Eva

A common fallacy of the modern age is solutionism, enamored with technology we belief that all problems can be solved with computation. Layers and layers of computation add such complexity to our modern world, that we've lost oversight and insight into our creations. Bridle calls them “hyperobjects”, something that surrounds and controls us, but cannot be seen (or understood) in its entirety. The internet falls into that category, as does climate change. The dynamics and consequences of both are hard to grasp, too overwhelming to address and therefore easiest to ignore. This is the new dark age.

The term stems from a 1926 H.P. Lovecraft quote:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

A military scifi where earth is ruled by corporations, and soldiers are de-materialized and re-materialized on Mars, the battlefront. The heroine of this story sometimes gets lost in time, during these jumps. Reminiscent of Memento, she tries to piece together the time-puzzle, that seems to hold the truth about a mysterious illness in the future, and why the enemy sometimes doesn't look all that unfamiliar.

The psychology of war is always fascinating, and this is another great sci-fi take on it. A soldier that goes to war lives in a different reality, they don't run on normal time, they run on mission time, and are only fed need-to-know information. Propaganda nourishes the battle spirit and is mostly welcome. A total control of the media might even gaslight a whole population as to who is the true enemy in one's war.

Great pace, great engaging mystery and especially effective in how it weaves many familiar sociopolitical aspects into the plot.

I really dug the war-of-the-worlds meta twist and maybe could have done without the timetravel. Obviously the timetravel was the energetic plot device, but in my opinion it wasn't properly explained how it would be possible.

Un roman graphic qui documente les experiences d'immigres maghrebins (d'Algerie, Maroc, Tunisie) en France. C'est une experience similaire a l'immigration ailleurs, mais elle est compliquee du fait que ces pays ont ete colonises par la France, et beaucoup d'immigres ont combattu dans la guerre pour la France, et ont ete importes pour un travail d'usine bon marche, tout en rencontrant la xenophobie, le racisme et la discrimination religieuse de la part des Francais. Quand devient le pays - ou vous ne vous sentez jamais bienvenu - votre pays?

Tres interessant and tres touchant, j'aime beaucoup ca.

A wonderful story about how telling and listening to stories can help us grapple with dark realities. The novel tells the history of the Augsburger Puppenkiste, a famous German marionette theater. Set during and after the WWII, this is also the story of dealing with its aftermath. The “Herzfaden” is the string that connects a puppet to the hearts of the audience, the magic that makes the puppets comes alive. The first sentence is just magical, for a coming-of-age story about puppets and strings. Das Mädchen riss sich von der Hand seines Vaters los und lief weg.I loved almost everything about the Kasperl. The scenes on the attic reminded me a bit of [b:Tyll 36130507 Tyll Daniel Kehlmann https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503797313l/36130507.SY75.jpg 57727239], and how conflicted you can feel about characters that balance on the edge of ‘evil'.

C'est un roman sur l'identité sexuelle, la confusion et les pouvoirs qu'elle apporte, et aussi un roman sur la narration et la facon dont les histoires interagissent avec leurs narrateurs et leurs auditeurs.

Une histoire est racontee par un conteur sur un espace de marche tres frequente a Marrakech.
Au Maroc, une huitieme fille nait dans une famille sans fils. Le pere insiste pour elever la fille comme un garcon, pour sauver la face dans une societe qui est construit uniquement autour des hommes.

L'efant vit les avantages que la culture musulmane attribue aux hommes. Mais quand il/elle grandit, des questions sur l'identite, la verite et le desir se posent.

Maintenant, l'histoire se divise et nous entendons plusieur voix qui ont chacune entendu parler de differentes fins de cette histoire. Certains sont violent, certains sont plus calmes. Pourtant, ni l'un ni l'autre ne donne une fin heureuse car c'est une histoire de tragedie dans l'ame. L'histoire devient malleable et guidee par les croyances et les souhaits du conteur.

Tres fascinant, questionnant les normes societales misogynes, et ce qui s'est passe lorsque nous supprimons notre veritable identite. Je n'arretais pas de penser que j'aimerais lire une version de ceci ecrite par une femme.

The 2020 Hugo Award winner. The setup is interesting, a new ambassador arrives at the center of the ruling empire. In her head she carries a neurological implant with the previous ambassador's memory. On arrival she learns that her predecessor is dead, a political murder mystery ensues, while she immerses herself in the empire's court built on bureaucracy, poetry and tradition.

