schinko94's reviews
107 reviews

This book includes rituals associated with the Druids and other forms of European paganism. If I wanted to know about those groups, I would have just bought another book. That being said, this book does appeal to creativity, and even if the rituals aren't strictly West African in origin, they have the potential to work. Perhaps most disappointingly, this book contains nothing about West African or Afrocaribbean divination, which is an essential part of voodoo/Santeria practice.

Also, the stuff about ritual garments is bull. You don't have to make your own garments for your magic to be effective-- simply wearing the color of your Orisha will usually do, if not just a fully white outfit.

Listened to this one on audio book, and I feel like the media hyped it up a little too much.

There were bits that were amusing, especially the parts about our dumpster fire of a president's neuroses, but the rest was fairly par for the course. Pundits and podcast hosts have been speculating about the political aspects of this book for over a year, and I'm pretty sure that there's no scenario in Fire and Fury that hasn't been talked about in some way.

What this book really provides is a confirmation of what many Americans already knew, which is that the Trump administration is, in fact, in shambles. I hope Muller flushes every last Trump henchman down the toilet with his investigation.

Not great, full of cliches. Also, who the fuck makes out in a Holocaust museum?

This book was crucial for my coming out process. Jay Michaelson does an excellent job at explaining myths and flat-out lies that Christianity and Judaism tell LGBT people. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is currently in the closet, especially those that are afraid to come out for fear of religious rejection.

This is the quintessential and, in my opinion, most important text on Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga. It provides the fundamentals of yoga practice from the mouth of Shiva himself, and is a great resource for anyone looking to immerse themselves in a South Asian classical text. At the risk of making comparisons between Shaivist and Vaishnavist theologies, this text is more encyclopedic than the Bhagavad Gita, but in the same vain, cuts out extensive "story telling" narrative to get to the good parts. I regularly incorporate many of the tenets in this book into my regular life, and I feel much more balanced because of it. जै जै महयोगी भगवान की!

This book is a terrifying and beautifully-written example of what happens when the wrong person takes control over a child.

I read this at the beginning of 2018, and it seemed apropos for the moment. The #metoo movement was in full swing, and I was interested in reading a literary classic that might shed some light on the issue. (I also love Lana Del Rey, and this book happens to be her favorite novel. While she likes this story for the wrong reasons, I was nonetheless interested in it because of her music.) The fact that this story has been romanticized in our culture since its very first edition is a testament to just how disgusting society's perception of child abuse and rape can be.

In my opinion, there is no other way to see Humbert Humbert than as a controlling, self-obsessed person that had little regard or actual love for Dolores Haze. He is extremely cunning, and overall, unreliable. He is so unreliable, in fact, that there is some question as to whether Humbert Humbert is even his real name (because, let's face it, who names their kid that?). These traits are exemplified by his use of deception and beautiful language to tell a story that he feels is justified by his martyrdom complex, but that is absolutely not justifiable in any way, shape, or form. There are moments in the book where he blackmails Lolita, tortures her mentally, and objectifies her, and yet he still says that his maltreatment comes from a place of love. He even states multiple times that he knows Lolita will become ugly to him eventually, as no girl can stay a "nymphet" forever. He is the textbook example of a pedophile. While pedophiles may be characterized by their sexual affinity for children, their actual sexual desires have less to do with youthful appearance and more to do with sexual manipulation.

So I guess, in a sense, it makes sense that this book would be seen as a "love" story by many American men. If the epidemic of sexual abuse and harassment towards women is as widespread across the workforce as we believe it is, then it's no wonder that men feel that this story reflects their inner "romantic" desires. They have a sense of entitlement afforded to them by society and other men in powerful positions, just as Humbert feels that he has a sense of entitlement given to him by his intellect.

However, if men really do feel that abusive behavior can be loving and/or justified, then we have a huge problem in our society, and a long way to go before it is completely fixed. Humbert Humbert wasn't even arrested for his escapades with Lolita, so I think this novel suggests that accountability is the first step towards reconciliation and atonement for much more serious crimes. We've sort of started that process, but much more legal work will need to be done before we can actually get to the root of the cultural problem from which this issue originates.

This book was recommended to me by a Vox podcast, but I found it less impressive than the person who recommended it did.

One specific aspect in which the book suffers is the way in which Leovy switches between arguing for justice and creating a narrative around several (not very interesting) homicide detectives. If she wanted to create an ethnography about the LA homicide department, she should have done so in a more structurally-efficient way. If she wanted to create an argument revolving around social justice and statistics, then she could have done that without focusing on one specific case, and it still would have been compelling. I understand that she wanted to personalize the issue and also examine the "police side" of homicides in Los Angeles county, but the introduction of new cases, the explanations of department mergers, and the introduction of new detectives are ultimately not presented very well. Sure, it may have been factually accurate, but there are certainly ways that this book as a whole could have been structured much better.

Secondly, I'm not entirely sure that I understand Leovy's overall solution for the problem of black-on-black homicide, which seems to be "solve more homicide cases, and solve them right." That seems like a nice idea, but it does absolutely nothing to address the ways in which racism influences policing, nor does it address other causes of the problem (e.g. poverty, redlining, education levels, etc.). She mentions the fact that the US's law enforcement system is essentially set up to make black men self-destruct via impunity, but I think there are several other causes that could be attributed to the high homicide rate in black communities. Over-policing is one of them, specifically harassment and humiliating policing tactics as Leovy mentioned, but I don't think that more policing and follow-through is necessarily the remedy to the problem.

I seem to be in the minority opinion though. The book is fine, and the hypothesis is interesting, but I don't think that it lives up to the hype.

This is an absolutely fantastic book, but I wouldn't recommend it for a cover-to-cover read-through (hence the four stars). It's a reference book, and it cuts through all the bullshit related to drugs that has been promoted by the government in favor of pure scientific facts. Great for anyone who is interested in brain chemistry or anyone who might have a loved one addicted to a controlled substance.