Book round-up: February 2021

A month of mostly very good reads and two massive face-plants by Canadian authors. Sorry Canada but this was not your month. Better luck for the rest of the year.

Non-fiction

Empty Planet (Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson)
This book has one thesis (the planetary population is actually poised to decline steeply over the next century, not plateau) and I guess it works in that it made me think. However, it also made me incandescently furious at its failure to connect the economic motivators the authors ascribe easily to non-Western women with why, say, a dinner party’s worth of women they meet in Belgium who are all working full-time jobs while their male partners study or freelance, and then are expected to do the dishes after the party, might not be running to reproduce. And it is probably needless to note that it didn’t address queer reproductive rights at all (which is! Like! Super-relevant to my personal lack of offspring at this present time actually!) If you’re curious read a review and spare yourself the aggro.

( Fiction )