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nerd teacher [books]

whatanerd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 5 months ago

Exhausted anarchist and school abolitionist who can be found at nerdteacher.com where I muse about school and education-related things, and all my links are here. My non-book posts are mostly at @whatanerd@treehouse.systems, occasionally I hide on @whatanerd@eldritch.cafe, or you can email me at n@nerdteacher.com. [they/them]

I was a secondary literature and humanities teacher who has swapped to being a tutor, so it's best to expect a ridiculously huge range of books.

And yes, I do spend a lot of time making sure book entries are as complete as I can make them. Please send help.

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nerd teacher [books]'s books

Currently Reading (View all 7)

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2025 Reading Goal

21% complete! nerd teacher [books] has read 13 of 60 books.

Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle (Paperback, 2010, Penguin Books Ltd)

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel by American writer Philip …

I'm Not Sure

I didn't dislike it, but I also don't feel like I connected with it? I liked the initial structure of it feeling like multiple vignettes that had all connected somewhat to the same book. And while I understand what was happening, I felt like it wasn't quite hitting the right notes for certain characters or even the overall theme. In a lot of ways, it felt like it kept fumbling some of them. (Edit: Upon reflection, it isn't actually true that the stories were woven around the same book because three of the characters never actually engage with the book in any capacity and their stories don't even mention it from the background.)

It was fine. Not my favourite book, but it was okay.

Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium (2024, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse …

Unfortunately Wojnicz could not pick up the prompt to criticize this newfangled field, because he knew nothing about it. Nor did he have much to say about impulses, as—to tell the truth—so far he had had little interest in sex. He knew that this interest was bound to appear one day—everyone talked about it and dropped hints—but for some reason he regarded himself as still immature. Sometimes he felt a little excluded from this community of sex, allusions and jokes, as if others had a talent that he lacked.

The Empusium by  (Page 231)

Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium (2024, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse …

They tried to play chess but soon found it boring. In any case, Wojnicz did not like chess. His father had tormented him with it too often. He must have been hoping that learning to play chess would organize Mieczyś’s foggy, unruly mind. After all, chess was played at court, and the emperor himself had shown great fondness for it. This was the entertainment of well-born men, requiring both the intelligence essential for playing it and an ability to see ahead. Wojnicz senior believed that moving around the chessboard in keeping with the rules would introduce an element of automatism into his son’s life that would make the world safe for him, if not friendly. So every day after lunch, just as the body was digesting and a gentle afternoon somnolence was suffusing it, they sat down at the table and set out the chessboard, and his father would let Mieczysław make the first move. Whenever the boy made a mistake, his father came over to his side, stood behind him and tried to steer the child’s attention in a cause-and-effect chain of potential next moves. But whenever Mieczyś was resistant, or “dull,” his father let himself be carried away by anger and left the room to smoke a cigar, while his son had to sit over the chessboard until he had thought up a sensible defense or attack.

Little Mieczysław Wojnicz understood the rules and could foresee a lot, but to tell the truth, the game did not interest him. Making moves according to the rules and aiming to defeat your opponent seemed to him just one of the possible ways to use the pawns. He preferred to daydream, and to see the chessboard as a space where the fates of the unfortunate pawns and other pieces were played out; he cast them as characters weaving complex webs of intrigue, either with or against each other, and linked by all sorts of relationships. He thought it a waste to limit their activity to the checkered board, to leave them to the mercy of a formal game played according to strict rules. So as soon as his father lost interest and went off to see to more important matters, Mieczyś would move the chess pieces onto the steppes of the rug and the mountains of the armchair, where they saw to their own business, set off on journeys, and furnished their kitchens, houses and palaces. Finally his father’s ashtray became a boat, and the pen holders were rafters’ oars, while the space underneath a chair turned into a cathedral where the wedding of the two queens, black and white, was taking place.

Among this race of chess people, he always identified with the knight, who delivered news, made peace between those who were at odds, organized the provisions for expeditions or warned of dangers (such as Józef’s entrance, carpet cleaning or being summoned for lunch). Then, when chided by his father, or sent to his room without supper as a punishment, he would head off with the dignity of a knight—two steps forward and one to the side.

The Empusium by  (Page 161 - 163)

Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium (2024, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse …

“Landscape … is a great … mystery … because in fact … it takes shape … in the eyes … of the beholder,” he struggled to say.

