Isham's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 09 Jan 2025 11:41:33 -0800 60 Isham's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Isham 3 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Isham
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
Found this a bit on the predictable side - humorless reality-reversal sci-fi.
]]> <![CDATA[Ti-ping tien-kwoh 2 Volume Set: Ti-ping tien-kwoh: The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution, Including a Narrative of the Author's Personal Adventures: ... - East and South-East Asian History) by Augustus F. Lindley (2012-08-16)]]> 195200355 0 unknown author Isham 5 5.00 Ti-ping tien-kwoh 2 Volume Set: Ti-ping tien-kwoh: The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution, Including a Narrative of the Author's Personal Adventures: ... - East and South-East Asian History) by Augustus F. Lindley (2012-08-16)
author: unknown author
name: Isham
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:
This history of the Taiping Civil War in China (1850-64) has to be one of the most harrowing accounts of warfare I've ever read. The U.S. Civil War was child's play by comparison. Augustus Lindley was an ex-British naval officer who joined the Taiping cause, lived in Taiping-controlled Nanjing, and fought on their side. His 2-volume, 800-page magnum opus alternates between shocking, cliffhanger adventures and battles and outraged polemics against the British Government, which intervened on behalf of the Qing Imperial forces (allegedly to protect British business and trade interests), thus turning the tide against the Taiping with superior weaponry that the Qing forces lacked. According to Lindley's own estimates (meticulously gathered from numerous contemporary accounts), as a result of this intervention alone in the final 2 years of the war, the combined British (and French) and Imperial forces were responsible for directly slaughtering 372,550 Taiping and non-combatant civilians; another 2,500,000 civilians were starved to death by deliberately blocking their access to food (total casualties for the war range between 20-30 million, overwhelmingly civilians). In walled city after city in the Yangzte River delta region, the Brits set up their heavy guns (cannons and howitzers) and bombarded everything inside - mostly non-combatants, women, and children whose only crime was happening to live there - fully aware they were killing many thousands. Any remaining survivors were driven out into an execution grounds for decapitation and dismemberment by Qing forces.
]]> <![CDATA[Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice]]> 38796277 433 Joseph J. Fischel 0520968174 Isham 3
Merged review:

Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.]]> 3.43 Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice
author: Joseph J. Fischel
name: Isham
average rating: 3.43
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
review:
Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.

Merged review:

Tangled analysis on a timely topic; remembered almost nothing after finishing the book.
]]> A Plum Blossom in Winter 216067224
Back at home for summer break, Shuyuan faces mixed blessings. While less study time means having more time for outings with her friends, it also comes with more chores and scolding. Although her parents� marriage has brought together both Han and Hui ethnic customs, their love for her is shown rather than spoken, and often strained by hard times.

Shuyuan hasn’t quite realized it yet, but her greatest struggle is within herself. Even if she surmounts her growing self-doubt, can she escape the other tiger that stalks her?]]> 254 Richard Sjoquist Isham 5 5.00 A Plum Blossom in Winter
author: Richard Sjoquist
name: Isham
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
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review:
In this YA novel about a Chinese girl’s initial coming of age, there is not much of a plot, nothing outright dramatic occurs (apart from the momentous results of a senior high-school entrance exam and the death of a relative), there is no romance or sexual awakening to speak of (as one might expect in a Western YA novel), no troublemaking or law-breaking, even hardly any quarrelling with parents. If this might seem to be a recipe for boredom, what we have instead is a refreshing little novel told in an unexpected way and quite unlike any other expat-authored novel set in China that I have read. The setting is a slightly dated Beijing (turn of the century). We follow the heroine Shuyuan and her lower-income family as she grapples with the most important things in her life, typical of mid-teens all over China at the time (and still today), rather humbler than what Western kids undergo in their own fraught transition to early adulthood, yet no less meaningful (or traumatic): getting through each day making the right decisions, dealing with adversity (family bickering due to lack of money), emergencies (a pet rabbit accidentally left out in the cold). As a 15-year-old, Shuyuan can’t be expected to have much of a distinct personality, and she doesn’t, but this serves a useful purpose. She functions as a transparent, nonjudgmental, and sympathetic eye through which the reader gets a firsthand, intimate tour of domestic Beijing life, and in Sjoquist’s disciplined hands, the focus is always on the here and now, all incidents and events invested with equal meaning and conveyed in clean, spare, unsentimental prose, perfectly suited to the subject matter.
]]> The Wanderer and the New West 37938095 426 Adam Bender 0992462975 Isham 0 to-read 3.56 2018 The Wanderer and the New West
author: Adam Bender
name: Isham
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft]]> 44065867 1343 H.P. Lovecraft 9897788239 Isham 5 4.33 The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Isham
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
An endlessly fascinating writer, not so much for his astounding visions, as his inimitable style.
]]> Outside Looking In 39854442
In this stirring and insightful novel, T.C. Boyle takes us back to the 1960s and to the early days of a drug whose effects have reverberated widely throughout our LSD.

In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research� becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys� initiation at one of Leary’s parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys� eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees—students, wives, and children—living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning.

Is LSD a belief system? Does it allow you to see God? Can the Loneys� marriage—or any marriage, for that matter—survive the chaotic and sometimes orgiastic use of psychedelic drugs? Wry, witty, and wise, Outside Looking In is an ideal subject for this American master, and highlights Boyle’s acrobatic prose, detailed plots, and big ideas. It’s an utterly engaging and occasionally trippy look at the nature of reality, identity, and consciousness, as well as our seemingly infinite capacities for creativity, re-invention, and self-discovery.]]> 401 T. Coraghessan Boyle 0062883003 Isham 5
Merged review:

Entertaining narrative on Timothy Leary's adventures up through his Millbrook commune.]]> 3.59 2019 Outside Looking In
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Isham
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves:
review:
Entertaining narrative on Timothy Leary's adventures up through his Millbrook commune.

Merged review:

Entertaining narrative on Timothy Leary's adventures up through his Millbrook commune.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Works of Shakespeare [38 plays, 4 poems, sonnets]]]> 32512
The fifth edition of this comprehensive anthology addresses the two key issues confronted by students approaching Shakespeare today: a lack of knowledge about the historical period and difficulty with the language of Shakespeare's plays. A richly illustrated general introduction offers insight into Shakespeare's England and background on the literary and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote and produced plays. Each play is introduced by a descriptive essay designed to help students appreciate the cultural contexts and interpretive issues raised by the play, without dictating students' interpretations. Thoroughly revised and updated notes and glosses support student readers line by line, paraphrasing Elizabethan idioms in clear and accessible language.

New to This Edition

Expanded coverage of stage performance and film. Introductory essays for each play have been revised and updated to include additional information on historical and modern performances, describing how stage and film directors have dealt with interpretive and cultural issues.

New 16-page color section, “Shakespeare's World: A Visual Portfolio,� includes historical documents, art, and photos to allow students to grasp the cultural context in which Shakespeare wrote. The Visual Portfolio also includes photos and production stills taken from recent stage and film productions, to help students to visualize on-stage scenes and dramatic situations.

Completely revised and updated notes and glosses assist modern student readers by providing clear, accessible paraphrases and contexts for Shakespearean idioms and word-play, while incorporating state-of-the-art critical insight and scholarship on the plays.]]> 1744 William Shakespeare Isham 5 4.57 1623 The Complete Works of Shakespeare [38 plays, 4 poems, sonnets]
author: William Shakespeare
name: Isham
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1623
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
I've now read all the plays (many multiple times) except for King John and Henry VI (1-3) & VIII, which I'll get around to at some point. My views on Shakespeare (garnered after years of teaching him as well) are summed up in my concise essay "A Shakespeare sex-and-violence starter kit" (). I had David Bevington, the editor, as my teacher in several courses at the University of Chicago back in the '80s.
]]> Stoner 8551582
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
--nyrb.com]]> 305 John Williams 1590173937 Isham 4 4.38 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Isham
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/21
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review:
If nothing else, a novel should be instructive. This novel was a trying read but I managed to get through it and learned how NOT to live life. It’s a well-regarded novel and is indeed competently written, but it’s a dreary story, with the most tediously dull and dreadful characters. Clearly, Williams is spoofing bourgeois academic society here, but the parody is so withering and the trappings so desiccated that there isn’t very much to work with. Perhaps it’s a perverse sort of test: the reader that succeeds in finishing the book realizes they actually belong in the book and the joke is on them.
]]> <![CDATA[Flowers in the Mirror: A Classic Qing Dynasty Chinese Novel]]> 26509006 314 Li Ruzhen 4871872416 Isham 0 china-bookshelf, to-read 3.35 Flowers in the Mirror: A Classic Qing Dynasty Chinese Novel
author: Li Ruzhen
name: Isham
average rating: 3.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: china-bookshelf, to-read
review:

]]> The Fat Years 19226369 Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history.

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less—except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn—not only about their leaders, but also about their own people—stuns them to the core. It is a message that will astound the world.

A kind of Brave New World reflecting the China of our times, The Fat Years is a complex novel of ideas that reveals all too chillingly the machinations of the postmodern totalitarian state, and sets in sharp relief the importance of remembering the past to protect the future.]]> 338 Chan Koonchung Isham 0 to-read, china-bookshelf 3.55 2009 The Fat Years
author: Chan Koonchung
name: Isham
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: to-read, china-bookshelf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I)]]> 32081
From 1629 to 1775, North America was settled by four great waves of English-speaking immigrants. The first was an exodus of Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts (1629-1640). The second was the movement of a Royalist elite and indentured servants from the south of England to Virginia (ca. 1649-75). The third was the "Friends' migration,"--the Quakers--from the North Midlands and Wales to the Delaware Valley (ca. 1675-1725). The fourth was a great flight from the borderlands of North Britain and northern Ireland to the American backcountry (ca. 1717-75).

These four groups differed in many ways--in religion, rank, generation and place of origin. They brought to America different folkways which became the basis of regional cultures in the United States. They spoke distinctive English dialects and built their houses in diverse ways. They had different ideas of family, marriage and gender; different practices of child-naming and child-raising; different attitudes toward sex, age and death; different rituals of worship and magic; different forms of work and play; different customs of food and dress; different traditions of education and literacy; different modes of settlement and association. They also had profoundly different ideas of comity, order, power and freedom which derived from British folk-traditions. Albion's Seed describes those differences in detail, and discusses the continuing importance of their transference to America.

Today most people in the United States (more than 80 percent) have no British ancestors at all. These many other groups, even while preserving their own ethnic cultures, have also assimilated regional folkways which were transplanted from Britain to America. In that sense, nearly all Americans today are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnic origins may be; but they are so in their different regional ways.

The concluding section of Albion's Seed explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still control attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Albion's Seed also argues that the four British folkways created an expansive cultural pluralism that has proved to the more libertarian than any single culture alone could be. Together they became the determinants of a voluntary society in the United States.]]> 946 David Hackett Fischer 0195069056 Isham 5
Courting couples were allowed to spend the night together in their parent's house, but the girl was fitted into a tight bag called a bundling stocking up to the hips so that the boy had no access to her groin but she was allowed to be naked from the waist up. Masturbation was punishable by death (more of a warning; it was rarely carried out). If someone was accused of bestiality, and you were observed joking or making light of it, just for that you could be permanently banished from the town.

Children were kicked out of the house (“sent out�) when they became prepubescent or adolescent since with so many family members (avg. 8-10 children) the likelihood of incest increased. The sent-out children were usually put with a smaller family (where they would also be taught manners).

The Puritans didn’t have churches but rather “meeting halls.� Sunday service was compulsory and sermons lasted 5-6 hours. In winter they were deliberately unheated inside, on the excuse that stoves might set off the munitions and explosives regularly stored there!

Some males were given bizarre first names at birth like “Notwithstanding�, “Maybe�, and “Increase�. Know how they got them? One of the parents would put their finger on a random word in the Bible.]]> 4.37 1989 Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I)
author: David Hackett Fischer
name: Isham
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/03/04
shelves:
review:
So fascinating you don't notice the 900 pages. Tidbits from the section on the Puritans in 17th-c. New England: It was illegal to be single. Tithingmen regularly barged in and inspected every family. Bachelors were rounded up and forced to live with a family. Teenage males could be executed for not obeying their parents.

Courting couples were allowed to spend the night together in their parent's house, but the girl was fitted into a tight bag called a bundling stocking up to the hips so that the boy had no access to her groin but she was allowed to be naked from the waist up. Masturbation was punishable by death (more of a warning; it was rarely carried out). If someone was accused of bestiality, and you were observed joking or making light of it, just for that you could be permanently banished from the town.

Children were kicked out of the house (“sent out�) when they became prepubescent or adolescent since with so many family members (avg. 8-10 children) the likelihood of incest increased. The sent-out children were usually put with a smaller family (where they would also be taught manners).

The Puritans didn’t have churches but rather “meeting halls.� Sunday service was compulsory and sermons lasted 5-6 hours. In winter they were deliberately unheated inside, on the excuse that stoves might set off the munitions and explosives regularly stored there!

Some males were given bizarre first names at birth like “Notwithstanding�, “Maybe�, and “Increase�. Know how they got them? One of the parents would put their finger on a random word in the Bible.
]]> <![CDATA[These Bones Shall Rise Again: Selected Writings on Early China (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)]]> 25474315 David N. Keightley’s seminal essays on the origins of Chinese society are brought together in one volume.

These Bones Shall Rise Again, brings together in one volume many of David N. Keightley’s seminal essays on the origins of early Chinese civilization. Written over a period of three decades and accessible to the non-specialist, these essays provide a wealth of information and insights on the Shang dynasty, traditionally dated 1766�1122 or 1056 BCE. Of all the eras of Chinese history, the Shang has been a particularly elusive one, long considered more myth than reality. A historian with a keen appreciation for anthropology and archaeology, Keightley has given us many descriptions of Shang life. Best known for his analysis of oracle bones, he has looked beyond the bones themselves and expanded his historical vision to ponder the lives of those who used them. What did the Shang diviner think he was doing? The temerity to ask such questions and the insights they have provided have been provocative and, at times, controversial. Equally intriguing have been Keightley’s assertions that many of the distinctive features of Chinese civilization were already in evidence during the Shang, 3000 years ago. In this collection, readers will find not only an essential reference but also the best kind of thought-provoking scholarship.

David N. Keightley is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.) and Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China, and the editor of The Origins of Chinese Civilization.

Henry Rosemont Jr. is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and currently Visiting Scholar of Religious Studies at Brown University. His books include Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the World’s Spiritual Traditions and, with Roger T. Ames, The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing.

]]> 362 David N. Keightley 1438447485 Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.33 2013 These Bones Shall Rise Again: Selected Writings on Early China (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)
author: David N. Keightley
name: Isham
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/02/11
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Archeologist's account of China's very distant past.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments]]> 28930020
William Leonard Pickard is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, with degrees in chemistry and public policy. He was formerly a research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow of the Interfaculty Initiative on Drugs and Addictions at Harvard, and Deputy Director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA. His interests include Victorian literature, deincarceration technologies, the neuropolicy of cognitive enhancement, and the future of novel drugs. He encourages correspondence from the thoughtful reader.]]> 654 William Leonard Pickard 0692509003 Isham 5
Without a background in literary studies, however, either academically or as a literary author with decades of experience in the craft or prior relevant publications, how in the hell then was Pickard able to write a book of such literary accomplishment, lexical breadth and allusiveness, and stylistic assuredness?

The Rose moreover contains innumerable minutely rendered, almost encyclopedic, accounts of scenes in far-flung spots around the world, down to exact descriptions of clothing, decor, flora and landscapes, which he seems to have been able to call up at will in his prison cell. This is beyond the ability of a mere photographic memory, which tends to be indiscriminate in its cataloging of detail. But the Rose records precisely those details demanded by his narrative. I cannot see how Pickard was able to access all of this information. Federal prisons don’t allow unrestricted or unsupervised use of the internet, and he was likely limited to email. Undoubtedly his many friends and contacts would have been mailing some of the information he required, but could not possibly have supplied everything he needed to write this book.

Perhaps, with the vast time on his hands in prison, his mind grew to comparable vastness, enabling and feeding his monumental vision--sweeping hallucinatory landscapes that enact rather than merely mimic the LSD experience, undergirded by profound Buddhist wisdom and all rendered in the most beautiful, inimitable prose--enriched from long acquaintance with entheogens, and he filled in all the requisite details through the powers of imagination alone, even if not everything was accurate and possibly made up out of whole cloth?

While a more skeptically minded person might suspect The Rose was collaboratively written (with a ghostwriter or writers, or an editor so thorough as to blur the line between editorship and authorship), and Pickard was generously allowed to claim sole authorship, nonetheless, I must give him benefit of the doubt and regard him as the sole author of his amazing literary creation. As for specifics about the book, please have a look at other reviews. The book is too large and capacious for me to go into any more detail here without turning this review itself into a book.]]> 4.42 2015 The Rose Of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments
author: William Leonard Pickard
name: Isham
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/02/06
shelves:
review:
From what I understand of William Leonard Pickard's background, he was trained as a chemist (after an aborted first semester at Princeton as an undergraduate) and spent most of his years manufacturing LSD (ultimately in an abandoned nuclear missile silo in Kansas) and moving within that milieu, while dipping into more academic study here and there, including several fruitful years at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His publications are limited to a few scientific and governmental policy articles on drugs and the drug trade. Meanwhile, a good portion of his life (25+ years) was spent in prison for a drug-conspiracy charge. He claims to have written The Rose entirely with pencil and paper during his last period of incarceration and published it in 2016 (he was finally freed in 2020).

Without a background in literary studies, however, either academically or as a literary author with decades of experience in the craft or prior relevant publications, how in the hell then was Pickard able to write a book of such literary accomplishment, lexical breadth and allusiveness, and stylistic assuredness?

The Rose moreover contains innumerable minutely rendered, almost encyclopedic, accounts of scenes in far-flung spots around the world, down to exact descriptions of clothing, decor, flora and landscapes, which he seems to have been able to call up at will in his prison cell. This is beyond the ability of a mere photographic memory, which tends to be indiscriminate in its cataloging of detail. But the Rose records precisely those details demanded by his narrative. I cannot see how Pickard was able to access all of this information. Federal prisons don’t allow unrestricted or unsupervised use of the internet, and he was likely limited to email. Undoubtedly his many friends and contacts would have been mailing some of the information he required, but could not possibly have supplied everything he needed to write this book.

Perhaps, with the vast time on his hands in prison, his mind grew to comparable vastness, enabling and feeding his monumental vision--sweeping hallucinatory landscapes that enact rather than merely mimic the LSD experience, undergirded by profound Buddhist wisdom and all rendered in the most beautiful, inimitable prose--enriched from long acquaintance with entheogens, and he filled in all the requisite details through the powers of imagination alone, even if not everything was accurate and possibly made up out of whole cloth?

While a more skeptically minded person might suspect The Rose was collaboratively written (with a ghostwriter or writers, or an editor so thorough as to blur the line between editorship and authorship), and Pickard was generously allowed to claim sole authorship, nonetheless, I must give him benefit of the doubt and regard him as the sole author of his amazing literary creation. As for specifics about the book, please have a look at other reviews. The book is too large and capacious for me to go into any more detail here without turning this review itself into a book.
]]> <![CDATA[Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback]]> 42415551 We are in the middle of a sexual revolution.

