Book review - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)

Oh god, why do I pick up books at the library because they've won a Pulitzer prize? This inevitably leads to me just "not getting it" and therefore probably being stupid or something. Anyway, doesn't matter. This book was ok. Good story, well written, learned a lot about the Dominican Republic that I didn't know. Wouldn't not recommend it, for sure. And when they invent some sort of literature prize for apocalypse seeking cyber-steam-punk gardeners with a massive chip on their shoulder, I'm sure I'll not only "get" the criteria but be invited to sit on the fucking judging panel.

Book review - What's left? (Nick Cohen)

This wasn't actually something I picked up myself, but then happened to wander through my field of vision when I was in the mood for it, so I read it. Politically I seem to have gone straight from apathy to disgust, which is a bit of a shame as I could have done with a nice morally soothing bit in the middle, but the details are and probably will continue to be messily unravelled all over other pages of this journal. FWIW I did pretty much the same hyperspace bypass with religion. I'm continually my own worst enemy when it comes to making myself feel better, it seems.

Anyhoo. This is basically a well-written and quite interesting argument against cultural relativism. It's backcover-noted as a scorching polemic. Firstly, I take exception to the scorching, but then I am a vicious sweary bitch at times; secondly, the whole polemic part of it left me feeling a bit like the author went too far down the road of devil's advocate and ended up shooting himself in the foot. Probably because he was juggling a bag of metaphors at the time :P Basically, I was left feeling really unsure about his whole anti-ant-war thing, but generally agreeing with him. Unsure is ok though - I like to be made to think.