!July questions, summer reading
---
agk's diary
19 July 2022 @ 06:34 UTC
---
written on ipad via ssh.sdf.org in safari
up late, procrastinating
---
I usually make my way through a couple books at a
time, slowly, over months. Last week I finished
Bulgakov's (1927) The White Guard, about a bourge-
ois Kiev family in the 1918 war in Ukraine. Bulga-
kov, like Chekhov, was a physician, and served in
Kiev in 1918. I enjoyed this one a lot.
During my commute I listen to Bulgakov's (1967) The
Master and Margarita, about a 1920s visit of the
devil to officially atheist Moscow. It's creepy and
fun. Before bed I read Sienkiewicz's (1884) With
Fire and Sword, about the 1640s Khmelnytsky Upris-
ing. It's clear Frank Herbert (author of Dune) and
probably Tolkien read With Fire and Sword. Scifi
and fantasy are the children of adventure stories.
Books below aren't what I most recommend, but
answer Christina's questions. In 2004 I stayed up
all night reading My Jihad by streetlight and coal-
oil lamp. In her BA thesis, Rachel used Foucault's
social analysis to interpret her participant-obser-
vation of a disaster free health clinic my friends
and I founded, which radically changed my underst-
anding of what we did. Each book below corresponds
with such stories.
Happy summer reading!
1. Books I couldn't put down...
* Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (1972), Roadside
Picnic
* Aukai Collins (2002) My Jihad: one American's
journey through the world of Usama Bin Laden
* Cory Doctorow (2010), For the Win
* Madeline ffitch (2019), Stay and Fight
* Andy Weir (2021), Project Hail Mary
* Daisy Pitkin (2022), On the Line
2. The book I couldn't pick up...
Any of a number of textbooks.
3. The book I tried so hard to like...
A self-indulgent memoir about the 2010 Gulf of
Mexico oil spill by my friend Fancy's brother.
4. Books that changed my life...
* Alcoholics Anonymous (1939)
* David Werner (1977), Where There is No Doctor
* Kochan & Wood (1984), Exploring the UNIX
System
* John Arquilla (2001), Networks and Netwars:
the future of terror, crime and militancy
* Rachel Judith Stern (2007), "This is solidar-
ity," not biomedicine: the Common Ground
Health Clinic and discursive intervention in
racial and ethnic health inequities [thesis]
* Shin Nawakari (2017), Essence of Shibari:
Kinbaku and Japanese rope bondage
5. Books that "saved" me...
* John Milbank (1999), Radical Orthodoxy, a
new theology
* Gillian Rose (1995), Love's Work, a reckon-
ing with life
* Paulo Friere (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppres-
sed
* Clarence Jordan (1970), The Cotton Patch
Version of Matthew and John
* Frantz Fanon (1961), The Wretched of the
Earth
* Sembene Ousmane (1960), God's Bits of Wood
---
Thank you Christina for good questions!
gopher://gopher.club:70/1/users/christyotwisty/
