http://www.goodreads.com/review/list_rss/58806 en-US Tue, 15 May 2007 08:28:23 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 1222690 Tue, 15 May 2007 08:28:23 -0700
So, how could Iranian middle class intellectuals and professionals in the late 1970s have been so different than me and my family? For the young, under the Shah, there was a strong and progressive, very Western group of middle class Iranians. Just like me and mine.

So, how could these people have allowed the "revolution" in Iran to become a "devolution?" The question bothered me all the time. Under the Raygun (Reagan)administration I entertained the possibility that I would have to emigrate for political reasons (ha, and let's just say the thought has cropped up again recently.)

How was America different from Iran -- no, that is too broad a way to state it. The question on my mind was how does your country become totalitarian, authoritarian, repressive -- and you still live there and didn't resist?

Read Persepolis to find out. Yes, it is a girl's growing up story. Yes, it isn't really about the parents. But when you read it, you can see that great evil can just sneak its way into your life because it comes just a babystep at a time.

No, the Iranian intellectuals and professionals were not very different from their American counterparts. There is a lesson there, and I hope we learn it before it is too late for us.]]>
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 01/04
date added: 05/15/07
shelves: educateyourself, graphicnovels
review:
I am as middle class (we call it affectionately, the "poor rich" where I live.) I am intellectual. I am like Richard Rodriquez and bellhooks because education took me away from my roots, but gave me who I am today.

So, how could Iranian middle class intellectuals and professionals in the late 1970s have been so different than me and my family? For the young, under the Shah, there was a strong and progressive, very Western group of middle class Iranians. Just like me and mine.

So, how could these people have allowed the "revolution" in Iran to become a "devolution?" The question bothered me all the time. Under the Raygun (Reagan)administration I entertained the possibility that I would have to emigrate for political reasons (ha, and let's just say the thought has cropped up again recently.)

How was America different from Iran -- no, that is too broad a way to state it. The question on my mind was how does your country become totalitarian, authoritarian, repressive -- and you still live there and didn't resist?

Read Persepolis to find out. Yes, it is a girl's growing up story. Yes, it isn't really about the parents. But when you read it, you can see that great evil can just sneak its way into your life because it comes just a babystep at a time.

No, the Iranian intellectuals and professionals were not very different from their American counterparts. There is a lesson there, and I hope we learn it before it is too late for us.
]]> 1054211 Sat, 05 May 2007 18:27:51 -0700
author: Alan Moore
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 05/05/07
shelves:
review:
I liked Swamp Thing when I was a kid. I liked it even better when I read it again as an adult. Revenge of the green matter.
]]> 1054199 Sat, 05 May 2007 18:26:46 -0700
author: Alan Moore
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 05/05/07
shelves:
review:
This one is a keeper. When you hit the first blush of middle age and get all weepy over what could have been, the Watchman puts it in perspective. Superheroes aging. And not always the way we dreamed they would. Not too different from us, the plebs.
]]> 1054156 Sat, 05 May 2007 18:24:46 -0700
author: Alan Moore
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 01/04
date added: 05/05/07
shelves: graphicnovels
review:
It is one of the best looks at the dark side of Margaret Thatcher's years in power, mirrored by the Reagun years in the US that has been written in sci-fi
]]> 833846 Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:51:31 -0700
He, of all people, had us reading McLuhan. At the time, McLuhan had to pay a typesetter extra just to print this book for him because it had pages where the type bled onto images and some pages were printed with upside-down text.

It took me about 15 years to get everything McLuhan was saying. This is primarily because he was a visionary and he could see outlines of what the future would resolve into. McLuhan read everything and was a scholar of the first order. His leap from economic theory about the use and abuse of natural resources to thinking about media "tubes" (the media themselves--broadcast, print, etc.)as natural resources is profound.

He never could bring himself to say that through TV and mass media, humanity has become an author of its own evolution because he was so devoutly Catholic, but that it the direction he was going.

If you can find movie clips of McLuhan on the 'Net, check them out. He was funny, smart and sometimes it seems like he is channeling our connected world today, but living in the 50s and 60s.

"Looking at the future through a rear-view mirror" is one of the conditions he describes. How many industries today (radio, record, television, newspapers) are run by leaders who are doing just that?

Just like my goldfish, who don't realize they are swimming in the pond, we don't realize we are completely bathed in a media pond that frames and conditions much of what we think and do.

If you think I am kidding, figure out what medium/media you are most involved with and stop using it for a couple of weeks to see what you are without it.]]>
author: Marshall McLuhan
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 10/70
date added: 04/22/07
shelves: classics-re-readfrequently
review:
In 1970, I was just an undergrad and about 17 or 18 years old. My teacher was this old, chain-smoking guy who looked like someone's grandpa. He was Harry Skornia, one of [Ed] "Murrow's boys" and a media giant. After WWII, it was his job to set up radio again in Germany.

He, of all people, had us reading McLuhan. At the time, McLuhan had to pay a typesetter extra just to print this book for him because it had pages where the type bled onto images and some pages were printed with upside-down text.

It took me about 15 years to get everything McLuhan was saying. This is primarily because he was a visionary and he could see outlines of what the future would resolve into. McLuhan read everything and was a scholar of the first order. His leap from economic theory about the use and abuse of natural resources to thinking about media "tubes" (the media themselves--broadcast, print, etc.)as natural resources is profound.

He never could bring himself to say that through TV and mass media, humanity has become an author of its own evolution because he was so devoutly Catholic, but that it the direction he was going.

If you can find movie clips of McLuhan on the 'Net, check them out. He was funny, smart and sometimes it seems like he is channeling our connected world today, but living in the 50s and 60s.

"Looking at the future through a rear-view mirror" is one of the conditions he describes. How many industries today (radio, record, television, newspapers) are run by leaders who are doing just that?

Just like my goldfish, who don't realize they are swimming in the pond, we don't realize we are completely bathed in a media pond that frames and conditions much of what we think and do.

If you think I am kidding, figure out what medium/media you are most involved with and stop using it for a couple of weeks to see what you are without it.
]]> 833821 Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:34:09 -0700
This book is about the images and not so much its text.]]>
author: Preston Bailey
name: drbarb
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 04/22/07
shelves: cocktailtablebooks
review:
This is not the usual kind of book I read, however, I leave it out on the cocktail table and almost everyone who sees it picks it up and looks through it.

This book is about the images and not so much its text.
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