By Any Other Nerd

The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist by Marcus Rediker My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lay was a man who lived in the late 1600s and 1700s. Born in England, he was a small person who also dealt with kyphosis, an illness that curves the back. He lived as a shepherd for a while and eventually lived as a sailor for about a decade before returning to England. Upon returning, he joins with his local Quaker community and he starts to call out the Quaker leadership for their hypocrisies. He spends much of the rest of his life, getting kicked out of Quaker communities for speaking his mind and increasingly, calling out Quaker leadership for owning and profiting from slavery both in England and in Pennsylvania. He even publishes a book through Benjamin Franklin's press, All slave-keepers that keep the innocent in bondage (yes, you can even read it today). He was a vegetarian and performed guerilla theatre st...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker My rating: 4 of 5 stars On one level, this graphic novel has struck a spark in me to find out even more about its subject, Benjamin Lay, an 18th-century abolitionist Quaker.  Born in England and raised in the Quaker religion, Lay challenges the hypocrisy of Quaker leadership who at the time still profited and made use of slaves.  Throughout his life, he is chased out of Quaker communities and ends up in Pennsylvania.  Continually dismissed for his ideas (and likely discrimination for his kyphosis--extreme-forward curving of the back), he challenges Quakers to align their beliefs with their actions.  While he does not see the fruit of his labor, his lifetime of work and humble living (literally living in a cave on a vegetarian diet) inspires younger Quakers and has a lingering effect in many Quakers abandoning and rejecting the supposed necessity of slavery in the 1800s....

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel My rating: 4 of 5 stars In this memoir of body, mind, and relationships, Bechdel explores how she's come to better understand herself and her close relationships through her pursuit of physical excellence. The narrative moves chronologically through the decades of her life and is filled with a mixture of general themes and specific scenes that often focus on her latest physical pursuit, recent relationship challenges with parents or partners, her coping mechanisms, and increasingly unhealthy work habits. Interspersed, Bechdel calls upon a mixture of Buddhist writings, Enlightenment poets (Wordsworth & Coleridge), Transcendental thinkers (Emerson and Fuller), and Beat poets (namely, Kerouac) to frame and connect her own narrative as well as highlight the intellectual giants who have guided her in this deep reflection of her life. In many ways, Bechdel outdoes her previous accomplishment (Fun Home) a...

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall My rating: 5 of 5 stars Hall's historical exploration of women-led slave revolts is reminiscent of Maus by Art Spiegelman in its storytelling and some of its visual layering. It's an amazing work that ingeniously melds together the story of the history, Hall's story, and the actual history that she aims to cover.  As a Black, lesbian, mother who gave up her work as a lawyer to pursue a Ph.D. in history, Hall takes readers through the practices of historians as she dives deep into archives in the United States and England to unpack the history, the historiography, and the lapses in understanding by a field dominated by white men that made them blind to the fact that there were, in fact, numerous slave-revolts in the Americas and on the slave-ships in the Middle Passage that were led by women.  That mixture of storytelling itself is enough to warrant attention and to see how the...

Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels by David A. Beronä My rating: 4 of 5 stars Beronä explores the world of wordless books from the early and mid-20th century. These wood-cut novels (and other types of wordless visual stories) were a phenomenon within storytelling that seemed to operate in parallel to art movements and the development of comics.  Beronä's effort here is to provide a preliminary history of their emergence and the most well-know creators such as Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Otto Nuckel, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde. The book does not necessarily have a critical through the line but sits more as an introductory exploration into the creators and the works. Besides the introduction and the conclusion, each chapter explores a particular creator and some of their works. The essays are brief biographies of the authors and some detail and complexity about the nature of the works being discussed.  Much of the book is dedicated to excerpts (ind...

