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Danny Garside

da5nsy@bookrastinating.com

Joined 2 years, 6 months ago

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Danny Garside's books

Currently Reading (View all 19)

Madeleine Jubilee Saito: You Are a Sacred Place (2025, Andrews McMeel Publishing)

Sweet and thoughtful

Many of the pages I wanted to send to people as cards, or put as posters on my wall.

Slightly more God-y than is my preference, but only minor, and one can choose to read "God" in the way one chooses to.

David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs (Hardcover, 2018, Allen Lane)

Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered …

David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs (Hardcover, 2018, Allen Lane)

Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered …

As early as 1901, the German psychologist Karl Groos discovered that infants express extraordinary happiness when they first figure out they can cause predictable effects in the world, pretty much regardless of what that effect is or whether it could be construed as having any benefit to them. Let’s say they discover that they can move a pencil by randomly moving their arms. Then they realize they can achieve the same effect by moving in the same pattern again. Expressions of utter joy ensue. Groos coined the phrase “the pleasure at being the cause,” suggesting that it is the basis for play, which he saw as the exercise of powers simply for the sake of exercising them.

Bullshit Jobs by 

This resonated with me. Often if I find myself feeling down, a fairly reliable way to perk myself up again is to do something which is solely an exercise in my personal volition (as opposed to doing something I was told or expected to do, or even invited to do, or even just something that I had previously decided/planned to do).

Mimi Mondal, Bama, Kumar, Sumit (Artist), Gogu Shyamala, Gautamiputra Kamble, P. A. Uthaman, Neerav Patel, Tamilmagan, Archita Mittra, Goutam Mandal, V. Chandrashekar Rao, Sahej Rahal, Rahee Punyashloka, Kunal Lokhande, Subash Thebe Limbu, Nabi Haider Ali, Esther Larisa David, Snehashish Das, Hameedha Khan, Aswathy K. Raj, Gouri, Gitanjali Joshua, Prachi Singh, Shivani Kshirsagar, Yukti Narang, Sudarshan Devadoss, M.K. Abhilash, Yeswanth Mocharla: The Blalf Book of Anti-Caste SF (EBook)

An anthology of weird, fantastic, supernatural, Dalit futurist, & magical realist fiction by writers from …

For me, speculative fiction possesses a delicious and breathtaking capacity for making political theory come to life. When I started my undergraduate degree as a political science major, I'd been an avoid science fiction and fantasy reader for years. The intellectual challenges these genres thrust me into made political theory electrifying and liberatory. I never had to struggle to imagine the new worlds that theorists like Karl Marx, Edward Said, and Franz Fanon implored readers to envision; I'd already been doing that.

The Blalf Book of Anti-Caste SF by , , , and 25 others (Page xv)

Nick Srnicek, Helen Hester: After Work (2020, Verso Books) No rating

Against this approach, we must insist that the reduction of unwaged work is necessary, not because it lets people take on more waged labour, nor simply because much of it is drudgery. Rather, this reduction is essential because it expands the availability of free time that is a prerequisite for any meaningful conception of freedom. The struggle against work – in all its forms – is the fight for free time.

After Work by , (Page 27 - 28)