Hi everyone and welcome back to Foibles and Fancies. Today I'm here to talk to
you about the books that I would like to read for Non-fiction November in 2018.
Huge thanks Olive for organizing this. I will put a link to her channel down
below. All four of the books I intend to read this month are on audiobook for me,
so I'll also make a note of how long each audiobook is. The first one I am
really excited about. It's called Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne.
This audiobook is 10 hours and 17 minutes. I'm constantly in search for
media that might help me articulate the blanket rage I sometimes feel for the
patriarchy. I have high hopes for Kate Manne's book, which was published in
December 2017. Kate is an assistant professor at the Sage School of
Philosophy at Cornell, and she focuses on moral philosophy, feminist philosophy and
social philosophy. She refers to Down Girl as a "crossover" book, which is meant
for both academics and non-academics of philosophy. This really appeals to me
because I can't see myself reading purely academic texts on feminist
philosophy, but I do like the idea of reading someone's thoughts who actually
thinks for a living, and is well educated in thinking, and can articulate these
"thoughts" in her own book. Her book draws on contemporary examples of misogyny such
as Trump's rise to president, Julia Gillard's Misogyny Speech, which I'll
make a link to down below, as well and the general tendency society seems to
have towards what she calls "himpathy", which is excusing men from moral and
physical crimes against women. Or simply, the unacceptable adage that boys will be
boys. The next one I'm excited to read is called The Water will Come: Rising Seas,
Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.
This one comes in at 9 hours and 2 minutes and is written by journalist
Jeff Goodell. I haven't thought about climate change, global warming and the
melting of the ice caps in a while and I'm feeling woefully under-educated in
this field. So, it's about time that I revisit this area. Throughout Earth's
history, sea levels have risen and fallen. It has gone from Icehouse Earth to
Greenhouse Earth. Sometimes these shifts have been slow and other times it's
been relatively rapid. The sudden change that we are currently experiencing is
what scientists are quite worried about,
because historically rapid global warming has almost always been
associated with the destruction of life. Which to me then begs the question: what
are we going to do about it? How will the world as we know it change in the years
to come? And how, or will, human society adapt to this change? It will be
interesting to see how a journalist Jeff Goodell addresses this. I figure I can't
go wrong with this read. If it's amazing, then, fabulous! And if it's not that good,
then at least I'll come away with a little bit more awareness on what's
going on in the world and the climate right now. It never hurts for one more
person to care about the environment in this world where very few people do.
Third on my list is Playing Dead: a Journey through the World of Death Fraud.
This one is only 7 hours and 55 minutes and I learned a new word -- PSEUDOCIDE -- which
is the act of faking one's own death. The author, Elizabeth Greenwood, was drowning
in student debt and was contemplating faking her own death. But, instead of
actually doing it, she went about researching how someone would go about
faking their own death, and this book essentially chronicles those findings. I
don't know if I'll like it, but it seems like an interesting topic to explore. My
final pick for Non-fiction November is one that I've heard a lot about recently.
It has had some great reviews and it is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a
Silicon Valley Startup. This audiobook is 11 hours and 38 minutes. It's written by
journalist John Carreyrou, who followed the rise and fall of startup Theranos.
Theranos was a biotech startup that claimed to have developed miniature
devices to test blood using only small samples of it, and also automating this.
So, it was a breakthrough for the scientific and medical world. It was
touted as the next unicorn startup. Most of us now know that Theranos was a
complete fraud, but the story of its founder is quite compelling and
interesting and she had a narrative that she told that everyone seemed to believe.
So it'll be really interesting to see how John Carreyrou unpacks all of this and how it
happened. How her company got to be so highly sought after and its massive
demise. So there you have it! Four non-fiction books that
I think I can really sink my teeth into this month and I'm looking forward to
discussing my thoughts on them at the end of the month. If you like this video,
go on and give it a thumbs up and also consider subscribing. Thanks very much
and have a great one. Bye!
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