In our era of crisis, collapse, and reactionary tyrants, we are also witnessing a productive transformation: profound and permanent changes in how we define gender, sex, consent, and whose bodies matter. It's a time of creative disobedience, of reimagining ways of organizing care, reproduction, and the work of building and sustaining the human species. These changes threaten the social and economic certainties that form our world; they threaten existing power structures, and they undermine the authority of institutions from the waged workplace to the nuclear family. No wonder the far right is fighting so hard. A shakeup in sexual and gender relations is a shakeup in political, economic, and social life as well. The stakes could not be higher.

Based on Laurie Penny's celebrated, Ellie-award nominated Longreads series about rape culture, Sexual Revolution is the culmination of years of journalistic research, written for a broad audience, drawing on the work of Shulamith Firestone, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Silvia Federici, Wilhelm Reich and Michel Foucault. This is a hand grenade of a book, a manifesto of social change, and a story of how feminism can save the world.]]> 320 Laurie Penny 1526602202 Isham 4
"It was my mother, one man wrote. She raised me to respect women. It was my father, said another. I saw how he treated my mother and sisters. I swore to be different. I escaped an oppressive Evangelist background, another man told me, and that led me to question everything. It was the love of Jesus, said another. My college girlfriend was patient with me. My wife had had enough. I have a daughter. I am a son. It was the girls in my online gaming group. It was my karate teacher. I got sober. I got dumped. I got better."

So that means, if I don't have a good mother, or a good father, I'm more liable to hate and kill women? Or it's only because I "swear" to be "different" from the common killer that prevents me from becoming one? If I don't love Jesus, I will inevitably assault or kill? If my college girlfriend is impatient with me, I will have to kill her? Or only having a child can prevent me from becoming violent? If the females in my gaming group aren't friendly enough, that will cause me to kill them? Alternatively, to prevent myself from becoming a murderer, I can try distracting myself with martial arts? Or stop drinking? Or behave just obnoxiously enough to get dumped so that I don’t do anything worse?

Wow. Who the hell are these guys? I suppose I've met a smattering of types over the years who may have expressed such dimwitted sentiments but I don't recall any. Equally bewildering is Penny's implicit assumption that these represent the best of men, her evident admiration for their courage in facing their darkest impulses: "Every answer was different. The common thing was that they all had one. There was a moment, or a number of moments, where they decided to rewrite the story of their own lives. The difference between sexist and non-sexist men is not how depressed they are but how good their skills are for dealing with it."

If struggling against the implacable inner compulsion toward violence represents some kind of model behavior or skillfulness in handling male despair, I'm not sure where that leaves me, as I, inexplicably, do not feel any such compulsion. Perhaps I must be in some kind of denial and if I were honest with myself I would have to recognize and come to terms with my own killer instinct?

No. I am sorry, but although I am a white male, I am not one of them. The reason I don't assault or kill women is not that something is holding me back. Quite simply, the very idea of hurting another person is repugnant and unimaginable irrespective of the circumstances! And of course it's morally wrong and evil. No other reason is needed. I can no more comprehend the mentality of violent men than any (nonviolent) woman can.

If Penny truly believes it's only men's mastery of their violent tendencies that keeps them from harming women, hers is indeed a grim, dark, pessimistic view of men. It's clear from Penny's account that she does not hate men; she claims to have loved many men in her life. She reminds us that the sexual revolution she believes is presently gathering force can restore male-female sexual relations to a state of equality and consent rather than coercion and fear: "Men who mouth the language of erotic liberation are often secretly terrified of women’s sexual agency." While she does express a nice paradox here, it doesn't ring true for me. I am not at all intimidated by women who boldly declare their desire; it's quite a turn-on in fact. I am sure many men long to see a society where women could display their sexual agency as freely and safely as they themselves can.

I'm afraid men are more complex and the world more complicated than Penny makes it out to be. The problem is not her depiction of awful men, legions of whom unfortunately do exist. It's the absence of any truly positive examples of men that confounds, or not even that, just ordinary men I see around me and deal with on a regular basis who are living constructively and creatively and have better things to do than live lives "predicated on violence."]]> 3.83 2022 Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback
author: Laurie Penny
name: Isham
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/02/02
shelves:
review:
I was prepared to go along with, even endorse, Laurie Penny's contention that white male entitlement is almost exclusively to blame for our society's burden of sexism and sexual violence because, well, if we are honest about it, there's much truth to it, and if her thesis is rather simplistically and brutally prosecuted for rhetorical purposes, then again so is male violence. But one passage in this otherwise cogently argued book, fiery polemics aside, stuck out like a jagged edge, so unbelievable are its implications. Penny is careful to differentiate between the worst of male offenders and the rest of the male population, the majority of whom after all do not offend. Yet when she queried her male friends "what exactly it was that stopped them going down that road" and "manage to retain their grip on human decency," as if the only thing holding them back was their triumphant self-control, the reasons they gave are nonetheless unwittingly shocking:

"It was my mother, one man wrote. She raised me to respect women. It was my father, said another. I saw how he treated my mother and sisters. I swore to be different. I escaped an oppressive Evangelist background, another man told me, and that led me to question everything. It was the love of Jesus, said another. My college girlfriend was patient with me. My wife had had enough. I have a daughter. I am a son. It was the girls in my online gaming group. It was my karate teacher. I got sober. I got dumped. I got better."

So that means, if I don't have a good mother, or a good father, I'm more liable to hate and kill women? Or it's only because I "swear" to be "different" from the common killer that prevents me from becoming one? If I don't love Jesus, I will inevitably assault or kill? If my college girlfriend is impatient with me, I will have to kill her? Or only having a child can prevent me from becoming violent? If the females in my gaming group aren't friendly enough, that will cause me to kill them? Alternatively, to prevent myself from becoming a murderer, I can try distracting myself with martial arts? Or stop drinking? Or behave just obnoxiously enough to get dumped so that I don’t do anything worse?

Wow. Who the hell are these guys? I suppose I've met a smattering of types over the years who may have expressed such dimwitted sentiments but I don't recall any. Equally bewildering is Penny's implicit assumption that these represent the best of men, her evident admiration for their courage in facing their darkest impulses: "Every answer was different. The common thing was that they all had one. There was a moment, or a number of moments, where they decided to rewrite the story of their own lives. The difference between sexist and non-sexist men is not how depressed they are but how good their skills are for dealing with it."

If struggling against the implacable inner compulsion toward violence represents some kind of model behavior or skillfulness in handling male despair, I'm not sure where that leaves me, as I, inexplicably, do not feel any such compulsion. Perhaps I must be in some kind of denial and if I were honest with myself I would have to recognize and come to terms with my own killer instinct?

No. I am sorry, but although I am a white male, I am not one of them. The reason I don't assault or kill women is not that something is holding me back. Quite simply, the very idea of hurting another person is repugnant and unimaginable irrespective of the circumstances! And of course it's morally wrong and evil. No other reason is needed. I can no more comprehend the mentality of violent men than any (nonviolent) woman can.

If Penny truly believes it's only men's mastery of their violent tendencies that keeps them from harming women, hers is indeed a grim, dark, pessimistic view of men. It's clear from Penny's account that she does not hate men; she claims to have loved many men in her life. She reminds us that the sexual revolution she believes is presently gathering force can restore male-female sexual relations to a state of equality and consent rather than coercion and fear: "Men who mouth the language of erotic liberation are often secretly terrified of women’s sexual agency." While she does express a nice paradox here, it doesn't ring true for me. I am not at all intimidated by women who boldly declare their desire; it's quite a turn-on in fact. I am sure many men long to see a society where women could display their sexual agency as freely and safely as they themselves can.

I'm afraid men are more complex and the world more complicated than Penny makes it out to be. The problem is not her depiction of awful men, legions of whom unfortunately do exist. It's the absence of any truly positive examples of men that confounds, or not even that, just ordinary men I see around me and deal with on a regular basis who are living constructively and creatively and have better things to do than live lives "predicated on violence."
]]> <![CDATA[Surveillance State: China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control]]> 56269193
Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated―and often brutal―harnessing of data.

It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,� and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response.

Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway―a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.]]> 310 Josh Chin 1250249295 Isham 5 4.16 Surveillance State: China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
author: Josh Chin
name: Isham
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/15
date added: 2022/10/15
shelves:
review:
Everything dystopian you think is happening -- in both China and the rest of the world including the US -- is happening. One of the many striking facts in this new book is that almost all of the companies involved in developing the apparatuses for digital control of people's lives in China were initially created in the US. American companies aggressively marketed their products and services to Chinese technology developers and police agencies, which the Chinese have now perfected. Cellphones and surveillance cameras (facial recognition) now control people's lives in China to an extent still unthinkable in the West, but I fear we're slowly moving in that direction. The only issue the authors neglect to discuss is the way China’s only social media app, WeChat, used exclusively by almost the entire population, has become a tool of the state, when it temporarily freezes or permanently blocks users who merely forward politically sensitive posts or news articles. This can seriously disrupt a person's life as the app is used for all sorts of communications, business and activities (the Alipay app can take over some of these but it's not a social media app used for communicating). WeChat repression has been going on for some years now so it’s unclear why the authors left it out. My guess is that they themselves rely on WeChat for their many China contacts and any direct criticism of the company might cause their own accounts to be blocked or shut down.
]]> <![CDATA[American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy]]> 61685227
"With AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS, David Corn 'did the full homework to take us all the way back to where it really begins.�" —Lawrence O'Donnell, host, The Last Word

#1 New York Times bestselling author and investigative reporter David Corn tells the wild and harrowing story of the Republican Party’s decades-long relationship with far-right extremism, bigotry, and paranoia.

A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America. In a compelling and thoroughly-researched narrative, Corn reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fostered fear, anger, and resentment to win elections—and how this led to Donald Trump’s triumph and the transformation of the GOP into a Trump personality cult that foments and bolsters the crazy and dangerous excesses of the right.

The Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was no aberration. AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS shows it was a continuation of the long and deep-rooted Republican practice of boosting and weaponizing the rage and derangement of the right.

The gripping tale in AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics topoison the nation’s discourse and threaten American democracy.]]> 402 David Corn 1538723077 Isham 5 4.54 2022 American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
author: David Corn
name: Isham
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/10/08
shelves:
review:
Nothing in David Corn's new book wasn't already known, but he pulls it all together and his history of the GOP makes for an excellent page-turning refresher course. What's indisputably clear is that the Republican Party is and has long been (at least since the 1950s) thoroughly, unremittingly evil, and there's not much hope for the USA as long as it continues to exist. If this sounds rather stark, go back to school and read the book.
]]> The Beatles: The Biography 35539
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for -- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves -- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.

Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where -- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills -- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road Studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe...all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.

It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read -- Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.]]> 983 Bob Spitz 0316013315 Isham 4 4.07 2005 The Beatles: The Biography
author: Bob Spitz
name: Isham
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/10/08
shelves:
review:
Compellingly written and just exhaustive enough to flesh out the picture every step of the way without getting too bogged down in extraneous details, Spitz's 1,000-page tome only seems to lose focus and rush things in the final Abbey Road-Let it Be years, as if getting impatient with his book's sheer length. Though I grew up with the Beatles (relying on my mother to pick up their albums starting with "Beatles '65"), there's a lot I didn't know, so many curious and bizarre stories behind the songs, such as the title of "A hard day's night" being one of Starr's frequent "Ringoisms" (malapropisms) and the opening of "I am the walrus" depicting a police siren. Another fascinating fact: before they broke out, the Beatles were rejected again and again by radio and record producers for being inept and incompetent, their music simply deemed not good enough; or during their massive concerts during which neither they nor anyone in the audience could hear the music due to the screaming crowds, they were constantly pelted with jellybeans (not out of anger). It becomes fully clear why they quit performing live in 1966.
]]> <![CDATA[A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books]]> 791098 A Gentle Madness astounded and delighted readers with stories about the lengths of passion, expense, and more that collectors will go in pursuit of the book. Written before the emergence of the Internet but newly updated for the twenty-first century reader, A Gentle Madness captures that last moment in time when collectors frequented dusty bookshops, street stalls, and high-stakes auctions, conducting themselves with the subterfuge befitting a true bibliomaniac. A Gentle Madness is vividly anecdotal and thoroughly researched. Nicholas A. Basbanes brings an investigative reporter’s heart and instincts to the task of chronicling collectors past and present in pursuit of bibliomania. Now a classic of collecting, A Gentle Madness is a book lover’s delight.]]> 638 Nicholas A. Basbanes 0805061762 Isham 5 4.03 1995 A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
author: Nicholas A. Basbanes
name: Isham
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/08
date added: 2022/10/08
shelves:
review:
A minor classic since its release in 1995 - just as the digital book revolution was getting underway and undermining the long realm of the printed book. Personally, I do not share the madness of bibliophiles, who as Basbanes notes so often display indifference to reading and the ideas of the books they hoard in favor of the obsession of collecting for its own sake. Bibliophiles must absolutely hate the Kindle and other e-reading devices. I love the Kindle, because it's the ideas, language and content of books that's key, and who cares in what format the content is delivered? This does not mean that I don't also enjoy a printed book in my hands; I've spent most of my life with printed books and still read them, still have them on my shelves. Brisbane is a fine writer and it is a great story, though, the history of bibliophilia, one that ironically can be fully enjoyed on a Kindle.
]]> <![CDATA[Sex, Drugs, Enlightenment: Noble Secrets from an Orthodox Buddhist ex-Monk]]> 35671902 This definitive work maps the evolution of Buddhism into today’s post-traditional form. A scientific manual of mind and body, it clearly explains what works for spiritual aspirants now and why. Complete, it will hold up under the scrutiny of every Buddhologist and Buddhist teacher.

Explore the empowering potential of using cannabis, MDMA, and LSD in sacred sex rituals to intimately grasp the nature of reality. You can embody the supernatural knowledge of dedicated initiates. This guide will show you how!

Advance Warning: Theory and Practice sections C, D, and E contain dangerous spoilers for Vipassana meditation practitioners. Traditionally, these derail ultimate success, but this portion wouldn’t be complete without them. In this new paradigm of the Information Age, anything less than full disclosure isn’t fair to you. There are warnings where they start. If you read them, consider yourself to be a consenting adult.

British spelling is a conscious choice.

About the author:

Born late in the Baby Boom to white-collar, WASP parents, Alex Walking was orphaned in his youth. As a teenager, he enjoyed thorough immersion in the imported cannabis trade. Cashing out at twenty-two, he spent six years spread over the next seven living in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and Thailand. Part of that was practising meditation in caves and jungle, well off the beaten paths.

In Asia, Alex learned both Samadhi and Vipassana meditation from incredible adepts in their inner sanctums. His Samadhi teacher was an extraordinary woman highly placed in the Theravadin Buddhist world. She would bounce him into states more vivid and electrically charged than our world.

An accredited master in that orthodox Order of monks threw the experience of Nibbana into Alex’s system. Understanding Nibbana at four progressively deeper levels confers enlightenment from barely to fully.

He was taught how to repeat the experience which is essential for becoming fully enlightened. Then, Alex was objectively tested for it over and over by the monk’s lineage’s secret methods to make sure there was no mistake. He emerged, apparently, irrevocably a different sort of human being. Theory and Practice C, D, and E explain how this happens and what it means.

For fifteen months he was a fully ordained Theravadin Buddhist monk of the forest tradition in northern Thailand.

All of that rare yet classical education enabled him to write this definitive work.

The entheogens Alex is most familiar with are cannabis, LSD, and MDMA. He’s taken LSD at least three hundred times. MDMA, he’s taken at least four hundred times. 99% of his experiences with MDMA centred on ritualised tantric sex, as have many of his LSD trips.

Although no longer bound by a pact to not disclose the identity of his late teacher of Red Tantra, Alex chooses not to at this time. A major Western guru loved to present her to his students as the most accomplished woman he knew. In her local community, she was considered a role model for women.

The book does contain inspiring details about her and insightful quotes. Multi-orgasmic and fully ejaculatory, she would completely morph into the archetypal sexual goddess that the Tibetans call 'The Diamond Yogini'. Physically regenerated, her features retained the shifts afterwards.

This gorgeous, brilliant lady considered such access to be every woman’s birthright which they’ve been denied through the subjugation of their sexual energy. She was adroit in her navigation of the realms and her ability to articulate the experience. That made her the indispensable Initiatress into the secrets of sexual connection.

So, have an enlightening adventure. Become a Noble One!

]]> 278 Alex Walking 0692881034 Isham 4
It's noteworthy that the Dakini-like female masters of Red Tantra aren't just employed as sexual objects but the lovemaking is mutual and the "Samadhi absorption" in a Red Tantra practitioner requires and typically results in "full-body orgasms complete with massive ejaculations of up to a half liter (two cups) or more of clear fluid, often repeatedly"! Walking stresses that female ejaculation "is not a myth. It’s a signpost of connection, both inner and outer, for a woman. For some, it’s natural, while for others, it’s a learned response. A woman who has established this connection inside of herself is said to be ‘sexually awakened�. That doesn’t necessarily mean spiritually attuned, but physically attuned as a prerequisite in this case. Not all orgasmic ejaculations are a sign of accessing concentrative absorption."

Walking's prose has an episodic style and a tendency to meander. The final section of the book consists of a grab-bag of rather (deceptively) banal meditation tips, which probably only count as wisdom once one has achieved a certain level of expertise. I would have preferred a tighter narrative with more of the autobiographical, where the author is at his most colorful.]]> 4.11 Sex, Drugs, Enlightenment: Noble Secrets from an Orthodox Buddhist ex-Monk
author: Alex Walking
name: Isham
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/15
date added: 2022/08/15
shelves:
review:
A completely unexpected introduction to Buddhism by an American with many years under his belt as a monk in Sri Lanka and Thailand. Walking combines the discipline of Theravada-style meditation with "Red" (sexual) Tantra and calibrated use of intoxicants like MDMA and LSD to aid in achieving peak experiences (there is nothing written in stone anywhere forbidding any of these tools and techniques).

It's noteworthy that the Dakini-like female masters of Red Tantra aren't just employed as sexual objects but the lovemaking is mutual and the "Samadhi absorption" in a Red Tantra practitioner requires and typically results in "full-body orgasms complete with massive ejaculations of up to a half liter (two cups) or more of clear fluid, often repeatedly"! Walking stresses that female ejaculation "is not a myth. It’s a signpost of connection, both inner and outer, for a woman. For some, it’s natural, while for others, it’s a learned response. A woman who has established this connection inside of herself is said to be ‘sexually awakened�. That doesn’t necessarily mean spiritually attuned, but physically attuned as a prerequisite in this case. Not all orgasmic ejaculations are a sign of accessing concentrative absorption."

Walking's prose has an episodic style and a tendency to meander. The final section of the book consists of a grab-bag of rather (deceptively) banal meditation tips, which probably only count as wisdom once one has achieved a certain level of expertise. I would have preferred a tighter narrative with more of the autobiographical, where the author is at his most colorful.
]]> <![CDATA[The Encyclopedia of Aphrodisiacs: Psychoactive Substances for Use in Sexual Practices]]> 11922670
� Details the use, preparation, and dosage of more than 400 plant, animal, mineral, and synthetic substances, both common and exotic, as well as their botany, science, and legal status

� Explores the historical and present use of aphrodisiacs and their role in sexual practices, culture, and art

� Richly illustrated throughout with more than 800 color photographs

The culmination of more than 30 years of cultural, anthropological, and scientific research, this encyclopedia examines the botany, pharmacology, history, preparation, dosage, and practical use of more than 400 erotically stimulating substances from antiquity to the present day.

