Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Cain]

Except I don't have ADHD, and so can actually finish a book if I'm interested in it, without years going by.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I've been training myself to read the way I did when I was like 13. These days there's an incredibly annoying nagging sense that I ought to be doing something else with my time, and it takes some mental discipline to shut it up and actually enjoy the darn book.

[Cain]

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzl

From the blurb:

Revolution was in the air in the 1960s. Civil rights protests demanded attention on the airwaves and in the streets. Anger gave way to revolt, and revolt provided the elusive promise of actual change. But a very differentcivil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. Here, far from the national glare of sit-ins, boycotts, or riots, African American men suddenly appeared in the asylum's previously white, locked wards.Some of these men came to the attention of the state after participating in civil rights demonstrations, while others were sent by the military, the penal system, or the police. Though many of the men hailed from Detroit, ambulances and paddy wagons brought men from other urban centers as well. Once at Ionia, psychiatrists classified these men under a single diagnosis: schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents—from scientific literature, to music lyrics, to riveting, tragic hospital charts—Metzl shows how associations betweenschizophrenia and blackness emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in ways that directly reflected national political events. As he demonstrates, far from resulting from the racist intentions of individual doctors or the symptoms of specific patients, racializedschizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts, actions, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane. Ultimately, The Protest Psychosis provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions, even during our current, seemingly post-race era of genetics, pharmacokinetics, and brain scans.

[Brotep]

^Damn, sounds like quite a read.


Picked up some more short stories by Neil Gaiman, and I've just started Lakoff & Johnson's Metaphors We Live By

[Freeky]

The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett. Again.

[Jasper]

The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett. Again.

That's a good one, but, as with 1/3 of his books since I read them all in a two month period, I've forgotten most of what happens.

[Freeky]

You should read it again, in that case.

[Juana]

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzl

From the blurb:

Revolution was in the air in the 1960s. Civil rights protests demanded attention on the airwaves and in the streets. Anger gave way to revolt, and revolt provided the elusive promise of actual change. But a very differentcivil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. Here, far from the national glare of sit-ins, boycotts, or riots, African American men suddenly appeared in the asylum's previously white, locked wards.Some of these men came to the attention of the state after participating in civil rights demonstrations, while others were sent by the military, the penal system, or the police. Though many of the men hailed from Detroit, ambulances and paddy wagons brought men from other urban centers as well. Once at Ionia, psychiatrists classified these men under a single diagnosis: schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents—from scientific literature, to music lyrics, to riveting, tragic hospital charts—Metzl shows how associations betweenschizophrenia and blackness emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in ways that directly reflected national political events. As he demonstrates, far from resulting from the racist intentions of individual doctors or the symptoms of specific patients, racializedschizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts, actions, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane. Ultimately, The Protest Psychosis provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions, even during our current, seemingly post-race era of genetics, pharmacokinetics, and brain scans.

I need to get my hands on this book.

Unseen Academicals--Terry Pratchett
and
Swords and Deviltry--Fritz Leiber

[Cain]

Shavenwolf and Hover Cat

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/history_military/43654dfgsdfdsf.html

[Cain]

Finally onto the Dust of Dreams, the most recently published (and second last) book in the Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series.  Once I finish this, I can get back to srs bizness reading.  Only 830 A4-sized pages to go...

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I am reading The Sacred Art Of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre. I just finished Boiling A Frog. The blurb on The Sacred Art Of Stealing mentions a dadaist bank robbery, so I am looking forward to this.

[Jasper]

You should read it again, in that case.

I actually might, but I gave away/got rid of all my fiction that wasn't particularly good sci-fi.

[Freeky]

For shame, Sig!

[Brotep]

Zoomed through the latest Dresden Files, and Robert Greene's Art of Seduction--again

[Jasper]

For shame, Sig!

Oops, that post belonged in the shame thread. 

I was, in my defense, not collecting books seriously at the time.  I've made up for it since then by inheriting a few different smart people's libraries.