vivian_m_anderson's reviews
118 reviews

picked it up randomly and read it all in one sitting, though that was admittedly out of necessity since i was on a four hour flight. i found our main character deeply tragic and visibility winced when he fell back into his gambling addiction--again, i want to read more about addiction but particularly gambling addictions as i think the sports betting and easily accesible unregulated online gambling industry right now is absolutely getting out of control. also a fun look in restaurant behind the scenes other than bistro huddy

teetering between a 4.25 and a 4.5. a great examination of the internet, though it at times feels slightly dated even though it was only release in 2019. would love to see seymour revist these same ideas today, as i think the patterns he identifies throughout the book are even more visible now.

an excellent non-fiction book, fully enthralled me despite my general disinterest in economics. noam yuran is a great writer (if it times overly dense or lengthy) with great critique of exisiting philosophies of capitalism. i would include quotes, but i probably underlined half of the book at this point. very badly want someone else i know to read it so we can discuss as these ideas are CERTAINLY worthy of extensive discussion; feel like it would work really well in a class (especially an all-male economics class if you get my gist)

the best modern novel i've read in a long, long time. beautiful, poetic (which i suppose is unsurprising for akbar), easy to read, modern without feeling cheap. cyrus is at once unique and deeply relatable, and his relationship with addiction leaves me wanting to read more and more fiction about those trying desperately to evade their addictions (spoiler alert: i read the dishwasher next haha) can't pull the quotes since i loaned the novel to a friend but truly give the novel a try, you won't regret it.

utterly bizarre but absoultey fascinating. a truly unique novel with a great critique of the myth of "post racial" america after obama's election with some excellent prose sprinkle around. that being said, i found the ending left a little bit to be desired. 

really well done--similarly to the struggle for taiwan, makes a concept that can feel quite inaccessible feel easy to digest. it wasn't especially revolutionary for me, but i think it would be a really good recommendation for people not previously critical of the critical justice system or the police, as i think it would successfully alert everyone to a certain degree of injustice in the system and potentially lead them down the path toward abolitionist thinking. it's so easy to forget that there are humans behind every step of the system, and not only do humans make mistakes, but they also make intentional mistakes, and that is extremely on display in this book. also, reading about the reid technique genuinely made me feel ill. 

"I once heard a stunning presentation by Bill thompson, a professor at UC Irvine, about bias in so-called scientific testing. He showed slide after slide of police officers who had given information to crime lab technicians that led to inaccurate results. One of the slides was a note from a technician to a detective saying, ''I've done the testing several times, but it keeps coming out wrong. It keeps not matching your subject.' That is not science" (116).

"In the 1969 case of Frazier v. Cupp, police officers lied to a suspect, falsely telling him that his codefendant confessed. The Supreme Court validated lying to suspects, stating 'The fact that the police misrepresented the statements that Rawls had made is, while relevant, insufficient in our view to make this otherwise voluntary confession inadmissible'" (147).

"Synthesized testimony occurs when police or prosecutors take witnesses who initially provided details helpful to the suspect and, convinced because of tunnel vision that the witness must be wrong, ask pointed questions of the witness suggesting that his or her memory is off. Some witnesses take the cue and begin to question their memory. Sometimes they will change their statements to correspond with what is clear the police believe must have happened" (160).

a wonderfully concise, clear, accessible guide to the history of us, china, and taiwan relations. in a moment where politics is often cloaked in obscure terms and the human error--primarily, khan notes, mistakes, confusion, and hesitance--of government officials is ignored, the struggle for taiwan provides a thorough and fast-moving account of how the united states, china, and taiwan got to the terrifyingly precarious place we are in now. world war three is always a looming distant threat in our collective imagination (though we even treat wars and genocides that are actively occuring as equally looming and distant) but this book makes it clear just how close we are and have come to a total nuclear holocaust. recommended reading for anyone with a vested interest in our country's relationships to taiwan in china, which should, as this book illustrates so well, be everyone. particular quotes highlighted below.

 "Commentators like to portray the contemporary US-China relationship as an ineluctable function of great power politics. Revisionist and status quo powers, we are told, invariably clash...telling the story in this was obscured the role of choice in bringing us to our current juncture...Decision-makers in Washington, Beijing, and Taipei were not the helpless victims of circumstance...Tempting as it is to frame those decisions in terms of virtue--good versus evil, freedom versus authoritarianism--the historical record does not bear that out. For the most part, the choices made were the result of confusion, panic, stubborness, and a stunning inability to think through long-term consequences" (247). 

"On March 6, 1955, Eisenhower told Dulles that he was willing to use 'automic weapons as interchangable with conventional weapons' to defend Kinmen and Matsu. Dulles began to work on creating 'a better public climate for the use of atomic weapons.' This was reckless beyond belief" (88).

"America had not agreed to set a date for terminating arms sales, it had not agreed to consult China on arms sales, it had not agreed to mediate between Beijing and Taipei, it had not agreed to revise the TRA, it had not agreed to take a position on the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty, and it would not take exert pressure on Taiwan to negotiate with the PRC" (136).

a really well-done novel--simple but complex, with beautiful prose and a strikingly lifelike world. in many ways mandane but also deeply philosphical; poses interesting questions about the purpose of life, immagrint life in the united states, and the impacts of gentrification. also three very grounded distinct realtionships: the main character and his friends, the main character and the wealthy white woman who has moved in, and the woman's daughter. there is a tenderness to the main character, espeically regarding the daughter, which is almost heartbreaking. see quotes below.

"Mixed in with the pride that inevitably came with living in such close proximity to a house as grand as Judith's was the unshakable faith that there was something not quite right to the whole affair. We expect the things that are dead or dying to remain so. But what happens when they refuse to stay that way?" (209).

"I picture my store burned to the ground, its contents looted. I imagine a crowed gathered around the charred remains of the building, shaking their heads silently in sympathy, in pity. Can of Campbell's soup are rolling down the sidewalk and street. The air smells of melted plastic, and no one can do anything because the trucks sent to save my store are here in front of me moving at roughly the same pace I am."

"Of course, my father looks back one last time at my mother, brother, and me before he's escorted at gunpoint out the door. I'm not even sure how much he was able to see at that point--whether our faces were distinguishable from one another, or if through the haze of tears and blood the three of us merged into one indeterminate figure. I like to think that's the way he saw us, his family, not as individual people, but as a world, one that he could faithfully claim to have created."

very hit or miss for me -- reminds me a bit of a fortune for your disaster but certainly does not reach that level of searing prose. i loved the title and themes of grief, death, apocalypticism, etc., and certain poems threaded the lines of those themes really nicely. other poems fell a little flat for me, but perhaps I'm just not the target audience! will leave some fav quotes below

"whose house is this who did i hurt to get here and is it too late to ask for help" note: epigraph, not his work but well chosen.

"your grief is so heavy, when we lowered the coffin, all the pall bearers fell in too."

 Read for Geisha, Wise Mothers, and Working Women (fall 2024)