From plants and animals that enhance fertility and virility, like celery, snails, or oysters, to substances that induce arousal, like ephedra, opium, or cannabis, the encyclopedia is richly illustrated with more than 800 color photographs--many of which are from the authors� extensive fieldwork around the world. Exploring individual, medicinal, and ritual use through historic and contemporary artwork, personal accounts, and literature as well as ayurvedic, tantric, shamanic, and European folklore practices and recent pharmacological research, the authors look at the revolving cycle of acceptance and condemnation of aphrodisiacs, the qualities that incur the label of “aphrodisiac,� the role of mind and setting, and the different ways aphrodisiacs stimulate desire--either physically, through the senses and vital organs, or mentally, through heightened awareness and altered consciousness. This comprehensive guide reveals these “remedies of the love goddess� as holy remedies whose proper use can help reestablish harmony with oneself, one’s partner, and the universe.]]> 736 Christian Rätsch 1594771693 Isham 5 4.32 2012 The Encyclopedia of Aphrodisiacs: Psychoactive Substances for Use in Sexual Practices
author: Christian Rätsch
name: Isham
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/06
date added: 2022/08/07
shelves:
review:
Along with Rätsch's Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, this is pretty comprehensive and there is no other work that can compare with it. A brief tour through the book reveals that aphrodisiacs work in all different ways, whether by stimulating blood vessels in the genitals, lowering inhibitions or enhancing the senses. The book's claim of the single most effective aphrodisiac may surprise you -- plentifully available in countries where it is legal.
]]> <![CDATA[The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare]]> 1223695 404 Brenda James 1405840862 Isham 3 3.32 2006 The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare
author: Brenda James
name: Isham
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/07/23
shelves:
review:
I have to grant one thing to the anti-Stratfordians, that the best of them tend to lay out their arguments with calm and patience, in contrast to the often contemptuously dismissive flaming of Shakespeare-as-sole-author proponents. Nevertheless, both sides suffer from their uncompromising and unyielding, black-and-white, mirror-image, boxed-in positions. The Oxfordians have to twist themselves into knots in order to explain how the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, could have penned The Tempest, which was almost indisputably written in 1610-11, if he had died in 1604. Brenda James solves this particular difficulty by proposing a different candidate altogether, Sir Henry Neville (1564-1615), and amasses quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for her thesis, which however began to pall on me by the end, with her penchant for repetition. But my impatience with all of the anti-Stratfordians stems from a deeper issue: a failure of the imagination, shared by the Stratfordians themselves, a failure to understand that 1) the authorship question may never be solved, and 2) it doesn't have to be since the potential solution is staring us right in the face. If, that is, it cannot be explained how Shakespeare singlehandedly could have amassed so much esoteric knowledge that made it into his plays which he could not possibly have been privy to with his provincial background, it may be because his plays were a collaborative effort among some or all these historical figures (Neville, Bacon, Jonson, Marlowe, etc.), who apparently knew each other, with Shakespeare the actual author and the others contributors to his project in the form of ideas, books, libraries, and the like.
]]> <![CDATA[The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic]]> 24692849
� Details how early modern theologians demonized psychedelic folk magic into “witches� ointments�

� Shares dozens of psychoactive formulas and recipes gleaned from rare manuscripts from university collections all over the world as well as the practices and magical incantations necessary for their preparation

� Examines the practices of medieval witches like Matteuccia di Francisco, who used hallucinogenic drugs in her love potions and herbal preparations

In the medieval period preparations with hallucinogenic herbs were part of the practice of veneficium , or poison magic. This collection of magical arts used poisons, herbs, and rituals to bewitch, heal, prophesy, infect, and murder. In the form of psyche-magical ointments, poison magic could trigger powerful hallucinations and surrealistic dreams that enabled direct experience of the Divine. Smeared on the skin, these entheogenic ointments were said to enable witches to commune with various local goddesses, bastardized by the Church as trips to the Sabbat --clandestine meetings with Satan to learn magic and participate in demonic orgies.

Examining trial records and the pharmacopoeia of witches, alchemists, folk healers, and heretics of the 15th century, Thomas Hatsis details how a range of ideas from folk drugs to ecclesiastical fears over medicine women merged to form the classical “witch� stereotype and what history has called the “witches� ointment.� He shares dozens of psychoactive formulas and recipes gleaned from rare manuscripts from university collections from all over the world as well as the practices and magical incantations necessary for their preparation. He explores the connections between witches� ointments and spells for shape shifting, spirit travel, and bewitching magic. He examines the practices of some Renaissance magicians, who inhaled powerful drugs to communicate with spirits, and of Italian folk-witches, such as Matteuccia di Francisco, who used hallucinogenic drugs in her love potions and herbal preparations, and Finicella, who used drug ointments to imagine herself transformed into a cat.

Exploring the untold history of the witches� ointment and medieval hallucinogen use, Hatsis reveals how the Church transformed folk drug practices, specifically entheogenic ones, into satanic experiences.]]> 304 Thomas Hatsis 1620554739 Isham 4 4.01 2015 The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic
author: Thomas Hatsis
name: Isham
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/07/22
shelves:
review:
A thorough, academically grounded, entertainingly narrated investigation of the origin and history of the fallacious idea that magical ointments were the main culprit in the alleged and unfounded claims by the Church and Inquisition that witches murdered babies in their sabbaths. Psychoactive ointments (typically infused with plants of the nightshade variety) have been used around world since time immemorial in vision-inducing and shamanistic ceremonies, but never for the purpose of infanticide. My only complaint is that Hatsis abruptly ends his study without going into more detail about how the plants were efficaciously chosen, extracted and employed in the various ointments, as there are few modern studies or practical recipes for these possibly beneficial substances.
]]> <![CDATA[The I Ching or Book of Changes]]> 11380470 The I Ching, or Book of Changes, a common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy, is one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe. It has exerted a living influence in China for 3,000 years, and interest in it has been rapidly spreading in the West.

]]> 802 Anonymous Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.56 -850 The I Ching or Book of Changes
author: Anonymous
name: Isham
average rating: 4.56
book published: -850
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/06/11
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Another translation of this most enigmatic of enigmatic books.
]]> <![CDATA[The Poison Path Herbal: Baneful Herbs, Medicinal Nightshades, and Ritual Entheogens]]> 56695134
� Explains how to work with baneful herbs through rituals and spells, as plant spirit familiars, as potent medicines, and as visionary substances

� Details the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, its active alkaloids, how to safely cultivate and harvest it, and rituals and spells suited to its individual nature and powers

� Shares plant alchemy methods, magical techniques, and recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches� flying ointment

Part grimoire and part herbal formulary, this guide to the Poison Path of occult herbalism shares history, lore, and information regarding the use of poisonous, consciousness-altering, and magical plants. Author Coby Michael explains how, despite their poisonous nature, baneful herbs can become powerful plant allies, offering potent medicine, magical wisdom, and access to the spirit realm.

Detailing the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, the author explores their magical uses in spells and rituals. He focuses primarily on the nightshade family, or Solanaceae, such as mandrake, henbane, and thorn apple, but also explores plants from other families such as wolfsbane, hemlock, and hellebore. He also examines plants in the witch’s pharmacopoeia that are safer to work with and just as chemically active, such as wormwood, mugwort, and yarrow.

The author shares rituals suited to the individual nature and powers of each plant and explains how to attract and work with plant spirit familiars. He offers plant alchemy methods for crafting spagyric tinctures and magical techniques to facilitate working with these plants as allies and teachers. He shares magical recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches� flying ointment. He also explores safely cultivating baneful herbs in a poison garden.]]> 256 Coby Michael 1644113341 Isham 4 4.55 The Poison Path Herbal: Baneful Herbs, Medicinal Nightshades, and Ritual Entheogens
author: Coby Michael
name: Isham
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/03
date added: 2022/06/04
shelves:
review:
A straightforward account of the medicinal and potentially poisonous entheogens, lacking the style and panache of Daniel Schulke's Veneficium but filling in necessary gaps with detailed instructions for making potions, salves, tinctures, and other concoctions. The book lacks clear organization and jumps around from the practical (botanical descriptions and recipes) to the theoretical (New Agey incantations and glyphs), yet adds to the alchemical library.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man]]> 99442 The Secret Life of Plants includes remarkable information about plants as lie detectors and plants as ecological sentinels; it describes their ability to adapt to human wishes, their response to music, their curative powers, and their ability to communicate with man. Authors Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird suggest that the most far-reaching revolution of the 20th century � one that could save or destroy the planet � may come from the bottom of your garden.]]> 402 Peter Tompkins 0060915870 Isham 4 3.99 1973 The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man
author: Peter Tompkins
name: Isham
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/30
date added: 2022/05/30
shelves:
review:
Jammed-packed with lore about all the disparaged scientists working on the intricate, sophisticated and fascinating world of plant life and plant powers over the past centuries. The gaping hole in this book is the utter lack of anything about plant medicines and entheogens - the real gold standard of plant intelligence.
]]> <![CDATA[Shots From the Hip: Sex, Drugs and the Tao (Shots from the Hip Duology Book 1)]]> 43656288 Shots From the Hip is the memoir of Daniel Reid, a world-renowned expert on consciousness, holistic medicine and living life to the full. It recounts a life lived footloose and free, unbound by convention and driven by a quest for new experiences on roads less traveled. From the sex, drugs, and rock & roll scene of Late Sixties America to the opium dens, bars, and bordellos of far-flung Asian outposts, the author recounts his outlandish escapades in a rollicking narrative told with flair and candor.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Shots From the Hip is also an in-depth commentary on life itself, and a deliberation on death drawn from the author's own close encounters. Reid, who calls himself a "Sinopath," felt a link with China early in life, compelling him to cultivate his taste for all things Chinese, from poetry and philosophy to food and women. His sinologisms entice the reader with tasty treats from the gourmet feast of traditional Chinese life. There is also a love story running through these pages, a tender tribute to the redemptive power of a woman's love for a man in the extremes of adversity.

For readers with an appetite for the exotic and bizarre, the author offers a generous banquet of vicarious experience, while for those interested in loftier ideas, he shares new insights about ancient spiritual questions and the enduring mysteries of the mind. Reid's explanations of alternate ways to understand reality, drawn from Eastern teachings, may provide readers with new perspectives on their own lives.]]> 361 Daniel Reid Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.57 Shots From the Hip: Sex, Drugs and the Tao (Shots from the Hip Duology Book 1)
author: Daniel Reid
name: Isham
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/05/28
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Compelling memoir by an eccentric hippie and China scholar.
]]> Mating 12964611

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 564 Norman Rush Isham 0 to-read 3.62 1991 Mating
author: Norman Rush
name: Isham
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Veneficium: Magic, Witchcraft and the Poison Path]]> 16006351 177 Daniel A. Schulke Isham 5
"Poison is the point of first beginnings from which all must arise; it is power, both in its raw state, and in all its potentials for transmutation."

"In its exaltation, Fear is the simultaneous knowledge and respect of those powers which can annihilate us. Its irrational axis, manifest in action, is cowardice and impulse; its flowering is courage and prudence."

"The ability to attach with ferocious passion, and detach as readily [is] a holistic recognition that each encounter with the unfamiliar may be a source of great power to the adept."

"Modern drug prohibition is driven by fear of gnostic revelation or knowledge arising from bodily ecstasy, and the consequent shattering of state or religion-enforced paradigms....the same fears lie at the root of state repressions of sexual freedom and expression."

"Amid the reeds a watchful satyr stood, observing him intently. Maintaining his gaze, the silen slowly raised what appeared to be a police radio to his lips and whispered into it: 'Affirmative. We have one who sees.'"]]> 4.33 2012 Veneficium: Magic, Witchcraft and the Poison Path
author: Daniel A. Schulke
name: Isham
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/23
date added: 2022/05/23
shelves:
review:
Dense compendium of poison-path lore by an expert and practitioner, veering between the poetic and the academic in style. I'll confine my review to a few amazing quotes:

"Poison is the point of first beginnings from which all must arise; it is power, both in its raw state, and in all its potentials for transmutation."

"In its exaltation, Fear is the simultaneous knowledge and respect of those powers which can annihilate us. Its irrational axis, manifest in action, is cowardice and impulse; its flowering is courage and prudence."

"The ability to attach with ferocious passion, and detach as readily [is] a holistic recognition that each encounter with the unfamiliar may be a source of great power to the adept."

"Modern drug prohibition is driven by fear of gnostic revelation or knowledge arising from bodily ecstasy, and the consequent shattering of state or religion-enforced paradigms....the same fears lie at the root of state repressions of sexual freedom and expression."

"Amid the reeds a watchful satyr stood, observing him intently. Maintaining his gaze, the silen slowly raised what appeared to be a police radio to his lips and whispered into it: 'Affirmative. We have one who sees.'"
]]> <![CDATA[The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way]]> 82184 The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity is a unique, comprehensive, and practical self-help guide to live a balanced and positive Taoist lifestyle.

Written by a Westerner for the Western mind, The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity is perfect for the modern reader interested in exploring the balanced and holistic health care system used by Chinese physicians, martial artists, and meditators for over 5,000 years.

Drawing on his extensive personal experience and research from original sources, author Daniel Reid covers all aspects of the healthy Taoist lifestyle, delivering concise information and instruction on diet and nutrition, fasting, breathing and exercise, sexual health, medicine, and meditation.

Featuring helpful charts and illustrations, The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity makes the ancient practice easier to understand and more applicable to a modern Western audience than ever before.]]> 432 Daniel Reid 067164811X Isham 5 4.18 1989 The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way
author: Daniel Reid
name: Isham
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/19
date added: 2022/05/19
shelves:
review:
Classic text by American Taoist expert that goes back to the foundational Taoist texts on health and sexual practices (sometimes too literally) and conveys it all with wry wit yet profound expertise for skeptical Western audiences; the author himself is no mountain hermit but a widely traveled hippie with an encyclopedic knowledge of Eastern cultures and plant medicines to boot.
]]> <![CDATA[The Toé / Datura Diaries: A Shamanic Apprenticeship in the Heart of the Amazon Jungle]]> 54521275 214 Javier Regueiro 1950367800 Isham 4
"The truth is that, even when we are totally sober, we are always hallucinating: projecting so hard as a matter of fact, that we don’t even realize we are tripping on our own drama. The people who insist on judging altered states of consciousness and praise absolute sobriety are clearly unaware that even they are already tripping all the time and putting up their own show on the stage of Life. All spiritual practices are devoted to waking up from this state of amnesia and to living more consciously as a result....The threat is not out there but is the creation of our insane minds: the more we suppress or soothe our fears, the more we project them onto the world and create what we call our reality accordingly....What actually happens is not that the medicine makes us crazy, but that it shows us in vivid detail how insane we already are."

Meanwhile, the sheer amount of these potent drugs the author is compelled to consume raises many questions he never answers and greatly frustrates the reader. Now, I've known people whose lives have been transformed by a single powerful psychedelic session. In ceremony after ceremony, however, Regueiro repetitively unpeels layer after layer of pain and healing that never seems to accomplish anything but dredge up yet more deeply buried trauma. And what exactly IS the difference between Datura and Ayahuasca, which he regularly mixes together in varying proportions? They are wholly different and unrelated alkaloids, but how exactly is this baneful brew, Datura (and the other nightshades), long the purview of witches and sorcerers, distinct from the medicine the Amazon is more commonly known for, Ayahuasca? Regueiro maddeningly refuses to clarify the one thing we want to know more than anything else until he finally tosses us a few nuggets: Datura is so much more potent than Ayahuasca that the latter serves more as a catalyst or enhancer (in the same way cannabis enhances a psilocybin or acid trip).

Datura is so potent in fact that by the end of the book our author-shaman admits to having "brushed very closely with madness" in his Datura trances and the deep unconscious work the medicine continues to perform on the mind long after consuming it. Another example of the unsettling after-effects of this substance is Reguerio's loopy hermaphroditism, preceded by his somewhat sheepish admission of being gay. And then we're hit with this:

"I move on to the theme of how women hurt, shame, and judge each other: no, it’s not only men who hurt women�.I go through a long process of becoming aware of and forgiving all the subtle ways in which I have judged, ridiculed, and shamed women simply for being themselves AND women."

Yes, Reguerio soon admits, so deeply does he empathize with women and their timeworn oppression that it has turned him into a woman. He is, he confesses, actually a woman, and I grow confused. No, wait - I look at his name again and check his author photo. I was right the first time - he's a man. But after his numerous Datura experiences, it appears he's not so sure. By the way, as he himself warns, stay away from Datura unless you know what you're doing. It puts you into a state, lasting up to several days, where you have no awareness of what's happening or memory of the bizarre behavior you may have engaged in during the spell.]]> 3.60 The Toé / Datura Diaries: A Shamanic Apprenticeship in the Heart of the Amazon Jungle
author: Javier Regueiro
name: Isham
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/09
date added: 2022/05/10
shelves:
review:
Italian author Regueiro has spent years in the Amazon jungle working with the Datura, Ayahuasca, and occasionally San Pedro (mescaline) plant medicines in his quest to become a shaman of the "poison path." His journeys into this underworld are at times remarkably philosophical and reveal such insights as:

"The truth is that, even when we are totally sober, we are always hallucinating: projecting so hard as a matter of fact, that we don’t even realize we are tripping on our own drama. The people who insist on judging altered states of consciousness and praise absolute sobriety are clearly unaware that even they are already tripping all the time and putting up their own show on the stage of Life. All spiritual practices are devoted to waking up from this state of amnesia and to living more consciously as a result....The threat is not out there but is the creation of our insane minds: the more we suppress or soothe our fears, the more we project them onto the world and create what we call our reality accordingly....What actually happens is not that the medicine makes us crazy, but that it shows us in vivid detail how insane we already are."

Meanwhile, the sheer amount of these potent drugs the author is compelled to consume raises many questions he never answers and greatly frustrates the reader. Now, I've known people whose lives have been transformed by a single powerful psychedelic session. In ceremony after ceremony, however, Regueiro repetitively unpeels layer after layer of pain and healing that never seems to accomplish anything but dredge up yet more deeply buried trauma. And what exactly IS the difference between Datura and Ayahuasca, which he regularly mixes together in varying proportions? They are wholly different and unrelated alkaloids, but how exactly is this baneful brew, Datura (and the other nightshades), long the purview of witches and sorcerers, distinct from the medicine the Amazon is more commonly known for, Ayahuasca? Regueiro maddeningly refuses to clarify the one thing we want to know more than anything else until he finally tosses us a few nuggets: Datura is so much more potent than Ayahuasca that the latter serves more as a catalyst or enhancer (in the same way cannabis enhances a psilocybin or acid trip).

Datura is so potent in fact that by the end of the book our author-shaman admits to having "brushed very closely with madness" in his Datura trances and the deep unconscious work the medicine continues to perform on the mind long after consuming it. Another example of the unsettling after-effects of this substance is Reguerio's loopy hermaphroditism, preceded by his somewhat sheepish admission of being gay. And then we're hit with this:

"I move on to the theme of how women hurt, shame, and judge each other: no, it’s not only men who hurt women�.I go through a long process of becoming aware of and forgiving all the subtle ways in which I have judged, ridiculed, and shamed women simply for being themselves AND women."

Yes, Reguerio soon admits, so deeply does he empathize with women and their timeworn oppression that it has turned him into a woman. He is, he confesses, actually a woman, and I grow confused. No, wait - I look at his name again and check his author photo. I was right the first time - he's a man. But after his numerous Datura experiences, it appears he's not so sure. By the way, as he himself warns, stay away from Datura unless you know what you're doing. It puts you into a state, lasting up to several days, where you have no awareness of what's happening or memory of the bizarre behavior you may have engaged in during the spell.
]]> DEFAULT 60740866 451 Anjo Bordell 0578708426 Isham 5 china-bookshelf
"We serpentined north, a single segment of a giant, glowing tapeworm, winding its way into the belly of the aging whore—this seductive, mythological temptress, Los Angeles.... Impossible interchanges, a million brake lights. I felt I’d been injected into some infernal creation too big, too wicked and malignant for comprehension. I was a small-town antigen adrift inside an organic monstrosity whose immune response could be awakened by the slightest provocation. This was different from the animal eyes of Oceanside. That was local, confined. This was cosmic. A supernatural pressure cooker inching toward the red, where I was being compelled by a swirling phantom force to commit something diabolical."

