Reading Log

Vonnegut captures today’s tech zeitgeist in a science fiction tale - written seventy years ago. Apparently he wrote it during his time at GE, inspired by their rush to automation. Finished reading: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut 📚

Girl in a Band

A quick read by a singular voice, heavy on descriptions of the New York art and music scene of the 90s. Like many punk memoirs, it’s a tribute to the many names that made the movement and a memorial for a city that no longer exists. Gordon’s voice is kind and bold, curious and smart. Her descriptions of growing up in LA and coming of age in New York are painterly and poetic. Her takes are generous for all but one person: her ex-husband.

All my respect to her for opening and closing the books with her raw reflections on Thurston’s mundane and deeply uncool betrayal.

Finished reading: Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon 📚

I very much enjoyed this book. Despite the heavy subjects, ultimately culminating in a reflection on the ongoing conflict in Palestine that can’t be missed, it was a compelling read that I’ve returned to many times as a reference. The mirror as metaphor for the inexplicable stories in the news.

Finished reading: Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein 📚

Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood

I’ve been waiting for this one because it’s a story I know well. It is an impeccably reported book covering how young women navigated a compromised, stigmatized, coercive landscape around unplanned pregnancies in the late 20th century. Sisson is a comprehensive writer whose reporting is deeply empathetic, based on her personal experience as an activist and academic working in reproductive justice alongside extensive research. She discusses the history of the adoption movement at length, connecting it to other institutional family separation movements, and considers it alongside the choice to abort unplanned pregnancies and against the decision to parent anyway, often in a deeply compromised social and political climate.

My deep appreciation to her for telling these stories and telling them well.

Currently reading: Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson 📚

Hidden Systems

My delightful book club pulled this YA graphic novel out of the 2023-24 “best of” lists and loved it. There is a remarkable amount of information on each page - truly, you could build a dynamic reading curriculum off of each section - between the written and visual communication. A triumphant example of quality science writing, a great gift book, suitable for just about any audience over the age of ten.

Finished reading: Hidden Systems by Dan Nott 📚

This is the kind of book that connects the dots on some big ideas, primarily how traditional gender roles intersect with capitalism to produce the economy, and in turn, how these systems, tensions and behaviors then reproduce inequality. It’s also, at the root, about how ideas form reality. By reframing some of the feminist classics - and the Marxist ones, too - the writers recast some of our old stories about how the world works, and set up a framework for future scholarship across a number of disciplines.

This is an intensely academic and dialectical book by some of the best thinkers who work at the intersection of Marxism and feminism, and worthwhile for anyone thinking about how work, labor, gender, sex, and culture press on the individual and the collective alike.

If this feels too heavy but you like the subject, check out the editor’s later book, “Feminism for the 99%.” It’s similar in form to bell hooks’ classic “Feminism is for Everybody” but with a clear collectivist and activist call to action.

Finished reading: Social Reproduction Theory by Tithi Bhattacharya 📚

The (very decorated) author (his first novel) spent time on the faculty in my Big Ten hometown. I already recognize some of the side characters. 👀 Currently reading: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar 📚

This smart graphic novel zooms in and out on engineered systems happening all around us: electricity, water, the internet. Fascinating and clever. Currently reading: Hidden Systems by Dan Nott 📚