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nix

nixnull@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years ago

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Ursula K. Le Guin: The  Dispossessed (Hardcover, 1991, Harper Paperbacks)

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, …

A Realistic Anarchist Utopia

I highly recommend this book to anarchists or libertarian leftists in general. It beautifully builds and explores a functioning anarchist society, and some of the dysfunction that could exist in such a society. It also has some great classic SciFi world building.

If bookwyrm allowed it I'd give a 4.5. The only flaw is a somewhat rushed feeling ending. Doesn't take away from the rest of the book tho.

Cory Doctorow: Radicalized (EBook, 2019, Head of Zeus)

Told through one of the most on-pulse genre voices of our generation--New York Times bestselling …

Four Timely and Thought Provoking Stories

Each of these stories is a not-so-subtle reference to real political issues and undercurrents right now, which I think is important to note. You won't find escapism here. But you will find a lot of food for thought in a digestible format, and that's what I really appreciated.

Jeff Speck: Walkable city (2012, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

If You're Going to Read 1 Urbanist Book, Do This One

No rating

I'm actually updating my rating, which was a 4/5 originally. I still think about and reference this book regularly, so I think it deserves that 5.

The tenth anniversary of this book is a must. The original is good, but it lacks any analysis of race. The tenth anniversary filled in a lot of these gaps, as well as reckoning with societal and tech changes since original publication.

To date this is the single most informative and comprehensive urbanist book I know, while still being very easy to read. It's not perfect, but it's the best place to start.

Robert D. Putnam: Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2020)

Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in …

Read for urbanist book club. I did not fully finish this. It's a classic work for a reason. But it suffers from the fact that better written, more interesting, and up to date works have built on the topic. This book did everything right in its era, but it's just aged.

Read last year for Urbanist book club. Book has some good and interesting points about the complexity of fixing the urban canopy in disinvested/redlines neighborhoods. There's a strange current throughout where the author, a white woman, talks about the importance of listening to minority communities while almost entirely focusing only on her own perspective.

Andrew Ross, Julie Livingston: Cars and Jails (Paperback, 2022, OR Books)

Written in a lively, accessible fashion and drawing extensively on interviews with people who were …

Just started reading this for the July #STLUrbanists book club. Really excited for this analysis, because I think it addresses an interesting contradiction in car culture - how cars have been simultaneously liberating to minorities and yet another vector for policing and indebting people.

Becky Chambers: To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Hardcover, 2019, Hodder & Stoughton)

In the future, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the galaxy …

A Quick Read with a few interesting thoughts

A short read about space exploration in search of other life forms. Some interesting thoughts about ethical science, and some imaginative world building. But overall it's a bit thin and ends in an unsatisfying way that feels a little forced.