Joycean puddles of outright confusion add to the mix as the dialogue lurches practically mid-sentence between Marine headquarters and Shanghai, and the reader is left wondering what the hell is going on. Well, it's what happens when an adrenaline-blitzed Marine crashes and burns in a place just as strange as Oceanside, CA—the still flamboyant China of the 2000s before She took over, the China of "two-wheeled phantoms—reapers!—zipping down crowded sidewalks, knocking pedestrians and briefcases and baozi back into the street to be mowed down by speeding black Audis. Out of the way! That noise—an ambulance? VIPs! Big bosses coming through!" Yet I wished more of the narrative had been set in China to give the novel clearer symmetry and flesh out the connections between the two simultaneous locales instead of leaving the reader floundering at times. A second reading will help, but even better would be a sequel.]]> 4.67 2014 DEFAULT
author: Anjo Bordell
name: Isham
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/30
date added: 2022/05/01
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Unique autofiction that seemingly recounts the author's disastrous experience in the Marines (there is too much insider detail for it not to be authentic), after a snowballing series of scandals sparked by a fellow Marine's fatal accident Bordell (he uses his own name) was implicated in during seaborne training in stormy weather. Much of the narrative hangs on a dramatic thread as to whether our protagonist is given an honorable or dishonorable discharge—culminating in a frantic escape and run to LAX—and China, where the nonlinear novel opens, and Bordell's Chinese masseuse girlfriend has apparently been killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It's all told with panache in a breathless, unstoppable, at once foul-mouthed and poetic stream-of-consciousness outpouring, with echoes of Kerouac:

"We serpentined north, a single segment of a giant, glowing tapeworm, winding its way into the belly of the aging whore—this seductive, mythological temptress, Los Angeles.... Impossible interchanges, a million brake lights. I felt I’d been injected into some infernal creation too big, too wicked and malignant for comprehension. I was a small-town antigen adrift inside an organic monstrosity whose immune response could be awakened by the slightest provocation. This was different from the animal eyes of Oceanside. That was local, confined. This was cosmic. A supernatural pressure cooker inching toward the red, where I was being compelled by a swirling phantom force to commit something diabolical."

Joycean puddles of outright confusion add to the mix as the dialogue lurches practically mid-sentence between Marine headquarters and Shanghai, and the reader is left wondering what the hell is going on. Well, it's what happens when an adrenaline-blitzed Marine crashes and burns in a place just as strange as Oceanside, CA—the still flamboyant China of the 2000s before She took over, the China of "two-wheeled phantoms—reapers!—zipping down crowded sidewalks, knocking pedestrians and briefcases and baozi back into the street to be mowed down by speeding black Audis. Out of the way! That noise—an ambulance? VIPs! Big bosses coming through!" Yet I wished more of the narrative had been set in China to give the novel clearer symmetry and flesh out the connections between the two simultaneous locales instead of leaving the reader floundering at times. A second reading will help, but even better would be a sequel.
]]> <![CDATA[Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China]]> 58895040 Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious devotees, court officials, and laypeople used powerful substances to both treat intractable illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of techniques to transform dangerous poisons into efficacious medicines.

Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the early Tang period, Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to the ways people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. Liu also examines a wide range of du-possessing minerals, plants, and animal products in classical Chinese pharmacy, including the highly poisonous herb aconite and the popular arsenic drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with potent medicines, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful.]]> 262 Yan Liu 0295749016 Isham 4 china-bookshelf 4.12 Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China
author: Yan Liu
name: Isham
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/24
date added: 2022/04/24
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
This easy-to-read scholarly study charts Chinese medical history over the first millennium AD and the extraordinary, delusional fads for consuming toxic minerals such as cinnabar for their alleged life- and sex-enhancing effects - the dark side of Taoist alchemy. The study is on the short side and raises more questions than it answers.
]]> <![CDATA[Medicine in China: A History of Ideas]]> 10057246 464 Paul U. Unschuld 0520266137 Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.33 1985 Medicine in China: A History of Ideas
author: Paul U. Unschuld
name: Isham
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/22
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Originally published in 1985, updated with a 2010 preface. Dispassionately lays out key points in the history of Chinese medical thought from the Shang Dynasty up through the Cultural Revolution, where acupuncture gets credit for its analgesic properties. See this in action in Antonioni's 1972 documentary Zhong Kuo, filmed in China and famously showing a conscious and smiling woman having her belly cut open for a Caesarian, no pain killers (we're assured) apart from acupuncture needles surrounding the incision.
]]> Of Grammatology 85326 456 Jacques Derrida 0801858305 Isham 5 3.96 1967 Of Grammatology
author: Jacques Derrida
name: Isham
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/18
shelves:
review:
Reputedly fearsomely difficult book (it's actually one of Derrida's easiest), marks one as an intellectual for having read it. Basic thesis: the invention of writing was perhaps the most profound invention ever, but we lack the vocabulary to talk objectively about it since the very act is dependent upon writing.
]]> Monogamy 763684
Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it—boredom, desire, and the tempting idea that erotic fulfillment might lie elsewhere. With 121 brilliant aphorisms, the witty, erudite psychoanalyst who gave us On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored distills the urgent questions and knotty paradoxes behind our mating impulse, and reveals the centrality of monogamy to our notions of marriage, family, the self—in fact, to everything that matters.

The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date.
There's nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.]]> 144 Adam Phillips 0679776176 Isham 5 3.58 1996 Monogamy
author: Adam Phillips
name: Isham
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/14
shelves:
review:
A slim, pithy book in clear, elegant English, but not an easy read, as monogamy itself is not an easy matter, when we delve beneath so many couples' self-congratulatory optimism.
]]> <![CDATA[The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings]]> 60200 799 Marquis de Sade Isham 5 3.45 1785 The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings
author: Marquis de Sade
name: Isham
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1785
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/09
shelves:
review:
Apart from the book's scandalous content, it's remarkable for its perfect fusion of form and content, as the chapters and episodes grow increasingly shorter and atomized as the captives' bodies are physically dismembered by the sadists-murderers lording over the mountaintop castle. As depraved as it is, one mustn't forget that it's only fiction, and it's a measure of a society's intellectual freedom that such infamous historical works are allowed to be published and preserved.
]]> <![CDATA[Analysing Casual Conversation (Equinox Textbooks and Surveys in Linguistics)]]> 2707529 348 Suzanne Eggins 1845530462 Isham 5 3.91 1996 Analysing Casual Conversation (Equinox Textbooks and Surveys in Linguistics)
author: Suzanne Eggins
name: Isham
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/09
shelves:
review:
This is hardcore Hallidayan linguistics, but it is valuable for writers and readers of fiction in one important sense - how conversational dialogue actually works, as opposed to how novelists think it works (of course, it's impossible to represent wholly naturalistic dialogue in fiction anyway).
]]> The Crystal World 70255
Through a 'leaking' of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses.

Fearing this transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest. Travelling through this gilded land, the doctor tries to resist its strange allure, while a tribe of lepers search for Paradise…]]> 210 J.G. Ballard 0374520968 Isham 5 3.65 1966 The Crystal World
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Isham
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves:
review:
Stylistic masterpiece, the prose mimicking the slow, strange and uncannily beautiful crystallization of the entire physical world, trapping the protagonist in a labyrinth of glass and color.
]]> <![CDATA[Fury On Earth: A Biography Of Wilhelm Reich]]> 150920 584 Myron R. Sharaf 0306805758 Isham 5 4.03 1983 Fury On Earth: A Biography Of Wilhelm Reich
author: Myron R. Sharaf
name: Isham
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves:
review:
Finally got around to reading this biography years after I bought it, on one of the most intense intellectuals in the world of psychology, long personally involved with Freud until Reich's Marxism sparked irremediable tensions.
]]> <![CDATA[The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason]]> 29501 The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.]]> 348 Sam Harris 0393327655 Isham 4 3.89 2004 The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
author: Sam Harris
name: Isham
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves:
review:
Much as I respect Harris's dogged pursuit of scientific logic and truth, he is noted and notorious for boxing himself into ethical corners.
]]> <![CDATA[Just My Type: A Book About Fonts]]> 10909804 384 Simon Garfield 1592406521 Isham 5 3.94 2010 Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
author: Simon Garfield
name: Isham
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves:
review:
A reader-friendly introduction to this beautiful science.
]]> <![CDATA[First & Last Emporers: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (Autonomedia New Autonomy)]]> 797863 208 Kenneth Dean 0936756772 Isham 5 4.20 1992 First & Last Emporers: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (Autonomedia New Autonomy)
author: Kenneth Dean
name: Isham
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Witty, goofy, readable poststructuralist mini-classic, critical-semiotic reading of "Reagan" (always in quotes) and the "the Bush-thing."
]]> Cat’s Cradle 135479 Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...]]> 306 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Isham 4 4.17 1963 Cat’s Cradle
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Isham
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
I read this about 4 decades ago and have completely forgotten what I read; I'll update this at some point.
]]> The Man in the High Castle 216363
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 259 Philip K. Dick 0679740678 Isham 5 3.64 1962 The Man in the High Castle
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Isham
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
The scope of the novel is too big for the 200+ pages to contain (see the Amazon TV series for an excellent fleshing out), but the imaginative feat of a Nazi and Japanese-occupied USA is compelling reading.
]]> Ubik 22590
Esta mordaz comedia metafísica de muerte y salvación (que podrá llevar un cómodo envase) es un tour de force de amenaza paranoica y comedia absurda, en la cual los muertos ofrecen consejos comerciales, compran su siguiente reencarnación y corren el riesgo continuo de volver a morir.]]> 288 Philip K. Dick 8498000831 Isham 5 4.11 1969 Ubik
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Isham
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Classic psychological sci-fi that plays mind games on you.
]]> <![CDATA[Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China]]> 2635587

China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls , Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.]]> 420 Leslie T. Chang 0385520174 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
On the other hand, there is a powerful counterforce holding many Chinese back from freedom and autonomy: the imposing psychological control of group conformity. As a longtime American resident in China, I see this all the time in numerous guises among all social strata, not just migrants (and I write about this in my website attached to my Amazon profile). Although it is true that working conditions in factories have been improving over the past few years as workers learn about their rights and bargaining power through better communication (the internet) as well as negative publicity about labor exploitation at Foxconn, this still largely applies to skilled factory workers. For countless other workers in the service industry (restaurants, shop workers, the sex industry), working conditions remain awful - 12-14 hour days, 1-2 days off per month, minimum wage. Educated white-collar workers, for their part, experience a different kind of exploitation, hardly less grim: typically just as long working hours (though varying considerably from company to company) or 24-hour cellphone monitoring when off work, with elaborate penalty systems for failure to respond immediately to cellphone summons or other minor infractions (one highly educated female I know who worked as a journalist for a national newspaper quit because they were docking too much of her pay each month for largely unspecified penalties).

So returning to the aforementioned English training school, where Chang would describe the conditions experienced by these women as a matter of personal freedom and choice, we also recoil at the psychological coercion involved, which prevents them from rebelling, protesting and leaving. To be sure, this school is a bizarre exception, and most English schools in China, even unaccredited ones, are run like normal schools, with students present only during class hours. But another book needs to be written that deals with the dark side of China's economic success, even in these upwardly mobile times. It's good to have Chang's upbeat account, but for every migrant who achieves success like Min, how many millions of Chinese (including the educated class) remain locked and paralyzed in their internal cages of fear and anger, quietly spending their entire waking hours making superiors rich while they receive a pittance (not to mention the horrifying ongoing problem of companies that don't pay their workers at all, even an entire year's promised wages, folding up operations just before the Spring Festival and disappearing). After years of teaching in Chinese universities, I could see the mental slavery all around me on university campuses, which unlike universities almost anywhere in the world, are completely void of any signs of student protests. Largely enabling and ensuring China's economic expansion, in short, is group coercion and internalized fear on a scale few other societies know.]]> 3.92 2008 Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
author: Leslie T. Chang
name: Isham
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Late in the book there is a disturbing account of a small-scale business operation in an apartment in Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The male running it keeps his female underlings working all day and forbids to them to leave the apartment except for a few hours once a week; they sleep in a cramped dormitory-style bedroom. Quiz: this operation is A) a brothel, B) a sweatshop, C) a religious cult, D) none of the above. D is correct: it's a private English language school for adults, mainly female factory workers between jobs who want to gain English credentials. Their teacher's notion of language learning is, like so much in China, quantitative-based and modeled on the factory assembly line: a machine he invented rapidly rotate words which the students must memorize as they flash by. This episode in Leslie Chang's book is representative in presenting two aspects of life in China for the hundreds of millions of migrant workers trying to achieve career stability or success in the city. On the one hand, there is the optimistic assessment, emphasized by Chang throughout the book, namely the freedom migrants now have to leave the village and go where opportunity beckons, with increasing numbers of success stories, primarily for female migrants, who often paradoxically enjoy greater freedom than males due to the obligations of male migrants to return to the village and care for their family. As Chang recounts with the stories of two migrants she befriended and followed for two years, Min and Chunming, the choices young Chinese women from the countryside now have at their disposal for upward mobility can be compared to the freedom and allure of worldwide travel young people from the developed world enjoy.

On the other hand, there is a powerful counterforce holding many Chinese back from freedom and autonomy: the imposing psychological control of group conformity. As a longtime American resident in China, I see this all the time in numerous guises among all social strata, not just migrants (and I write about this in my website attached to my Amazon profile). Although it is true that working conditions in factories have been improving over the past few years as workers learn about their rights and bargaining power through better communication (the internet) as well as negative publicity about labor exploitation at Foxconn, this still largely applies to skilled factory workers. For countless other workers in the service industry (restaurants, shop workers, the sex industry), working conditions remain awful - 12-14 hour days, 1-2 days off per month, minimum wage. Educated white-collar workers, for their part, experience a different kind of exploitation, hardly less grim: typically just as long working hours (though varying considerably from company to company) or 24-hour cellphone monitoring when off work, with elaborate penalty systems for failure to respond immediately to cellphone summons or other minor infractions (one highly educated female I know who worked as a journalist for a national newspaper quit because they were docking too much of her pay each month for largely unspecified penalties).

So returning to the aforementioned English training school, where Chang would describe the conditions experienced by these women as a matter of personal freedom and choice, we also recoil at the psychological coercion involved, which prevents them from rebelling, protesting and leaving. To be sure, this school is a bizarre exception, and most English schools in China, even unaccredited ones, are run like normal schools, with students present only during class hours. But another book needs to be written that deals with the dark side of China's economic success, even in these upwardly mobile times. It's good to have Chang's upbeat account, but for every migrant who achieves success like Min, how many millions of Chinese (including the educated class) remain locked and paralyzed in their internal cages of fear and anger, quietly spending their entire waking hours making superiors rich while they receive a pittance (not to mention the horrifying ongoing problem of companies that don't pay their workers at all, even an entire year's promised wages, folding up operations just before the Spring Festival and disappearing). After years of teaching in Chinese universities, I could see the mental slavery all around me on university campuses, which unlike universities almost anywhere in the world, are completely void of any signs of student protests. Largely enabling and ensuring China's economic expansion, in short, is group coercion and internalized fear on a scale few other societies know.
]]> <![CDATA[Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco]]> 484205 320 Benson Tong 0806132841 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
The author focuses on the decades between 1850-80, from the onset of the gold rush to the start of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when virtually all Chinese were forbidden from entering the US and those within the US were encouraged to leave and were attacked, beaten, or arrested. It's almost unbelievable that such vicious racial animosity could erupt and become law in a country that had just outlawed slavery. The only people who attempted to help Chinese prostitutes during these decades were a smattering of Catholic charities for "fallen" women. But with no surviving accounts of these women themselves, apart from refracted details of legal testimony by injured Chinese prostitutes who had the gumption to fight back or go to court and testify with little or no English capability against their violent johns or pimps - hence the "unsubmissive women" of the title - we have very little to go on but our imagination. Benson Tong's dispassionate and empathetic treatment compensates for the dry academic nature of the material he's working with. It's to his credit that he embellishes nothing but allows the records to speak for themselves and encourage the reader to imagine the rest.]]> 4.12 1994 Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco
author: Benson Tong
name: Isham
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Nothing is more annoying than frivolous 1-star reviews casually tossing off mean-spirited and dishonest comments like "poorly written" (as appears on Amazon). Benson Tong's "Unsubmissive Women" is a carefully and tellingly written account of a rare topic, Chinese sex workers in a 19th-century American city. Let's get the facts out on the table to make it clear why it's not an easy topic to write about. The overwhelming majority of these women were teenagers from rural China who were bought or kidnapped from their families or duped into believing they could find high-paying jobs in the "Gold Mountain" of California. Upon arriving, they were forced to work as sex slaves in brutally managed brothels, typically receiving little to no salary, and then cast out on the street as soon as they passed their prime or became ill or incapacitated from STDs. They left almost no written accounts of their experiences such as letters or diaries because they were illiterate and unable to write. The only records we have that enable us to piece together and reconstruct this underground society are municipal in nature - police, legal and demographic records, and newspaper accounts generally of a sensationalized and derogatory nature, reflecting the shocking racism of white Americans towards Asians at the time, coupled with patronizing Victorian attitudes toward degenerate women preying on upright Christian families. Incidentally, the tradition of duping women into prostitution with lucrative job offers in another country is alive and well in our times, e.g. East European women enslaved in West European brothels, their passport confiscated by their pimps and terrorized into obedience through beatings. The Chinese too remain experts in this trade, as in the recent news about Chinese women lured by traffickers to Angola with the promise of legitimate job offers, only to find themselves in Chinese brothels there.

The author focuses on the decades between 1850-80, from the onset of the gold rush to the start of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, when virtually all Chinese were forbidden from entering the US and those within the US were encouraged to leave and were attacked, beaten, or arrested. It's almost unbelievable that such vicious racial animosity could erupt and become law in a country that had just outlawed slavery. The only people who attempted to help Chinese prostitutes during these decades were a smattering of Catholic charities for "fallen" women. But with no surviving accounts of these women themselves, apart from refracted details of legal testimony by injured Chinese prostitutes who had the gumption to fight back or go to court and testify with little or no English capability against their violent johns or pimps - hence the "unsubmissive women" of the title - we have very little to go on but our imagination. Benson Tong's dispassionate and empathetic treatment compensates for the dry academic nature of the material he's working with. It's to his credit that he embellishes nothing but allows the records to speak for themselves and encourage the reader to imagine the rest.
]]> <![CDATA[Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry]]> 2172519 276 Yeeshan Yang 9628673289 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
Yeeshan Yang does not shy away from these obstacles. She confronts them directly in the first chapter, laying out her informal methodology - a compromise between the social worker interviewer and partial participant observer. We never really find out why she herself is interested in the topic of prostitution, but it's enough to know that she is, as we all are. However, her honesty inevitably forces her to confront the ultimate question as a female researcher, why she doesn't engage in sex work herself to gain the priviest perspective, and her response is poignant in its blunt candor: "Even if I did try to prostitute myself, I would likely end up digging my own tiny, burning pit of shame." To compensate for her acknowledged "narrow vision," she works very hard, hanging out on the streets and hostess clubs over months and years trying to meet and befriend as many sex workers of all types as she can. The insights that emerge from this approach are numerous and startling. If you talk to enough people in the same occupation, you will begin to see patterns and truths, some that I have never quite understood myself, despite my own extensive acquaintance with numerous sex workers in mainland China, e.g.: "Prostitutes have a stronger desire for love than do average women."

