Reviews and Comments

LA art world in the 70s -> life crisis -> drinking mezcal in small towns in Oaxaca -> growing del maguey mezcal. a brand promo book for sure, but I also learned a lot about mezcal production and some about small town Mexico across the years. plus has a real LA / artist freewheeling memoir feel that I'm a sucker for

like everything michael deforge writes I love it. this one’s a collection of shorts, all delightful. I want to share the last one with my team at work (at some point protagonist falls in and out of love with “the public”) but I’ll probably not

interesting and multifaceted sociological study of the social dynamics and labor that goes into NYC VIP clubs, including motivations of each of the actors (girls/models, promoters, and to a more limited extent clients). reminds me of tressie mcmillan cottom’s writing on the hustle economy, in that it digs into why “girls” would want to participate in such a clearly exploitative system, which I think is both more satisfying and says something about all of our lives under late capitalism. four stars because it gets a little repetitive in that common academic way, but recommend

I very much agree with @callan's review. encourage folks to join the maintainer's email list if this book is of interest to you; interesting things come through often! themaintainers.org/community/

a collection of essays weaving together magic, whiteness, indigeneity and colonization, the pacific northwest, domestic violence and living and loving through ptsd, alcohol and sobriety, red dead redemption 2. beautiful, excited to dig into some of the footnotes (esp about indigenous stories and their relationship to natural phenomena, like the Salish stories of historic Seattle earthquakes along a fault caused by serpent a'yahos: www.nature.com/articles/news050711-7)

this book delivers what it promises but was more deeply researched and expansive than I expected—rolls in labor history, ones relationship to work, social programs, etc, to paint a picture of a cultivated and toxic modern relationship to work. was a concrete way to tie in theory, history, and work malaise, though I lost a bit of interest toward the end and petered out about 3/4 of the way through

really useful and varied collection of texts about organizing and abolition. I believe these texts are all available elsewhere, but it was really nice to have in one place, curated, and grouped by theme. I found the collection to be personally useful and inspiring, as well as a great entrypoint to talk about abolition in practice with coworkers and friends interested in the topic but without (yet!) experience with organizing around it.

here's a great reading & discussion guide for use with groups: www.haymarketbooks.org/pdfs/10

crushing and beautiful and accurate and I can't wait to read (and cry through) it again

I really struggled to get through this book despite the fact that it had some resonant parts and beautiful passages. Women. Hatred. Rebelling against god, because god surrounds you and is suffocating. Understanding that you've crafted yourself as something against, but not for. Music as community and lifeblood. But I couldn't get past the editing—it sagged for me in the middle, took me months to finish despite being fairly short, and I ended up getting angry at how hard it was for me to move from page to page. There were bits that were all in the same world, but never felt like they added up. I can't tell if the difficulty came from where I'm at reading/focus-wise, the expectation I had that it would be more linear, or just the strong need for a heavy editor. Probably all three.