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dhampyresa) wrote2024-01-30 11:25 pm
dhampyresa) wrote2024-01-30 11:25 pm
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Read in 2023, part 1: Non fiction books
It will take the time that it takes, but I will post about everything I've read in 2023 (that I have something to say about, at least).
French non-fiction books (2)
J'accuse ! ("I accuse!"), by Émile Zola: I dunno I guess I just felt like rereading it. It's really cathartic, what can I say.
Biggest take-away: GET 'EM ÉMILE
Le Guide des fées : Regards sur la femme ("Guide to fairies: perspectives on women"), by Audrey Cansot and Virginie Barsagol: This was much less in-depth than I excepted and several of the conclusions were not well supported.
Biggest take-away: Titania in Elisathean and Jacobean literature and theater is a "mirror" of Elizabeth I of England -- which makes me wonder what a fairy mirror of Liz2 would be like.
"J'accuse!" 100% is the best.
English non-fiction books (8)
2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, by Rachel Aaron: This was a reread. I've been having trouble writing, well, anything, for the past couple years, so I thought it might helped. I'd found it helpful in the past, but this time it wasn't really. Probably a combination of me having gotten what I needed out of it already and it being about how to write more and not just write at all -- but then again expecting one book to Solve Depression is a bit much, innit?
Biggest take-away: Brainstorming a scene before writing it is useful. I outline pretty loosely, for example my outline might just read "Hannibal talks his sister" and brainstorming what that conversation actually entails before doing the actual writing is helpful.
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, by Barbara Ehrenreich: This book came out shortly after the 2008 subprime crisis, so some of the specifics are probably dated, but I still found it quite interesting as a case study of the destructive effects of toxic positivity.
Biggest take-away: Thinking everything is already perfect closes you off to constructive criticisms and improvement.
Let's Talk About Down There: An OB-GYN Answers All Your Burning Questions… without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking, by Jennifer Lincoln: This was very interesting. Even the things I already knew were presented in a clear way and I like the authorial voice.
Biggest take-away: That my biology classes skipped over a bunch of stuff it really ought to have covered.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb: This was really good. I liked how well the book demonstrated its thesis that hat drives people to seek therapy is not why people need therapy, both through her own and her "patients" experiences. (The author clarifies in the foreword that none of the patients in this are real, but rather that they are composite of real stories.)
Biggest take-away: At one point the author describes anger as "a secondary emotion" and while I can't say I agree entirely[1], looking deeper into why I am/was angry at some things has been enlightening.
[1] I am nothing but a neutron star of rage in vaguely human form.
The War on Everyone, by Robert Evans: The only audiobook I listened to this year and it wasn't even on purpose. The chapters of this audiobook are uploaded on the same youtube channel as the episodes of the Behind the Bastards episodes, which I've been listening to a lot of at work. Which means I can't really remember what was said here vs any other episodes. So have a review of the podcast my friend wrote for me instead: "This podcast made me late to stuff. Not because it's good, I am just often late. 3/5, ok podcast." Also, Evans mispronounces people's names on multiple occasions that I picked up on -- for example, it was only because I knew the rough shape of the events described in the "The (French) Capitol Insurrection" episode that I realised «Jon Joray» was meant to be Jean Jaurès.
Biggest take-away: Fascism bad.
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, by Laura Jane Grace and Dan Ozzi: The autobiography of Laura Jane Grace, the front woman of the band Against Me!, includes both current day reflections on her past and excerpts of her diary at the time. It was ok, but a bit too long and muddled.
Biggest take-away: Not sure why, but the image that most sticks with me is her, as a teenager still presenting as male and living in a punk squat, eating birth control pills from her squatmates in the hope they would do something.
Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food, by Chris van Tulleken: My favourite non-fiction book I read all year! It was absolutely fascinating. I did think there were a couple points where the rhetoric was a bit too scaremongering but overall it was really interesting and well-argued. It framed cooking food as being about connection (to culture, to people, etc) -- vs ultra-processed food being about profit -- and that has helped me framed cooking as even more of a Good Thing for me: it's not just a creative I (have to) engage in almost daily, it's an act of love, from me to me. You don't cook for people you don't love. If I'm cooking for me, that means I'm someone worth cooking for.
Biggest take-away: That I need to check ingredients list more -- one of the first thing I checked, because it was in front of me and I was reading the book during lunch, was made of duck according to the big letters on the front of the packaging, but was in fact made mostly of pork fact.
Unf#ck Your Writing Write Better, Reach Readers, & Share Your Inner World, by Joe Biel, Faith G. Harper: *Gandalf voice* I have no memory of this place.
Biggest take-away: I should take notes on non-fiction books?
My favourite was "Ultra-Processed People", with "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" as n°2.
In terms of things I remember from prescriptive non-fiction I read last year, the thing I got the most use of was Kondo pointing out that making sock balls by turning one of the socks inside out destroys the elastic. So now I just chuck all my socks into the sock drawer without bother to fold them or whatever -- which I guess ties into How to Keep House While Drowning saying there's nothing shameful in making things easier for yourself.
French non-fiction books (2)
J'accuse ! ("I accuse!"), by Émile Zola: I dunno I guess I just felt like rereading it. It's really cathartic, what can I say.
Biggest take-away: GET 'EM ÉMILE
Le Guide des fées : Regards sur la femme ("Guide to fairies: perspectives on women"), by Audrey Cansot and Virginie Barsagol: This was much less in-depth than I excepted and several of the conclusions were not well supported.
Biggest take-away: Titania in Elisathean and Jacobean literature and theater is a "mirror" of Elizabeth I of England -- which makes me wonder what a fairy mirror of Liz2 would be like.
"J'accuse!" 100% is the best.
English non-fiction books (8)
2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, by Rachel Aaron: This was a reread. I've been having trouble writing, well, anything, for the past couple years, so I thought it might helped. I'd found it helpful in the past, but this time it wasn't really. Probably a combination of me having gotten what I needed out of it already and it being about how to write more and not just write at all -- but then again expecting one book to Solve Depression is a bit much, innit?
Biggest take-away: Brainstorming a scene before writing it is useful. I outline pretty loosely, for example my outline might just read "Hannibal talks his sister" and brainstorming what that conversation actually entails before doing the actual writing is helpful.
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, by Barbara Ehrenreich: This book came out shortly after the 2008 subprime crisis, so some of the specifics are probably dated, but I still found it quite interesting as a case study of the destructive effects of toxic positivity.
Biggest take-away: Thinking everything is already perfect closes you off to constructive criticisms and improvement.
Let's Talk About Down There: An OB-GYN Answers All Your Burning Questions… without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking, by Jennifer Lincoln: This was very interesting. Even the things I already knew were presented in a clear way and I like the authorial voice.
Biggest take-away: That my biology classes skipped over a bunch of stuff it really ought to have covered.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb: This was really good. I liked how well the book demonstrated its thesis that hat drives people to seek therapy is not why people need therapy, both through her own and her "patients" experiences. (The author clarifies in the foreword that none of the patients in this are real, but rather that they are composite of real stories.)
Biggest take-away: At one point the author describes anger as "a secondary emotion" and while I can't say I agree entirely[1], looking deeper into why I am/was angry at some things has been enlightening.
[1] I am nothing but a neutron star of rage in vaguely human form.
The War on Everyone, by Robert Evans: The only audiobook I listened to this year and it wasn't even on purpose. The chapters of this audiobook are uploaded on the same youtube channel as the episodes of the Behind the Bastards episodes, which I've been listening to a lot of at work. Which means I can't really remember what was said here vs any other episodes. So have a review of the podcast my friend wrote for me instead: "This podcast made me late to stuff. Not because it's good, I am just often late. 3/5, ok podcast." Also, Evans mispronounces people's names on multiple occasions that I picked up on -- for example, it was only because I knew the rough shape of the events described in the "The (French) Capitol Insurrection" episode that I realised «Jon Joray» was meant to be Jean Jaurès.
