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norb

norb@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 2 years ago

just a guy who reads sometimes

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norb's books

Stopped Reading

2025 Reading Goal

16% complete! norb has read 2 of 12 books.

John Scalzi: Starter Villain (2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Inheriting your mysterious uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might imagine.

Sure, there …

Really enjoyed this book.

Scalzi always takes an idea to interesting, often weirdly obvious, but wholly entertaining, places.

Like KPS before it, I found this one to be a nice light, fun read. The basic premise (everyman inherits family business from long lost relative and everything goes sideways) isn't exactly new, but I would say the overall execution of it is very well done.

reviewed Why Nothing Works by Marvin Harris (A Touchstone book)

Marvin Harris: Why Nothing Works (1987, Simon & Schuster) 5 stars

Still Relavent After 40 Years

5 stars

This book absolutely blew me away. I got it on a whim from an offhand comment I read somewhere online (had to request it from a library in another city, even). I wasn't expecting much, and honestly thought I'd just be reading a bunch of antiquated anthropological ideas from 1980, but I couldn't have been more wrong!

The ideas presented in this book share a web of events in post-WWII United States that led to what Harris describes as a somewhat broken society. His arguments were well thought out and researched (extensive citations are provided). The way he combines business consolidation/conglomeration, the feminist movement, the gay right movement, cults, and a lot of other ideas into one cohesive argument for why things were the way they were in 1980 was eye opening.

The most impressive part of all of it was how relevant his observations are here in 2023! 40 …

finished reading Eyes: Novellas and Stories by William H. Gass

William H. Gass: Eyes (Paperback, 2016, Vintage) 2 stars

This book wasn't really for me.

I quite enjoyed the first story, "In Camera," and thought that I would breeze through the rest of the book (which I ultimately did, but not as I expected).

While deciding on reading this, I'd read that Gass can be a "challenging read" but I was not prepared for the second "story" called "Charity" (I use quotes around the word story here because it was somewhat of a story, but very hard to follow and get through). "Charity" was more of a stream of conscious rant/diatriabe/something about the nature of charity and giving and why people seem to give. The protagonist (if it can be said there's one at all) is depicted at different times in their lives, sometimes in the same sentence. There wasn't much structure to it, and I gave up on this one about half way through. (It was the longest …