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Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 4 months ago

I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.

I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.

Also on Mastodon.

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Fionnáin's books

Currently Reading (View all 11)

Laura Jean Mckay: Animals in That Country (2020, Scribe Publications) 3 stars

What if birds are screaming?

4 stars

This is an odd book, classified by many as science fiction, but maybe more aligned with posthuman philosophy. The basic gist is that there is an epidemic across Australia, and people can hear the animals speak. They don't speak literally, but more through the parts of their bodies that communicate differing desires. This idea is very well considered, although at times the animal thoughts seem a little too human-oriented. Despite this, there is a wonderful disconnect between the hopes of one young protagonist (who wants to hear the animals tell her how much they love her) and the reality (terror of the human, for example).

The book is full of moments, one with a crocodile, another with some fleas, that are memorable. It speaks to our disconnection from a nonhuman world in a very unique way, leading through a protagonist who is coping with her alcoholism and how it contrasts …

Zoe Anderson, Helani Laisk, Caren Florance: Under the Skin of the World (Paperback, Recent Work Press) 4 stars

Staggering moments

4 stars

This collection of poetry and illustrations is unashamedly reflective of living in the ever-present shadow of today's environmental grief. The moments in it are beautiful, and heavy, and touching. The best poems embrace personal reflection, but the book as a whole is full of surprises that surface suddenly, just when you thought you'd read it all. Like any collection, there are less engaged moments and there are standouts, such as the amazingly personal Breathe, and the powerful soliloquy to garbage collection (and waste), These are Dull Steal Days). Overall this is a gorgeous and timely book.

Vinciane Despret, Stephen Muecke: Our Grateful Dead (Paperback, 2021, University of Minnesota Press) 4 stars

The anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann suggests that this way of organizing wakefulness and sleep, dreams and perhaps their exchange, could have an influence on the manner that people experience the spiritual and what is called the supernatural. The semiconscious state in which dreams are mixed with consciousness is conductive, for those who practice or cultivate this state, to the possibility of experiencing things that are usually impossible. They can, for example, hear someone speaking to them from hundreds of kilometers away, feel that something has happened to one of their family, or even see things that are not normally seen. Luhrmann also claims that an American who might have what are considered in our cultures to be a sleep disorder (and would have learned to define it as such), and who is questioned about strange events happening at night, will be more inclined to describe things as unreal and due to a lack of sleep. "It seems likely," she concludes, "that the way our culture invites us to pay attention to that delicate space in which one hovers on the edge of sleep changes what we remember of it.

Our Grateful Dead by , (Page 37)

This section references the article To Dream in Different Cultures by Tanya Luhrmann in the New York Times in 2014.

A. T. Lucas: Furze (1960, Published for the National Museum of Ireland by the Stationery Office) 4 stars

Imeóidh a dtiochfaidh is a dtáinig riamh Ach ní imeóidh na grásta ó Dhia ; Imeósa is tusa as an áit seo Is beidh an t-aiteann ag fás 'nár ndiadh

(Everything that has come or will ever come will pass But the graces from God will not pass ; You and I will pass from this place And the furze will be growing when we are gone.)

Furze: a survey and history of its uses in Ireland by  (Page 186)

A poem quoted in the UCD folklore archive from Ballyvourney

A. T. Lucas: Furze (1960, Published for the National Museum of Ireland by the Stationery Office) 4 stars

A comprehensive archive of aiteann

4 stars

A book that documents the Irish folk history of furze (also known as gorse in England and textbooks). The plant has a rich history in folk usage as a material for hedging and fires, but went out of use in the mid-1800s. Lucas studied the folklore archive at University College Dublin and put together this amazing anthology in 1960 that catalogues the many entangled histories of the plant with people in Ireland. It is a remarkable document even today, and a great research project. It is quite technical for long stretches, quoting the archive from different places in Ireland, so maybe not a book for everyone but a wonderful piece of archival research nonetheless.