Biggest take-away: Fascism bad.
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, by Laura Jane Grace and Dan Ozzi: The autobiography of Laura Jane Grace, the front woman of the band Against Me!, includes both current day reflections on her past and excerpts of her diary at the time. It was ok, but a bit too long and muddled.
Biggest take-away: Not sure why, but the image that most sticks with me is her, as a teenager still presenting as male and living in a punk squat, eating birth control pills from her squatmates in the hope they would do something.
Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food, by Chris van Tulleken: My favourite non-fiction book I read all year! It was absolutely fascinating. I did think there were a couple points where the rhetoric was a bit too scaremongering but overall it was really interesting and well-argued. It framed cooking food as being about connection (to culture, to people, etc) -- vs ultra-processed food being about profit -- and that has helped me framed cooking as even more of a Good Thing for me: it's not just a creative I (have to) engage in almost daily, it's an act of love, from me to me. You don't cook for people you don't love. If I'm cooking for me, that means I'm someone worth cooking for.
Biggest take-away: That I need to check ingredients list more -- one of the first thing I checked, because it was in front of me and I was reading the book during lunch, was made of duck according to the big letters on the front of the packaging, but was in fact made mostly of pork fact.
Unf#ck Your Writing Write Better, Reach Readers, & Share Your Inner World, by Joe Biel, Faith G. Harper: *Gandalf voice* I have no memory of this place.
Biggest take-away: I should take notes on non-fiction books?
My favourite was "Ultra-Processed People", with "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" as n°2.
In terms of things I remember from prescriptive non-fiction I read last year, the thing I got the most use of was Kondo pointing out that making sock balls by turning one of the socks inside out destroys the elastic. So now I just chuck all my socks into the sock drawer without bother to fold them or whatever -- which I guess ties into How to Keep House While Drowning saying there's nothing shameful in making things easier for yourself.
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There is a lot of fascinating history and detail in this book about how the foods we eat now are not the foods our ancestors ate. I enjoyed learning about how the "Chicken of Tomorrow" contest reshaped commercial poultry, how vanillin was originally made out of pine extract, and about the various experiments with goats and nutrition. I think that Schatzker lays out a very good case for the relationship between taste and nutrition, and that flavor intensity has decreased with the industrial production of foods.
But I am skeptical of the further connections he draws between added flavorings and obesity, and his thesis that it is flavor alone, without the mitigating toxic secondary compounds that drives people to eat things that are bad for them in huge quantity. He asserts that we only overeat Doritos and similar junk food, that real food with true flavor will sate us after only a small amount, but this comes from his own anecdotal experience, not from any actual studies. (I can report my own overdosing on clementines while on a bus in Israel in the 1980s, which resulted in a desperate need for a bathroom that was not available. I have also eaten way too much high-quality chocolate, way too much delicious free-range steak, drunk way too much wine (which is certainly toxic), and so on, to believe that quality food is self-limiting.
I also found his assertion that we drown our food in spice and fake flavor because it's been engineered to blandness incredibly Western-world-centric. What about Chinese and Indian dishes, with their complex spices, which were developed long before commercial-industrial poultry and pork and produce? What about countries which do not have the entrenched industrial agriculture of the US, but which still suffer from an increasing obesity rate?
Still, I agree that the tastiest foods are usually the local, free-range, heritage breeds, whether we're talking meat or vegetables. I also appreciate that he points out the uncomfortable truth that industrial organic is still industrial, and that he acknowledges that buying food for flavor means spending more money, and that as a nation and a world, we cannot afford to feed ourselves on low-yield and free-range food in the manner we are used to. I am lucky enough to be married to a hunter and to have a large range of local, organic, heritage foodstuffs available, and have the money to pay for it, but not everybody does.
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