perfect_leaves's reviews
452 reviews

I would actually give the book 3.5 stars, but I don't believe in rounding up for things like this. Coates uses unremarkable vocabulary and old ideas, but the book is certainly worth the read. It's an in-depth look at the black male experience. He does not attempt to say that his story is the one story, quite the contrary- he gives examples of stories that are unlike his own. The novel it written in the form of an anecdote-filled letter to his son, and the ideas are woven together beautifully. Each section introduced a subject that is clearly different from but also clearly related to the last one. I'm not sure if I would read it again, but I definitely plan to pass it on (and my children will for sure read this).

This book would have been better off with the title "Why Men Have the Privilege They Do and Why the West Isn't the Best, With Some Notes on Women."

I desperately want to give Women in Shariah a lower rating, but despite my opposition to some of the views expressed in the book, the Islamic laws are well-sourced and well-explained. I take issue, however, with how much time Doi spends justifying men's rights. I understand that there are certain situations where it is impossible to examine the woman's role without exploring the man's role (such as in a discussion about marriage), but there are times--especially in the polygamy chapter--when Doi gets a bit preachy over men's rights. He also spends a significant portion of the book slandering "The West" by making violent, sweeping generalizations about the behavior of Europeans and Americans, exclusively for the purpose of elevating Islamic society above The West. In doing so, though, Doi makes two major blunders: he assumes that western society is not and cannot be Islamic society and he ignores the socioeconomic factors that play into some of the problems he discusses. He also does a wonderful job of covering up the deficiencies in so-called Islamic societies. Had he taken the time to explore them, he would have realized that these deficiencies are not a result of religion, culture, or even geographic location (though all of those things obviously factor in) but a result of human nature.

I also take issue with the structure of the book; the chapters on polygamy and zina are excessively long. The chapters on family planning and education are exceedingly short by comparison. There is, at least, a derth of evidence supporting the author's stance on the latter two chapters, while the former two are supported by opinion and evidence taken from outside the realm of Islam (Doi cites Newsweek more than once). Moreover, one of the final chapters, "Feminism," is unnecessary. While the feminism chapter provides decent insight into the feminist movement in a handful of Muslim (or formerly Muslim) countries, it is mostly unrelated to the topic at hand--Islamic law. I'm not saying discussions about feminism are unnecessary, quite the contrary, feminism and womyn's (I use the 'y' to include a wider range of gender expression) rights need to be a worldwide topic of dialogue, but Doi included it simply to add fuel to his "The West is the Worst" argument. At least the information can be used as a jumping point into feminism.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone, Muslim or otherwise. It's a solid primer, even if I bristle at some of the author's conclusions and word choices. If it weren't for those offenses, I would have given the book a much higher rating.

Looking through other users' reviews, it seems a lot of people are upset by the fact that the book's argument isn't new. While I agree that the argument-- our dependence on technology will eventually be our downfall (I'm simplifying and paraphrasing a bit)-- isn't new, I don't believe that should disqualify it from anyone's reading list. Echoing sentiments and reprising ideas is how authors, philosophers, and scholars get people to listen.

I would have liked to give this book five stars, but there are a few structural things that held me back. The book was about 100 pages too long; the pacing seriously slowed down in the last fifth. There were some good plot points, but the passages tying them together were fairly empty. Dave Eggers also used the words "obfuscation/obfuscate," "ebullient," and "untenable" entirely too often. All three were words I needed to find in a dictionary the first time they were introduced, which might have made them stick out a bit more to me, but I became more aware of the words each time Eggers used them. I also took issue with the characterization of Mae. She was a shallow, static character, who I found myself growing increasingly more irritated with. Her density served to underscore the brainwashing her society had undergone, but I believe that could have been dealt with much more subtlety.

Despite the book's drawbacks, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I found myself entirely absorbed in the book, fighting to myself to put it down and go to work. The book has no definitive chapter markings, but it is divided into sections by spacing and asterisks. The only major divisions are "books" which are several hundred pages long (with the exclusion of "Book III" which is only a few pages). The content made me uncomfortable, most likely because I recognized the behavior of the characters. Egger's novel was a mirror. It reflected the ways in which my generation interacts with technology and I found myself genuinely scared. I've been working on lessening my use of Facebook and overhauling my Twitter personality, but now I think carefully about any human-computer interaction I make. Does windows need to automatically gather usage information from my laptop? Do I want Instagram to know my location? Privacy is so incredibly important, but social media is slowly breaking down the walls. I pray that the walls never disappear completely.

