Reviews and Comments

Me, with less than 100 pages left to finish this book: wait, how have I ended reading this... -checking notes... "Orientalism Now"- when this is not at all a topic related to any of my personal interests??? Also, me in January: yayyyy, 2025, finally I'll be reading more "classical theory"!!! Fanon, Said... Understanding where everything began!!! yayyy!!

My inner self is complaining that "I've read very little this year compared to previous years" (because I currently have a backlog of books to read), but the problem is that this year, I am just devouring dense books that I had pending. One after another. Like tra, tra, tra.

A pro-Russian colleague from Iran lent me this book to showcase how good the Soviet Union was and that Putin (yes, Putin) is great and all that. My opinion after reading the book is funnier than that. I was reading it, following the dramas between a drunk Steinbeck and a picky Capa and surprising myself with what they expected, and what was going on in reality. And also seeing the contrast between what my colleague said and what I was reading as well. As a meta-context, when they visited the Soviet Union, Stalin was still alive, and he made his famous Stalinisation, where pro-family and conservative policies were re-imposed in the society. My point in adding this info is that Steinbeck sees this big contrast between the USSR traditionalism and the post-World War II era in the States, where women and men were "freer" than the soviet ones. Kind of funny reading the book from the perspective of 2025, knowing all that happened since then in the States and also in Russia and the (not anymore) USSR countries.

A must to read, but always with a critical and historical perspective

i truly "meh'ed" this book.

you are not going to believe it's all the british's fault (jk(no jk))

This year, I decided to start re-reading David Graeber's books. Bullshit Jobs was the perfect one to begin. The first time I read it, I was in a BS role. I was getting paid too much for a job that used to take me less than 10 hr per week to perform. The real performance for me was to be in the office, trying to act as if I were doing more. I did not understand what was going on. It was my first "white collar role", in a really small business, and I was earning more than members of my family who were working in professional blue-collar roles that contributed more to society than mine. That dissonance quite destroyed me. Apart from that, knowing that I needed to perform daily to not lose the job, among the fear of losing it in the middle of a recession and just after the pandemic, made me hate to do what I was doing. I started to study short courses while working. I ended with 5 or 6 short courses done before my first year. I tried to read, but it was impossible. I watched Netflix. I ate while looking at the bright screen of my laptop. Finally, I quit. I could not continue with that. And I felt like shit because, folks, they were paying me really well by that time.

Anyway, after that, I have met more people with similar situations to mine. I have also met people who truly believe their BS job is important and that it is doing something relevant. Also, I have met some libertarians and neoliberals who truly truly believe that essential roles are not as essential as their roles (when they work in crypto, AI or fake altruistic stuff). Bullshit.

Re-reading this book, I focused more on the idea of "value" and how we describe and accept whether something is valuable to society. How can one of those "bros" not see that, in reality, society does not need them? How do they see the world to believe in their bs?

I still have questions to answer, but Graeber made me realise (again) quite a few things.