Reading Wednesday
Jun. 29th, 2022 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frandroidWhat have you finished reading?
Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria's Kurds by Thomas Schmidinger
Started that one a while ago and then just let it sit... It's a bit dated now but it's a great political and anthropological look at the nascent Rojava project. There is a lot that has been written about the Kurdish struggle in Turkey but fairly little in Syria. It's focused on the recent times so there isn't too much about the 20-odd years the PKK was based there, since I guess that wasn't internal politics per se, but the PKK's historical presence is definitely at the root of local organizing, whether affiliated with it now or not. There's a fair bit of history of various parties and factions, in the traditional Kurdish alphabet soup way. One thing that's great is that the final chapter of the book, which is actually over a third of the volume, is made up of tightly edited interviews with various players of all factions. There Schmidinger shines, challenging interviewees and making them reveal more of their mindset than the platitudes they thought they'd be regurgitating.
A Short History History of the Blockade by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
That was interesting, but I think I'm a little too cartesian to really dig it.
What are you currently reading?
Learn Ruby the Hard Way, which is actually way too easy, but was just at the right level to review on the beach.
What are you throwing out?
I went to put the Rojava book on one of my politics shelves and it was packed. I'm kind of running out of shelf space, so I took a look, took out Uncle Sam and Us by Stephen Clarkson and put it on the "get rid of this" pile in the dining room. His thesis was that international agreements like NAFTA, the WTO and others eroded national sovereignty and form a kind of supranational constitutional order. I don't think that subsequent history held that up as much as he'd proposed.
Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria's Kurds by Thomas Schmidinger
Started that one a while ago and then just let it sit... It's a bit dated now but it's a great political and anthropological look at the nascent Rojava project. There is a lot that has been written about the Kurdish struggle in Turkey but fairly little in Syria. It's focused on the recent times so there isn't too much about the 20-odd years the PKK was based there, since I guess that wasn't internal politics per se, but the PKK's historical presence is definitely at the root of local organizing, whether affiliated with it now or not. There's a fair bit of history of various parties and factions, in the traditional Kurdish alphabet soup way. One thing that's great is that the final chapter of the book, which is actually over a third of the volume, is made up of tightly edited interviews with various players of all factions. There Schmidinger shines, challenging interviewees and making them reveal more of their mindset than the platitudes they thought they'd be regurgitating.
A Short History History of the Blockade by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
That was interesting, but I think I'm a little too cartesian to really dig it.
What are you currently reading?
Learn Ruby the Hard Way, which is actually way too easy, but was just at the right level to review on the beach.
What are you throwing out?
I went to put the Rojava book on one of my politics shelves and it was packed. I'm kind of running out of shelf space, so I took a look, took out Uncle Sam and Us by Stephen Clarkson and put it on the "get rid of this" pile in the dining room. His thesis was that international agreements like NAFTA, the WTO and others eroded national sovereignty and form a kind of supranational constitutional order. I don't think that subsequent history held that up as much as he'd proposed.