Vegan Bookclub

This is Nota's review of "Animal Rights" by Patience Coster, I rated it 1 star

#animalrights #nonfiction #animalrightsmovement

I picked this up for how short it is. It is a dispassionate account on the subject of animal rights where it feels like that animal abusers are given more consideration than animal activists. There are parts which frame animal abuse as something not that bad, it’s just that the author hasn’t done enough research, and doesn’t know enough about the practices. For example the animal testing part completely disregards that animal tests fail over 90% of the time. It doesn’t mention the alternatives to animal testing, and how much more successful they are. It is a shallow dive into the subject. It reads like a wikipedia article, and I do think the wiki contains a lot of this information. I thought this might be a cool pamphlet to give out to people at a party at first, but I did not realise that animal rights are not taken that seriously then. This book mostly is focused on animal welfare, but even fails to really drive in that welfare.

Animal rights is a sensitive subject, involving countless lives, the biggest holocaust in human existence so I don’t really want the information regarding it to be presented in a less passionate way than chat GPT could muster. Perhaps picking this up would be a right step for some people to start caring about the animals, but I think it could also make a lot of people think that the subject is not as serious as it is. I hope the author gets more curious, and takes the steps to research more about animal rights as it is such an important topic, but I cannot recommend anyone to read this.

#badbook #1star #animalwelfare #discussion #loweffort #animaltesting #vivisection #animalabuse #hunting #hunters

My review of "The Sea Around Us" by Rachel Carson (Plus a drawing I made while reading it)

#theseaaroundus #nonfiction #rachelcarson

I finished yet another brilliant book by Rachel Carson, now dated, but a great account on the sea. Here you read about the deep ocean, how the waves are affected by various factors, the minerals of the sea, the temperature of the sea, the nature of islands. A lot of stuff I entirely forgot from my childhood or perhaps I did not pay much attention to the broader facts of the sea despite it being so fascinating. I do want to read about the oceans more. They are all around us.

A lot of locations, names, and specifics went over my head, but I do not care too much to dwell over them when I am not familiar with a subject. Perhaps it is the novelty of the subject which makes me want to give a high rating. I love anything that challenges me, and I want to embrace that more, and more.

I had more affinity towards certain subjects. I believe the animals, and the plant life fascinates me way more than learning about how people sailed the seas or used explosives to get info about the depths. I learned about the fragility of the islands, and how they are utmost incompatible with humanity. We do like to demolish anything unique, sensitive, emotional. The way we demolish nature is the way we demolish ourselves.

I feel a very great affinity with people studying animals, and biologists. I was very drawn as a child to the most dark, and terrible aspects of humanity that nobody wanted to look at. And caring about the wild animals must be one of these albeit with a different kind of horror attached, the horror of apathy, and negligence. I need to return to this neglected aspect of myself, and revive it. That sounds very metaphorical in itself.

Nature is all around us, but we don’t really explore it, and we do not really live with it. I need to be the change. I need to look at what I do, and what I can do. I am living my life, and following my interests. I live with myself.

#sea #sealife #marine #islands #waves #ocean #theocean #theseas #deepsea #animals #life

This is my review of "Feminisms: A Global History" by Lucy Delap

#visions #writers #dreamers

This took a long time to finish as when I started it I was disillusioned with the idea of feminism as some of the activists have disappointed me in person. But now that I continued it I was disillusioned with vegan activism. The text is so factual, dry, but the reactions it got out of me were so fiery because I just kept remembering real life instances, and the hurt that I experienced regarding activism. They both are great movements, and both bring a lot of value, ideas into society, but that doesn’t mean I will get along with everyone inside those movements especially when I am an artist who tries to create, and improve instead of replicating what exists. I had to grow up, and learn that. I clung to my ideas of everyone getting along so much, and paid the price for that. It was like being in a group of engineers, and yet they tried convincing me all the time that we would do art eventually when that wasn’t the case at all. Choose people who make you shine alongside them, not the people who use you as car fuel due to their lack of self-awareness.

Regardless this is a very cool account on how all groups that called themselves feminist were as different as they can get. The parallels to vegan activists were so fascinating to observe, it’s basically the same thing in so many ways with a different make-over. Feminism is a way more popular movement, and at the moment with a way richer history so vegan activists can really learn from this. There’s the peaceful, and the direct activists, visions of Utopias, songs, etc. At any instance of the book I can’t help, but think of the vegan movement. Vegans aren’t that unified either, and there are a lot of fringe groups. Lots of people with contrasting beliefs from all sides of political spectrums.

It is of great irony that some feminists called women the negros, and the meat. And even now plenty of feminists do not realise that the meat industry is wrong, they continue using the meat metaphors without realising it.

I am not sure I want to continue with books like these because this does conjure a deep feeling of hopelessness in many ways. There are so many fights to fight, and most people don’t choose a single one, and even if they do choose one then they don’t support the others. I want to be in a better headspace + educated. I am ambitious. So anyways I will read even more hopeless books about factory farming as that would make the most sense for me to do. This is the only way I can face my traumas, and develop hope from them. Wait no, I could do this by creating as well.

I read this book in Lithuanian in restaurants with vegan options, and I made sure to carry it around. The cover of it is pink, and it brought me immense satisfaction to do something like that. I also chalked some vegan messages in the park while I carried it. I remember I journaled, and summarised some of the book somewhere.

One very motivating thing about the book is how a lot of activists were commonplace people with no support whatsoever, working terrible jobs for decades. It really puts life into perspective, and how it’s about what’s the best one can do in their given situation, not about how much one can achieve. It is the personal achievement which matters the most, and can only be assessed by the persons living their lives, not the outside. I am just a tiny dot within the collective, but that’s okay, and I can still try my best. I am never alone. I have myself.

#feminism #lucydelap #nonfiction #history #feminist #activism #activist #dreams