The Walking Dead, Vol. 32: Rest In Peace by Robert Kirkman My rating: 4 of 5 stars I knew this one had been coming and I knew a significant piece of the ending because, well, internet. But I picked up the first trade of The Walking Dead just as it was released and began reading this series. Some 16 or so years later, the trip through all 32 trades has been entirely worth it. It's funny how spoiler-heavy society is now with the internet. I didn't have to worry that Lori's fate being spoiled way back in the day, but Rick's fate, well. And yet, knowing it, didn't diminish it. After all, Kirkman never hesitated to do with his characters (in all his works) what the story demanded. In sitting down and reading what is the last volume in this series, it wasn't as they say, bittersweet. It was rather exactly what it needed to be. I don't know that I'd consider it the best end of a comic series, but it doesn't come anywhere close to the wor...

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes Back sometime in 2018, I wrote about how I find the books that I read and what my selection process is like .  I meant to follow it up shortly with another post about how I choose which books to add to my collection because as much as I try not to be materialistic, books are definitely my kryptonite.  Obviously, as a nerd, books hold a special place and I waiver in my belief that it's somehow different from holding dear to shoes, clothes, cooking devices, sports memorabilia, etc.  But I wanted to do more than just that, but explain how I conceive of, organize, and interact with my bookshelves. While a part of me would love to have a library of every book I've ever read ( Goodreads says that would be in the vicinity of 4,250+ books , but I know that list is missing at least 100-200), I also live in a finite space and with a partner who would prefer not to trade in furniture for bookshelves.  A few years ago, I worked to find an ac...

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal by Aviva Chomsky My rating: 5 of 5 stars Though published in 2014, Chomsky's book feels all the more necessary to be put in everyone's hands during the era of the Trump administration. Her book has several clear and well-researched points. One point is to highlight the historical events that lead to the current frame of how the US has created "illegal immigrants" and how that frame is largely informed by a racialized view that devalues immigrants of color, particularly Mexicans and other people from Latin America (that's not to say that she doesn't acknowledge how the current US culture does not devalue other immigrants of color, but that her argument is that in the 20th century, much of the creation of "illegal immigration" had Latin and Central America at its heart). She also argues that if the US is the country that it claims to be, valuing the individual and not discriminating on grou...

Obviously, I like to read and I tend to read a lot and I write a lot about what I read.  In fact, if you're reading this blog, I'm going to guess you already know this and appreciate that (some have commented that they look to this blog for reading recommendations), you are a fellow reader who enjoys seeing what I come up with here, or you're someone I know who is mildly entertained by how much I talk about books.  And I've discussed how I come across books in a previous post but I haven't really talked about deciding upon what books to read.  Mostly because it hasn't been a conscious strategy in so much as a grab-what's-in-front-of-me kind of strategy. But since it's the new year and I've been thinking about my new reading goal, I realized I had an opportunity to do something different this year with my reading.  I've been thinking about what I read and why and the different gaps it fills or inspiration I encounter.  It's all great but I w...

And we close out the year with another great selection of readings that I'm hoping some of you will get the opportunity to read.  I'll be doing a 2018 year in books post shortly so I won't go much into the "year-end" retrospective, but I certainly did end with a mad flurry of reading, once my semester ended (Between December 19th and December 31, I read/listened to 12 books).  So let's take a look at the ones that grabbed my fancy enough to talk about.   Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism  by  Derrick A. Bell Bell uses allegoric storytelling to explore the legal, cultural, and philosophical racial underpinnings of American white culture and its impact on black identity and methods of surviving in this hostile racialize structure. His approach in many ways reminds me of the philosophical dialogues that we see in the works of Plato and the like. They are sometimes clear and simple settings and other times fantastical, but with each,...

As you'll see, I got into reviewing books this month a bit more.  I have several reasons as to why.  The first is that books are conversations and after reading one, I sometimes have a lot to say in return.  The second is that I've been getting more requests from friends and readers to hear more about what I think about certain books and so I'm happy to indulge in some reflecting.  The third is just that I find I retain more (that reflecting thing) when I write a bit about what I read and what resonated (or didn't) with my reading.  Finally, it gives me something to put on the blog, right?   In other news, I broke my 200 book goal for reading in 2018 and at the time of writing this (the last week in November), I'm at 210.  I have a forthcoming post about reading practices that may highlight some of this.  As I close in on December though, I'm hoping that I achieving my other reading goal of the year which is to read at least 24 physical boo...