jiayuanc's reviews
268 reviews

This is a fine collection that provides readers a good overview and valuable introduction to various sources in Marxist political writings. 

That being said - I want to point out to readers that the more I read from the publishers Haymarket Books, the more I am leaning to the belief that they are Trots (or at least, are apologists for him). They have unfortunately excluded writings from Mao and Stalin here. From Le Blanc's own introduction, he states that while past handbooks to Marxism have usually included works from the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin group of four, his own personal belief is that Stalin should not be included, and the foursome should be Marx-Engels-Lenin-Trotsky (lol). Make of that as you will, though I suppose reading Trotsky is good in a "know your enemies" kind of way. 

Aside from that, this is a valuable book. I used it as an introduction and to catch up with revolutionary viewpoints. I would recommend Losurdo's book on Stalin for further reading from here. 

Genuinely terrifying. 

This was my first time reading any adaption of Frankenstein and I loved it. Fantastic, eerie vibes, felt the sorrow of the characters. 5 stars. 

The second set of stories in this collection follows Toru Oshikiri and his weird haunted mansion house that leads to alternate dimensions; these stories alongside Junji Ito's creepy art just gives me the spooks. I liked these a bit less than his adaption of Frankenstein. The one the stood out to me the most was the story where 3 classmates of Oshikiri become his friends as they are all into investigating the supernatural. I was even a bit sad at the end when their friendship (understandably) fizzles out after a horrible encounter with their alternate dimension selves.  

The "bonus" stories at the end about Ito's own pets was really kind of weird (not in a good way) and I excluded these in my star rating. 

I made the mistake of reading this in the evening right before bed and now I'm terrified I will have nightmares. 

I love Paolo and Tina's friendship. Some episodes did spook me! But mostly they are fun listens, I would put it on to fall asleep to. 

Magical little book. I read this in both the original French and in the wonderful Charlotte Mandell English translation. Énard just doesn't miss. 

Told in a series of vignettes, in second person, Richardson tells the tale of life of Henry, art history professor. After the loss of his wife, Henry joins the Canadian Army and is posted to Sicily during WW2. Interspersed between the happenings of Henry are art history facts that provide the background for events or key words happening in the foreground.

I've seen this style of writing before in fanfiction and it works because we are already attached and "know" the character that we are inhabiting in the second person. It's much more difficult to pull off with original characters as the second person perspective, especially in this small vignettes chapters style of writing make it much more difficult for us to get to know the character. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this quick read and loved the escape to art history past; the references to history were some of my favourite parts of this book. I thought Richardson did a lovely job of putting this reflective fiction together. 

Excellent course looking at the lives of "normal" people throughout Roman, Greek, Persian, Ancient Egyptian, Anglo Saxon, Norman, Celtic historical world. There is a bit dated talk (at some point Prof Garland says baby girls are still tossed aside for being girls in "modern" China, which may have been true at the time the course was presented but certainly isn't true in any majority anymore) but otherwise I really enjoyed this course and looked forward to each new lecture. Taking this look at the "normal" lives of people was truly eye opening. Human beings have always been this way, and it's moving to see artifacts like children's toys being similar across all cultures. 

While Sabar's investigative journalist work is clearly well researched and fascinating, I am not convinced of the psychological profile he has put together on Dr Karen King, and to a lesser extent on the forger Walt Fritz.

Re Dr King, Sabar provides us a thorough background on her childhood and early academic career, including being a consultant on The Da Vinci Code film, being careful enough to evade notice of East German gov't officials while studying there on a West German scholarship. Yet I am not entirely moved to see these life events as "proof" that she is so cunning, her whole life built up to advance this forgery. I am seeing many red flags that she as a scholar of such reknown should have seen, many mistakes made (having only 2 friends peer review the work, being late getting scientific testing done, getting friends / family to do the testing, being too eager to break the story without sufficent proof of its authenticity, etc). But it seems more to me that she is a scholar who unfortunately just fell for a forgery, when she really wished it to be true, during a time when her department at HDS was possibly going to lose status with the Yard wishing to open (secular) religious studies themselves. I don't think she had nefarious motivations per se. 

Sabar also makes a lot of jumps to conclusions that seem like reaches to me, but definitely make for intrigue at first glance. For example, there is a passage where an English translation of the forged text uses the word "abdicate" rather than the more accurate word "deny", and this is used as part of the proof that the forger had used a specific website to piecemeal together this forged Jesus's Wife papyrus fragment. Sabar then leaps to the conclusion that the forger must have used the word "abdicate" as word play to target Dr Karen "King". Not sure I buy this. 

Another example of what feels like just sensationalism: 
We move into a deep dive of Walt Fritz the forger and his fetishes, including his running of a hot wife video website. Sabar attempts to link Fritz's "switch" kink persona to the need to essentially suck up to idols, such as Prof Osing while Fritz was in grad school, or to Dr Karen King for the Jesus Wife fragment. Again, I am not buying these psychological profile and linkages betwen these events. Is everyone's fetishes really the answer to why they supposedly do what they do?

Sabar acknowledges this, yet doubles down and says the two things (the making of the forgery and being a hot wife pornographer) are relevant to each other and thus needs to be included in the book because both things involve "wives". This feels lacking to me. 

Another example where I was just getting more "Pepe Silvia conspiracy" vibes, this time however at least Sabar acknowledges the mere coincidence.. he says Fritz's first email to Dr King is 114 years to the day after scholars first announced their discovery of Gospel of Mary, and 114 is the number of sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. It feels like all this is just giving credence to Fritz and his supposed smarts to be able to link everything he does to some kind of well thought out plan, when I don't believe he had one. 

Overall a quite thrilling read that covers a lot of ground and was difficult to put down even with my above gripes with some of the conclusions. 

Excellent introduction. Especially enjoyed the debunking of "scary" words like jihad, sharia, fatwa etc. Dr Oliver has a fantastic, clear way of speaking. Really enjoyed the female professor's recitations of the Qur'an (as the course prefaces each lecture, these recitations are done in secular sense for teaching purposes); this was not something I had heard preformed in a female voice before. 

Just a note that I believe there are some audio editing issues in certain places, often there was a much longer than normal pause which would make me think the lecture was over, but it only happened a few times so I didn't mind it so much. 

I would love to hear more from Dr Oliver. 

Had an excellent time listening to these lectures on Francis and the order he founded. Particularly enjoyed the lecture on the Poor Clares, and learning about Clare as her own person, not just as the side character to Francis's story. Drs. Cook and Herzman play off each other's energies very well, looking forward to more from the two of them.