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This is recommended reading for a philosophy seminar I am taking this semester. And this thing is a chore to read. It's repetitive, has a basic vocabulary that doesn't read like the author's natural voice, and is filled with pictures. These are all bizarre choices in my reading since the author claims the book's aim is, in part, to correct elitist views of why science denialism is gaining ground.

How is the book going? In the back of my mind, I find myself drafting out why I probably don't like Cormac McCarthy and definitely don't like this book in particular. But after three tries over a five year period, I am almost done. This book will not defeat me.

I can't deny the craft on display here--but it's craft without soul. There is just nothing to engage here and it drives me nuts.

"Mijito" is the first story in this collection I strongly dislike. It not only reads like writing--it reads like the kind of writing that comes out of creative writing MFA workshops. Spanish terms in italics and all. It's beneath Berlin.

One of the things I like about Berlin's writing style is it invites the reader to watch the mind of the writer at work much more openly than most writers would be willing to allow.

I'm increasingly a fan of how this collection has been edited. As you progress through it, it becomes clearer that the stories are in dialogue with each other in a number of different and interesting ways.

I greatly enjoy the work and the choices and presentation of the translation itself. However, as I do a slow, close reading of the text and read the commentary between selections, I'm increasingly coming to the view that they really stepped over the line in the editing department, especially considering it's a posthumous translation of a whole work by an established artist.

Berlin gets how class works in America on a level that very few of the writers I read and enjoy do.

I started a lot of books at once last year and only managed to finish a couple. My reading goal for this year was to finish those and then add one book at a time to my list. And that plan is sort of out the window at this point. On the upside, I'm reading way more regularly than I did in 2017 so far.

In what feels like another life, I was a philosophy student at Berkeley. I've been meaning to read these books for several years due to both the basic mission of the work and the fact that one of my former professors edited it.

And I am disappointed in myself that I put it off so long. The preface by Parfit is fucking hilarious. It makes me wish his fellowship at Oxford required him to teach.

I'm going to end up buying more of Berlin's books. This is a well-edited introductory collection and presents a writer with a style and sense of humor I sort of love.

This is the first time I've kind of struggled to stick with a book. For me, it took about 200 pages to "break in" to the story in Blood Meridian. And I'm not entirely sure if that's by design--McCarthy's generation likes to use language as a barrier as much as a means of communication--or a sign I just am not into the book.

Berlin's use of first-person is a bit strange at first. And I like that this collection of her work basically addresses that by having the bulk of the stories in the beginning be strictly first-person and then there is a story literally about the author's use of POV and why she writes that way before it starts incorporating more traditional third-person selections.

I seriously fell behind on my reading last year when they moved me to the swing shift. This year, the goal is to read more consistently and not let work get in the way. To that end, I'm going to be reading a short story or poetry collection in tandem with novels and non-fiction books to make incremental reading during breaks at work easier.

Berlin is one of the writers I'm glad I discovered recently. Her sentence construction makes the influence mid-to-late 20th century poetry had on her writing apparent and she's up there with Carson McCullers, Richard Yates, and Alice Munro when it comes to writing about poverty in North America in a way that rings true. I'm really enjoying the collection so far.

The gunpowder scene is among the best pieces of black humor I've read.

The book so far is full of good insights. The focus on the eerie timeliness of the often overlooked debt resistance aspect of Christ's ministry in the early going builds nicely toward the middle section's focus on Pauline doctrine.

Unfortunately, I'm also starting to see how Yoder's view of the Church's role in the world lends itself to his history of sexual abuse and harassment.

This is one of a few books by Latina authors given to me by a fellow writer/lover for Christmas a couple years ago.

So far, it's interesting in that the book takes a deep and immediate dive into the boundaries--or lack thereof--between food, the body, sex, and the mind and the Latin American understanding of them, which is somewhat alien to me.

This continues to be a rigorously engaging examination of Christ's teachings, their social and political implications, and the academic/theological approach to each as it stood in the late 20th century.

About halfway through the book, which was recommended to me by Alvin Plantinga and Stanley Hauerwas before they retired, I became aware of Yoder's misdeeds and their relation to his work here, which colors things.