Philosophy | Raging Biblio-holism

The Seed Collectors

January 9, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: The Gardener Family has secrets. After the death of the eldest family member, some of those secrets begin to come to light – secrets of paternity, of love, of how the middle generation all died on a mysterious expedition, and of real world magic. The Review: It is a goddamn shame that just as Scarlett Thomas delivers her best novel so far, one that highlights all of her eccentricities and skills in perfect measure, that American audiences are […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 6, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Botany, Family, Favorites, Fiction, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, review, Reviews, Scarlett Thomas, Science, Speculative, The Seed Collectors

The Argonauts

December 14, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Part memoir, part theory exploration, part prose-poem, part theory creation – The Argonauts is the story of Maggie Nelson’s courtship with and marriage to Harry Dodge, her pregnancy, a country’s evolving mind on gender and sexuality, and a look at the theory that has created a single human’s worldview. The Review: There is such a joy in discovering something to be not only worthy of the hype, but worthy of continued generation of that hype. So it is with […]

Categories: Essays, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: 6, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, BookClub, Books, Essays, Favorites, Feminism, Gender Theory, Maggie Nelson, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Queer Theory, review, Reviews, The Argonauts, Theory

Roundup, September 2016

September 30, 2016 by Drew

James Bond: Vargr by Warren Ellis and Jason Masters 4 out of 5 The Short Version: After a revenge mission in Helsinki, Bond returns to London and is handed a case from his fallen comrade’s workload. A new drug has hit English shores and his job is to break up the trafficking operation – but what should be a simple in and out job turns out to be anything but. The Review: The idea of Warren Ellis taking on James […]

Categories: Fiction, Roundup • Tags: 007, A Chooseable Path Adventure, Action, Choose Your Own Adventure, Classics, Family, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Hamlet, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Iain Reed, Ian Fleming, James Bond, Jason Masters, Jens Peter Jacobsen, Literature, Niels Lyhne, Philosophy, Ramona Ausubel, Riverhead, Ryan North, Shakespeare, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, Spy, Thriller, Tiina Nunnally, To Be or Not to Be, Transhumanism, Translation, Vargr, Warren Ellis, William Shakespeare

The Last Samurai

August 19, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: After a one-night stand, Sibylla – an American first studying at Oxford and then surviving on odd jobs in London – finds herself raising Ludo, a precocious young boy with a hunger for knowledge. She turns to the classics (languages, works of fiction and non-fiction, and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) to craft his education and by age 11, he is beyond ready to find his father. So he sets out to do so. The Review: The Last Samurai has developed […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Classics, Fiction, Film, Helen DeWitt, Literature, London, New Directions, Philosophy, Reviews, Seven Samurai, The Last Samurai

The Course of Love

August 12, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Rabih and Kirsten meet and fall in love – and move in together, and get married, and have kids, and fight, and struggle, and ultimately find a sense of maturity and comfort in one another as they reach a comfortable late-middle-age – but all of this is peppered with insights from the inimitable de Botton. The Review: It’s unfair to call this a novel. I’m sorry, it really is. I look forward to the entirely-possible debates that […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Alain de Botton, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Literature, Philosophy, Reviews

Conversations

July 22, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: A man lays awake at night replaying a conversation he had with a friend earlier in the day, about a movie the two of them had seen and their wildly differing conceptions of it – all spinning off the sight of an incongruous Rolex on the wrist of a lowly goatherd… The Review: Have you ever been talking with a friend – a friend you respect and admire and have known for a while – when they […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, César Aira, Conversations, Fiction, Katherine Silver, Literature, Literature in Translation, New Directions, Philosophy, Reviews, TNBBC, Translation

The Hatred of Poetry

June 15, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Why do so many people hate poetry, or at least claim that they do? What is it, through history, that has caused a disconnect between the idea of poetry as perhaps the most noble of art forms… and the reality of its crushing inadequacy? Ben Lerner, a noted poet in his own right, believes that it may be part of poetry’s essence: that there will always be an impossible gap between a poem’s goal and its actual […]

Categories: Essays, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: Ben Lerner, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Essay, Essays, FSG Originals, Monograph, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Reviews, The Hatred of Poetry

The Dispossessed

February 8, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Ever since the planet was founded over 150 years ago, Anarres has been kept apart from its sister planet (or more accurately moon) Urras. This all changes when a gifted physicist named Shevek travels to Urras with the promise of faster-than-light technology – but can his anarchist-utopian beliefs survive on the staunchly capitalist planet? And were they even true beliefs to begin with? The Review: In the last few years, there’s been a whole lot of hubbub in […]

Categories: Fiction, Sci-Fi • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, BookClub, Books, Fiction, Olive Edition, Olive Editions, Philosophy, Politics, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

Square Wave

February 1, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Sometime in the future, in a city called Halsley in an America not quite dystopic but certainly worse off than we are now, several lives intertwine: a writer interested in 17th-century Sri Lanka, a musician exploring microtones, the son of an Indian scientist researching weather modification, and more all come together not quite in harmony but in a sort of harmonic dissidence as the presidential elections loom… The Review: I’ll admit that for quite a long time with this […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advance Review, America, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Dystopia, Fiction, History, Ideas, Literature, Mark de Silva, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Science, Science Fiction, Square Wave, Two Dollar Radio

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Philosophy