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The gist of the book is clear: to be better than the patriarchy it wants to dismantle, feminism must be anticapitalist. The framing of the problem is simple, perhaps deceivingly so: there is the feminism of social movements, and liberal feminism, and we need to take side, supporting the first and disowning the latter. Woman emancipation must be the emancipation of all women, not the diversification of elites. Throughout, there are good examples of 'good' feminist initiatives and of the selling out of feminism at the hands of liberal economic elites.

It is a manifesto, so it is clear that bold ideas are necessary, and that it must be interpreted as a provocative call to action, rather than a sociological treaty. But it grates on me to divide the world into two camps, because the camps are never two, and are never so clearly divided: between the radical feminist movements and Sheryl Sandberg are millions of women who would not support all of the theses proposed here, but call themselves feminist. Purging is so 1930s; and Nancy Fraser is such a fine thinker that I was expecting more.

Starting from the title, On earth we're briefly gorgeous is an exceptional, poetic book. If I had noticed ReadEra's new quoting function, I would have quoted the hell out of it.

Little Dog - Ocean himself, it would appear, is growing up gay in the suburbs of New York (New Jersey?), brought up by his Vietnamese mum and grandma, both with mental health problems. Around him, malls - where to go on a Sunday afternoon, all dressed up, to stroll and suck on two hardly-earned Godiva pralines - fields - cultivated with tobacco, handpicked by Latino workers - and opioids - relentlessly destroying Little Dog's friends, one by one.

The book is told in the form of a letter to the narrator's illiterate mother. The two stories waved into it are how Little Dog's family came from Vietnam into the US in the aftermaths of the war, and Little Dog's romance with Trevor, a white boy from a messy, unloving background, ashamed of being gay, intent on proving how tough he is all the time, but capable of being really sweet to Little Dog. I liked the romance, I liked the power dynamics between the two, Trevor being white, but far from rich, and son to an alcoholic, violent father, Little Dog being Asian, more 'urban' but poor, son to a mentally unstable but loving mother.

It was a great book to start 2020.

I don't why I find self-help book (so often written by straight white men) so reassuring - even if I can see they're flawed and politically dubious. Oh well.

Poor Cal sounds like a bit of nutter - it is not so much his super regimented mechanisms of self control and scheduling that grate, but his assurance that his way will benefit everyone. I made a list of the suggestions that I found relevant: - plan to work deeply in chunks, aiming for 3-4 hours a day. try to make your chunks reasonably long (60-90 minutes). - schedule these blocks in advance, working around shallow work you cannot avoid. Remember that deep work is more important, so call in sick if it needs be. - have rituals for opening and closing blocks of deep work, and for shutting down at the end of the day (something that tells your brain it needs to stop thinking about work). - the internet and social media are the biggest threat to concentration. don't mindlessly browse in your short breaks during sessions. schedule 'browsing times' rather than internet blocks. think very carefully about which social media you need to use, if any. - be mindful, purposeful and ambitious about what you CHOOSE to do in your free time. Don't let it slip past. - reframe time-planning as a way to be mindful, rather than controlling what happens in your day (it is OK to redraw the plan 6 times a day) - Make your progress visible, ideally on a board you see from your work station - Force yourself to finish at 5:30, with few exceptions - Don't take Cal too seriously

The story of an abusive relationship between women, interspersed with reflections and literary discussions about queerness and abuse. Machado's central preoccupation concerns the importance of documenting her story - given the erasing of queer people's lives in literature, and the general denial of victims' experience of abuse. Some of them were very clever, but I was most fascinated by the more narrative parts, as I think she has a knack to sketch out her ex's character, so elusive and yet so convincing. At times she sounded very sick, as in, mentally unstable, to the point that I questioned to what extent she can be held responsible for her actions - perhaps a question the author herself had to grapple with, and concluded, hell yes, to a great extent because the alternative is to blame the victim.

Every chapter is narrated in a different literary genre, or perhaps a different space, moment or concept through which to make sense of the story: Deja Vu, Cautionary Take, Apartment in Philadelphia. It could easily be 'try-hard', but I thought it worked quite.

Commercial surrogacy is not a radical, qualitative change in modes of reproduction, since children are already treated to some extent as commodities and, crucially reproductive labour is already unfairly distributed, among genders, classes, races and geographies. Two implications follows: first, commercial surrogacy is wrong only in the sense that is an acute manifestation of broader problems; second, we should treat surrogacy as work, e.g. alienated labour: "I am sympathetic to the impulse, in that the advancing frontier of commodification elicits, in so many of us, a form of recoil that feels almost beyond words. I think I get it. We refuse the concept that the most precious things should be for sale, as though that will change the reality that—exploitatively, yet consensually—they are".

