What I Just Read

A third-wave feminist comes full circle and discovers that women have been had. She wants equality, but finds out to her dismay that "equality" turned out to mean being stuck in W-2 hell just like the men, trading all her time for consumerism and a long commute. And so she explores an entirely different solution, drops out of the rat race entirely, and comes to realize that "homemaking"--despite all the disparagement it got from second -wave feminists--can actually be an act of feminist identity. The author interviews a wide range of women and couples on similar paths, showing that we become healthier, wealthier and even happier the more we can master a wider and wider range of domestic skills. And we can still call ourselves feminists! Homemaking isn't making a comeback, it's been here for years. It's intriguing to follow along on this author's mental journey, as she and her interviewee subjects find they need substantial deprogramming. They learn t...

This book discusses the evolving semiotic landscape across the last few decades of the Soviet system. If you are at all interested in semiotics, linguistics and the iterative cultural reactions a society has in response to its government's various methods of control, you'll find the author's journey towards proving his thesis fascinating--actually quite a bit more interesting than the thesis itself. I also consider this book to be a useful exercise in metadiscourse, helping the reader better perceive and navigate the terrain on which ideological, cultural and even personal discussions can take place, and how our discourse can be externally directed and influenced. Once you understand the types of things that can "grow" on a given informational terrain, you begin to see how governments and regime-compliant media till the ideological soil and "plant" things--in the form of propaganda, opinions we are encouraged to hold or not hold, or even certain words an...