Smashbomb

Brittney Cooper is a Black feminist theorist who specializes in the study of Black women’s intellectual history, Hip Hop generation feminism, and race and gender representation in popular culture.

Kudos

Samurai Archives Japanese History Podcast

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Podcast

Follow your hosts on a trek into Japanese history, from ancient Japan to the end of the Samurai and...

The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News

Stephen Wittek

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Book

The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News builds a case for the...

Andy Gill recommended Two Sevens Clash by Culture in Music (curated)

Two Sevens Clash by Culture

1978 | Reggae, Rock

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Album Favorite

"I saw Culture live. Dub reggae was one of the main things I would listen to, so seeing them live was great! We may have been on the bill with them or something, I can't remember. I think we might have done a big Rock Against Racism gig in Finsbury Park at the Rainbow. And Culture played at that. There was a band called… I know The Jam came and did a few numbers before Gang Of Four. It's all a vague. I think we took the rhythmic nature of the lyrics and the way they fitted around the music was very key, very influential."

Source

Kudos

TeamClearCoat - An Automotive Enthusiast Podcast by Two Car Nerds

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Podcast

Two friends podcasting about car culture and their own attempts at modifying, racing, and fixing...

Milezee Movies (2 KP) rated Ready Player One (2018) in Movies

May 21, 2019

The visuals are stunning (0 more)

The plot is thin and predictable (0 more)

Mediocre Spielberg

The movie feels thin, take away the references to video games and pop culture and you have a very poor movie for the talents of Spielberg. I love the visuals and the concept tho with the shining scene being the highlight here.

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Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Rebel of the Sands in Books

May 19, 2018 (Updated May 19, 2018)

Rebel of the Sands

Alwyn Hamilton | 2016 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)

8.0

(6 Ratings)

Book Rating

Amani is a girl in a country that doesn't value women, and treats them as useless property only good for breeding sons. The country is basically occupied by another country that the Sultan is "allied" with, but lets run roughshod over his people. She has her sights set on escaping her backwoods, dead-end town, and running to the capital city, where the aunt she's never met lives. All of that is derailed when she meets Jin at an underground shooting competition, and then later hides him from the armed forces hunting him.

The country is definitely middle-east inspired, but there's a lot of religion-bashing, and complaining about the culture oppressing women. It's the same problem I have with a lot of knight-and-castle era fantasy - just because historically in OUR world those time periods weren't kind to women, doesn't mean they have to be the same in fantasy. It's FANTASY! It can be anything you want! Break the tropes! It's a fine line to walk, taking the good parts of a culture without just cherry-picking and appropriating the culture, and who's judging what the good and bad parts are, anyway? So I understand it's difficult, but bashing the culture in a book inspired by their mythology is not quite cool, either. I feel like City of Brass, another fantasy book set in the middle east, hit a better middle ground of embracing the culture of the inspiration without bashing parts of it.

That gripe aside, I really enjoyed the world-building. I'm not quite sold on the characters yet - Amani is far too quick to abandon things she should fight for - but I'm interested enough to see how they progress in the next two books.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com