Fritz
Interesting take on some stuff. A lot of other stuff felt disconnected.
Especially the part about the Hadzabe felt like it was very much removed from our world. Sure. We can learn from these societies. But the author is in a very different wealthy environment where she can fly in. Learn some stuff and go back.
Anyways. Interesting. But not a must read.
I liked the part about sharing responsibilities
Steengoede behandeling van onze crisis met het coronavirus, de herkomst hiervan en de samenhang met de economische groei waarvoor alles moet wijken in onze huidige neoliberale kapitalistische hegemonie.
Zowel de rechtse partijen als de linkse wordt verweten binnen een bepaald model en gesprek te blijven in plaats van de overkoepelende thema's te bespreken. Wat is onze strategie en waarom? Is groepsimmuniteit een strategie of altijd een bijproduct geweest? Zijn de maatregelen reëel en eerlijk voor alle lagen? Zo worden er geen handvaten geboden om de maatregelen toe te passen en leggen we alles bij het individu en “eigen verantwoordelijkheid”.
Ondertussen zijn er bailouts voor de grote bedrijven. Terwijl de zwakkere in de samenleving weer de consequenties zelf moeten dragen.
Schinkel is ijzersterk en scherp in de analyse. Zijn conclusies van ecosocialisme en pandemocratie als oplossing zijn bijzonder anders dan het heersende gedachtegoed. Of dit echt de oplossing is, dat weet ik niet. Maar ik wil er graag over nadenken.
What a beautifully written horrid tale. The language and prose is quite stunning. But by god what an extreme series of heinous atrocities in one book.
If you like rape and bestiality this is the book for you.
After reading I'm not quite sure what the point of this book is. To reveal the evil nature of man? To explain to us that no one should be trusted? Near the end it seems to convey something of a “man is an island” sort of vision.
It's weird and awful. The amount of agony that the boy endures is surely fiction. If not this world is terrible and we should jump ship.
I recently read Dave Eggers' What is the What. And where that was also awful. It was different. More hopeful and sounded more realistic. I'm not sure what to make of this.
Edit:
I've been thinking about this book a lot these last few days. So at least there is that. The core of the story perhaps lies in the postwar scenes where the protagonist lives in the orphanage.
There is this particular passage where he and a friend find out about a railroad switch. They give it some oil and they can actually pull the lever and change the course of the train:
‘All I had to do was leap to the switch and move the points, sending the whole train over the cliff into the peaceful stream below. All it needed was one push on the lever . . .
I recalled the trains carrying people to the gas chambers and crematories. The men who had ordered and organized all that probably enjoyed a similar feeling of complete power over their uncomprehending victims. These men controlled the fate of millions of people whose names, faces, and occupations were unknown to them, but whom they could either let live or turn to fine soot flying in the wind. All they had to do was issue orders and in countless towns and villages trained squads of troops and police would start rounding up people destined for ghettos and death camps. They had the power to decide whether the points of thousands of railroad spurs would be switched to tracks leading to life or to death.
To be capable of deciding the fate of many people whom one did not even know was a magnificent sensation. I was not sure whether the pleasure depended only on the knowledge of the power one had, or on its use.'
Also I found out the made a movie out of this. Why on god's green earth would you do such a thing.
Aardige novelle over de grillen social media en de content moderators die het mogelijk maken.
Bervoets weet de sfeer van een kantoorbaan die het leven uit je zuigt giet te portretteren (kan ik uit eigen ervaring bij callcenter zeggen).
De verhaallijn is oké. Maar start en conclusie lijken niet sterk met elkaar in verband te staan.
Hoe dan ook een aardig boek. Het boek is op zijn sterkst wanneer het het opneemt tegen de flat earthers en holocaustontkenners.
This book is phenomenal. It's a story, a memoir, a commentary on art and an unconstrained critique of the patriarchy and the way women are portrayed or reviewed in the art world.
It's also cool to see how far we've come.
“It seemed strange that people would be interested in any conversation between such a homogenous crew: four straight white European men in their 50s, all divorced and now with childless younger women in their early 30s. “ (From the chapter “Add it up”).
The quote from the book here is no longer a very new statement, now it's become the norm to question a panel where the members are all white straight males.
The book is really a sort of reflective spiralling into the mind of Chris. She falls in love with (the idea) of Dick. It's a hell of a ride.
This book, like Blue Like Jazz, packs a narrative and a punch.
What is left when the factualness and literal interpretation of Christianity lose meaning? Do we toss everything out? Or do we learn to see a benefit and a hope without depending on the “holy scripture” to be without fault (which is just silly isn't it?)
Anyways I really enjoyed how Mike let himself combine his scientific approach his atheism and the practices of faith and it's benefits.
Ok. Not sure if is the cognitive dissonance speaking for reading 14 volumes averaging at 850 a piece. But I thought it was good. It was a satisfying ending. Which in the land of long-running fiction is hard to accomplish. Overall I'm happy. But I'm also happy to move on to something else ;).
There is a small annoyance throughout the series that grew to an escalation here as it was so often used: Balefire. The "evil" fire ("Not that, never that.") that burns away objects and people from the pattern. It always felt like this was very much to the author's convenience: you burn someone away. But not all of the things they did were reversed. But some were. That said this is the first novel where "balefire" has the ramifications you'd expect, things reversed that actually has a lot of effect. But then it immediately gets solved in the same paragraph. So yeah. That kind of bums me.
