Fionnáin replied to Niamh Garvey's status
@niamhgarvey@mastodon.ie no doubt I will. Your introduction alone is a treat.
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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@niamhgarvey@mastodon.ie no doubt I will. Your introduction alone is a treat.
I pre-ordered this collection of essays after seeing the editor @niamhgarvey@mastodon.ie post about it on Mastodon. I got it a couple of weeks ago in the post and am freeing up some time to read it now.
[Rats and lice] are sufferers even as we are, and quite as innocent of intentional malice. For though we acquire the disease from them, they get it from each other and from us. So there [->] would seem to be as much to be said on one side as on the other.
— Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser (Page 166 - 167)
Page breaks at [>]
I balk at some of the things Zinsser writes in this book about other humans, but this observation on the innocence of lice and rats in the spread of disease is very important and a credit to him.
The effects of a succession of epidemics upon a state are not measurable in moralities alone.
— Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser (Page 128)
I have made many drawings of brambles on my walks...Those arching stems can't be contained on a single sheet of paper; they make the rectangle of a page absurd, and when I've tried a more distant view in an effort to fit the whole plant [->] in, the drawing looks weirdly polite, which couldn't be less appropriate for this irrepressible, thorny weed.
— Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker (Page 127 - 129)
Quote breaks at [->] and page 128 is a full-page reproduction of a 6th Century illustration of a bramble, which is why the reference skips from p127 to p129
@loppear Thanks! I opened Moby Dick in a bookshop the other day and read a couple of pages, and I was hooked (excuse the pun). I love the wry prose in these short stories already.
In the last few months, other books that I have read have referenced Melville, and in particular the short stories 'Billy Budd, Sailor' and 'Bartleby the Scrivener', so I got this collection from the library. I've never read any of his work so this will be an adventure.
I'm not sure what to write about this book. It is a print edition of a 17th Century encyclopaedia of birds published by a writer and artist working in Italy at that time. The text is full of wild assumptions and ideas about the birds from that time, and the images, although wonderfully made, are often very strange – some are made from taxidermied critters and some from life.
The book becomes a documentation of a time when a type of observational science was becoming very popular in western Europe. For that, it is a fascinating document, even if it is strange to have it presented this way in modern print and type. While reading, I felt like I needed more information on the book and its content, and on what it may have led to or been useful for. But it's also hard to know what this book is …
I'm not sure what to write about this book. It is a print edition of a 17th Century encyclopaedia of birds published by a writer and artist working in Italy at that time. The text is full of wild assumptions and ideas about the birds from that time, and the images, although wonderfully made, are often very strange – some are made from taxidermied critters and some from life.
The book becomes a documentation of a time when a type of observational science was becoming very popular in western Europe. For that, it is a fascinating document, even if it is strange to have it presented this way in modern print and type. While reading, I felt like I needed more information on the book and its content, and on what it may have led to or been useful for. But it's also hard to know what this book is useful for, maybe as a reference point for a historical science that we have left behind. Or maybe just as a coffee table book with interesting moments that pique mild curiosity.
Arendt is a philosopher who always turns my thoughts upside-down, even when I have read so much of their work. On Revolution focuses on two major events of the past 250 years: The French Revolution (1789) and the American Revolution (1783). By using texts and letters from the time of these events, Arendt shows how much the thinking of the 'revolutionaries' in these events was guided by a very different ontology and way of looking at western politics.
The most striking revelation for me early in the book seems so glaringly obvious now: The word 'revolution'. The word does not imply a new system, it implies that we are revolving back to the same system, with new people in power. Today, we think of things that are 'revolutionary' as somehow counter-cultural or against the norm, but Arendt illustrates very well how this language was co-opted and altered over the last …
Arendt is a philosopher who always turns my thoughts upside-down, even when I have read so much of their work. On Revolution focuses on two major events of the past 250 years: The French Revolution (1789) and the American Revolution (1783). By using texts and letters from the time of these events, Arendt shows how much the thinking of the 'revolutionaries' in these events was guided by a very different ontology and way of looking at western politics.
