Reviews and Comments

Amartya Sen's 1999 book presents his dominant economic ideals, mostly focussed on how economic development must be coupled with social schemes and not just an influx of money. The idea seems a little obvious to anyone who reads feminist philosophy, but the evidence presented is written for people in economics who may not always encounter these ideas. It's hard to tell how radical this may have seemed in 1999, because I am not familiar enough with the school of economics.

It is presented as a layperson's book, and for the first third Sen does a good job in grounding how economic theory reached this point. Later on the chapters remain interesting but become a little dry for someone like me who is not an economist. The ideas remain sound, and the comparisons between countries and their social and economic positions, but the writing got a little too domain-specific for me.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a gentle voice in mindfulness. This short book gives reflections and meditations, and a few nice illustrations, on the topic of food and eating. They ask us to be mindful of the complexity of our food chain and the human and nonhuman actors that make it possible for us to eat in this modern world. Like all Hanh's writing, it's a beautiful, gentle book.

My partner bought this and a couple others from this series because they enjoyed the organisation's online articles.

I love Tokarczuk so much and this one is the supposed masterpiece. It has been on my list for years and it's about time I gave it the time.

Saw this quoted on Mastodon by @bonfire@indieweb.social and added it here

Recommended by a colleague while I have been working on a project in Limerick. I got a copy from the library.

I picked this up in the library, my eye caught by the cover, and took it out without knowing what it was about (it's a historical fiction of the last days of the composer Ravel)

Recommended at a talk at a conference in Austria in 2024, added here to my (endless) 'to read' pile

A friend visited recently and was reading this. She said I would love it, and I expect that I will, so I'm adding it to my wishlist.

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.

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.

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.

This collection of poems by Longley has moments of beauty, particularly in the very short poems, which offer moments of beauty in succinct form. I am not really too knowledgeable on poetry, so am hesitant to write too much more.

This was referenced in Deb Chachra's book 'How Infrastructure Works' and it sounded like it would present some ideas on economics that are new to me, so I got it out of the library.