decline
sastyk | August 4, 2011I didn't expect to like _Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother_ - in fact, I expected to hate it. Instead, I found it funny, charming and moving - and give Amy Chua a lot of credit for having the ovaries to expose herself. I didn't just like the book, I loved it.
If that seems strange, give me a minute to explain before you assume I'm secretly Mommy Dearest ;-). I should note that I am not a Tiger parent, although Chua and I perhaps have more in common than you might think. You see, like Chua, I don't necessarily think that that assumptions of western parenting are always right. Like Chua, I…
sastyk | January 27, 2010A while back I ran a post-apocalyptic novel book club on ye olde blogge, which was a lot of fun. It allowed us to get our doom on at low stakes. Now I'm not, strictly speaking, a hard doomer. I suspect most of the likely scenarios involve gradual declines in resource availability and increasing poverty. In some ways this is more depressing than the grand and more dramatic scenarios that writers love to create - you can win against the zombies, but it is tough to win against the enemy "crushing national debt and gradually increasing world temperatures."
I think most apocalyptic novels are…