Books are never far from a scholar’s hands, just as songs are never far from a singer’s lips. – Chinese proverb
Though I was a voracious reader from the age of four until my early thirties, I’m just so very busy these days writing that I don’t have nearly as much time for reading. More accurately, I don’t have as much time for book reading; I still spend plenty of time reading articles online. If I didn’t set aside about 15 minutes in the morning and a similar amount at bedtime, however, I probably wouldn’t get to read books at all any more (which is why it takes me so long to get through the rather large stack of books generously sent by my readers). These four books have something else in common: they were all written by people who read this blog (at least from time to time). Three of these are my most recent reads, but I read Sex at the Margins about a year and a half ago and just recently realized that I had neglected to review it.
Paying For It: A Comic-strip Memoir About Being a John by Chester Brown
By the time I go to bed in the evening I am often so exhausted that I fall asleep over whatever book I’m trying to read, even if it’s something I like a lot (such as reprints of Silver Age sci-fi comics). But I had no such problem with Paying for It; I repeatedly found myself saying, “I’ll just read for a few more minutes,” and finished it in a very few days. If I had to sum up this book in a single word, it would be “sincere”; it’s an honest and frank illustrated journal of Brown’s experiences with Toronto hookers, starting with how he came to prefer paying for sex over the serial monogamy he had (like most people) previously practiced, and ending with his becoming a long-term regular of one exceptional lady and planning the book. Along the way he shares his thoughts, impressions, joys, concerns and misgivings, and also his conversations with friends who had internalized prohibitionist propaganda; he depicts several arguments, discussions and debates with them in comic form, and also includes 23 appendices in which he effectively refutes prohibitionist arguments. For me, the most fascinating aspect of the book was its revelation of the author’s internal monologue, which is presented so matter-of-factly that its honesty is irrefutable; it’s one thing for a client to say “this is what I was thinking” when speaking directly to me, and another thing entirely for him to share with the world even those thoughts which could be perceived as unflattering to himself. Though die-hard neofeminists will continue to believe that all clients are evil exploiters no matter what evidence is presented to them, I believe this book is powerful enough to sway many of those who are “on the fence” about the subject, and I really hope it gets the extensive exposure and brisk sales it deserves.
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry by Laura Agustín
The term “groundbreaking” is regularly and carelessly thrown about in reviews on books which cover controversial topics, but in this case it is wholly accurate and entirely deserved. Regular readers are already familiar with Dr. Agustín, whose blog The Naked Anthropologist I have often quoted and linked, but what you may not realize is how much those of us fighting “sex trafficking” hysteria owe to her and especially to this book. She started studying the intersection of migration and sex work back when “human trafficking” still meant the smuggling of undocumented immigrants across international borders, and hers was among the first voices raised in protest when the moral panic around it went into high gear in 2004. Sex at the Margins doesn’t only challenge the mythology of millions of passive, helpless, exploited victims, but also clearly and thoroughly explains what is really going on with most of those labeled “trafficked”, how their actions are viewed through a sexist, racist and colonialist prism to interpret them as some kind of global disaster, and why it’s so important to listen to what migrants (in sex work or otherwise) have to say about their own experiences rather than forcing an ignorant, biased interpretation onto them. Furthermore, the book has not only helped many people (including me) to understand these phenomena, but has also given us the language to talk about it: for example, the term “rescue industry”, now a common one in sex worker rights discourse, was coined by Dr. Agustín and first widely disseminated herein.
The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong by Brooke Magnanti
Dr. Magnanti, as the big yellow sticker the publisher has pasted on the cover reminds us, had already published a number of books as Belle de Jour, the stage name she used as a London call girl while working on her PhD in Forensic Pathology. But this is her first written specifically as a scientist and statistician, and I hope it’s at least as successful as her previous books because she thoroughly and effectively debunks nine myths about sex (including “sex addiction”, “premature sexualization”, “negative secondary effects” and myths about porn, prostitution and “sex trafficking”). She does this not only by presenting facts and studies which disprove the myths, but also by demonstrating how the entire approach of those who create, define and spread them is designed not to discover the truth, but rather to promote a predetermined agenda by picking and choosing only those facts, pseudo-facts and opinions which can be made to fit the desired pattern and excluding the rest. Her writing is sharp, clever and compelling, and she has a gift for coining useful terms like “constellation maker” (one who chooses which data points to include in the desired “picture” just as the ancients chose which stars made up a constellation). Though she is generally more polite to the prohibitionists than I tend to be, let that not be mistaken for her being soft on them: she convincingly demonstrates that those who manufacture and define sex myths are fully aware of what they’re doing, and in fact her last chapter refutes the claim that prohibitionists are largely well-meaning, if deluded. The book has not yet been released in the United States, but is available from a number of British vendors who offer international shipping for a competitive price.