He added that it was a sort of projection of the spectator’s inner state, and that we should wonder whether what we are seeing might look entirely different in reality.

Wojnicz replied that as a child he had been bothered by the question of whether, for example, everyone saw the color green similarly, or was “green” just an agreed term for something that each person might perceive in their own way. If so, then our inner representations of the world might be dramatically different. Only language and social norms would be keeping some kind of order.

“But in fact colors are particular wavelengths, objective measures,” he concluded.

“Except that they can act on the human eye in all sorts of ways. How do you see green?” asked Thilo.

Wojnicz could not answer. Green like a leaf—that was all that occurred to him. He could only talk about it through comparison, through analogy with something else.

The Empusium by  (Page 89)

Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium (2024, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse …

Then Dr. Semperweiss’s gun appeared before his eyes, leaning against the desk, and it brought back images of the time when his father and uncle had taught him to shoot. They hunted pheasants, strange birds that burst out from underfoot and flew heavily into the air with a whir. Their ungainliness was annoying; it prompted one to think them to blame for their own deaths. It was not hard to shoot them, and his uncle often succeeded. But Mieczyś was quite recalcitrant about killing them, and always aimed a centimeter to the left—a minor deception, “pheasant distance” as he called it—an action that neither his uncle nor his father ever noticed, preferring to call the shot “abortive.” Pheasant distance was a defiance strategy similar to reticence, vanishing at the relevant moment or moving out of sight. Mieczysław appeared to take part in the game imposed on him but found a way of escaping it. A slight shift of the sights, imperceptible to others, thwarted the whole performance.

The Empusium by  (Page 66 - 67)

Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium (2024, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

In September 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse …

Not bad, though very slow.

This book is very much a slow burn, and it kind of needs to be in order for the "twist" to make sense. In order to prompt the reader to ask the questions they need to be asking, they really have to follow Mieczysław's thoughts, experiences, and memories.

There is a horror story somewhere, but it's not... very horrific? It kind of feels tacked on in places. It is choreographed, but I think its existence within the story doesn't do much of anything. If anything, it's a very quick catalyst that prompts Mieczysław to live in the way they want. But anything could've been that catalyst, not the horror story that sometimes feels like it's... not even there.

I think if the horror story was utilised better or wasn't there at all, I would've liked this more.

reviewed Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet, #1)

Kazu Kibuishi: Amulet (2008, Graphix)

Emily and Navin's mother is kidnapped and dragged into a strange and magical world where, …

Enjoyable and Also Good for Newer English Learners

This book is really cute! And it's super enjoyable on its own. I'd definitely say give it a go, but do go into it knowing that the audience is primarily aimed at younger teenagers.

Anyway, I've been reading this book with my student, and they are someone whose English fluency is very much in the middle. They have a lot of typical school-based knowledge, but they haven't really had to use English that much outside of class (and even the class is very much lacking in actually using English other than the assignments). Those complaints are slightly irrelevant, but it does contextualise what I'm going to say here since my review is mostly with regards to that element.

This book is really good for kids who are newer to reading in English, and it is one that I'd recommend to people who want to encourage kids to start reading in …

Yoko Ogawa: The Memory Police (Paperback, 2020, Penguin Random House)

A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance.

On an unnamed island off …

Ethereal and conflicting.

I'm uncertain how it is that I feel about this book. I don't even know that I can call it enjoyable, though it is incredibly dream-like. There is so much care between the characters, but it also is hard to really enjoy.

It's impossible to really discuss it without spoiling all of it, and I don't particularly feel like writing more. But I can say that the book left me feeling somewhat empty, which I think is honestly the point considering the story itself (an island where things 'disappear', where people who remember are arrested by the Memory Police).

Trang Thanh Tran: She Is a Haunting (2023, Bloomsbury)

Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …

Really Great Until It's Not

I really love what this book is trying to do, and I really enjoyed so much of the story up to the very end of it because... it was just meh?

Not sure what the editing process was for this book or what conversations took place during it, but it feels very much like Alma was going to play a much stronger role than she did. There was so much choreography in the beginning about Alma being the colonialist monster, trying to revitalise and support colonialism within Vietnam, and trying to exploit Vietnamese people, and trying to rewrite that colonial history to support European histories...

... and then that ball was just kind of dropped for the focus on the house being parasitic. Sometimes the 'Alma' ball was picked back up, but I don't think it was used very well. And I have to wonder if parts of that were …