In principal I liked this, but it didn't fully live up to my expectations, and the plot could have been tighter.
3.5, rounding down

Two young Austrian punks sneak across the border to experience the Italy of the 80ies without a cent in the pocket. Live every day like it's your last. Sex, drugs and punk. Italian restaurants feeding the poor, and Italian men incapable of understanding ‘no'. There's a LOT of darkness in there, but somehow Lust manages to leave you with a love for independence and adventure.

This is a very academic text, lots of repeated definitions, intros and conclusions constantly summarizing what we're about to read or have just read. I would have preferred to read the general-audience version of this, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Roberts defines different methods of censorship, looks at the current situation in China, and then crunches the numbers on a couple of studies that show the effects of censorship.

Censorship is the restriction of expression of information, and the restriction of access to information.

The three methods of censorship:
- fear ... government issued punitive consequences
- friction ... increase the “cost” for distribution or retrieval of information (extra technical know-how or time needed to access blocked websites, via VPN etc)
- flooding ... release of competing distracting information to drown out unwanted information (mostly propaganda)

In the past Fear-based censorship was more common, yet today has more potential for backlash. Friction and Flooding are much less obvious forms of censorship, often can't be easily detected, and therefore lead to less negative reactions from the public. Friction that's slowly introduced is the most effective. The government can for example slowly throttle the responsiveness of external websites, and the public wouldn't notice and believe that the quality of the website itself deteriorated.

In China the government owns and controls the media. Journalists need to be government certified. The so-called 50 Cent Party government-paid internet trolls spreading pro-China propaganda across the internet. Only 10-15 years ago, most international websites were still accessible in China. Today, China has the Great Chinese Firewall which blocks twitter, facebook, google, etc and channels everyone to use Chinese (state-controlled) equivalents instead. People can still circumvent this restriction by using VPNs but the cost/effect is too high for the masses.

Fascinating. Even if the text was very dry.

What a weird meandering abstract dream painting, of a town called Pebble Town at the foot of Snow Mountain. The novel follows several town characters, through dream-like scenes of mundanity and magical realism. The narrative follows dream logic, with plot strands suddenly stopping, characters appearing out of context.

It had a charming intriguing quality at the beginning, you can read it as some hypnotizing puzzle with a solution always out of reach, but I then tired of it in the second half. I rushed through the last chapters just to finish. And I am still left with my questions.

Does the levitating constantly-disappearing garden represent paradise, are the fleeing small dark animals souls, is everyone in purgatory, is everyone dead, where are we?!

Un autre livre que j'ai lu en francais et que je dois donner la meilleure note. Je ne sais si c'est la lenteur de mon lecture de francais qui donne l'ecriture le temps de resonner davantage, ou si c'est mes limits en francais qui permettent a mon cerveau d'improviser et d'ameliorer ce qui est flou, ou si seulment la selection de livres en francais que je choisis est superieure.

C'est une histoire sentimentale de vieillissement et de memoire et d'oubli, situe a Montreal, racontee a plusieurs files qui s'entremelent merveilleusement. L'histoire en Russie, l'histoire de bouttons, l'histoire de superparapluie et son etoile bien-aimee, l'histoire de Jeanne et Suzor, l'histoire des pas dans le neige ...

Je viens d'apprendre que l'histoire russe est basee sur un mystere de la vie reelle: Affaire du col Dyatlov.

Perfect short little book explaining Hong Kong's colonial past, complicated political system and the recent protest movements fueled by a young generation that's not old enough to remember China's brutal crackdowns on protest in the past, and young enough to experience 2047 and the end of one-country-two-systems in their future.

History moves fast in Hong Kong, as this book went into editing end of 2019, a whole additional chapter on 2020 would now already be in order.

This was rather excellent. An eco scifi story that morphs into a cyberpunk and techno thriller. Set a couple of decades in the future, a Chinese peninsula absorbs all the world's trash. Yet in a world of tech-enhanced prostheses and biological viruses toxic waste has become more dangerous. Silicon Isle is also the site of class struggle, and a very Chinese merging of animism and techno futurism. Add to that the continous exploitation of the east through western nations, dressed up as greenwashed capitalism. And our heroes are right in the middle of the clashes between the west and the east, between the fighting mafia clans controlling the island, between the locals and the immigrants. A really solid scifi, very much grounded in today's geopolitcal and ecological developments, with great characters and partially quite haunting literary visions of our future.

