wednesday reading
Apr. 16th, 2020 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thingexplainerthe quarantine is starting to get to me. also my laptop exploded when i tried to draft this the first time. doing it again to take my mind off of how awful everything is.
What I Just Finished Reading
The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang
Part 3 was as upsetting as I thought it would be. Overall, enjoyable but maybe too dark for me right now. I did think it interesting how the East asian references were done. Many were quite obvious: the Opium war, the entire Second Sino-Japanese War, little things like Baji turning into a pig or a character literally named Nezha. So I thought it was strange how not!China's top academy was called Sinegard, and not!Japan was called the Federation, which struck me as having oddly Western roots when the rest of the setting did not.
What I'm Reading Now
Ghost Work, by Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri
An academic book for the popular crowd about the ghost work that powers automation and AI. So far pretty thought provoking, especially with a chapter outlining the history of labor and marginalized labor throughout American history.
What I'm Reading Next
I have This is How You Lose the Time War and Gideon the Ninth off of hold, so as long as I can scrounge up some free time.... We'll see. I have to redo a month's worth of work in the next few days. Things are looking bad.
The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang
Part 3 was as upsetting as I thought it would be. Overall, enjoyable but maybe too dark for me right now. I did think it interesting how the East asian references were done. Many were quite obvious: the Opium war, the entire Second Sino-Japanese War, little things like Baji turning into a pig or a character literally named Nezha. So I thought it was strange how not!China's top academy was called Sinegard, and not!Japan was called the Federation, which struck me as having oddly Western roots when the rest of the setting did not.
What I'm Reading Now
Ghost Work, by Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri
An academic book for the popular crowd about the ghost work that powers automation and AI. So far pretty thought provoking, especially with a chapter outlining the history of labor and marginalized labor throughout American history.
What I'm Reading Next
I have This is How You Lose the Time War and Gideon the Ninth off of hold, so as long as I can scrounge up some free time.... We'll see. I have to redo a month's worth of work in the next few days. Things are looking bad.
