Reviews and Comments

The title and premise of the book seemed appealing. The attention economy has seen a lot of, uh, attention lately, and so a book about possible escapes from it seemed promising. But I came away non-plussed. The book puts together little pieces of philosophy from a large variety of writers, ranging from Greek cynics, Aldo Leopold, Walter Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers like Donna Haraway of danah boyd. But it all seemed pretty piecemeal and non-cohesive to me. I found myself skimming many passages. Ah well, it was a quick read and I did appreciate some of the discussions of how artists define and redefine attention and perception.

Rather disappointed in the book. Ah well.

I'm very excited to read this! It seems like a fitting book for the times we live in.

Quite a ride. Simultaneously funny and deeply painful to read!

The holidays finally gave me some quiet to finish Lee Dugatkin's "Dr. Calhoun's Mousery." It's a very readable account of the the life and work of a fascinating figure in rat and mouse research after World War II. John Calhoun used his research on crowding and population dynamics in experimental mouse/rat colonies to muse about the human condition. What do rat experiments tell us about the design of cities? about "the population bomb" in humans? Calhoun himself and those who receive his work swing back and forth between wild extrapolations from mouse to human and careful framing of the research about being only about animals. Today, Calhoun's work is all but forgotten.

Not an easy read and it took a long time to finish. I did enjoy it, though.

Excellent sociological account how our society and ourselves are measured, ranked, ordered in ever multiplying ways. Healy and Fourcade write clearly and forcefully, making this an enjoyable read.

The content overall was good, especially for people who aren't as familiar with what zoning is and isn't, and what it does and doesn't do. The structure of the book starts out well, but in the later sections of the book, repetitiveness in themes and language start to creep in. It's also a bit unclear who the audience for the book is: Is it trying to convince people who are already open to zoning being problematic to follow Gray's full zoning abolitionist project? Is it the abolitionist rhetoric employed to get proponents of zoning to give in a little and at least achieve reform?

Time to move this off my "Currently reading" shelf. I could not stand this book and gave it too much time.

Did I really start reading this in October? That can't be right. Another very enjoyable and weird Murakami.

This is coming out in a couple days and I'm very excited to read it, based on having read some of Healy's previous works.

I finally got around to reading the last few stories in "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow." Good stuff!