Where I felt the book falls short, or maybe just irritates me, is in the righteous take down of diverging positions, especially since it comes from a self-defined utopian manifesto that can allow itself to smooth over practical difficulties within its vision and tensions or contradictions within its argument. Lewis attacks liberal feminists for its blindness to class issues in the surrogacy business model (rightly!), attacks what she defines as surrogacy-exclusionary feminism (without really giving a satisfying account of their arguments which may not be the point of this particular book but would have been interesting). And finally, she attacks those who attacks the customers of surrogacy as moralist, while at the same time most of the book present those same customers as having drunk the koolaid of reproductional capitalism and reaping the advantages of their class privilege. So, basically, 'they' are all wrong, regardless of where they stand on this issue; even if Lewis agrees with them, she charges them of thinking the right thing of the wrong reasons. She attacks attacks attacks without conceding any ground, any area where her vision or arguments may be prone to appropriation or be weak or harmful, which is only possible because both vision and argument are intentionally vague. Ultimately, the reflection around surrogacy becomes a basis to call for a rethinking of family, again, on similar lines as Haraway: "For if babies were universally thought of as anybody and everybody’s responsibility, “belonging” to nobody, surrogacy would generate no profits. Would it even be “surrogacy” at this point? Wouldn’t the question then simply be: how can babymaking best be distributed and made to realize collective needs and desires?".

A short, enjoyable book about graphic design for the communication of (statistical) information. It is easy to get nostalgic for these "simpler" times when bias and distortion were thought as the main threats to truth. Tuften is a minimalist, and his principles are good to keep in mind, even if he can veer towards the austere. He probably would argue that when the data is interesting there is no need to spice it up, when the data isn't interesting there is no point in spicing it up.

The book offers some key principle for graphic integrity: maintain proportions between dimensions on paper and numbers; be generous with labelling; show data variations, do not vary design for aesthetic purposes; in time series with monetary values, account for inflation; associate every size-changing dimension to a variable (e.g. if a variable represented by rectangles doubles, only double either the width or the height); give context to interpret the data.

His theory of data graphics: Data ink is the ink that carries information. One should aim maximize the proportion of data ink to non-data ink, within reason.

The Kreutzer Sonata is such a mind-bending story. I vaguely remember my high-school teacher citing it as a must-read, and retrospectively I cannot help but think: what the actual fuck.

I won't argue with the style (fantastic, gripping) and, sure, the book is full of deep thoughts, existential angst and moral theories about 'man', i.e. the hallmarks of great (straight, white, male) literature. But can we just stop to think about the plot for a second:

Man grows up behaving like a lad, visiting brothels and seducing married women. Man decides it is time to marry, picks young attractive gentlewoman. Man is disappointed because she is not a sex goddess the first time they sleep together. Marriage deteriorates because of lack of communication and shared interests. Sex is occasionally good, but always followed by arguments. The only thing that gives Man some satisfaction is reproducing (though Man blames wife for loving children too much - specifically for loving their bodies as well as their souls). Doctor orders wife to stop breastfeeding for health-related reasons, Man is disgusted. Doctor prescribes wife anti-conceptional, Man decides marriage no longer has a point. As wife's health improves, she looks more beautiful. Man is disgusted by this fact, Man starts beating wife because irritated by her demeanor. Man begins having attacks of groundless jealousy. Wife begins taking piano lessons, encouraged by Man. Man becomes jealous of piano teacher. Man surprises piano teacher and wife having dinner together during his absence. Man kills wife. Man blames moral corruption of youth for his moral corruption. The cure: abstinence for both genders, including after marrying.

In the postscript, author confirms he actually shares Man's conclusion. Wikipedia informs us author had 13 legitimate children, and at least an illegitimate one.

The other stories are variations on the theme of: rural life and poverty (though, thank god, not starvation) are virtuous - we (Russian aristocrats) should do it more often.

After starting and failing to read to an end five different fiction books, seven in total (lockdown, work stress, general restlessness), I took a stab at this one. Admittedly, it is just over 100 pages, but I started at 8am and by 12 I was finished, with a break in between for breakfast.

A family escaped from the DDR. The mum and two teenage kids are waiting for the dad to come back from a business trip - ready to celebrate his promotion with a mussel feast. The time passes, but the dad does't arrive - and the more he's late, the more we learn about him; the more we learn about him the less we like him: tyrannical, unsympathetic, arrogant, abusive, even violent.

At breakfast, T and I argued over how to interpret it. She remembered reading it's supposed to be a critique of the West, or the East, or an allegory, East vs West. Judging by the author's quote on the publisher's site, it is the story of a revolution: ‘I wrote this book in August 1989, just before the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I wanted to understand how revolutions start. It seemed logical to use the figure of a tyrannical father and turn the story into a German family saga.’ It's also 'just' a family portrait: convincing, detailed, heart-breaking.

I loved this one. A novel that reads like a memoir (I thought it was), about a woman taking care of the dog of a friend who has killed himself. On the one hand there is the love story between her and the dog, the getting to know and trust each other, their growing dependent on one another. On the other, the one between her and the dead friend: not quite a romance, but affection, admiration, respect, sexual tension.

Grief, love relationship and writing are the three main themes. As she overhears at the memorial, her friend is now another dead straight white man, a womanizing and non PC one at that. It is implied that one of the reasons he killed himself is that he felt the chasm between him and today's intellectual climate had grown too wide: in a world where people want to read 'politically constructive' stories from 'the oppressed', what place is there for the historical writer - relatively privileged, often morally reprehensible, not too concerned about offending people? It could be a very annoying line of thinking, but because the narrator herself is not fully on board (a progressive woman, concerned about who should she write about and for, aware of her privilege...) it is easier to listen to. I'm not making much sense, and maybe it doesn't matter, I think the main reason I liked the book is her soothing tone, erudite but full of humor and, above all, love and sadness for the loss of two loves.