Take me away to Neverland

Karl Marx's Interpretation of History by M.M. Bober

One of the things I've noticed about the books I've been reading in my library's history section, especially the older ones, is that they generally do not have the pseudo-impartial, no-usage-of-the-first-person style I've come to expect in academic writing from wikipedia and high school English class. Instead, the authors will talk about the time period they currently live in, their opinions on other historians and philosophers and philosophies-of-history, and their personal opinions on the long dead people they talk about, which tends to make me feel less like I am reading Absolute Facts and more like I'm personally having... not a conversation with these authors, since I can't exactly comment back, but it's more akin to sitting down with them after dinner somewhere and politely listening while they infodump at me about their research. It's a bit exasperating sometimes and amusing at others, but I think I actually appreciate it in some ways over more impersonal academic writing. And I've gotten into the habit of googling the names of these authors, trying to find information on them which helps put their writing into further context.

Which brings me to this book, which was a bit of a departure from that- the first 3/4 or so of the book were mostly an impartial summarizing of many, many, many aspects of Marxism, though with the occasional bit of "this theory is flawed because X" criticism or "Marx and Engels were very vague on this point"- but it isn't until the last quarter of the book that Bober sits down and starts chewing out all the various flaws he sees in Marxist theory, particularly Marx's, er, interpretation of history.

About Bober himself I was able to find out about Bober himself is that 1) His full name is Mandell Morton Bober, 2) He is/was a scholar at Harvard University, 3) He seems to identify as a conservative, 4) He states that after the publication of the first edition of the book he received a lot of "abusive letters" from Marxists, and seems to consider Marxists overly worshipful of the guy, and 5) The second edition (the one I read) was probably being written during the mid 1940s, while the Great Depression was still weighing on people's minds. Meanwhile, I can't find any information on him through google beyond that he wrote this book, which was a bit of a surprise after being able to find wikipedia articles on authors I thought would be too obscure for people to bother with.

Anyway, this probably does not tell you much about the book itself, so I'm just going to copy+paste what I wrote on goodreads about it:


Anyway, in the last volume Emily and the gang had found the way to Cielis, where they were planning on meeting up with the Council of Cielis, a group of  Old And Important stonekeepers, to ask for their help in taking down the Elf King. They met a Council-hopeful named Max Griffin, a stonekeeper who I think is around Emily's age- but god knows, since I've missed things like Trellis being a Literal Teenager before- and a couple of mostly unimportant guards. Everyone got on a ship and they were headed for Cielis. This volume opens up with them on the ship, and Emily having a dream conversation with her stone, just before they arrive at Cielis.

Upon arrival, Luger and Trellis are dumped into a prison, the Hayes family brought to Council headquarters where Max and the others are insistent that Emily will undergo a dangerous trial to try and join the Council, and the furry brigade are told to just enjoy Cielis, whatever. Unfortunately, not only are the Elven duo imprisoned, but Emily- and Leon/Enzo/Enzo's Pal I Forgot The Name Of- discover that something is deeply, deeply wrong with the city of Cielis and the Council. Meanwhile, Miskit and Cogsley are rescued from a wyvern's nest by a stonekeeper named Vigo, who turns out to have a connection with their creator, Silas.

And here I'm going to copy paste my rambling/speculations from my tumblr.


The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

First book in a series called The Raven Chronicles which I decided to pick up after seeing a tumblr post from the author (spoilers spoilers spoilers) about Which Disney Characters The Five Main Characters Would Be and decided I was intrigued. 

The story starts with a sixteen year old teenage girl called Blue Sargent, who lives in a house with her psychic aunt and various other psychic ladies who are like aunts and cousins and friends of her mother. Blue herself is not psychic but has the weird ability to amplify other people's psychic powers and is pretty much a giant rechargeable battery for psychic energy stuff. Blue also has the slight issue where every psychic she's met ever has pretty much taken one look at her and gone "You're going to kill your true love when you kiss him." Blue plans on dealing with that by not falling in love, ever.

