K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 23

Book Review: The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

I finished this book over a week ago, and I have tried to wrap my head around what to say about the book. I have been on a quest to understand what justice means. We have this innate sense of what is just and what is not. Amartya Sen writes in the book that justice is about feelings. (A statement on which he doesn’t elaborate.) Something would be easy to dismiss from justice as justice is rational, founding our societies. The thing is that it doesn’t seem to be. We have rationalized our systems....

Short Story: Mechs

The metallic banging and screeching made her want to scream. She kept her hands over her mouth and tried to calm down. The outside world thundered as the bombs rained against the metal, but they kept going. She knew humans couldn’t win. Not against those monsters. The hilt of her gun pressed against her rips. It had kept her alive thus far, but only against other humans and not against them. The first search party passed the house she was in, but the second would soon come. The mechanical war ma...

Book Review: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

This is a story of sorrow and perseverance. In a post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, Onyesonwu has to survive her birth and her future and set a new path for herself despite being a child of rape and persecution. She is the one who has been foretold to come and shake out the outdated views about race and women. Her golden skin and anger have set her apart for so long; now she is to find her destiny and learn to use the magic in her to free the people of genocide.

The book handles big subjects, wha...

Book Review: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté

If you have ever read or listened to Gabor Maté speak, then you know what this book is about. This is an elaborated version of Maté’s arguments about why and how trauma affects the individual and the society and how society interplays with trauma. Maté draws examples from studies done and from his own life, bringing the subject alive and relevant.

The book is divided with the understanding what trauma is, the personal and the illnesses it brings forth, the traumatic society and how it affects...

Short Story: The Choice

I never meant to die. What I mean, of course, is I would die like everyone else does, but to die at the exact time and date I did was never in my plans. I was to grow old. It was just that the life I had didn’t afford me hours longer than it did. I’m not sure how I died. Death is merciful for the last moments. But I can remember my life, and death doesn’t offer me forgiveness there. All my bad decisions follow me. What takes hold of me is the understanding of the restricted vision I have for lif...

Book Review: Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks

It would be lovely to think that we, the modern people, know how to structure our societies so that the unlucky can have a decent life, but we still police, punish, and profile the poor. We see their misfortune as their fault. We cut their benefits when they cash them at the liquor store, which is the only place in the city where you can cash your check. We collect a massive amount of data on them, which will haunt them for the rest of their lives so that we can help their situation, but only if...

Book Review: Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses by Jackie Higgins

It’s bizarre how differently we all (humans and animals) evolved to manage the information we gather from the world to survive. All animals stress different senses to hunting and navigating in their environment, like spiders and their eyes, which can recognize space and time, and octopuses, whose tentacles keep sucking shrimps even when they have been severed, but only when they can see them. Yet, even more bizarre is that we actually share so much with the animals, and the question about sentie...

Book Review: The Fisherman by John Langan

I went into this not knowing what I would read. I knew this was a horror story, or so it was marketed all over the internet. And in a way, it was. It’s not high-intensity horror, not to make you afraid to fall asleep, but cozy horror that isn’t actual horror but has the components to be one, pondering about life’s mysteries.

The book is narrated by Abe. He’s a widower who lost his wife to cancer. To cope with his sorrow, he takes up fishing and becomes obsessed with it. He asks his co-worker ...

Book Review: The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper

Karl Popper wrote this during the Second World War against totalitarianism and for the democratic process. The book is divided into two parts, covering the thoughts of known philosophers about how to organize the state, to whom power belongs, and why. He writes about Plato, Hegel, Aristoteles, and Marx, and in the second part, he discusses the building blocks of mind, religion, and rationality, drawing his conclusions. He defends rationality, equality, and institutions.

The book is highly cri...

Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Reviewing a mystery book is always tricky because you cannot reveal the ending, which usually justifies the book’s whole tone, as it was with this one. The book is about Ted, a possible serial killer, his cat named Olivia, and Dee, whose sister was murdered. All the points of views are narrated from a first-person perspective, even the cat’s, and little by little, they piece together what is going on in the book and what has happened to the Little Girl With Popsicle.

The enjoyment of the book...