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Finally getting around to the last of this 5-part volume, on practice of kinship. I brought this because I'm on a train today and it's pocket-sized!

recommended here by @joergr after my review of 'How Forests Think, so I've added it as one to read.

@joergr brilliant, thanks for this, I'd never even heard of it. I love 'academic but readable' as a description, the 'but' says so much...

How Forests Think tries to present an anthropology beyond the human. It situates itself in writer Eduardo Kohn's years spent among the Runa in Ecuador. The Runa have close linguistic and cultural relationships with the forest creatures and plants surrounding them in the rainforest. Kohn posits that we can learn a more-than-human way of doing anthropology by learning to listen to these relationships.

Although the context is fascinating, and the methodology is urgent, I felt the book never really justified its many claims to be creating an anthropology beyond the human. It still felt for a large part as the voice of a western observer in a non-western culture, and while this is the truth it also feels like maybe it can never work without some other level of collaboration. The writing is also very heavy and does not flow, even though there are poetic moments at the beginning of each chapter. I kept hoping it would unlock something but it kept feeling empty and contradictory, never quite confirming or even properly presenting how the methodology could really work.

The central argument is that semiotics (signs) constitute 'thinking' and that by understanding the complexity of signs means that animals can think as well as humans. Although anecdotal attempts are made to show this, such as how a monkey can understand danger from the creaking of a tree, it is not really well argued. Although it is worth mentioning that authors who have built on Kohn's work like Michael Marder or Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing have managed to show this later, with stronger writing and justification, so this remains an important if imperfect work.

Eduardo Kohn has been praised for trying something new here, and rightly so, yet it too often is either confused or obfuscated, and the end result is a book of interesting moments, mostly those where the Runa take centre stage, but these moments are too few.

I read Things We Lost in the Fire, Mariana Enriquez' collection of short stories translated into English not long after it came out in 2017, having found it in a library and taken a chance on it. The visceral and beautifully written horror stories astounded me. And the way that she embeds political and social critique is pitch perfect. After such a brilliant debut I worried that a second book might prove to be a repetition or just nowhere near the same quality. I haven't yet read the lauded The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (her debut in Spanish but second collection translated to English), but this, her third, certainly did not disappoint me.

A Sunny Place for Shady People is literary horror. Across 12 short stories, very few events of any great drama takes place, but strong characters and realistic settings bring everything to life. In each story there is a creeping dread or an uncanny unease that grows page by page. In a way, the unease is a little like peeking repeatedly into something private, and this is partly because the stories situate themselves mainly in Argentinian urban and suburban areas, with intimate characters mostly speaking from the first person.

Some moments will continue to haunt me: A character whose face disappears, an accident inside a fridge and a violent terror in a burned out ruin are among the most visceral images. This collection is again brilliant, and Enriquez has cemented her place as one of my favourite short story writers.

Added to my to-read pile after reading a reference in the book 'Material Acts'.

I spotted this in the museum of country life bookshop during a visit and ordered a copy on inter-library loan into my library. I then forgot all about it and the day before the copy arrived, a friend loaned me a copy of the book on a whim saying I'd like it. Nice synchronicity, so I've started reading both copies.

A gift last year from my brother after he attended this exhibition in LA, that I'm just getting around to now.

@rra ah that's interesting, thanks. I'm Not familiar with their writing at all.

My sister gave this to me for Christmas a few years ago. In truth I rarely enjoy science fiction so I've kept putting off reading this, but have decided to at least have a go at it.

This section on absence is interesting. I've never thought about technologies for what they exclude by being in the world, more what they create or change.

I bought this with the end of a gift voucher I received from a friend. I loved Enriquez' debut collection of short stories, Things We Lost in the Fire, and was delighted to find this one on the book shelves. Also, it's an appropriate time to read some horror stories!