Unfortunately for Blue's best laid plans, she's off on Saint Mark's Eve helping her Aunt Neeve do Psychic Errands by figuring out who's going to die soon based on who Aunt Neeve spots on the Corpse Road, when she encounters the ghost of a boy called Gansey. Neeve concludes if Blue is seeing him then that means she's destined to either A) Kill him or B) He's her true love, and in any case since he's there he's probably going to be dead within a year.

Gansey, as it turns out, is a boy at the local Rich Boy's Private School known as Aglionby, whose primary passion in life is the paranormal and tracking down a mythical Welsh king known as Glendower, who he's pretty sure is somewhere in the area. Gansey is accompanied by his friends Adam, overworked scholarship student with intense baggage thanks to his shitty abusive family and his need To Prove Himself, Ronan, walking attitude problem with Dead Dad Issues, and Noah, who is very quiet.

Gansey's quest to find Glendower and research into the local ley lines leads to him eventually crossing paths with Blue and her family- okay, his quest and the fact that he and his posse sometimes eat at the diner where Blue works- and things steadily become more and more worrying. Especially because a teacher at Aglionby- the unfortunately named Barrington Whelk- is also very interested in the ley line, and he happens to be a giant pissbaby.

Entertaining, and made me a bit nostalgic in an odd way since the random paranormal elements and things like the heroine whose specialness derives from her lack of specialness reminds me of the sort of stuff I tried writing as a teenager. (Which... probably sounds like an insult but was not intended as such. The writer is good at what she does.)

( Spoilers. )

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Psuedo-fairytale kid's novel about an unusual mouse who lives in a castle and prefers reading books to chewing them, a dungeon rat with a fascination for light, a servant girl with a history of being abused, and a beloved princess named Pea. The desires and backstories of the characters all entwine, leading them through the opposing worlds of the glittering castle and the horrific maze-like dungeon below. The narration (which frequently features the author directly addressing the leader) will probably seem either cloying or charming depending on who you ask. I mostly enjoyed it though, although I was kind of "Hmmm" about the way the story treated Mig and Roscuro.

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

Autobiographical comic book detailing Raina Telgemeier's four years at the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. I think this used to be a webcomic before Raina Telgemeier got a publishing deal?

The story starts with her horrifically damaging her front teeth and the next four years deal with her basically having to have her entire jaw reconstructed in procedure after procedure, while dealing with the usual tweenage woes of body image issues, crushes, and toxic friendships. Also a bit of a "period piece" as we get to read about Raina seeing The Little Mermaid in theaters for the first time and living through the 1989 San Francisco Earthquake. Pretty cute overall. The art style reminds me vaguely of the For Better or For Worse comics.



Mary Coin by Marisa Silver

Novel based on Dorothea Lange's famous "Migrant Mother" photograph. In this story Dorothea Lange is replaced by a woman named Vera Dare, and Florence Owen Thompson becomes Mary Coin, while the author adds in a third character, Walker Dodge, a modern day historian and university professor who has a connection to the photograph that he's unaware of. The author chronicles the lives of these three characters, popping back and forth in time to slowly reveal more information as the three characters deal with their own issues: Vera Dare tries to figure out her career while dealing with her husband and sons, Mary Coin struggles with keeping herself and her children alive during extreme poverty, and Walker Dodge deals with the death of his distant father and the issues of his troubled teenage daughter. Not a very action packed book, as you might imagine, though I liked the family drama elements.

The Stonekeeper's Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

Second book in the Amulet series. (My thoughts on the first book here.) It's a bit less frightening, for lack of a better word, than the first book: Instead of the grey and blue forests full of toothy, slimy monsters from the previous installment this book starts off in a warmer fantasy city populated by anthropomorphic animals, the protagonists gain new allies, learn more about what exactly they're doing and what the rules of this new world are, are able to fight their enemies instead of just flee from them, ( Spoilers. )Still plenty of danger along the way though, and it's a very action packed book. I'm intrigued as to where the story's going next.

( More spoilers/speculation. )