thrust of the book is important, timely, and forceful. As a result it’s a book worth reading and grappling with.
A note on style and accessibility: Given the topic, and that the author is an academic Marxist, this could have been dense and unreadable. Instead it is brisk, pretty tightly edited, and jargon-free. If you’re concerned about that, don’t be - pick it up.
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with …
A gripping biological detective story that uncovers the myth, mystery, and endangered fate of the world's most humble fruitTo most …
Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart …
The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial …
Continuity over a much longer time than is usually told
This is a rich and deep book on my neighborhood, drawing a nuanced and thoughtful line from the pro-commercial neighborhood activism of immediate post-earthquake Mission to the anti-commercial - but still very neighborhood - activism of today. Really helps contextualize why the place has such a rich sense of Neighborhood, and (not unrelated) gives context to anything you'll read in one of the neighborhood's three papers.
It is fairly readable as academic books go, but still very much an academic text (almost 1/2 citations, by page count) which is the only reason I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to all of my San Francisco friends.
Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had …
Wish someone had assigned this in middle school.
Of course, this wasn’t written until I already had a law degree, but my point stands. Critical American history that we’re barely taught, concisely and movingly. Well worth a few weekend hours for any Gen X/Millenial who knows there was a civil rights movement but can’t say much past “MLK did some things”, which, lets be honest, is most of us.
After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through …