I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

I heard this crazy story, and I want you to know.

It is the age of internet gossip; of social networks, repackaged ideas and rating everything out of five stars. Mega-famous celebrities respond with fury to critics who publish less-than-raptuous reviews of their work (and then delete their tweets); CEOs talk about reclaiming reclaiming ‘the power of vulnerability’; and in the world of fiction, writers eschew actually making things up in favour of ‘always just talking about themselves’.

In this blistering, addictive and very funny first book of non-fiction, Lauren Oyler - one of the most trenchant, influential and revelatory critics of her generation - takes on the bizarre particularities of our present moment in a series of interconnected essays about literature, the attention economy, gossip, the role of criticism and her own relentless, teeth-grinding anxiety.

Illuminating and thought-provoking by turns drily scathing and disarmingly open, No Judgement excavates the layers of psychology and meaning in how we communicate, tell stories and make critical judgements - to offer dazzling insights into how we live and think today.

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The Verdict:

Lauren Oyler is a novellist, essayist and cultural critic. This collection of 6 interconnected essays about gossip, cultural criticism, vulnerability, ‘auto-fiction’, living in Berlin, and mental illness makes some interesting points at times but too many of the essays left me wondering what the point was while I didn’t see the purported humour and the constant mentions of her Ivy League education made her too try-hard for my tastes.

NO JUDGEMENT: ON BEING CRITICAL was released in the United Kingdom on 7th March 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Is Weekend Update fake news?
How can we tell the difference between satire, smart-assert, and seriousness?
What is the benefit of jokes that cause outrage?
The Church Lady has a bad case of moral superiority. How about you?
What can Wayne and Garth teach us about living a happy life?

Live from New York for over forty years, Saturday Night Live is seriously funny, and through decades of sketches, monologues, commercials, music acts, and a huge cast of recurring characters, NBC’s original late-night comedy sketch show has brought a touch of levity to everything that is laughable about modern life. Many of the greatest minds in modern comedy - Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Chris Rock, Kate McKinnon and more - have honed their craft at SNL, finding fresh ways to highlight the ridiculous and absurd in our boardrooms, newsrooms, mailrooms, sorority houses, music studios, churches, schools, and everywhere in-between. Politicians from Gerald Ford to Donald Trump have had their faults and foibles lampooned by SNL’s election sketches and satirical news segments, and all the while, Weekend Update has shown us that the medium is the message.

Of course, comedian-philosophers from Socrates to Sartre have always produced and provoked us, critiquing our most sacred institutions and urging us to examine ourselves in the process. In Saturday Night Live and Philosophy, a star-studded ensemble cast of philosophers takes a close look at the “deep thoughts” beneath the surface of the award-winning late-night variety show and its hosts’ hijinks. In this book, philosophy and comedy join forces with the strength of the Ambiguously Gay Duo to explore the meaning of life itself through the riffs and beats of the subversive parody that gives the show its razor-sharp wit and undeniable cultural and political significance.

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The Verdict:

Jason Southworth is a philosophy instructor at several colleges and universities. Ruth Tallman is department chair and teaches philosophy at Hillsborough Community College. This mixed bag of 20 essays (part of a series on philosophy and pop culture) examines the elements of Saturday Night Live through various philosophical schools of thought but you need to be a hardcore SNL fan or an undergraduate philosophy student to get the most from it.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, Love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Louise Brooks and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most highly acclaimed essay collections in years.

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The Verdict:

Hilton Als is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic and an Associate Professor of Writing at Colombia University. In this collection of 13 smart and provocative essays (9 of which were first published in 2013) he tackles such subjects as race, homosexuality, AIDS, Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson and André Leon Talley and memory and although some of it went over my head (mainly due to unfamiliarity with the subject) I enjoyed his insight and passion.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

An anthology of sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories, and non-fiction by English and Creative Writing undergraduates at Brunel University London.

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The Verdict:

This is an anthology of stories and essays in the SF, fantasy and horror genres written by undergraduate students studying English and/or Creative Writing at Brunel University. It’s edited by Kirsty Capes (with Frazer Lee and Nick Hubble serving as Supervising Editors) and Nick Hubble’s introduction sets out Brunel University’s association with SF, fantasy and horror, which is particularly interesting as I had no idea of Ken MacLeod’s association with the university and how it pops up in his writing. Because the writers are all undergraduates, you can’t go into this anthology expecting to find writers at the top of their game – they’re still learning their craft – but there’s a lot of promise on show here and it’s really good to see writers who are completely new to the genre making a positive contribution to it.

The Blurb On The Back:

Every arena of science has its own flash-point issues – chemistry and poison gas, physics and the atom bomb – and genetics has had a troubled history with race. As Jonathan Marks reveals, this dangerous relationship rumbles on to this day, still leaving plenty of leeway for a belief in the basic natural inequality of races.

The eugenic science of the early twentieth century and the commodified genomic science of today are unified by the mistaken belief that human races are naturalistic categories. Yet their boundaries are founded neither in biology nor in genetics and, not being a formal scientific concept, race is largely not accessible to the scientist. As Marks argues, race can only be grasped through the humanities: historically, experientially, politically.

This wise, witty essay explores the persistence and legacy of scientific racism, which misappropriates the authority of science and undermines it by converting it into a social weapon.

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The Verdict:

Ultimately I found this a clearly written, fascinating read about the misuse of genetics and anthropology with clear arguments that I found compelling and I would definitely check out the other 2 books in this series (IS RACISM AN ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT? By Ghassan Hage and ARE WE ALL POSTRACIAL YET? By David Theo Goldberg).

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

A guys walks into a bar …

From here the story could take many turns. A guy walks into a bar and meets the love of his life. A guy walks into a bar and finds no one else is there. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless. In Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, Sedaris delights with twists of humour and intelligence, remembering his father’s dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant) and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered pygmy. By turns hilarious and moving, David Sedaris masterfully looks at life’s absurdities.

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The Verdict:

This collection of 19 essays and six monologues contains some material familiar to those who listen to David Sedaris’s successful Radio 4 show, although there was much here that was new to me. I found the collection a little slow to get going and didn’t enjoy the earlier pieces as much as I did the latter ones, while the targets of some of the monologues (specifically included as he’d met a number of teenagers looking for pieces to perform for school) a little too broad for me to really enjoy the humour. That said there were some essays where I genuinely laughed out loud (particularly one where Sedaris finds himself on the verge of buying the skeleton of a murdered pygmy and one where he succumbs to his father’s demand that he get a colonoscopy) and I’ve always enjoyed Sedaris’s willingness to reveal his own foibles and shallowness. For that reason, I will pick up his back catalogue as I eagerly await his next collection.

The Blurb On The Back:

Penguin first published woman-about-town India Knight in 2000, introducing with My Life on a Plate a voice as fresh as a skinny latte. In On Shopping Knight celebtrates the joys of retail therapy and shares with us the many and varied pleasures to be found online and on the high street, as well as her conviction that if you don't enjoy shopping, you're simply not doing it properly.

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The Verdict:

I suspect that you'd get more out of this if you were already a shopaholic, particularly with the store/web recommendations that Knight makes. However, for someone who doesn't live to shop, it didn't really do it for me.