The result is a flawed yet profound book (which is why I'm still giving it 5 stars). Yang lacks the academic's sense of structure, and there is a loose sense of organization to her chapter sequencing that may strike some as haphazard. She also lacks the novelist's conciseness of expression and dramatic propulsion. The stories pile up of initially colorful characters who descend one after another into the same sad degeneracy of their materialistic fetishes, abusive relationships with pimps or boyfriends, drug addiction, jail and the repeating of these cycles over and over until they either waste away in prison or disappear into obscurity. She seeks but fails to find the counterpoint to these tragic tales - the happy hooker. We are left wondering if this mythical creature could possibly exist anywhere or may very well exist but was missed because the author was hanging out with all the wrong people. One suspects that if another intrepid author set about writing the same sort of book, a whole different cast of characters might emerge that would still bring us no closer to the truth of the prostitute. On the other hand, I don't think I've read a non-fiction account of prostitution that goes as far as Yang's does in its sheer persistence in the attempt.]]> 3.91 2006 Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry
author: Yeeshan Yang
name: Isham
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
There is nothing more difficult than finding out what goes on in the mind of a prostitute, even when one is genuinely curious and not afflicted by sanctimony. She won't give men an honest answer, since they are potential customers, and will claim she earns less than she actually does to gain sympathy. She won't give women an honest answer, since they are potential competitors or worse - moralists. Academics and sociologists have no better luck trying to interview the prostitute, even when offering to pay for her time; she will then be happy to cooperate and will tell them exactly what (she thinks) they want to hear, exaggerating her circumstances and stories for shock effect. It's a classic problem of circling around the truth without ever getting any closer to it. Perhaps the female ethnographer could penetrate more deeply into this world by becoming a prostitute herself for a spell, but this is usually precluded by ethics protocols in academia (not to mention that in most countries sex work is an illegal activity). Another potential source of valuable information is the men who regularly sleep with prostitutes, though the information and stories they have to offer are secondhand and bound to be deeply subjective and self-serving as well.

Yeeshan Yang does not shy away from these obstacles. She confronts them directly in the first chapter, laying out her informal methodology - a compromise between the social worker interviewer and partial participant observer. We never really find out why she herself is interested in the topic of prostitution, but it's enough to know that she is, as we all are. However, her honesty inevitably forces her to confront the ultimate question as a female researcher, why she doesn't engage in sex work herself to gain the priviest perspective, and her response is poignant in its blunt candor: "Even if I did try to prostitute myself, I would likely end up digging my own tiny, burning pit of shame." To compensate for her acknowledged "narrow vision," she works very hard, hanging out on the streets and hostess clubs over months and years trying to meet and befriend as many sex workers of all types as she can. The insights that emerge from this approach are numerous and startling. If you talk to enough people in the same occupation, you will begin to see patterns and truths, some that I have never quite understood myself, despite my own extensive acquaintance with numerous sex workers in mainland China, e.g.: "Prostitutes have a stronger desire for love than do average women."

The result is a flawed yet profound book (which is why I'm still giving it 5 stars). Yang lacks the academic's sense of structure, and there is a loose sense of organization to her chapter sequencing that may strike some as haphazard. She also lacks the novelist's conciseness of expression and dramatic propulsion. The stories pile up of initially colorful characters who descend one after another into the same sad degeneracy of their materialistic fetishes, abusive relationships with pimps or boyfriends, drug addiction, jail and the repeating of these cycles over and over until they either waste away in prison or disappear into obscurity. She seeks but fails to find the counterpoint to these tragic tales - the happy hooker. We are left wondering if this mythical creature could possibly exist anywhere or may very well exist but was missed because the author was hanging out with all the wrong people. One suspects that if another intrepid author set about writing the same sort of book, a whole different cast of characters might emerge that would still bring us no closer to the truth of the prostitute. On the other hand, I don't think I've read a non-fiction account of prostitution that goes as far as Yang's does in its sheer persistence in the attempt.
]]> <![CDATA[Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China]]> 18051654
MEDIA REVIEWS

"Great vignettes from world class writers...a celebration of the outsider's experience in China, in all of its juiciness and fetid rancour." --Time Out Shanghai

"Excellent. Concise and truthful." --South China Morning Post

"Although other anthologies have featured outstanding journalism about China by Western writers, Carter's collection is the first to focus on the wide-ranging experiences of foreigners living in China." --China Daily

"The authors, mostly experienced writers who have traveled widely in China, offer tales beyond those of the usual laowai experience." --Shanghai Daily

"The majority of stories are individual gems and an enjoyably diverse range of issues are found in the book." --Time Out Hong Kong

"The moral of this collection appears to be that though almost everything has changed, one basic thing - the allure of China to a certain kind of Westerner - remains curiously consistent." --Taipei Times

"Funny, poignant, and wry...the outcome is a depth and variety about the expat experience and life in China that is almost unsurpassed." --Asian Review of Books

"Fast-moving romps through a rapidly-changing changing society." --Caixin

"An eminently dip-into-able, informative and enjoyable collection." --That's Shanghai

"One might be tempted to classify it as a travel book of sorts; what is being traversed and recollected throughout is not the lay of the land, but rather, the contours of confusion, excitement and isolation that every China expat has, at one point, had to clamber across and conquer." --The Beijinger

"A surprisingly refreshing, instead of rehashing, collection of essays, written by professionals, instead of amateurs...at times hilarious, at times beautiful, but always relatable..." --China.Org

"(Editor) Tom Carter has pulled together an impressive cast of writers, established and amateur alike." --Beijing Cream

"If there is an overarching message to take from the book, it is that holy !@#$ China changes quickly." --Shanghaiist

"The vignettes lead the reader through a variety of emotions; some will tug at your heartstrings, others will leave you chuckling in understanding, and a few will really make you think." --Shanghai City Weekend

"Presents a more realistic China." --Li Jihong for Shanghai Review of Books

"As a Chinese writer with a certain cynicism, I did not expect to find anything truly surprising. But surprised I was, and my own stereotypical presumptions stand corrected." --Xujun Eberlein for Los Angeles Review of Books

"The result is a highly readable, often humorous, and at times brilliant book that is unerringly direct: the authors gathered together here do not shy away from troublesome issues." --Asian Correspondent

"The title dis-serves them...the range, humor and insights in this book place it among the best of its kind." --Asia Sentinel]]> 304 Tom Carter 9881616409 Isham 3 china-bookshelf unsavory, stories of a refreshingly seedy and disreputable nature, peeling back a new layer of reality in Chinese society as more and more foreign pioneers venture deeper into the country. Inevitably, someone would take it upon himself to dredge up a collection of lascivious or discomfiting encounters and slap it together as a book. What we have here instead, alas, is a much more banal take on "unsavory elements": "the communist propaganda machine" use of the phrase (as Carter first recalled it) to describe anyone of questionable, less than revolutionary morals. Foreigners - formerly "foreign devils" - are by definition unsavory; their mere presence in the Middle Kingdom unsavory. It is not possible to be a foreigner in China and not simultaneously bumbling, gauche, vulgar and unsavory. Thus any random collection of non-fiction stories of foreign devils wandering around or working and living in China will do. The 28 contributors represent quite a spread, scattered about the country in pretty much all walks of life, but what cannot be said about them (with a few exceptions) is that they are unsavory. They are, on the contrary, painstakingly polite, respectful and normal. They are strenuously family-friendly; nine of the stories - those by Levy, Paul, Muller, Bratt, Arrington, Washburn, Solimine, Watts, and Conley - concern actual families and children or the teaching of children. The pieces are all good clean fun, worthy of inclusion in Reader's Digest or those bland, antiseptic Intensive/Extensive Reading textbooks for freshmen English majors in Chinese universities.

Inevitably, the collection is uneven. The pieces by Peter Hessler and Simon Winchester are predictably the most assuredly written, though they don't really tell us anything we can't get from their own books about China. Meyer, Polly, Earnshaw, Spurrier, and Kitto are competent writers but fail to particularly stand out, unlike Watts' piece on the German botanist and eccentric Josef Margraf, and Fuchs on Tibetan muleteers, which benefit from their intriguing subject matter. Stevenson mars his intriguing subject matter of life in a Chinese prison with snideness (here I direct readers instead to the extraordinary book Prisoner 13498: A True Story of Love, Drugs and Jail in Modern China by Robert H. Davies of his experience in Chinese prisons). Humes' horrific account of being violently mugged suffers from his gratuitous histrionics while recovering in the hospital; the tantalizing question and cliffhanger of how he was able to pay for the huge medical expenses (without any cash or insurance) is hinted at and then forgotten. Some pieces lack contextualization, like Eikenburg's account of her daring courtship with a Chinese male, but what decade is she referring to, exactly? Interracial relationships on the Mainland are far more ubiquitous and accepted now than two or three decades ago, when I imagine her relationship took place; a reader unfamiliar with China might wrongly assume things are as stringent and racist today as ever.

If I had been given the same anthology project with the same title and the same contributors to choose from, I would keep three. I would start the book off with Winchester's piece as a prologue (instead of its current slot as epilogue), then proceed with the spicy if rather innocuous account of KTV escorts among China's privileged by Susie Gordon, followed by Carter's aforementioned piece. For the succeeding stories, I would have to find alternative, more intrepid contributors willing to challenge bourgeois readerly expectations and really get down and rock 'n' roll in China's seamy, truly unsavory underside. After all, I would only be doing what China's own writers have already done, like Wang Shuo, Jia Pingwa and Zhu Wen back in the 1980s depicting life among hoodlums and lumpen elements at large or the graphic accounts of casual sex and drug use by Hong Ying, Wei Hui, Mian Mian and other female writers of the 1990s. Until that happens, pass on the word of Tom Carter's enticing new collection at the local bake sale or church group back home when queried on a latest wholesome introduction to China to curl up at the fireplace with.]]> 3.59 2013 Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China
author: Tom Carter
name: Isham
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Even before this book came to press it was already in the thick of polemic and controversy - for all the wrong reasons. Some advance-copy reviews by feminist editors in the expat zines of Beijing and Shanghai have been withering, particularly of editor Tom Carter's own "exploitative" and "juvenile" contributing story on a brothel visit (e.g. ). It is actually one of the best pieces in the book, its slapstick style perfectly suited to the tawdry circumstances of a group of clumsy foreigners haggling in the shabbier variety of Chinese brothel. It is the only story in the entire collection, in fact, that merits the book's title. Before I came to the book, I was expecting and hoping for just that, something unsavory, stories of a refreshingly seedy and disreputable nature, peeling back a new layer of reality in Chinese society as more and more foreign pioneers venture deeper into the country. Inevitably, someone would take it upon himself to dredge up a collection of lascivious or discomfiting encounters and slap it together as a book. What we have here instead, alas, is a much more banal take on "unsavory elements": "the communist propaganda machine" use of the phrase (as Carter first recalled it) to describe anyone of questionable, less than revolutionary morals. Foreigners - formerly "foreign devils" - are by definition unsavory; their mere presence in the Middle Kingdom unsavory. It is not possible to be a foreigner in China and not simultaneously bumbling, gauche, vulgar and unsavory. Thus any random collection of non-fiction stories of foreign devils wandering around or working and living in China will do. The 28 contributors represent quite a spread, scattered about the country in pretty much all walks of life, but what cannot be said about them (with a few exceptions) is that they are unsavory. They are, on the contrary, painstakingly polite, respectful and normal. They are strenuously family-friendly; nine of the stories - those by Levy, Paul, Muller, Bratt, Arrington, Washburn, Solimine, Watts, and Conley - concern actual families and children or the teaching of children. The pieces are all good clean fun, worthy of inclusion in Reader's Digest or those bland, antiseptic Intensive/Extensive Reading textbooks for freshmen English majors in Chinese universities.

Inevitably, the collection is uneven. The pieces by Peter Hessler and Simon Winchester are predictably the most assuredly written, though they don't really tell us anything we can't get from their own books about China. Meyer, Polly, Earnshaw, Spurrier, and Kitto are competent writers but fail to particularly stand out, unlike Watts' piece on the German botanist and eccentric Josef Margraf, and Fuchs on Tibetan muleteers, which benefit from their intriguing subject matter. Stevenson mars his intriguing subject matter of life in a Chinese prison with snideness (here I direct readers instead to the extraordinary book Prisoner 13498: A True Story of Love, Drugs and Jail in Modern China by Robert H. Davies of his experience in Chinese prisons). Humes' horrific account of being violently mugged suffers from his gratuitous histrionics while recovering in the hospital; the tantalizing question and cliffhanger of how he was able to pay for the huge medical expenses (without any cash or insurance) is hinted at and then forgotten. Some pieces lack contextualization, like Eikenburg's account of her daring courtship with a Chinese male, but what decade is she referring to, exactly? Interracial relationships on the Mainland are far more ubiquitous and accepted now than two or three decades ago, when I imagine her relationship took place; a reader unfamiliar with China might wrongly assume things are as stringent and racist today as ever.

If I had been given the same anthology project with the same title and the same contributors to choose from, I would keep three. I would start the book off with Winchester's piece as a prologue (instead of its current slot as epilogue), then proceed with the spicy if rather innocuous account of KTV escorts among China's privileged by Susie Gordon, followed by Carter's aforementioned piece. For the succeeding stories, I would have to find alternative, more intrepid contributors willing to challenge bourgeois readerly expectations and really get down and rock 'n' roll in China's seamy, truly unsavory underside. After all, I would only be doing what China's own writers have already done, like Wang Shuo, Jia Pingwa and Zhu Wen back in the 1980s depicting life among hoodlums and lumpen elements at large or the graphic accounts of casual sex and drug use by Hong Ying, Wei Hui, Mian Mian and other female writers of the 1990s. Until that happens, pass on the word of Tom Carter's enticing new collection at the local bake sale or church group back home when queried on a latest wholesome introduction to China to curl up at the fireplace with.
]]> Empire of Glass 35007936 Kaitlin Solimine has been a Fulbright Fellow in China, and has received several scholarships, awards, and residencies for her writing, including the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award for an earlier draft of Empire of Glass, judged by Colson Whitehead. Her fiction has been published in Guernica,Kartika Review, and numerous anthologies. Kaitlin is co-founder of Hippo Reads, a network connecting academic insights and scholars to the wider public. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, where she was a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow and is associate producer of the childbirth documentary, Of Woman Born.]]> 299 Kaitlin Solimine 1632460564 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
Solimine chronicles the history of a Beijing family over the latter half of last century up through the year the author herself lived with the family as a teenage exchange student. The cultural and linguistic hurdles of being thrust alone in a country as foreign as China would be daunting enough for anyone that young, but she bonded closely with her host family and was deeply and positively affected by the experience. The challenge for the author, in retrospect, was how to surmount the claustrophobic constraints of a straightforward first-person narrative by an impressionable sixteen-year old and achieve a more objective distancing, how to shift the focus from herself to her adopted family as they experienced their own reality. The result is a complex, layered narrative with multiple frames and fragmented perspectives, as if the story could only be viewed through intersecting prisms (suggestive of the book's title and cover of shattered glass), at the cost of a more unified vision.

One prism shows us Baba's (the father) mental upheaval as a teenage soldier when thrust into a sexual encounter with a captured American female army nurse just across the Chinese border in the Korean War. Half a century later, when the blond teenage Solimine ("Lao K" in her narrative incarnation) writes herself into the story, she ignites in the now elderly Baba memories of the blond nurse and fresh longings. He is on the verge of assaulting her when he pulls back after a single caress. I was relieved nothing worse happened, but the novelist in me craved a more explosive outcome, a more momentous, grievous event or a primal scene, out of which the narrative could erupt with a more inexorable purpose, than the actual denouement, Li-Ming's (the mama of the family) slow death from cancer, which dominates the final chapters.

What holds these dispersed threads together is a dense, finely woven poetic texture ("Time was words etched into caves. Books hidden under beds"; "I looked to my hands and saw only a broken sun, a damned, irreversible dawn"), which though occasionally overly bejeweled and abstruse, invites a second reading.]]> 4.00 2017 Empire of Glass
author: Kaitlin Solimine
name: Isham
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
At a time when genre writers are rapidly clearing the field and no novelist who hopes to survive these days dare write a book without a murder or a torrid romance set in the historical past, I applaud the stubborn, heroic and foolhardy who act as if "literary" fiction were still alive when they alone know what the term even means anymore. Or call it "experimental" fiction, that which defies readers' expectations in having no clear beginning, middle and end, in other words a nonlinear narrative. I'm also on the lookout, as a China expat book watcher, for the rare novel which doesn't feature your pensive cheongsam-clad woman on the cover, with her fan or umbrella, too modest to be viewed except obliquely, from over her shoulder. Thus Kaitlin Solimine's oddly designed and titled Empire of Glass caught my attention when it first came out, though it took a while to work its way to the top of my reading list.

Solimine chronicles the history of a Beijing family over the latter half of last century up through the year the author herself lived with the family as a teenage exchange student. The cultural and linguistic hurdles of being thrust alone in a country as foreign as China would be daunting enough for anyone that young, but she bonded closely with her host family and was deeply and positively affected by the experience. The challenge for the author, in retrospect, was how to surmount the claustrophobic constraints of a straightforward first-person narrative by an impressionable sixteen-year old and achieve a more objective distancing, how to shift the focus from herself to her adopted family as they experienced their own reality. The result is a complex, layered narrative with multiple frames and fragmented perspectives, as if the story could only be viewed through intersecting prisms (suggestive of the book's title and cover of shattered glass), at the cost of a more unified vision.

One prism shows us Baba's (the father) mental upheaval as a teenage soldier when thrust into a sexual encounter with a captured American female army nurse just across the Chinese border in the Korean War. Half a century later, when the blond teenage Solimine ("Lao K" in her narrative incarnation) writes herself into the story, she ignites in the now elderly Baba memories of the blond nurse and fresh longings. He is on the verge of assaulting her when he pulls back after a single caress. I was relieved nothing worse happened, but the novelist in me craved a more explosive outcome, a more momentous, grievous event or a primal scene, out of which the narrative could erupt with a more inexorable purpose, than the actual denouement, Li-Ming's (the mama of the family) slow death from cancer, which dominates the final chapters.

