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I feel like if someone who had never seen a leftbook meme in their lives were to read this book it would be very eye opening for them. Unfortunately (?) I have already been looking at memes about urban planning and the evils of capitalism for well over a decade, so there was not really any new information in this book for me except for a few fun historical facts here and there.

Once again, I find myself frustrated by authors who spend a great deal of time bemoaning how terrible the state of the world is and very little time talking about how to actually achieve any alternative.

Most of the examples in this book aren’t indigenous, pre-capitalist societies like I would expect. Instead, most of the examples are from relatively modern Western society. Many of them are just religious sects and most of them were either short-lived or are not scalable to society as a whole.

This book had been on my radar for a while, so I’m glad I read it, but it was honestly pretty disappointing.

Despite having several witchy friends, I have never pulled my birth chart or held astrology for anything but made up woo. But a very close friend (who does not own a single crystal and whose book recs I always trust) loaned me their personal copy and told me I had to read it.

This involved first going to the author's website and entering your exact date, time, and city of birth, which gives me the ick knowing how secure any data we put on the internet is (not). Which meant I had to text my mother and ask what time I was born. With my sensitive personal data entered, I was emailed my birth chart to print. Printout in hand, I sat down to analyze it with this book.

I quickly realized that the chart I printed out did not correspond to the explanations included in my email. The Sun was in the wrong sign in the picture but was described correctly in the chart underneath. So I had to text one of my astrology expert friends who directed me to yet another website to enter my information, which then printed an accurate and easier to read chart and corresponding info.

As a first timer analyzing a birth chart, I felt like I was back in my high school math classes, most of which I flunked out of. But once I got past all these considerable hurdles (I really do love the person who lent me this book), it became pretty enjoyable.

It was actually uncanny how accurate a lot of it was. And, as for anyone who sometimes struggles though life, it is very cathartic to read a self-help book that identifies a problem you have always had and validates your struggles. Most of the book does not pertain to your birth chart, so in each chapter, you only read the small section about the particular planet/house/sign permutations that apply to you and skip the rest.

By the end, Chani has guided you to create a map to self-fulfillment: What you need to achieve in life to be happy, what your strengths are, and what aspects of your self may hinder you in reaching that goal.

The rest is left up to you. I pondered on the prompts throughout the book and I do feel like I got something out of it. If anything else, I now know that I apparently have the planet Saturn to blame/thank for much of my life, both the good and the bad. I feel like Saturn might become my new mascot. We've been through some sh*t.

Do I believe in horoscopes now? No. But this was a fun way to spend a few hours self-reflecting on some affirmations. And I may finally prioritize getting over some of my hang-ups that I had not really thought about confronting just yet. Plus now I have a new Space Comrade 🪐

Imagine Braiding Sweetgrass was written by an annoying Californian yuppie and that’s this book. I’m glad I read it. It has a lot of good ideas and it challenged me to think about how social media and my internet use affect my life, which is what made me pick up the book in the first place.

However, it would have been a lot more effective if she had trimmed a few hundred pages of fat and just gotten to the point. Overall, though, still a good read. 

I consider myself pretty well versed in the shortcomings of capitalism, but this book still managed to shock me time and time again with tales of the brazen greed of tech companies over time. It was an easy read, which I appreciated, and I greatly enjoyed the conversational and sometimes colorful tone of writing.

Yet even though the author said multiple times that he would explain how we go about fixing the problems of Big Tech, he never really did. That is, unless I somehow figure out how to suddenly make Congress listen to me instead of a huge corporation, or learn how to reverse-engineer my own social media company. Nevertheless, it’s a great read, and one that more people probably should.