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Recent reading
May. 4th, 2019 12:51 pmOoops, have not written up books in a while.
Svensk överklass och högerextremism under 1900-talet by Karl N. Alvar Nilsson (2000)
Title means "The Swedish Upper Classes and Right Extremism in the 1900's". Wow, I didn't know how close we actually came to joining WWII on the German side--if some of the military brass had gotten their way. Luckily the government was firmly neutral. This was an informative book, maybe too much so. I wish there had been more analysis compared to the stacking of facts and names.
Norra Latin by Sara Bergmark Elfgren (2017)
YA urban fantasy by one of the co-authors of the Engelsfors Trilogy. The title is the name of a high school in Stockholm, one that in RL was closed down in the 80's, but in this one it's open. Overall I enjoyed it! There's a ghost story and also a love triangle. I do wish the love triangle had shown more of the eventual F/F than the long-drawn-out and destructive M/F relationship that preceded it, though. We didn't even get an onscreen kiss, FFS.
Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff (1994)
I was in the mood for some Sutcliff! It's been a while. This is a short book about a disabled boy in the Bronze Age and his struggles to be accepted as a warrior. I love her nature descriptions as always, but I think the female main character got a pretty rough deal.
Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase (2015)
Short, worth reading. He takes further automation as an axiom and investigates four possible cases of scarcity/abundance of natural resources, and equality/inequality. Abundance and equality = communism, abundance and inequality = rentism (with a lot of intellectual property rights), scarcity and equality = socialism, scarcity and inequality = exterminism. Most chilling is the observation at the end that these might not be mutually exclusive but that one could lead to another: if the rich kill off the poor first (exterminism) then the rich could live in communism...
I've read more books, but for various reasons will review them later.
Svensk överklass och högerextremism under 1900-talet by Karl N. Alvar Nilsson (2000)
Title means "The Swedish Upper Classes and Right Extremism in the 1900's". Wow, I didn't know how close we actually came to joining WWII on the German side--if some of the military brass had gotten their way. Luckily the government was firmly neutral. This was an informative book, maybe too much so. I wish there had been more analysis compared to the stacking of facts and names.
Norra Latin by Sara Bergmark Elfgren (2017)
YA urban fantasy by one of the co-authors of the Engelsfors Trilogy. The title is the name of a high school in Stockholm, one that in RL was closed down in the 80's, but in this one it's open. Overall I enjoyed it! There's a ghost story and also a love triangle. I do wish the love triangle had shown more of the eventual F/F than the long-drawn-out and destructive M/F relationship that preceded it, though. We didn't even get an onscreen kiss, FFS.
Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff (1994)
I was in the mood for some Sutcliff! It's been a while. This is a short book about a disabled boy in the Bronze Age and his struggles to be accepted as a warrior. I love her nature descriptions as always, but I think the female main character got a pretty rough deal.
Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase (2015)
Short, worth reading. He takes further automation as an axiom and investigates four possible cases of scarcity/abundance of natural resources, and equality/inequality. Abundance and equality = communism, abundance and inequality = rentism (with a lot of intellectual property rights), scarcity and equality = socialism, scarcity and inequality = exterminism. Most chilling is the observation at the end that these might not be mutually exclusive but that one could lead to another: if the rich kill off the poor first (exterminism) then the rich could live in communism...
I've read more books, but for various reasons will review them later.
