May 2023 was mainly about work and preparing Battle Under the Mountain, so the reading wasn’t all that glorious. But I managed a few things.
Thomas Ligotti
Ligotti’s second horror collection from a time when he was one of horror’s most innovative voices. The first one thrilled me; Grimscribe (1991) is… well, weaker. In places it was quite entertaining, Harlequin’s Last Feast was in its way almost hypnotic, but overall it was mainly confusing. To the point where I soon stopped caring about anything. Shame.
Mark Galeotti
If you want insight into Putin’s regime and Russia as a phenomenon, read Galeotti. He can go deep, perceives long-term contexts and motivations of actors, and can describe and analyse even the worst things without resorting to “evil in the blood” and “eastern hordes.” And when he’s wrong, he admits it and then analyses why.
Putin’s Wars describes conflicts from the Chechen War to the conflict in Ukraine with a narrow focus on the Russian army — what it does, how it works, how it organises itself, and who feeds it and how. It’s reading that’s both interesting and useful, because I don’t think without understanding the misery of the nineties (when a large part of military conscription turned into something between odd jobs and mafia with a flavour of starvation) it’s possible to understand how today’s model of the Russian army came about.
Tři útěky Hanny Arendtové: Tyranie pravdy
Ken Krimstein
Biographies suit comics, I consider Arendt’s work essential, and Krimstein managed to handle all the pitfalls of her romantic relationships and also the express-train philosophy and period intellectual environment. It’s beautiful.
The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
Jason Hickel
I read a lot of Hickel while writing about degrowth, and this actually has the same troubles. Again, mostly excellently framed problems and miserably designed solutions with no real chance. The series of small recommendations is nice, but faces many problems, starting with: why does the author endlessly want to strengthen nation-states, including the weakest and disintegrating ones, as some basic and naturally given unit of organisation? This problem is moreover very precisely noted by Hathaway and Shapiro in their excellent “Internationalists.”
Some states are constantly weak, corrupt, and unable to provide basic services, or due to previous conflicts or stupid border-drawing cannot fulfil basic functions. Hickel strongly leans toward strengthening them all, but the problem is that a large part of the misery people in, say, Africa experience comes not only from multinational corporations but mainly from those states themselves. The fact that convincing more successful states “hello, please surrender your wealth” isn’t so easy probably goes without saying — Hickel realises this too. But what to do about it, he’s not entirely sure.
Stephen King
I sort of like King and this is, well… very King-like. And also very tired, with bogeymen where there could have been people, a completely pointless fan-wink through characters that don’t fit the plot at all, and utterly, utterly killed by its terrible length. It could have been told so many times faster.
Kurt Ludewig
I started with some prejudices, received a massive dose of very complex language and perhaps unnecessarily complicated explanations, and a few good reasons why it works, and decided to get to know systemic therapy better. All in all, an apparently good introductory book.
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
Arnold Schwarzenegger
One of the best autobiographies I’ve read. Not only did Arnold simply live an interesting life and has things to say, but it’s also interestingly written, includes MANY personal failures, shows how business and politics work, and as a bonus you get incredibly pathetic pleas of “wife, come back” (which I sympathise with — who among us hasn’t done that at least once). Of course it’s also incredibly annoying when Arnold tries to give you life advice, describes how great he is, and OF COURSE when you take him completely seriously, because with many things it’s obvious he significantly embellishes his role and omits uncomfortable things.
But with this awareness, it’s simply good reading :)
Šitíčko: důvěrné rozhovory íránských žen
Marjane Satrapi
Marjane Satrapi is one of my favourite authors, and Šitíčko (Embroideries) is a minimalist, compact comic entry into the world of Iranian women across several generations. Highly recommended for a pleasant hour of reading.