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Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 9 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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Amartya Kumar Sen: Development as freedom (1999, Knopf)

Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher …

The rationale of the market mechanism is geared to private goods (like apples and shirts), rather than to public goods (like the malaria-free environment), and it can be shown that there may be a good case for the provisioning of public goods, going beyond what the private markets would foster.

Development as freedom by  (Page 128)

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Rebecca Solnit: Orwell’s Roses (Paperback, 2021, Granta)

“In the year 1936 a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a …

The trees made the past seem withinlreach in a way that nothing else could: here were living things that had been planted and tended by a living being who was gone, but the trees that had been alive in her lifetime were in ours and might be after we were gone. They changed the shape of time.

Orwell’s Roses by  (Page 6)

Han Kang: We Do Not Part (Hardcover, 2015, Hogarth) No rating

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her …

I love Han Kang's writing and was delighted when they won the Nobel Prize. A couple of months ago a colleague gave me a book token for a favour I did them, and I picked this one up with it in a local book shop. Just started reading today.

Amartya Kumar Sen: Development as freedom (1999, Knopf)

Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher …

A much more plausible explanation of the rapid increase in British life expectancy is provided by the changes in the extent of social sharing during the war decades, and the sharp increases in public support for social services (including nutritional support and health care) that went with this.

Development as freedom by  (Page 51)

Sen is finishing a section here arguing that improved social services as a social good are potentially better for a country's life expectancy than an increase in GDP. They began this chapter with a look at different countries and how some have high life expectancy despite a low average income, and end here with a historical look at how the war years led Britain to introduce social policies that also improved loving conditions dramatically.

Anna Chapman Parker: Understorey (Hardcover, 2024, Duckworth)

‘It began as a way of drawing nothing – as near as I could get …

Drawing with lines and words

Anna Chapman Parker is an artist who thinks deeply about incidental moments. This wonderful book charts a year in her life where she draws weeds that she finds on her wanders. It features both her writing and her drawings, and also some other artworks as references.

Parker writes about what she draws beautifully, about her days and her time with her family. She also weaves in observations on art history, writing and culture that show a deep and acute understanding of her craft.

The drawings are wonderful, the anecdotes thoughtful. Although I am not generally a fan of the diary form of writing, this book masters it, moving easily from anecdote to theory to humour, treating each day as unique. The quality of writing helps this. The end result is a joy to read and one I will revisit again and again.

Hans Zinsser: Rats, Lice and History (Hardcover, 1996, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Distributed by Workman Pub. Co.)

The classic chronicle of the impact disease and plagues have had on history and society …

Fascinating as a project, frustrating as a rant

This 1934 book is a history of typhus presented as popular science (and apparently as a biography, although it doesn't really follow any such form).

The first four chapters are pretty much unreadable. One Stanford University scientist in the 1930s grinds an axe about many different scientists and writers for about 80 pages of text. Once he finishes with this rant, it gets more interesting as he begins a historical exploration of the spread of disease, and in particular how disease and war travelled together.

The writing stays on point mostly, except for a few more veiled jabs at other writers and some questionable classist comments that are troubling even for that time (a 'humerous' anecdote about having the police arrest a homeless non-white man so that he could gather lice from him sticks out in my mind). The fascinating two chapters on lice are by far the best of …

Sinéad Gleeson: Constellations (2020, Mariner Books)

Essays on ableism, feminism, and art

This collection of essays by Sinéad Gleeson is deeply honest and opens her up in a way that I admire. Not many people will write about their lives, their grief, their abilities and their personalities with so much openness. Any collection of essays will have stronger and weaker moments, and some of these are wonderful but the prose didn't catch me for many.

Where I felt the writing was strongest was always when Gleeson was describing artworks. In these moments, they had a powerful sentiment and a clear love of the objects and ideas in art. The writing there is the most brilliant, and the most standout unique. In other moments, the more hurtful or difficult, the writing also becomes a little laboured, reflecting the themes but also making it harder to move through. While the book is admirably honest, the moments of joy popped out particularly for me.