Denys finch hatton and karen blixen5/31/2023 ![]() The problem (and of course the beauty) of biography as fiction is that the fiction writer deals in what a character feels and thinks, not merely what they do, or have done to them by others. Those questions are about the ethics of biography-as-fiction, particularly with those who may have still living children.īiography itself may of course be flawed, even ‘facts’ are subject to interpretation, but the general tenet of a good biography is not to assume the fictional mantle of identifying what the subject was thinking and feeling – unless of course they left evidence of this, or perhaps there was a third party who reported conversations and recollections (those these of course may be subjectively and selectively filtered by that third party) Paula McLain’’s well- written second book, Circling The Sun, a biography-as-fiction of Beryl Markham, aviator, horse-trainer, free woman, adventurer, leaves me with the same kind of uneasy questions as did her first novel, The Paris Wife, another biography-as-fiction about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. ![]()
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For the Common Good by Herman E. Daly5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() Instead, economic growth, in its contemporary meaning, is almost a regulative ideal, having nothing to do with the possibilities and limits dictated by the materiality on which it depends. This was evident in Daly's eyes thanks to the teachings of Georgescu-Roegen, who highlighted how the second law of thermodynamics (i.e., entropy) has to be applied to economic processes too, since they take place within the biophysical world. ![]() Since he was a student, Daly understood the absurdity of the paradigm of growth, which could be considered realistic only by neglecting the fact that any growth process must have a limit, defined by the availability of resources and their regenerative rate. An American economist, pupil of the Romanian mathematician and economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, during his long career as a professor, Daly taught hundreds of economics students not to passively accept the dictates of neoliberal economic theory, but to recognize its historical roots and to critically analyze its implications in the strictly economic sphere as well as on society and the environment. Among the most notable examples of this critical and attentive approach to the analysis of reality is undoubtedly Herman Daly, one of the first and most relevant advocates of ecological economics, who passed away on 28 October 2022 at the age of 84. ![]() Christmas at cold comfort farm book5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() I did enjoy reading this one again – big relief – finding it gently funny and utterly charming. My month of re-reading therefore has given me the perfect excuse to read it again. ![]() Having read Christmas at Cold Comfort farm in December – short stories by Stella Gibbons, and then Starlight a few months later – this was a book that had found itself back on my TBR. I remembered gulping down Cold Comfort Farm many years ago (early 90’s maybe) and thinking it hilarious. One of the dangers of re-reading something that you loved the first time around is that it doesn’t live up to the memory. The second book in my month of re-reading. ![]() Where dreams descend5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() The one good thing about being left alone in the House. She had long stopped trying to hide it, simply left for her greenhouse as they did away with the evidence. Her maids never said anything when they discovered the scorched bed. The fabric singed beneath her fingertips, still smoking. Kallia jolted awake, clawing at her blankets. ![]() The shadow easily pursued, until the dark consumed her. She reached within herself to summon fire and lightning and whatever unholy element she could to ward off the beast. It rushed from her lips without sound, useless. Its looming shadow cast over her, coming for her. ![]() Her shallow breaths cut like glass as she crawled desperately back on her hands, away from something rising above her. Fell to fingers digging into rocky damp soil. The nightmare had returned, in flashes thick as flesh. A PRINCESS WITH CLAWS WHO WISHES FOR WINGS ![]() |