What holds these dispersed threads together is a dense, finely woven poetic texture ("Time was words etched into caves. Books hidden under beds"; "I looked to my hands and saw only a broken sun, a damned, irreversible dawn"), which though occasionally overly bejeweled and abstruse, invites a second reading.
]]> <![CDATA[A Death in Peking: Who Killed Pamela Werner]]> 42443205 390 Graeme Sheppard Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.20 A Death in Peking: Who Killed Pamela Werner
author: Graeme Sheppard
name: Isham
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Alternative and more persuasive account than Paul French's Midnight in Peking of the Pamela Werner murder. I've read both accounts of the Pamela Werner murder--Paul French's Midnight in Peking and now Sheppard's book. Both offer radically different accounts, and I have to say I am far more convinced by Sheppard's. This isn't the space to go into much detail, except to say French's account gets off to a bad start when he places the location of Pamela's body in a ditch outside the Tartar Wall directly below the Fox Tower. Newspapers at the time of the murder, fed by Peking police reports (e.g. the London Times of Jan. 9, 1937, quoted by Sheppard) noted the body's location in a ditch on the INSIDE of the Tartar Wall and considerably west of the Fox Tower (some 750 meters); the discovery by the Fox Tower seems to be French's invention, in order to sensationalize his story by linking the murder to this legendary haunted tower. However, these conflicting locations are starkly different in terms of their logistical feasibility and the suspects in either case; and it's quite telling as an example of the sensationalism of French's entire book, which though admittedly an engrossing page-turner, has more in common with literary fiction and mystery novels than hard facts. The comment above by the one-star reviewer that French's inaccuracies are "relatively inconsequential" is not true; on the contrary, they are very consequential, as you'll discover by reading first French and then Sheppard.
]]> <![CDATA[City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai]]> 40116741 Now one of Kirkus Reviews' "Best Books of the Year" From Paul French, the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Peking—winner of both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction—comes City of Devils, a rags-to-riches tale of two self-made men set against a backdrop of crime and vice in the sprawling badlands of Shanghai.Shanghai, 1930 It was a haven for outlaws from all over the a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, and fortunes made—and lost.“Lucky� Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex–U.S. Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison and rose to become the Slots King of Shanghai. “Dapper� Joe Farren—a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto—ruled the nightclubs. His chorus lines rivaled Ziegfeld’s.In 1940, Lucky Jack and Dapper Joe bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation, and war. They thought they ruled Shanghai, but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction left in their wake. Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting moment even the wildest dreams could come true.]]> 311 Paul French 1250170605 Isham 4 china-bookshelf 3.96 2018 City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
author: Paul French
name: Isham
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Gripping history of 1930s Shanghai with some apparent fictionalization.
]]> Party Members 31143521
Will Yang Wei achieve his ambition of promotion to the mysterious eighth floor? Will he win the love of his beautiful but materialistic colleague, Rainy? And will his penis stop telling him to eat at fast-food restaurants? Just how far will Yang Wei go to achieve his pursuit of wealth, glory, and a better car?

Party Membersis a bleak and black comedic fantasyabout a world where to get rich is glorious, no matter who gets hurt in the process. Designer handbags, sex, karaoke, and shady property deals combine to paint a picture of modern China unlike anything seen before.]]> 284 Arthur Meursault 1910736368 Isham 5 china-bookshelf
Meursault has done what everyone up till now has carefully avoided doing. He has gathered up all the worst aspects of Chinese society (a long list) and out of the trash heap hashed together an inexorable plot and absorbing narrative. Some may ask why anyone would go through the trouble of needlessly hurting the Chinese people’s feelings. The answer is simple. When everyone tacitly agrees not to write a certain book, this is precisely the book that needs to be written. Somebody would have written this book sooner or later. Meursault got his foot in the door first. I have to say he’s done a pretty good job at it too, but we’re not talking gentle satire here. After a relatively benign comic start, things quickly descend into the most uncomfortable, brutal reading experience even for the jaded. And that’s the whole point. China isn’t an easy place for a lot of people, including the Chinese themselves.

We are not meant to like the hero of the story, Yang Wei (whose name means “impotent�), a lowly faceless bureaucrat in a menial job with the city government. Certain things are so ugly they’re almost beautiful, and that’s where the humor lies. The Chinese do things in their daily life that the rest of the world doesn’t. All the author has to do is describe them. The rudeness of strangers, the fake friendliness of those who want something out of you, the toadying and money-grubbing, the class contempt for rural migrants, the obsession with iPhones and luxury handbags and black Audis to the exclusion of anything else in life, the squalor and the spit, are all wrought into a sharply focused technicolor mosaic, systematically unfolded. Visitors to China who have witnessed the disaster zone known as a public toilet are in for a delight, as they follow a drunken Yang Wei into a restaurant’s men’s room and watch his contribution to this particularly Chinese form of performance art. The scene is worth the price of the book alone, but since I want the author to reap some earnings from his effort I won’t divulge any details.

Soon the rollicking comedy takes a darker and more disturbing turn. Yang Wei’s member begins talking to him and starts instructing him on how to really be a dick, which is the only way to get ahead in China. Over the course of the rest of the narrative he undergoes a part Dorian Gray, part Kafka’s Metamorphosis-style transformation � the book’s depraved but brilliant conceit � which again I don’t wish to divulge here and spoil for the reader. But along the way you can expect many horrendous scenes, such as a repulsive and quite explicit three-way sex scene involving our hero, a prostitute, and a bucket of KFC. Yes, the chicken meat is engaged with sexually. Meursault has a great deal of fun with the notorious irony that the comfort food of choice for a great many Chinese, for all their disparagement of Western food, is none other than KFC.

Many will protest that Meursault’s is a grossly one-sided affair. One could turn things around and concoct an equally convincing positive account of China, full of uplifting scenes and lovely, memorable characters. Even novelists depicting China’s political repression seek to counter the struggle or tragedy with sympathetic protagonists engaged in heroic actions and stoic determination against the forces of evil or disaster. This is to miss the point. The problem is, this is exactly what almost every novelist on China, Chinese and foreign, already does. Meursault himself mentions Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk as among his literary influences. We wouldn’t want to condemn those two important and highly popular novelists merely because they explore the dark side of contemporary American society. When China learns to take it on the chin and lose face again and again and again; in other words, when China mellows out, as it must at some point in the future if it doesn’t want to explode, it will be able to take critiques of its society in stride and laugh them off like water off a duck’s back.

I salute this debut novel by Arthur Meursault which is guaranteed to earn him more enemies, Chinese and foreign, than friends. But to me there is no more admirable way of knowing who your true friends are than by declaring forthrightly where you stand.]]> 4.10 Party Members
author: Arthur Meursault
name: Isham
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Lots of people aren’t going to like Arthur Meursault’s Party Members: Chinese customs officials who find reasons on every page to blacklist the book; patriots who don’t tolerate anything that puts their country in a bad light; cynics who freely disparage their own country but can’t stomach a single criticism by a foreigner; the humorless; sinophiles grateful for the privilege of being allowed into China; the Pollyannas who run the expat magazines assuming the burden of preventing China at all costs from losing face.

Meursault has done what everyone up till now has carefully avoided doing. He has gathered up all the worst aspects of Chinese society (a long list) and out of the trash heap hashed together an inexorable plot and absorbing narrative. Some may ask why anyone would go through the trouble of needlessly hurting the Chinese people’s feelings. The answer is simple. When everyone tacitly agrees not to write a certain book, this is precisely the book that needs to be written. Somebody would have written this book sooner or later. Meursault got his foot in the door first. I have to say he’s done a pretty good job at it too, but we’re not talking gentle satire here. After a relatively benign comic start, things quickly descend into the most uncomfortable, brutal reading experience even for the jaded. And that’s the whole point. China isn’t an easy place for a lot of people, including the Chinese themselves.

We are not meant to like the hero of the story, Yang Wei (whose name means “impotent�), a lowly faceless bureaucrat in a menial job with the city government. Certain things are so ugly they’re almost beautiful, and that’s where the humor lies. The Chinese do things in their daily life that the rest of the world doesn’t. All the author has to do is describe them. The rudeness of strangers, the fake friendliness of those who want something out of you, the toadying and money-grubbing, the class contempt for rural migrants, the obsession with iPhones and luxury handbags and black Audis to the exclusion of anything else in life, the squalor and the spit, are all wrought into a sharply focused technicolor mosaic, systematically unfolded. Visitors to China who have witnessed the disaster zone known as a public toilet are in for a delight, as they follow a drunken Yang Wei into a restaurant’s men’s room and watch his contribution to this particularly Chinese form of performance art. The scene is worth the price of the book alone, but since I want the author to reap some earnings from his effort I won’t divulge any details.

Soon the rollicking comedy takes a darker and more disturbing turn. Yang Wei’s member begins talking to him and starts instructing him on how to really be a dick, which is the only way to get ahead in China. Over the course of the rest of the narrative he undergoes a part Dorian Gray, part Kafka’s Metamorphosis-style transformation � the book’s depraved but brilliant conceit � which again I don’t wish to divulge here and spoil for the reader. But along the way you can expect many horrendous scenes, such as a repulsive and quite explicit three-way sex scene involving our hero, a prostitute, and a bucket of KFC. Yes, the chicken meat is engaged with sexually. Meursault has a great deal of fun with the notorious irony that the comfort food of choice for a great many Chinese, for all their disparagement of Western food, is none other than KFC.

Many will protest that Meursault’s is a grossly one-sided affair. One could turn things around and concoct an equally convincing positive account of China, full of uplifting scenes and lovely, memorable characters. Even novelists depicting China’s political repression seek to counter the struggle or tragedy with sympathetic protagonists engaged in heroic actions and stoic determination against the forces of evil or disaster. This is to miss the point. The problem is, this is exactly what almost every novelist on China, Chinese and foreign, already does. Meursault himself mentions Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk as among his literary influences. We wouldn’t want to condemn those two important and highly popular novelists merely because they explore the dark side of contemporary American society. When China learns to take it on the chin and lose face again and again and again; in other words, when China mellows out, as it must at some point in the future if it doesn’t want to explode, it will be able to take critiques of its society in stride and laugh them off like water off a duck’s back.

I salute this debut novel by Arthur Meursault which is guaranteed to earn him more enemies, Chinese and foreign, than friends. But to me there is no more admirable way of knowing who your true friends are than by declaring forthrightly where you stand.
]]> <![CDATA[Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution]]> 16073046
Bi takes a long overdue, comprehensive look at bisexual politics—from the issues surrounding biphobia/monosexism, feminism, and transgenderism to the practice of labeling those who identify as bi as either "too bisexual� (promiscuous and incapable of fidelity) or "not bisexual enough� (not actively engaging romantically or sexually with people of at least two different genders). In this forward-thinking and eye-opening book, feminist bisexual and genderqueer activist Shiri Eisner takes readers on a journey through the many aspects of the meanings and politics of bisexuality, specifically highlighting how bisexuality can open up new and exciting ways of challenging social convention.

Informed by feminist, transgender, and queer theory, as well as politics and activism, Bi is a radical manifesto for a group that has been too frequently silenced, erased, and denied—and a starting point from which to launch a bisexual revolution.
]]> 352 Shiri Eisner 1580054749 Isham 4 3.77 2013 Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution
author: Shiri Eisner
name: Isham
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Radical, incisive vision of liberated sexuality, marred only by the author's constant unnecessary insertions of "trigger warnings." If readers really needed trigger warnings, they wouldn't have picked the book up in the first place.
]]> <![CDATA[Pearl River Drama: Dating in China]]> 24407404
Dating in China: A Memoir.

When one nerdy, young American moved from California to China in the autumn of 2008, he had no idea what was coming. He knew there would be an adventure and it would have its challenges, but he didn’t know it could get that bad.

From the deserts of Black Rock City, Nevada, to the towering metropolis of Hong Kong, this memoir takes our humble writer all across the globe in search of love. Well, maybe not always searching for love, but in search for something.

It starts on a psychedelic trip in Burning Man, and continues in the “overnight city� of Shenzhen. That’s in the Pearl River Delta, among the densest megacities on Earth. In breakup after breakup, one lonely expat struggles to understand the Chinese mystique. Featuring an ensemble cast of international girls, he had many experiences and leaned a few lessons along the way. The story continues to further exotic locations: Beijing, Canton, Bangkok, Manila, Ohio, the ruins of Cambodia, and Seattle.

Once or twice, he may have even found love. And lost it. Hearts were broken. Minds were mended. All in a haze of sexual exploration, online dating, and travel.

This is his story. Complete with travel photos, and quotations from “Seinfeld� and Mo Yan.
]]> 186 Ray Hecht Isham 2 china-bookshelf 3.00 2015 Pearl River Drama: Dating in China
author: Ray Hecht
name: Isham
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Meandering accounts of the author's dating and love affairs in China, shapeless narrative, lack of editing.
]]> <![CDATA[A Spy in the House of Love: The Authoritative Edition]]> 8164847
Consider the following passage, which describes Sabina's encounter with Philip, whom she has met in a

"The trembling premonitions shaking the hand, the body, made dancing unbearable, waiting unbearable, smoking and talking unbearable. Soon would come the untamable seizure of sensual cannibalism, the joyous epilepsies.

"They fled from the eyes of the world, the singer's prophetic, harsh, ovarian prologues. Down the rusty bars of ladders to the undergrounds of the night propitious to the first man and woman at the beginning of the world, where there were no words by which to possess each other, no music for serenades, no presents to court with, no tournaments to impress and force a yielding, no secondary instruments, no adornments, necklaces, crowns to subdue, but only one ritual, a joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous impaling of woman on man's sensual mast."

Part realism and part fantasy, A Spy in the House of Love achieves a level of writing that is very rare in the English language.]]> 148 Anaïs Nin Isham 4 3.69 1954 A Spy in the House of Love: The Authoritative Edition
author: Anaïs Nin
name: Isham
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Intense, poetic, impressionistic narrative, though evanescent, lost to memory.
]]> <![CDATA[Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China]]> 1599602
As a twenty-year-old exchange student from Stanford University, John Pomfret spent a year at Nanjing University in China. His fellow classmates were among those who survived the twin tragedies of Mao's rule―the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution―and whose success in government and private industry today are shaping China's future. Pomfret went on to a career in journalism, spending the bulk of his time in China. After attending the twentieth reunion of his class, he decided to reacquaint himself with some of his classmates. Chinese Lessons is their story and his own.

Beginning with Pomfret's first days in China, Chinese Lessons takes us back to the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982. One classmate's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; another classmate labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; a third was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father. As we watch Pomfret and his classmates begin to make their lives as adults, we see as never before the human cost and triumph of China's transition from near-feudal communism to first-world capitalism.]]> 336 John Pomfret 0805086641 Isham 4 china-bookshelf 3.88 2006 Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
author: John Pomfret
name: Isham
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Eyewitness account of Tiananmen Square 1989; a kind of memoir, but the author generally prefers fading into the woodwork to focus on the lives of former classmates, a la Peter Hessler.
]]> A Single Swallow 49434305 The eagerly awaited English translation of award-winning author Zhang Ling’s epic and intimate novel about the devastation of war, forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring power of love.

On the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast—in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II—three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It’s where they had fought—and survived—a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.

All that’s missing is Ah Yan—also known as Swallow—the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.

As they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan’s life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she’d been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.]]> 304 Zhang Ling 154204149X Isham 0 china-bookshelf, to-read 4.17 2017 A Single Swallow
author: Zhang Ling
name: Isham
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power]]> 35559016 Exploring how neoliberalism has discovered the productive force of the psyche

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.]]> 74 Byung-Chul Han 1784785792 Isham 0 to-read 4.09 2014 Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
author: Byung-Chul Han
name: Isham
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Steal This Book 184085 Steal This Book captures Hoffman's puckish tone and became a cult classic with over 200,000 copies sold. Outrageously illustrated by R. Crumb, it nevertheless conveys a serious message to all would-be revolutionaries: You don't have to take it anymore. "All Power to the Imagination was his credo. Abbie was the best." —Studs Terkel]]> 352 Abbie Hoffman 156858217X Isham 5 3.62 1971 Steal This Book
author: Abbie Hoffman
name: Isham
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
I'm ashamed to admit I didn't steal Hoffman's book, but I sure didn't pay the absurdly high Kindle price now listed when I bought it years ago. Can't steal the Kindle anyway.
]]> Stranger in a Strange Land 53456915 610 Robert A. Heinlein Isham 0 to-read 3.88 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land
author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Isham
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Inside Story 54187798 From one of the most highly acclaimed writers at work his most intimate and epic work yet--an autobiographical novel of sex and love, family and friendship.

This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the latest literary gossip (not to mention ideas, books, and where to lunch), Hitch was Amis's wingman and adviser, especially in the matter of the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps--an obsession Amis must somehow put behind him if he is ever to find love, marriage, a plausible run at happiness. Other significant figures competing as Amis's main influencers are his father, Kingsley; his hero Saul Bellow; the weirdly self-finessing poet Philip Larkin; and significant literary women from Iris Murdoch to Elizabeth Jane Howard. Moving among these greats to set his own path, Amis's quest is a tender, witty exploration of the hardest how to live, how to grieve, and how to die. In search of his answers, he surveys the horrors of the twentieth century, and the still-unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks on the twenty-first--and considers what all of this has taught him about how to be a writer. The result is a love letter to life--and to the people in his life--that achieves a new level of confidentiality with his readers, giving us the previously unseen portrait of his extraordinary world.]]> 545 Martin Amis 0593318307 Isham 5 4.20 2020 Inside Story
author: Martin Amis
name: Isham
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/07
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Amis claims the most important aesthetic criterion of the novel is freedom, and this free-ranging meditation on his lifelong obsessions (his favorite authors) memorably illustrates his aesthetic.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution]]> 56939017 Foucault’s personal and political experimentation, its ambiguous legacy, and the rise of neoliberal politics

Part intellectual history, part critical theory, The Last Man Takes LSD challenges the way we think about both Michel Foucault and modern progressive politics. One fateful day in May 1975, Foucault dropped acid in the southern California desert. In letters reproduced here, he described it as among the most important events of his life, one which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. That trip helped redirect Foucault’s thought and contributed to a tectonic shift in the intellectual life of the era. He came to reinterpret the social movements of May �68 and reposition himself politically in France, embracing anti-totalitarian currents and becoming a critic of the welfare state.

Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora examine the full historical context of the turn in Foucault’s thought, which included studies of the Iranian revolution and French socialist politics, through which he would come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the left nor the right: neoliberalism.]]> 265 Mitchell Dean 1839761407 Isham 0 to-read 3.60 2021 The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution
author: Mitchell Dean
name: Isham
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer]]> 32717367 259 Dean Baker Isham 0 to-read 3.85 Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
author: Dean Baker
name: Isham
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Finally, Some Good News 43093502 162 Delicious Tacos Isham 3 3.85 2018 Finally, Some Good News
author: Delicious Tacos
name: Isham
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/07
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Masturbatory stream-of-consciousness musings.
]]> <![CDATA[Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs]]> 48845954 350 Peter Andreas 0190463031 Isham 0 to-read 4.00 2020 Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs
author: Peter Andreas
name: Isham
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game]]> 43999264 234 Andrew R Gallimore 1527234762 Isham 0 to-read 4.30 Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game
author: Andrew R Gallimore
name: Isham
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume One: The Gathering (Princeton Library of Asian Translations Book 56)]]> 18913674 In this first of a planned five-volume set, David Roy provides a complete and annotated translation of the famous Chin P'ing Mei, an anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This work, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art form--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context.

]]> 706 Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng Isham 0 china-bookshelf, to-read 4.26 1596 The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume One: The Gathering (Princeton Library of Asian Translations Book 56)
author: Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng
name: Isham
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1596
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf, to-read
review:

]]> Farewell My Lovely 44403497 283 Raymond Chandler Isham 0 to-read 4.27 1940 Farewell My Lovely
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Isham
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Appointment in Samarra 18958405 The writer Fran Lebowitz called “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald� makes his Penguin Classics debut with this beautiful deluxe edition of his best-loved book

One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O’Hara’s crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O’Hara’s iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream—and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.]]> 237 John O'Hara 1101602953 Isham 0 to-read 3.79 1934 Appointment in Samarra
author: John O'Hara
name: Isham
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart, #9)]]> 18714841 Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siècle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana--the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L'Assommoir--is now rendered in racy, stylish English.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 464 Émile Zola 0191623113 Isham 0 to-read 3.67 1880 Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart, #9)
author: Émile Zola
name: Isham
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August]]> 35066358 417 Claire North Isham 0 to-read 4.03 2014 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
author: Claire North
name: Isham
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Two Serious Ladies 18085520 Two Serious Ladies is a modernist cult classic, mysterious, profound, anarchic, and funny, that follows two "respectable" women as they descend into debauchery—updated with an introduction by Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs.