The most striking revelation for me early in the book seems so glaringly obvious now: The word 'revolution'. The word does not imply a new system, it implies that we are revolving back to the same system, with new people in power. Today, we think of things that are 'revolutionary' as somehow counter-cultural or against the norm, but Arendt illustrates very well how this language was co-opted and altered over the last 250 years to mean something very different than it originally meant. As always with Arendt, this is then opened up into a deep consideration of language, culture and power. I felt the argumentation drags on a little in the middle of the book, but that's mostly because I don't hold a great interest in the finer details of the French Revolution and its protagonists. Yet as always, there are gleaming moments in the brilliant philosophy of one of the 20th Century's most brilliant philosophers.
Rebecca Solnit is one of those brilliant writers who I love reading regardless of the content. Her respect for the craft of writing, along with her brilliant and multifaceted research methods, make her work a joy to read. Another author who I have always loved for this skill is George Orwell, particularly in his essays and nonfiction writing. So reading a book by Solnit about Orwell's nonfiction writing was just a treat.
Solnit doesn't waste too much time with biography, instead leaping into Orwell's contradictory ways of living, his politics and his home life, through the lens of his essay writing. She constructs a person through his work, and the work others have made about him. And she begins with his work not as a writer, but as a gardener who planted roses outside a rented cottage in Hertfordshire, England in the 1930s.
The rose is used by Solnit for …
Rebecca Solnit is one of those brilliant writers who I love reading regardless of the content. Her respect for the craft of writing, along with her brilliant and multifaceted research methods, make her work a joy to read. Another author who I have always loved for this skill is George Orwell, particularly in his essays and nonfiction writing. So reading a book by Solnit about Orwell's nonfiction writing was just a treat.
Solnit doesn't waste too much time with biography, instead leaping into Orwell's contradictory ways of living, his politics and his home life, through the lens of his essay writing. She constructs a person through his work, and the work others have made about him. And she begins with his work not as a writer, but as a gardener who planted roses outside a rented cottage in Hertfordshire, England in the 1930s.
The rose is used by Solnit for its metaphors, its culture, and its relationship to Orwell. She weaves in stories about Orwell's personal and political life with modern issues. The best example is when she threads together Orwell's protest writing about miners (eg. The Road to Wigan Pier) with a narrative about the modern rose trade and the mistreatment of Columbian workers. She is perfectly on point throughout the book, and it is a fluid and enjoyable read, a true homage to a writer who, like Solnit, has pushed back time and again against hegemonic structures and systems.
Sofia Samatar's unusual memoir The White Mosque is a hard book to categorise. On the surface, it could be described as a travel book of an author taking a journey through historical sites. But it is far more complex and unusual. The author is Mennonite-Muslim with German-Somali heritage, raised in the USA; her skin, education and accent identify her as 'other' in between so many liminal identities that other people place on her. The place is a pilgrimage route in Uzbekistan that was taken in the mid-1800s by Mennonites fleeing conscription in Prussia and Russia. Samatar's colleagues on the journey are the other Mennonite tourist-pilgrims and she is also accompanied by her large catalogue of biographies of those mid-19th Century travellers.
The result is wildly interesting and completely unique. Samatar's brilliant writing helps her cause in telling this story, because it is all so foreign to me that I worried …
Sofia Samatar's unusual memoir The White Mosque is a hard book to categorise. On the surface, it could be described as a travel book of an author taking a journey through historical sites. But it is far more complex and unusual. The author is Mennonite-Muslim with German-Somali heritage, raised in the USA; her skin, education and accent identify her as 'other' in between so many liminal identities that other people place on her. The place is a pilgrimage route in Uzbekistan that was taken in the mid-1800s by Mennonites fleeing conscription in Prussia and Russia. Samatar's colleagues on the journey are the other Mennonite tourist-pilgrims and she is also accompanied by her large catalogue of biographies of those mid-19th Century travellers.
The result is wildly interesting and completely unique. Samatar's brilliant writing helps her cause in telling this story, because it is all so foreign to me that I worried at the beginning I would not be able to persevere with the book, despite the interesting moments. The anecdotes and histories are beautiful but all tinged with sadness and often invaded by violence, and this makes it a hard read at times. It is also an incredible journey and gives space as a reader with little knowledge of either Uzbekistan or Mennonite culture to open up to two things in this complex multicultured world we are lucky to be part of. And for me, this is the gift of this unforgettable book.
Foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk.
A unique celebration of the beginnings of ornithology, designed to …