Sharif

Beyond Trashy Noir

Revisado: 01-07-22

The start leaves low expectations and then shatters them. It starts as a self-aware cliché of future detective story. As it goes on it unexpectedly, but in a quite welcome way develops a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy style of humor but in a way that's organic to its own story most of the time. I only got it because one of my friends is named Isaac Steele. I fully expected to hate it and ended up drawn to wanting to hear the rest. Quite delightful and clever scifi with LGBT, Civil Rights, and post-colonial themes. It's like the author went "What if trash was actually written in a way that was worth people's time?"

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A Good Intro to Anthropology

Revisado: 10-05-21

If I ran an anthropology class I would recommend this book. It's written from a cultural relativist perspective and is a great background into why and how cultural ideas take hold, also shows ancient mastery of their own technologies.

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Great Start but Got Lost on Digression

Revisado: 04-20-21

This has a fantastic compelling start and I was following along through the chapter on how white male feelings wreck social movements, but then there's one part that feels like the author is relitigating online arguments rather than supporting her point. She gives more reasons to support Bernie Sanders than solid reasons to hate him, just the people around him. The irony being her point is how woke people will disrupt social movements because of their own hurt feelings. She admits that Sanders is strong on class issues but accuses him of placing too much emphasis on class to solve racial issues, which to me reads like a criticism that rewards Sanders as trying to solve racial inequality with an economic theory but just that the author doesn't feel like it does enough. I saw Hillary Clinton tell Black Lives Matter that as leadership it wasn't her role to solve black issues, it was their job to come up with solutions. Clinton said that she'd not support Palestinian human rights. To me as a poor child of Palestinian parents, I was open to the author's want to disabuse me of the idea that Sanders was not the best option and Clinton was. But the author didn't hold Clinton to any scrutiny nor champion her with any logos argument as the better. So her argument in that chapter to not give praise or boost people whose personal feelings get in the way of social movements was so compelling that it felt like an immediate challenge to then close the book as she tried to catastrophize Bernie Sanders. The on-thesis angle here is that Sanders' awful supporters do damage and fracture social movements. The white feelings of angry men trying to use woke to grab what is there's do more damage than good. The Bernie Bros did such damage by fracturing progressives and alienating women in the Democratic Party. But instead Oluo takes on a progressive movement she doesn't seem to actually disagree with because she was deeply wounded by the followers. The irony was too much for me.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Exposition heavy and Harry keeps his slave

Revisado: 06-08-20

The transphobic author spends most of the book explaining things. the characters go around in circles bickering. One of the last lines before the epilogue is about Harry wanting his slave to make him a sandwich. It's bad enough this world believes racist tropes like the slave better off in masta's house, but for the hero who should know better to keep his slave...

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JK Rowling's Weird Prejudices

Revisado: 12-23-19

Harry Potter overall has a theme of being anti-bigotry. In this Dumbledore even argues against the prejudice of giants and werewolves, but there's this creepy imperialist trope of the slaves liking being slaves. Hermione is troubled by slavery, but the heroes tell her she's over reacting since slaves love slavery.

I've noticed there are no mentions of Middle Eastern people in the series thus far that doesn't make them out to be ugly, thieves, or bad at their jobs, which made me dread listening through the World Cup because I knew the Egyptian referee would be jeered at by our heroes.

Also the first use of gender changing and it's used to have the villain characters sneak into jail. There's an anti-trans trope that being trans is some kind of deception or used to invade a space not suited for them. While the characters are not trans, the use if mtf and ftm transformations were used in a way that affirms anti-trans rhetoric.

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The Reader is Amazing!

Revisado: 04-16-19

This is not an easy book to read more or less perform. He tackles the difficult and foreign pronunciations with gusto. He's careful about the nuances of the text.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Great story

Revisado: 03-14-19

I don't normally like genre fiction, but the storytelling is sound and the jokes land. the world is well designed and built.

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Learn More about King than Writing

Revisado: 10-10-17

A bit remedial for more advanced writers, but helpful to beginning writers even though much of it is advice I'd warn people to stay away from.

It definitely gives you insight into Stephen King and his writing more than anything.

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Jeremy Irons perfect for a long story

Revisado: 06-18-17

I love the top rate acting. Irons brings spot on interpretation of the voice and intent of the text. Brilliant performance.

Story goes on longer than it maintains interest. Ending seems forced and not earned. Listen for the raw absurdity of this post modern book.

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Well acted, stories drone on

Revisado: 09-09-16

The stories take a little too long to tell and often end without a fulfilling ending. There's so much detail for the sale of detail and world for the sake of world, but not all of it seems to really do much to add to the mood or contain any information relevant to the story. could use more concise storytelling.

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