Christina Goering, eccentric and adventurous, and Frieda Copperfield, anxious but enterprising, are two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves. Old friends, each will take a surprising path in search of salvation: during a visit to Panama, Mrs. Copperfield abandons her husband, finding solace in a relationship with a teenage prostitute; while Miss Goering, a wealthy spinster, pursues sainthood via sordid encounters with the basest of men. At the end the two women meet again, each radically altered by her experience.]]> 221 Jane Bowles 006228312X Isham 0 to-read 3.47 1943 Two Serious Ladies
author: Jane Bowles
name: Isham
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bawdy House Girls 51251612 83 Alton Pryor Isham 3 4.00 2006 The Bawdy House Girls
author: Alton Pryor
name: Isham
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/07
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Amusing, mostly worthwhile for tidbits on bordello life in the American West.
]]> <![CDATA[Shanghai: A Novel by Yokomitsu Riichi (Volume 33) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)]]> 366043
Yokomitsu incorporated striking visuality into a realistic mode that presents a disturbing picture of a city in turmoil. The result is a brilliant evocation of Shanghai as a gritty ideological battleground and as an exotic landscape where dreams of sexual and economic domination are nurtured.]]> 248 Riichi Yokomitsu 1929280017 Isham 4 china-bookshelf 3.27 1932 Shanghai: A Novel by Yokomitsu Riichi (Volume 33) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)
author: Riichi Yokomitsu
name: Isham
average rating: 3.27
book published: 1932
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/07
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Dark wanderings of male obsession, unusual for being written and narrated by one of the Japanese occupiers.
]]> Orientalism 355190
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.]]> 424 Edward W. Said Isham 5 4.13 1978 Orientalism
author: Edward W. Said
name: Isham
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
A momentous text, basic thesis: the Orient is largely just a delusion, a distorting mirror in which the Occident sees and reassures itself in relation to its fearful "Other."
]]> <![CDATA[One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society]]> 349650 260 Herbert Marcuse 0807014176 Isham 4 3.99 1964 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
author: Herbert Marcuse
name: Isham
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
I read this 4 decades ago and don't have a distinct memory of it. Someone help me out.
]]> <![CDATA[The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge]]> 252648 144 Jean-François Lyotard 0816611734 Isham 4 3.84 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
author: Jean-François Lyotard
name: Isham
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Read this 4 decades ago and don't have a distinct memory of it. Someone help me out.
]]> <![CDATA[The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction]]> 1875 176 Michel Foucault 0679724699 Isham 5 4.04 1976 The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
author: Michel Foucault
name: Isham
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
This slim volume was hard for me to understand when first introduced to Foucault in Lauren Berlant's literary crit class at U Chicago back in '83, but the thesis was momentous: sex, far from being repressed, is ever discursively exploited as a form of power.
]]> We 76171 The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.]]> 256 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0140185852 Isham 4 3.91 1924 We
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Isham
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1924
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
It's been a while since I first read this forerunner of Brave New World and I hope to return to it; images of apartment buildings with transparent walls and floors shielding no one from privacy.
]]> Kama Houri 4060000 132 Ataullah Mardaan 158873000X Isham 4 3.17 2001 Kama Houri
author: Ataullah Mardaan
name: Isham
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
The novel gets off to an enticing and erotic start but can't sustain the sexual tension throughout.
]]> <![CDATA[The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence]]> 53754596 With analytical clarity and narrative force, The Feminist and the Sex Offendercontends with two problems that are typically siloed in the era of #MeToo and mass incarceration: sexual and gender violence, on the one hand, and the state’s unjust, ineffective, and soul-destroying response to it on the other. Is it possible to confront the culture of abuse? Is it possible to hold harm-doers accountable without recourse to a criminal justice system that redoubles injuries, fails survivors, and retrenches the conditions that made such abuse possible?

Drawing on interviews, extensive research, reportage, and history, The Feminist and the Sex Offender develops an intersectional feminist approach to ending sexual violence. It maps with considerable detail the unjust sex offender regime while highlighting the alternatives we urgently need.

]]> 225 Judith Levine 178873341X Isham 4 3.53 2020 The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence
author: Judith Levine
name: Isham
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Timely account adopting a reasoned and reasonable position on the question of barbaric sex-offender laws in the US.
]]> True Hallucinations 114867 Preface
1 The Call of the Secret
2 Into the Devil's Paradise
3 Along a Ghostly Trail
4 Camped by a Doorway
5 A Brush with the Other
6 Kathmandu Interlude
7 A Violet Psychofluid
8 The Opus Clarified
9 A Conversation Over Saucers
10 More on the Opus
11 The Experiment at La Chorrera
12 In the Vortex
13 At Play in the Fields of the Lord
14 Looking Backward
15 A Saucer Full of Secrets
16 Return
17 Waltzing the Enigma
18 Say What Does It Mean?
19 The Coming of the Strophariad
20 The Hawaiian Connection
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Further Reading]]> 256 Terence McKenna 0062506528 Isham 5 4.10 1993 True Hallucinations
author: Terence McKenna
name: Isham
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Surely one of the most bizarre books ever written, one that the author himself probably didn't understand (also the inspiration for the biopic starring Jim Carrey which never got made). Love the Esquire blurb: "It would be hard to find a drug narrative more compellingly perched on a baroquely romantic limb than this passionate Tom-and-Huck-ride-Great-Mother-river-saga of brother bonding."
]]> American Pictures 586091 304 Jacob Holdt 8798170201 Isham 5 4.65 1977 American Pictures
author: Jacob Holdt
name: Isham
average rating: 4.65
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
One of my absolute favorite books, the Danish vagabond author and Jesus-Christ lookalike hitchhiked around the US, selling his blood to buy more camera film, befriending and staying with bums and poor people, and garnering an incredible amount of wisdom along the way.
]]> <![CDATA[Guitar Army: Street Writings / Prison Writings (A Rainbow Book)]]> 379062 Book by Sinclair, John 364 John Sinclair 0882090003 Isham 5 4.00 Guitar Army: Street Writings / Prison Writings (A Rainbow Book)
author: John Sinclair
name: Isham
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
A hippie-era collectible, with its multicolored pages and text, it's one of those books, like Be Here Now, that can't exist in Kindle form without gutting 90% of the pleasure of reading it.
]]> The Anarchist Cookbook 251547 160 William Powell 0974458902 Isham 5 3.48 1971 The Anarchist Cookbook
author: William Powell
name: Isham
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
I remember an unlikely friend of my parents sheepishly showing me this book when I was 15 and then saying, "I probably shouldn't have let you see this."
]]> <![CDATA[Lovemaps: Clinical Concepts of Sexual/Erotic Health and Pathology, Paraphilia, and Gender Transposition in Childhood, Adolescence, and Maturity (New Concepts in Sexuality)]]> 3286934 331 John Money 0879754567 Isham 0 to-read 3.48 1986 Lovemaps: Clinical Concepts of Sexual/Erotic Health and Pathology, Paraphilia, and Gender Transposition in Childhood, Adolescence, and Maturity (New Concepts in Sexuality)
author: John Money
name: Isham
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists]]> 900 not fiction. These men really exist. They live together in houses known as Projects. And Neil Strauss, the bestselling author, spent two years living among them, using the pseudonym Style to protect his real-life identity. The result is one of the most explosive and controversial books of the year—guaranteed to change the lives of men and transform the way women understand the opposite sex forever.

On his journey from AFC (average frustrated chump) to PUA (pick-up artist) to PUG (pick-up guru), Strauss not only shares scores of original seduction techniques but also has unforgettable encounters with the likes of Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Heidi Fleiss, and Courtney Love. And then things really start to get strange—and passions lead to betrayals lead to violence. The Game is the story of one man's transformation from frog to prince—to prisoner in the most unforgettable book of the year.]]> 452 Neil Strauss 0060554738 Isham 3 3.74 2005 The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
author: Neil Strauss
name: Isham
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
One of the most controversial books ever - on the one hand repulsively sexist and cynical, on the other a masterpiece of publishing originality.
]]> My Secret Life 39312167 Volumes I to III



By An Anonymous Author




AMSTERDAM
PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS.
1888
This first reprint of "My Secret Life" is for private distribution among connoisseur collectors. It is strictly limited to four hundred and seventy five copies, all of which have been subscribed for prior to publication.
INTRODUCTION

In 18� my oldest friend died. We had been at school and college together, and our intimacy had never been broken. I was trustee for his wife and executor at his death. He died of a lingering illness, during which his hopes of living were alternately raised, and depressed. Two years before he died, he gave me a huge parcel carefully tied up and sealed. Take care of, but don't open this he said: if I get better, return it to me, if I die, let no mortal eye but yours see it, and burn it.

His widow died a year after him. I had well nigh forgoten this packet which I had had full three years, when looking for some title deeds I came cross it, and opened it, as it was my duty to do. Its contents astonished me. The more I read it, the more marvellous it seemed.]]> 25 Anonymous Isham 5 3.90 My Secret Life
author: Anonymous
name: Isham
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
What makes this Victorian pornography - and the sex is relentless - such a classic is the astonishing attention to visual detail and scene-setting, rare in porn literature.
]]> <![CDATA[Re/Search #12: Modern Primitives]]> 367880 206 V. Vale 0965046931 Isham 5 4.07 1989 Re/Search #12: Modern Primitives
author: V. Vale
name: Isham
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
This startling book which came out in 1989 (the Robert Mapplethorpe era) with its shocking photographs of torture artists would test any government's censorship guidelines.
]]> <![CDATA[The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State]]> 52198 An eternal being created human society as it is today, and submission to superiors and authority is imposed on the lower classes by divine will. This suggestion, coming from the pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation.

The history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication of Bachofen's Mutterrecht (maternal law) Engles makes the following propositions:

1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism.

2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law; and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity.

3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), according to Bachofen's idea.

4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of the primeval religious law (i.e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time.

]]> 220 Friedrich Engels 0898754690 Isham 5 4.15 1884 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Isham
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1884
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Highly readable, important text far ahead of its time on the perversion of the family and the strangulation of sexuality under patriarchal monogamy and capitalism; even more important than Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.
]]> <![CDATA[Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, No. 4]]> 2533135 224 Franklin Rosemont 0941194272 Isham 5 4.33 1989 Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, No. 4
author: Franklin Rosemont
name: Isham
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
A classic collection of surrealist poetry, much of it flowing with freewheeling sexuality.
]]> <![CDATA[The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order]]> 2166291 352 Rene Denfeld 0446517526 Isham 5 3.62 1995 The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order
author: Rene Denfeld
name: Isham
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:
Well-written early manifesto (1996) on the dangers of anti-sex hysteria on American college campuses.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976]]> 26073079
The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962�1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. Frank Dikötter uses this wealth of material to undermine the picture of complete conformity that is often supposed to have characterized the last years of the Mao era. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.]]> 396 Frank Dikötter 1632864215 Isham 5 china-bookshelf 4.00 2016 The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976
author: Frank Dikötter
name: Isham
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Detailed look at the Cultural Revolution madness, especially the crazy propaganda campaigns and the immense starvation going on behind the scenes.
]]> The Analects 27297
The Analects are a collection of Confucius’s sayings brought together by his pupils shortly after his death in 497 BC. Together they express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one’s fellow man, he argued that the pursuit of virtue should be every individual’s supreme goal. And, while following the Way, or the truth, might not result in immediate or material gain, Confucius showed that it could nevertheless bring its own powerful and lasting spiritual rewards.

This edition contains a detailed introduction exploring the concepts of the original work, a bibliography and glossary and appendices on Confucius himself, The Analects and the disciples who compiled them.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 249 Confucius 0140443487 Isham 4 china-bookshelf 3.84 -475 The Analects
author: Confucius
name: Isham
average rating: 3.84
book published: -475
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
I give this world classic only 4 stars to set the proper expectations, not because it's unworthy of the highest praise, but because it's really only a poorly edited collection of fragments attributed to the author, assembled without much rhyme or reason. Yet the wisdom shines out.
]]> <![CDATA[Don't Joke on the Stairs: How I Learned to Navigate China by Breaking Most of the Rules]]> 11859195 356 Cecilie Gamst Berg 9881900204 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
From the Chinese standpoint, Berg's very presence is a bit surreal, in that she is regularly taken for an American, as all white foreigners are. She discovers locals at the many schools where she volunteers her services to be perplexed as well and unhappy to learn she's not an American or British native, as how could she possibly speak, let alone teach, English? (The reader can rest assured that the author's English is fluent to the point of being indistinguishable from that of a native English speaker's, or if anything better, as she sprinkles her text with a dexterous use of English idioms.)

Hong Kongers are more used to foreigners, of course, but despite her many years in Hong Kong and command of Cantonese, it is assumed by the locals there that no foreigner could possibly learn the language, and they obtusely refuse to engage her, regularly answering her Cantonese with English. I can attest the same occurs on the Mainland; my Mandarin is regularly answered with English, but the difference here is that they need to show off or simply have no one to practice with, in contrast to the much greater foothold English has in Hong Kong. But no matter how clearly I speak Mandarin (including nailing all the tones down), they fail to comprehend, as again, foreigners by definition can't learn Chinese, and therefore what is coming out of my mouth must either be insane gibberish or actually a strange form of English that is meant to fluster or mock their own limited English ability. Berg's many depictions of conversational breakdowns from the double whammy of a huge cultural and linguistic chasm will resonate with anyone who has spent time in the East.

At its best, Berg's style has spiciness to it, like the Sichuan cuisine she loves and declares "the best food in the world." She does not mince her words at things that rile her: "today's Communist Party needs Mao as a rallying point for the nationalism they have been relentlessly pushing as China's new religion for the last few years....Because to be honest, the party hasn't of late been subject to the reverence and open-mouthed saliva-dripping awe from the masses that it feels is its due." Elsewhere, however, her chattiness gets in the way and the narrative tension deflates into one too many stale card-playing, beer-drinking routines: "All right: I'd just have to go by myself. It would be fun anyway, I just knew it! Just like Sichuan or even better. Beer-filled dinners lasting long into the night, cards every day, teachers' psycho hour... I was ready to descend on Xinjiang province again."

Perhaps because I've lived in China many years myself and all the hard edges and absurdities of the country no longer startle me, I found myself easily putting the book down and a bit of a chore to keep having to get through the rest. It does have a cast of memorable, mostly male, characters whom Berg meets, typically on trains, with her gift for gab and picking up strangers. Curiously, after so much socializing with Chinese men, one wonders where things are heading and why none of these encounters ends up deliciously in the sack. More frankness and detail in this regard might have spiced up the narrative even more, at least for me. Sex does occur between foreigners and locals and in my opinion is precisely the ingredient missing from so many Western accounts of China. In this respect they merely replicate in mirror image the Chinese penchant for being puritanical and morally fastidious when it comes to describing their own country. (I gather Berg's previous book Blonde Lotus is far more lascivious, in the guise of her semi-fictional protagonist, though I've yet to read it.)

But while not terribly informative for longtime China expats, I could see how this book, in all fairness, might be just the right sort of entertaining introduction for newcomers to China, particularly those contemplating a lengthy trek or sojourn in the country and want to know what they're getting into.]]> 4.21 2011 Don't Joke on the Stairs: How I Learned to Navigate China by Breaking Most of the Rules
author: Cecilie Gamst Berg
name: Isham
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
The author, a Norwegian who has spent two decades in China and is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, certainly has the qualifications to write a book about this country and can be expected to have much of interest to relate. Unlike the usual more contemplative or journalistic accounts of the country, Cecilie Gamst Berg adopts a breezy, conversational, humorous approach, designed to elicit non-stop, uproarious laughter at the everyday "surrealism" (her operating term) of China.

From the Chinese standpoint, Berg's very presence is a bit surreal, in that she is regularly taken for an American, as all white foreigners are. She discovers locals at the many schools where she volunteers her services to be perplexed as well and unhappy to learn she's not an American or British native, as how could she possibly speak, let alone teach, English? (The reader can rest assured that the author's English is fluent to the point of being indistinguishable from that of a native English speaker's, or if anything better, as she sprinkles her text with a dexterous use of English idioms.)

Hong Kongers are more used to foreigners, of course, but despite her many years in Hong Kong and command of Cantonese, it is assumed by the locals there that no foreigner could possibly learn the language, and they obtusely refuse to engage her, regularly answering her Cantonese with English. I can attest the same occurs on the Mainland; my Mandarin is regularly answered with English, but the difference here is that they need to show off or simply have no one to practice with, in contrast to the much greater foothold English has in Hong Kong. But no matter how clearly I speak Mandarin (including nailing all the tones down), they fail to comprehend, as again, foreigners by definition can't learn Chinese, and therefore what is coming out of my mouth must either be insane gibberish or actually a strange form of English that is meant to fluster or mock their own limited English ability. Berg's many depictions of conversational breakdowns from the double whammy of a huge cultural and linguistic chasm will resonate with anyone who has spent time in the East.

At its best, Berg's style has spiciness to it, like the Sichuan cuisine she loves and declares "the best food in the world." She does not mince her words at things that rile her: "today's Communist Party needs Mao as a rallying point for the nationalism they have been relentlessly pushing as China's new religion for the last few years....Because to be honest, the party hasn't of late been subject to the reverence and open-mouthed saliva-dripping awe from the masses that it feels is its due." Elsewhere, however, her chattiness gets in the way and the narrative tension deflates into one too many stale card-playing, beer-drinking routines: "All right: I'd just have to go by myself. It would be fun anyway, I just knew it! Just like Sichuan or even better. Beer-filled dinners lasting long into the night, cards every day, teachers' psycho hour... I was ready to descend on Xinjiang province again."

Perhaps because I've lived in China many years myself and all the hard edges and absurdities of the country no longer startle me, I found myself easily putting the book down and a bit of a chore to keep having to get through the rest. It does have a cast of memorable, mostly male, characters whom Berg meets, typically on trains, with her gift for gab and picking up strangers. Curiously, after so much socializing with Chinese men, one wonders where things are heading and why none of these encounters ends up deliciously in the sack. More frankness and detail in this regard might have spiced up the narrative even more, at least for me. Sex does occur between foreigners and locals and in my opinion is precisely the ingredient missing from so many Western accounts of China. In this respect they merely replicate in mirror image the Chinese penchant for being puritanical and morally fastidious when it comes to describing their own country. (I gather Berg's previous book Blonde Lotus is far more lascivious, in the guise of her semi-fictional protagonist, though I've yet to read it.)

But while not terribly informative for longtime China expats, I could see how this book, in all fairness, might be just the right sort of entertaining introduction for newcomers to China, particularly those contemplating a lengthy trek or sojourn in the country and want to know what they're getting into.
]]> <![CDATA[Encounters with Ancient Beijing: Its Legacy in Trees, Stone and Water]]> 2749532 330 Virginia Anami 7508503813 Isham 5 china-bookshelf
Virginia Stibbs Anami is the American turned-Japanese-citizen wife a Japanese ambassador, who over a 20-year period from 1983-2003 investigated (what seems like) hundreds of ancient spots in and around Beijing and put it all together like some huge three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and folded it into a perfectly conceived book. She writes with a beautiful economy, not a word too many or too few on the immediate topic at hand, whether a temple with an ancient tree over 1,000 years old, an equally old or older stone stele with a fascinating story behind its inscriptions, the remains of a long-forgotten waterway or channel. She goes over the territory again and again, revisiting the same spots over decades to see whether they've changed (they typically did and usually for the worse), managing to force or finagle her way into places normally forbidden to foreigners or to Chinese as well. She makes numerous friends in the process, as an inevitable old man or woman pops into view at each ancient site, as if on cue, with an elaborate oral history to tell about it. Not all readers may find all of the stories or episodes equally engaging, but they add up to form an impression of great depth, more than the sum of its parts, a beautiful book. Anami is also an excellent photographer, and credit must be given as well to China Intercontinental Press for the surprisingly professional and tasteful job in terms of the design, layout, and high-resolution photographs (not one of Chinese publishers' strong points, at least back in 2004 when the book was published). The book also has a beautiful cover (shown on Amazon but not ŷ).