You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos by Robert Arthur
Rob Arthur defines a taboo as “a topic that a culture prevents its people from discussing freely,” and this book is based around the philosophy that “taboos are a burden on society…[and] hinder progress toward greater happiness.” Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows the truth of that statement: if it weren’t for the general ignorance about sex in general and sex work in particular, an ignorance maintained by sexual taboos, no reasonable person would accept laws against consensual sexual behavior and the ridiculous lies about the harms which supposedly result from sexuality would be widely recognized as the ravings of miserable prudes. Arthur also discusses taboos against drugs and bodily wastes, though the latter doesn’t get nearly as much space as sex and drugs because there is no vast, expensive and oppressive “War on Poo” whose chief result is human misery. In a sense, You Will Die is two books in one; it is written in a pleasant, conversational style and presents fascinating, often obscure facts in such a way as to make it a great pleasure read, but is both exhaustively researched and so extensively footnoted that it will make an important addition to my reference library. Note: I read this book in the third edition, but the link and picture are for the fourth, which will be available in a few weeks; Rob consulted me while updating the section on prostitution and sent me a copy as a thank-you.
I have just started Dr Magnanti’s book, The Sex Myth. So far it is fascinating. The truth does not only debunk the myths but is interesting in its own right. Highly recommended.
A really good one I just finished is “Too Much Magic” by James Howard Kunstler. It’s about how we want to beleive that technology will save us from our current problems, when that’s a really iffy position.
The main problem with technology is that it is used by human beings, a creature which, unlike a carefully designed and tested-by-use machine, isn’t very reliable.
Aladdin’s lamp couldn’t save us from anything if we refuse to rub it.
Yes, and Aladdin’s lamp was also used by the evil sorcerer to royally screw Aladdin; only a different instrumentality (the ring) saved him. Technology is neither a panacea nor a bringer of doom; it is a morally-neutral tool. The Millennium and the Armageddon alike can only be created by humans, not by technology.
I’ll agree, but with a caveat: the Millennium and the Armageddon alike can only be created by humans using technology. Neither Aladdin nor the sorcerer would have amounted to much without that lamp (and ring).
Tools are to be used; the problem is that, for good or ill, people prefer to credit the tool rather than the user.
You and twwells both make a good point, and I agree. I think the same mistake is made when people say things like “technology won’t save us” or, for that matter, “technology will destroy us.” Well no, it won’t. But people using the best tools can save us.
And, of course, people using the best tools can also doom us. But here’s the thing: failing to use the tools will doom us as surely as using them foolishly or maliciously.
Absolutely.
I guess I’ll have to join the agreefest. 🙂
Trouble is, I don’t see anyone doing anything that will resolve the real problems. That, however, is a very different discussion….
Us programmers say that no program is foolproof because fools are so ingenious. The same applies to any technology….
Will probably be reading The Sex Myth at some point over the winter. I may have to add You Will Die as well, since in the last year or so I’ve witnessed first hand otherwise intelligent people have their thinking stopped in its tracks on taboo subjects.
Blah!
None of these books are available on Kindle.
Before buying from Amazon, one might want to read: http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
I wasn’t planning to ever buy a Kindle, but when I found out due to the 1984 debacle that they could literally steal books from buyers, that became an absolute certainty. I don’t rent or lease anything; I buy it, and then it belongs to me to do with as I wish, and anyone who tries to take it is legally recognized as a thief (unless it’s the government, but that’s a separate issue).
Here’s what I do:
I buy a physical book, and send it to 1dollarscan.com. They then scan the book for me for 1 dollar per 100 pages, and send me a PDF file. That way I have control, and there is no DRM. The price isn’t much higher since ebooks are horrendously overpriced. One can OCR the PDF file oneself to save some money, or let them do it.
I will I will be recommending people to do this in the future, as part of my work as a board member of the Danish Pirate Party.
I have start-from-JPG OCR software.
Is there a way to use this 1dollarscan service, then extract the individual page-image JPGs from the PDF?
Or is there any really good “OCR a PDF” software that anyone recommends?
I occasionally use OCR software to prepare PDFs of stories from printed books, but it’s a huge pain in the arse because the OCR technology still isn’t close to perfect and there are invariably hundreds of typos to correct in even a short story. For example, my editions of “The Face” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” each took hours to edit.
Yes.
ABBYY Finereader is the best OCR around according to studies that I have read. Usually only little editing is necessary afterwards. It works on PDFs as well as individual files.
One can download it in the latest version, 11, on torrent.
Except that your computer software is almost certainly licenced to you rather than owned by you…
Only technically; they have no way to take it back or stop me from modifying it, and possession is nine points of the law. With a Kindle, you’re essentially giving others both the right and the means to steal what should be your property.
That’s starting to be less and less the case as DRM becomes more widespread; there’s a significant body of software that, in normal use, the publisher can disable without your consent. Kindle is a particularly egregious example but far from the only one.