One of my Interactive Media Arts professors assigned the first half of this book between our Photoshop and graphic composition units. I decided to finish it because I'm genuinely interested in learning more about my craft. While I can't say for sure whether I'll go into comics or animation or anything of that sort (I like coding, it's relaxing), the information in this book can be applied to most, if not all art forms, at least to some extent.


I gave the book three stars because I didn't particularly enjoy the book, but I didn't particularly dislike it.

Understanding Comics was a quick read, but it was unfortunately dry, given it's a comic book about comics. There were some attempts at humor but they did not outweigh the heavy technical bits. I say technical, but the language of the book wasn't very dense. The most important thing to remember when reading Understanding Comics is it's age. It's older than I am, meaning some of the information is terribly outdated. The chapters detailing the components of a comic and the elements that go into art in general are timeless, but some of the issues comics faced when McCloud wrote the book have been resolved or at least lessened by advanced in technology. Still, I'd recommend this book as a good primer, especially since it sights a number of other notable figures and books in the world of comics, but I wouldn't recommend this book to someone set on becoming a master comic artist. Understanding Comics is more of a "comics are awesome! comics are art!" piece than anything.

I finished this book as a matter of principle more than anything else. I was determined to finish it, so I did.

In my opinion, the book deserves a solid three stars. It wasn't despicable enough for me to put it down, but it certainly wasn't a page turner, and I disagreed with some of the rhetorical moves Herzog made (such as defining some terms while leaving the reader to guess others, and unnecessarily repeating information). Beyond that, the language is extremely colloquial (he even throws in some hard language here and there), which slightly undermines the credibility of the author.

The discussion, while well-balanced, was unsatisfying. He spent time arguing both sides of particular scenarios, without really coming to a conclusion. Of course, that might have been the point-- "these questions are fun to think about but too hard to answer." Insofar as answers, I gained nothing from this book; Herzog spent too much time on middle ground. I did, however, glean a few random facts about people and animals that may one day come in handy. The book also forced my to think more deeply about my own relationship with animals, though I was not swayed to make any changes.

All in all, the book is good for a once-through, but not much more than that.

I'm giving this book three stars because it was not much better than "ok." I wanted to like the book because Toni Morrison is a critically acclaimed author whom I've read before, but this novel just didn't cut it for me. The plot is shallow, the characters are rather flat and the word choice is basic. I will commend Morrison for altering the way I think about society. I started to hate Bride because she seemed to pitiful, then I realized I was hating her for things she couldn't (necessarily) control. I think I only went through this thought process because I was already contemplating the way society deals with mental health issues. The book has a few merits, but I wouldn't recommend it. Don't waste your time.

This book was incredibly hard to get through. The language was odd (possibly due to the translation, though I imagine it would also sound odd if I were reading it in the original Farsi, because the book is old) and it seemed a bit shallow. Ghazali kept writing "there is a verse in the Qur'an that says [x]" or "there is a hadith stating [x]" without giving references. Without references, it's significantly harder for me to go to the original source and make my own conclusions.

Most people who discuss this book talk about the "egregious" chapter on marriage, so I guess I'll add my two cents as well. I didn't hate the chapter, rather, I found it confusing. It seemed to simultaneously argue male ownership over their wives while calling the wives free agents. It told husbands to be firm, yet gentle. It went back and forth so many times I wasn't sure what to think. One main thing stuck out: Ghazali called a woman's reproductive ability a criterion for marriage. Granted, this might have been more important back when the book was written, but these days, such concepts are incredibly outdated, especially given how over crowded the world is. I agree that we should always seek to increase the Muslim population, but there are other ways to do that besides procreation. Denying barren women marriage is both unfair to the woman and an offense against Allah, who has willed that woman be barren.

For the most part, though, this book has good ideas. It talks about knowing oneself as a means of knowing God, and discusses the form and extent of knowing and loving God. I personally didn't like the book and wouldn't recommend it, but it's worth the read for the simple sake of being a Sufi classic.