Hammer & Jack

Tag: Books

  • hit refresh

    My review of Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh. Short review? Skip.

  • revolution

    The work of the French Revolution never quite got finished, and the problems with a capitalist industrial economy—problems that were spotted almost immediately by both participants and observers of the new industrial paradigm; thinkers that thought it was not a tenable system included economists, politicians, factory owners, journalists, and bankers, as well as utopian visionaries—broke…

  • Dhalgren

    This review discusses racial and sexual violence. A lot. And make a reference to gross stuff with poop. “Some people need sun, clear nights, cool breezes, warm days—” I said. “They can’t live in Bellona,” Tak went on. “In Helmsford, I knew people who never walked further than from the front door to the car.…

  • Juliet Takes a Breath

    Juliet Takes a Breath, Gabby Rivera To begin, a little disclaimer: If there are readers that see themselves in Juliet and take strength in her journey, I want to honor that. If there are white readers out there that are able to see themselves through an outsider’s eyes through this story, I think that’s a…

  • Circe ፧ Madeline Miller

    The highest praise I can give to Circe is to simply describe, simply and without exaggeration, how I felt when I finished the book. It felt like a heavy weight on my chest, and like every feeling of loneliness and powerlessness and fear had been dug up from the deep places I had tried to…

  • Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution | Shiri Eisner

    There is a shelf on the third floor of Central Library in downtown Portland. It contains all of the nonfiction books specifically about bring queer: books about raising your gay teenager, coming out in later life, how to support your partner who is transitioning, and about four books on bisexuality. I have never done anything…

  • Wonderblood | Julia Whicker

    Faith, reason, morality, progress all come into conflict under the shadow of the launch tower at Cape Canaveral! Kings, magicians, doctors, executioners, all bound to their own arcane rituals. A girl appears just like in a prophecy. And then a new bright light appears in the sky. I really did not care for this book.…

  • january book roundup

    All We Can Do is Wait ⪼ Richard Lawson What a sweet little book! I picked it up because I follow Richard Lawson on Twitter, but I guess I wasn’t following him when it was released. Although the novel starts with a dramatic bridge collapse, most of what unfolds are the quotidian dramas of being…

  • lost in the cosmos pt.2

    Yesterday I finished with Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy. Finished with, not finished. It was so easy to nod along with his argument. I get this way with particularly nerdy hard sci-fi—particularly Neal Stephenson books—, I am not so good at knowing when the science ends and the fiction begins and it can be so disappointing to…

  • cover her face

    If you dream like I dream you know that dreams are heavy, and they make you sensitive to other people’s dreams. It’s like walking around with a bellyful of strong magnets, and getting close to other’s success and failures pulls at you like an electromagnetic field. I want to be a person that has the…