Personally it only affects me with games, where always-on licensing checks are getting far too common. But it exists elsewhere too. This is one reason I hate web-based apps and other software-as-a-service schemes; they cease to exist if the publisher says so, and the user has little to no control over that.
Open source everything!
That’s my solution too, but I’m not in the habit of direct advocacy outside IT circles. 😉 Most of my own software has been replaced with OSS equivelents to the extent that I’ve been able to find them.
Ugh, how do I turn off crackhead smilies? Or at least make them not appear in my own posts?
If I don’t want to see 😉 then I use ^_~ instead.
” I don’t rent or lease anything; I buy it, and then it belongs to me to do with as I wish”
Well, yes, sort of. If you think of a dead-tree book as a device which allows you to see the author’s “intellectual property”, you can do what you like (more or less) with the book, but not with the content — as your sidebar about “Boring but necessary legal stuff” makes clear. So, you can think of a Kindle in the same way — do what you like with the device, but as with the dead-tree device, you can’t do what you want with the content. You can give the Kindle away to a third party, who can then read the content, much like giving a single book away.
And, with a Kindle you can build a library of classics for free — much cheaper than buying the books; you can read your choice of erotica on the bus without everyone knowing what you’re reading; it’s much easier to pack for a holiday; and, hopefully, a Kindle will encourage more people to read more.
Before you think I’m a Kindle apologist, their actions with 1984 and with “Linn” were utterly draconian. And, here in the UK, e-books are VAT rated; amazon.co.uk is based in Luxembourg where the VAT rate is 3% as opposed to the 20% in the UK. But this 17% difference is used by amazon to haggle with publishers (whereby amazon seems to pocket the 17%) — a publisher here may get (much) less than 10% of the price of the e-book; and they and the author loose out. (amazon has about 90% of the UK e-book market.)
You’re forgetting one thing: A publisher has no way to even know where I live and no convenient way to get here, and if it did decide to steal my library it would have to break a multitude of laws to do so. With Kindle, you’re doing the equivalent of ushering goons through your library every time you synch up, and there’s no guarantee they won’t steal one or all of your books, leaving you (as the Norwegian woman discovered) without recourse.
Sorry, no sale. If I want a classic for free in electronic form I’ll download it from Project Gutenberg.
Not to mention there is just something about reading a book on paper that can’t be replicated with a Kindle. If I were traveling a great deal, I might be persuaded to purchase a Nook or something to save space, but honestly? Nothing beats a book with pages that I can write on and mark up to my heart’s content.
And dog-ear. Nothing says “I love reading” like a library filled with tattered, loved, dog-eared volumes. (My 11 year old daughter hates it when I do that.)
When I loan out a book, I tell people that bookmarks are cheap, you can use a spent bus pass, an old grocery receipt, or if it comes down to it I will give you a bookmark. Do not dog-ear my books. What you do to your books is your business, but MY books are not to be dog-eared.
And just to be sure that they take me seriously, if I’m dealing with somebody I know is in the canine-aural habit, I let them know that if you dog-ear a book I loan you, I won’t be loaning you another.
Thanks for the review, Maggie. I’ve already told you this, but I’ll repeat it here: you’re doing important work. I’m proud that you liked my book so much. And I agree with you about the books by Laura Agustin and Brooke Magnanti. I’m in the middle of reading The Sex Myth right now, and I’m really enjoying it. I hadn’t heard of You Will Die, but I’ll search for it.
You’re very welcome Chester; the good review is well-deserved. 🙂
Robert Arthur’s book seems extremely current and salient.
WHat depresses me is the same thing that depresses me when people reject the most basic libertarian arguments out of ignorance. Most people spend most of their time arguing themselves out of their own basic freedoms, rather than into them, and then complain when dictators abuse them. In the cases of the above-listed books, the disaster is twofold: Many people refuse to acknowledge them, and many that do choose to reject sound arguments out of group or mass identity politics or hypocritical self-interest.
The ones that really make me want to beat my head against a wall are those who think it’s possible to guarantee every basic liberty except property rights for those who have “too much” more than everyone else, or to suppress only those individual rights which somehow offend THEM while still guaranteeing others.
I think a good argument could be made that ideologues of all stripes are delusional, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.
I think a small minority is waking up.
This is especially evident among the college aged.
Will it be enough?
And this isn’t just in the U.S.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Ron Paul has supporters in every corner of the world.
That small minority has been around for decades. Libertarianism remains a fringe belief that few understand and fewer take seriously.
I get the sense the you don’t see much hope that “Libertarian revolution” of any sort will ever arrive. I tend to agree.
On the other hand I hear people say that all change is accomplished by minorities, so I don’t know…
If the college aged kids can leave behind their entitlement mentalities, there’s a hope. But I don’t see it happening. They want their stuff left alone, but then they want the gov’t to go after “the rich” to hand them a free education….there’s a huge cognitive dissonance going on.
A grouping of books to keep in mind. One or two of them might even be available at the library.