Sorry for the double long ass titles. I just felt like these two really work together and are both 4 star books. Also both very very short. I believe the audiobook for Serviceberry was like 2 hours and Reclaiming Art was 5 hours.
*****These are actually really good books that are short and can quickly open you up to a new world to explore outside of them. My summaries/reviews (especially of these) will NOT be a good enough representation of the books and the authors actual opinions and knowledge. I read these mid December and it is now beginning February lol. So obviously I don’t remember a lot of details. For the fiction books that’s like whatever but I don’t want to misrepresent what the authors are saying. I am more just trying to get you to read the books plzzzzzzzzzz
I read Serviceberry in my bed in like 45 minutes on some random morning. I found this book just by scrolling on storygraphs one day looking for more good non-fiction and this showed up. Lowkey, I didn’t even look at what it was about, I only looked if it was available on Libby for an audiobook and when I saw how short it was, I immediately got started.
Robin, the author and indigenous woman, reads this book to us. The serviceberry is used at the beginning of the book to introduce us to what the gift economy could look like to us. Her neighbor had excess and shared with those around them. From there others can return the favor if they please with other goods rather than money.
She discusses the benefit to our communities in a more gift economy focus and building those relationships. She also brings up how it is not only humans that participate in the gift economy. Like a symbiotic relationship some animals have with each other, we can have them with these creatures as well.
I really remember this story because it involves ravens and I LOVE RAVENS AND CROWS THEY ARE JUST SO SO SO SMART AND COOL AND LIKE YOU DON’T WANT TO PISS THEM OFF BECAUSE THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY WILL REMEMBER YOU. And there was this hunter and his job was to control the… deer(?) population. The ravens figured out what he was doing because they would come by after he left to eat what he left behind. When he would show up, they would see his truck and would fly around where there were a lot of these animals to tell him where they were. He recognized that they were helping him so he would leave behind a few parts for them to eat after he left.
Robin says it much more intelligently and eloquently so def read this and listen to her be sooooo smart about it.
It was from this book, I believe (it is all a blur tbh), that I found the next book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice.
This was also a very good book and I am so sorry but I am not going to really say anything about it because I was as sick as a dog while reading it and I don’t think I truly digested what was being said but there were times that I was like “holy shit that is too true” or “damn I have never thought it about that way and I am happy that there is further discussion about this”
Best I will do rn is just put the description of the book here.
“In Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel offers a compelling and incisive meditation on the nature of art in a world dominated by invasive media, rampant consumer culture, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from Paleolithic cave art to contemporary cinema, Martel argues that true art reveals the unseen forces shaping our existence—forces that transcend politics, technology, and even culture. In contrast to artifice, which seeks to manipulate or distract, authentic art calls us back to the essence of things, opening “rifts” onto the sublime and the weird and reconnecting us with the radical mystery at the heart of the world.
Featuring an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Donna Tartt, this edition also includes a new afterword by the author, reflecting on the continued relevance of art in our increasingly mediated world.”
Sorry for the copout guys. Again, I was so sick when I read this and also I am coming down with a cold so my brain is a little fuzzy 🙁
Although I know I didn’t really talk about these two enough, I still hope that it may lead to at least one person reading at least one of these books.
Okay byeee
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