A few mystifying perplexities. None of the hundreds of photos accompanying her narratives have captions. Sometimes it's obvious which picture she's talking about, but frequently not; sometimes she provides a general or fairly specific location, e.g. the name of a town or district, but often not. I suspect this vagueness - in strange contrast to the meticulousness of her research and the attention she lavishes on specific trees, stones, etc. - is deliberate. By not explicitly connecting each site to its picture, she keeps her discoveries shrouded in mystery; by making it difficult for the interested reader to visit the same places, her research remains unprecedented. It's as if Anami is inviting the reader to make the same or similar discoveries but with the proviso that the expedition must not be made easy, that only with great time and effort can one be rewarded with the pleasures of this peculiar sort of layman's archeology.]]> 5.00 2004 Encounters with Ancient Beijing: Its Legacy in Trees, Stone and Water
author: Virginia Anami
name: Isham
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
I know that the phrase "truly unique" is considered redundant and bad style, but it took an extraordinary imagination to come up with the concept of this book, not merely to write it. It's exactly what it says it is - a book about the history of Beijing told from the standpoint of its trees, stones and water - with the sort of unassuming, unflashy title guaranteed to put off even readers interested in all things China. You could be a poet laureate and hard-pressed to engage most readers' interest, in our narcissistic electronic era of orgiastic mutual surveillance, in nature (though Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) won me over to the possibilities of such writing), particularly when that's the only thing you're writing about - nature and nature alone (not as a metaphor for something else), if with a bit of history thrown in to contextualize that nature and man's involvement in shaping it.

Virginia Stibbs Anami is the American turned-Japanese-citizen wife a Japanese ambassador, who over a 20-year period from 1983-2003 investigated (what seems like) hundreds of ancient spots in and around Beijing and put it all together like some huge three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and folded it into a perfectly conceived book. She writes with a beautiful economy, not a word too many or too few on the immediate topic at hand, whether a temple with an ancient tree over 1,000 years old, an equally old or older stone stele with a fascinating story behind its inscriptions, the remains of a long-forgotten waterway or channel. She goes over the territory again and again, revisiting the same spots over decades to see whether they've changed (they typically did and usually for the worse), managing to force or finagle her way into places normally forbidden to foreigners or to Chinese as well. She makes numerous friends in the process, as an inevitable old man or woman pops into view at each ancient site, as if on cue, with an elaborate oral history to tell about it. Not all readers may find all of the stories or episodes equally engaging, but they add up to form an impression of great depth, more than the sum of its parts, a beautiful book. Anami is also an excellent photographer, and credit must be given as well to China Intercontinental Press for the surprisingly professional and tasteful job in terms of the design, layout, and high-resolution photographs (not one of Chinese publishers' strong points, at least back in 2004 when the book was published). The book also has a beautiful cover (shown on Amazon but not ŷ).

A few mystifying perplexities. None of the hundreds of photos accompanying her narratives have captions. Sometimes it's obvious which picture she's talking about, but frequently not; sometimes she provides a general or fairly specific location, e.g. the name of a town or district, but often not. I suspect this vagueness - in strange contrast to the meticulousness of her research and the attention she lavishes on specific trees, stones, etc. - is deliberate. By not explicitly connecting each site to its picture, she keeps her discoveries shrouded in mystery; by making it difficult for the interested reader to visit the same places, her research remains unprecedented. It's as if Anami is inviting the reader to make the same or similar discoveries but with the proviso that the expedition must not be made easy, that only with great time and effort can one be rewarded with the pleasures of this peculiar sort of layman's archeology.
]]> CHINA: Portrait of a People 4447653 From the subtropical jungles of Yunnan to the frozen wastes of Heilongjiang; across the scalding deserts of Xinjiang and beneath Hong Kong's neon blur. Tramping through China by train, bus, boat, motorcycle, mule or hitching on the back of anything that moved. On a budget so scant that he drew sympathetic stares from peasants. Backpacking photographer Tom Carter somehow succeeded in circumnavigating over 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) across all 33 provinces in China during a 2-year period, the first foreigner on record ever to do so.

What Carter found along the way, and what his photographs ultimately reveal, is that China is not just one place one people, but 33 distinct geographical regions populated by 56 different ethnicities, each with their own languages, customs and lifestyles.

Despite increased tourism and surging foreign investment, the cultural distances between China and the West remain as vast as the oceans that separate them. Carter's book, CHINA: Portrait of a People, was published as a means to visually introduce China to the world by providing a glimpse into the daily lives of the ordinary people who don't make international headlines yet whom are invariably the heart and soul of this country.

MEDIA REVIEWS

"One of China's most extraordinary explorers." --The World of Chinese

"Part of the strength of this book is its independent spirit. It's not a travel guide showing China dressed in its Sunday best, or a photojournalistic approach documenting the underbelly of the country, but rather a peek at the sights Carter has seen and a corrective to both the glowing promotional images and negative media shots that we are all familiar with." -- China Daily

"Tom Carter is an extraordinary photographer whose powerful work captures the heart and soul of the Chinese people." -- Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea

"Tom Carter's photo book is an honest and objective record of the Chinese and our way of life... his camera leads us through 33 wide-sweeping scenes of the real and the surreal." -- Mian Mian, author of Candy

"Capturing the diversity of [China's] 56 ethnic groups is a remarkable achievement ... There are a number of shots in this book that could easily grace the pages of National Geographic ... Unless you want to undertake your own two-year trek through some of the mainland's most difficult terrain to take your own shots, this is a study well worth having on your bookshelf." -- South China Morning Post

"In these 900 images, Carter shows just how diverse the Chinese really are, with their different facial features, skin hues, lifestyles, cultures and occupations. What ensues is an engaging and enlightening photo essay of 1.3 billion people." -- Asian Geographic Passport

"A striking, kaleidoscopic vision of China's lands and people." -- The Beijinger

"Through Carter's journey of self-discovery, we end up discovering a little more about ourselves -- and a land so vast, so disparate, that 638 pages of photos barely manage to scratch the surface. Still, CHINA: Portrait of a People is a very good place to start peeling back the layers." -- Time Out Hong Kong

"Travel photos taken by a stranger seldom fascinate. But 800 color images captured by Tom Carter as he spent two years on the road, traveling 56,000 kilometers through all of China's 33 provinces, make a dramatic exception ... Carter's weighty book takes an effort to carry home from a store. But anyone interested in China should love owning it." -- Cairns Media Magazine

"Getting a full picture of China - a vast country with an enormous population, a place that is experiencing sweeping cultural and economic changes - is, of course, impossible. But Tom Carter comes close. ... It's a remarkable book, compact yet bursting with images that display the diversity of a nation of 56 ethnic groups." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"In China: Portrait of a People, Tom Carter shows us that there are actually dozens of Chinas. The American photojournalist spent two years traveling 35,000 miles through every province of China by bus, boat, train, mule, motorcycle, and on foot." -- Christian Science Monitor

]]> 638 Tom Carter 9889979942 Isham 5 china-bookshelf
The actual book, once in my hands, is unlike any other book I've seen, including those in the photojournalism genre. It has a surprisingly small trim size of only 6 x 6 inches, but at 638 pages and over 2 inches thick and weighing almost 3 pounds, it's not a small book (and probably better suited to hardcover than its fragile paper binding). The weight is legitimated on the inside with the high-quality paper stock and what I'd guess approaches 1,000 high-resolution photo reproductions, capturing the author's two years of traveling to every province of China frequently under spartan and the roughest of conditions. Each province is prefaced with a map and a concisely written pitch, along with beautifully succinct, haiku-like captions for many of the photos, demonstrating that the author's skills as a photographer are matched by appropriate writing talent. The descriptions and the variety of photographic subjects - rural and urban landscapes, ordinary daily objects transfigured by the camera, and lots and lots of unforgettable people - seem to form a narrative that pulls one along the lengthy book, though most readers will probably prefer to dip into it at random than go through the whole thing at one shot. Regardless, it fulfills its evident purpose in being a comprehensive and enticing introduction to the country for people who haven't been to China, and equally interesting as well for those conversant with the country (I myself have lived in China for 13 years).

Now for a more critical angle. The gold standard of "intrepid" or "hardcore" photojournalism books and one that will probably never be equaled is surely American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass by the Dane Jacob Holdt. Holdt arrived in the US in 1971 with $40 in his pocket and spent the next 5 years hitchhiking over 100,000 miles through 48 states and living with 350 families, taking 15,000 photos (selling his blood to buy film) and culling them down to 700 in his book, which are balanced by a substantial and moving narrative of his encounters with the many people he met, delving into their lives with a shocking empathy and intimacy (often sleeping with both women and men to dialogue at the deepest human level), and unflinchingly capturing with his lens the most horrific but sympathetic images of poverty and decrepitude.

Personally, I would like to see the Chinese equivalent of Holdt's book. I suspect Tom Carter may even have witnessed some such darker scenarios or ruder encounters with people and made an understandable strategic decision not to include them, inasmuch as he seems to be positioning his book at the more "polite" end of the photojournalism spectrum, calibrated not to ruffle any feathers in China, where only the positive side of things tends to be presented. Thus he does not refer to himself in the first person but adopts the "objective" reportorial "the author," and when he almost dies during extreme weather on the 5,600-meter Drolma-La pass if it weren't for "a Ngari pilgrim woman" who "appeared as my own private Tibetan goddess of mercy, literally carrying me the remainder of the spiritual circuit," that's all we're told. I want more; I want to hear the dark side of travel and see the underbelly of the country, not just the picture-perfect promotional product. The author is certainly qualified to do this, and I invite him to consider these possibilities for another project.]]> 4.26 2008 CHINA: Portrait of a People
author: Tom Carter
name: Isham
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
Based on the thumbnail image of the book's cover, even with the hot woman and the tasteful design, and knowing only it was some kind of photographic spread on China, I feared "coffee table book" - or worse, cheesy Chinese variety that would actually mar my coffee table, the sort you can find in the tourist bookshops with washed-out reproductions, incoherent English and sappy token displays of ethnic minorities dancing in their costumes.

The actual book, once in my hands, is unlike any other book I've seen, including those in the photojournalism genre. It has a surprisingly small trim size of only 6 x 6 inches, but at 638 pages and over 2 inches thick and weighing almost 3 pounds, it's not a small book (and probably better suited to hardcover than its fragile paper binding). The weight is legitimated on the inside with the high-quality paper stock and what I'd guess approaches 1,000 high-resolution photo reproductions, capturing the author's two years of traveling to every province of China frequently under spartan and the roughest of conditions. Each province is prefaced with a map and a concisely written pitch, along with beautifully succinct, haiku-like captions for many of the photos, demonstrating that the author's skills as a photographer are matched by appropriate writing talent. The descriptions and the variety of photographic subjects - rural and urban landscapes, ordinary daily objects transfigured by the camera, and lots and lots of unforgettable people - seem to form a narrative that pulls one along the lengthy book, though most readers will probably prefer to dip into it at random than go through the whole thing at one shot. Regardless, it fulfills its evident purpose in being a comprehensive and enticing introduction to the country for people who haven't been to China, and equally interesting as well for those conversant with the country (I myself have lived in China for 13 years).

Now for a more critical angle. The gold standard of "intrepid" or "hardcore" photojournalism books and one that will probably never be equaled is surely American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass by the Dane Jacob Holdt. Holdt arrived in the US in 1971 with $40 in his pocket and spent the next 5 years hitchhiking over 100,000 miles through 48 states and living with 350 families, taking 15,000 photos (selling his blood to buy film) and culling them down to 700 in his book, which are balanced by a substantial and moving narrative of his encounters with the many people he met, delving into their lives with a shocking empathy and intimacy (often sleeping with both women and men to dialogue at the deepest human level), and unflinchingly capturing with his lens the most horrific but sympathetic images of poverty and decrepitude.

Personally, I would like to see the Chinese equivalent of Holdt's book. I suspect Tom Carter may even have witnessed some such darker scenarios or ruder encounters with people and made an understandable strategic decision not to include them, inasmuch as he seems to be positioning his book at the more "polite" end of the photojournalism spectrum, calibrated not to ruffle any feathers in China, where only the positive side of things tends to be presented. Thus he does not refer to himself in the first person but adopts the "objective" reportorial "the author," and when he almost dies during extreme weather on the 5,600-meter Drolma-La pass if it weren't for "a Ngari pilgrim woman" who "appeared as my own private Tibetan goddess of mercy, literally carrying me the remainder of the spiritual circuit," that's all we're told. I want more; I want to hear the dark side of travel and see the underbelly of the country, not just the picture-perfect promotional product. The author is certainly qualified to do this, and I invite him to consider these possibilities for another project.
]]> <![CDATA[The Emperor's River: Travels to the Heart of a Resurgent China]]> 7841707 A look China's recent cultural reinterpretationof the oldest canal in the world, dug when Confucius was alive, along which hastraveled not only cargo but ideas, customs, and dialects

The face of modern China is changing. Liam D'Arcy-Brown travels the length of the Grand Canal, a symbol of national identity, Chinese pride, and cultural achievement. For those with an interest in Chinaandits culture, people, or heritage, this book provides an exciting, fascinating, and well-written account of the navigation of the lifeblood of a rising power—the Grand Canal of China. At
more than1,100 miles long, and dating back to the 5th century BC, the Grand Canal of China is the world’s longest artificial waterway and its oldest working canal. Though a source of great national pride to the Chinese, one of China’s most economically important transport routes, and the possible savior of a rapidly desiccating Beijing, it has never been investigated by foreign writers and travelers. The first non-Chinese to have made this journey since the 1780s, Liam D’Arcy-Brown traveled from Hangzhou to Beijing along the Grand Canal by barges,
boats, and road and here tells his tales.]]> 288 Liam D'Arcy-Brown 1903070708 Isham 4 china-bookshelf
Most of the Grand Canal today, it turns out, is not a pretty sight. Only the southern length, from Hangzhou north to Jining, has enough water to continue to be used mainly for coal transport on barges, some of which the author was lucky enough to be allowed onto after bribing the captain. The northern length is largely bone dry, despite a few brief showcase stretches passing through Tianjin, the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou and a few other cities, that have been beautified with parks and monuments. Elsewhere for long lengths of the canal the author could not even gain access, stuck in hotels in nearby cities and monitored by the police. His intrepid attempt to chart the entire canal, while not an unqualified success, is impressive enough that I doubt anyone else will need or want to try to surpass it. And fortunately for the reader, D'Arcy-Brown writes well. There are many evocative descriptions, seamlessly weaving past and present to flesh out the geographical or historical context, where a more prosaic account in the hands of a less imaginative writer would have less to say.

My issue with the book has to do with strategy. If I were to write such a book, I would stick closer to the Canal, spending more time on technical particulars: what is a canal, how this canal is different from others, what exactly is involved in its construction, more again about the huge loss of life (comparable to the millions of laborers who died building the Great Wall), what future prospects for the canal are technically feasible, and so forth. While Darcy-Brown does touch on these issues, far more space is allotted to things that have nothing to do with the canal. Instead, he has cast the Canal as a metaphor for China itself in order to spin off a wide-ranging essay on all aspects of contemporary Chinese society. This might work for readers unfamiliar with the country and looking for the latest capsule account. What made many passages of the book virtually unreadable for me despite the general quality of its writing was the frequent denouncing of the Chinese Government by your predictable know-it-all Westerner, the Westerner who is needed to channel the secret aspirations of the Chinese people, who knows what's right for China. I don't have much of a soft spot for the Party myself. But when yet another "objective" reportorial travel writer goes through the usual laundry list of corruption, inequality, repression, etc., as if culled from Western media reports, the risk is smugness and sanctimony. Leave speaking out against the Government to the Chinese. There's enough in China to preoccupy, mystify, appall and entrance the rest of us without having to resort to the same old cliché-ridden Western narrative about China's lack of democracy and the common people's yearning for freedom. Spare me.]]> 3.50 2010 The Emperor's River: Travels to the Heart of a Resurgent China
author: Liam D'Arcy-Brown
name: Isham
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/06
shelves: china-bookshelf
review:
The idea of devoting a book not just to the history of China's Grand Canal but to its present state is a good idea, and I'm surprised no one else has done it (at least in English). It often takes foreigners to actually view Chinese history as something that includes the present, not just the musty past, as the Chinese themselves tend to see "history," eliciting from them much yawning. Of course, the reason why history as it is taught in China does not include the present is that the present often departs from the carefully scripted official story, according to which modern China's history ends in 1949 and after which there is no more history to write, because the country's socialist destiny has been reached, apart from a handful of ongoing self-congratulatory milestones - the Beijing Olympics, the space program, etc. So to write a history that addresses the reality of something in the present is quite a radical idea in China. D'Arcy-Brown found this out in his numerous encounters with baffled and suspicious police along the Canal who wanted to know what he was doing there.

Most of the Grand Canal today, it turns out, is not a pretty sight. Only the southern length, from Hangzhou north to Jining, has enough water to continue to be used mainly for coal transport on barges, some of which the author was lucky enough to be allowed onto after bribing the captain. The northern length is largely bone dry, despite a few brief showcase stretches passing through Tianjin, the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou and a few other cities, that have been beautified with parks and monuments. Elsewhere for long lengths of the canal the author could not even gain access, stuck in hotels in nearby cities and monitored by the police. His intrepid attempt to chart the entire canal, while not an unqualified success, is impressive enough that I doubt anyone else will need or want to try to surpass it. And fortunately for the reader, D'Arcy-Brown writes well. There are many evocative descriptions, seamlessly weaving past and present to flesh out the geographical or historical context, where a more prosaic account in the hands of a less imaginative writer would have less to say.

My issue with the book has to do with strategy. If I were to write such a book, I would stick closer to the Canal, spending more time on technical particulars: what is a canal, how this canal is different from others, what exactly is involved in its construction, more again about the huge loss of life (comparable to the millions of laborers who died building the Great Wall), what future prospects for the canal are technically feasible, and so forth. While Darcy-Brown does touch on these issues, far more space is allotted to things that have nothing to do with the canal. Instead, he has cast the Canal as a metaphor for China itself in order to spin off a wide-ranging essay on all aspects of contemporary Chinese society. This might work for readers unfamiliar with the country and looking for the latest capsule account. What made many passages of the book virtually unreadable for me despite the general quality of its writing was the frequent denouncing of the Chinese Government by your predictable know-it-all Westerner, the Westerner who is needed to channel the secret aspirations of the Chinese people, who knows what's right for China. I don't have much of a soft spot for the Party myself. But when yet another "objective" reportorial travel writer goes through the usual laundry list of corruption, inequality, repression, etc., as if culled from Western media reports, the risk is smugness and sanctimony. Leave speaking out against the Government to the Chinese. There's enough in China to preoccupy, mystify, appall and entrance the rest of us without having to resort to the same old cliché-ridden Western narrative about China's lack of democracy and the common people's yearning for freedom. Spare me.
]]>