My second Eileen Chang, after [b:Half a Lifelong Romance 25937741 Half a Lifelong Romance Eileen Chang https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456693593l/25937741.SY75.jpg 2929435]. We follow Julie through her time as a student in Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion, and her family- and relationship entanglements in Shanghai after WWII. She, her mother and her aunt are very untraditional, travel and have multiple relationships. They exist on the cusp between the oriental past and the modern age. Julie's mother's feet are bound, her father is an opium addict, yet Julie earns her money writing novels that get adapted as movies. They yearn for love, but also value their freedom. Chang has such an interesting writing style. It's segmented, jumps in time, without giving you so much as a paragraph break as a warning. She doesn't take you by the hand while she utilises a vast and complicately-linked cast of characters, and often leaves you guessing about what happens between the lines. Her characters have relationships and affairs, and mostly sexual encounters are elegantly and vaguely hinted at, and yet sometimes her descriptions are quite explicit. And add to all that ocassional beautiful sentences that have such an evocative and piercing quality.It was like coming home after watching a sentimental movie, the same feeling of strangeness that she felt when returning to her childhood home: everything became smaller, shorter, and older. She experienced a sense of rapture. It all adds up to a very intriguing mix, that's not easy to fall into or follow along with, but still has this unique exquisite style. I prefer [b:Half a Lifelong Romance 25937741 Half a Lifelong Romance Eileen Chang https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456693593l/25937741.SY75.jpg 2929435] over this one, as it had a more streamlined plot, but i think Little Reunions still will stay with me. 3.5

Intriguing portrait of one of the biggest family and nation-controlling experiments out there, the cruel ways it was implemented and a somber look at its many unintended consequences. Fong looks at the effects of the policy from multiple fascinating angles.

Guided by the threat of overpopulation and the drive for economic progress, from 1979 to 2015 China's One Child Policy allowed the majority of its citizens to only have 1 offspring. Paired with China's patriarchy and low standing of women, this has now led to a population with a high gender imbalance. The gender ratio is so tipped towards an abundance of men, that Chinese parents pay doweries to find brides for their sons. Populations with more men than women are also said to be highly aggressive, and have historically often led to wars.

Low birth rates and advanced healthcare lead to a Chinese population where soon 1 out of 3 people will be over 60. In the land where filial piety still rules, the single child of single-child parents now find themselves sole care-taker of 2 ageing parents and 4 grandparents. As the only offspring of a family, children are simultaneoulsy coddled (the “little emperor” phenomenon, producing solipsistic low-risk takers) and also put under enormous pressure (the need to succeed, to support all elderly family members).

Once China realised these trends and tried to reverse course by adapting the policy to allow every family 2 children (nuclear families only!) it was too late. Only a small portion of families are currently opting for second children, due to economic considerations.

The book opens with the statement that nearly 1 out of every 5 women on this planet lives in China. That's a staggering number. A potentially powerful one. While Hong Fincher does a lot of thorough reporting on the repressive patriarchy that currently rules over Chinese women in society, law and economy, strangely this book left me with more hope for a revolution in China than any of the other writings I've encountered so far.

Feminism is always at the forefront of democratic revolutions. And Chinese women are slowly getting more empowered. Despite all the cruel tactics the government employs against them.

Gender equality originally was one of the selling points at the founding of the Communist Party. Yet since then the government has slowly returned to more conservative family stereotypes. As in all authoritarian regimes. Women need better exam results than men to enter certain universities. Government sponsored campaigns shame single “leftover” women into marriage. From 1990 to 2010 Chinese women's income relative to men fell from 77.5% to 67.3%!! Yet feministic activists also slowly gain small victories. Since (only) 2015 China has a law against domestic violence.

Empowering women, the best weapon against authoritarian regimes! Still a long way to go, but there's a glimmer of hope.

Factory Girls was published in 2008, since then the number of China's migrant workers has only increased. As of 2019 China has 290 million migrant workers (ref), which represents a staggering 20% of its population. That's a huge economic and societal transformation over the last decades, and Chang's books presents a candid portrait of this new societal class.

The majority of the migratory workers are girls coming from rural villages, who set out to support their families by working in factories in China's industrial south. They sleep in crowded dorms, and work 10-12 hours a day, fabricating electronics, handbags, shoes on the assembly line. They are ambituous and constantly try to improve their skills with English or confidence-building classes. They learn to switch jobs fast, when opportunities arise. If they are clever and have the right height, age and look, they receive promotions from the factory floor into the management offices.

The ubiquitous motto in factory towns is “trust no one” and “make money fast”. Bus drivers try to trick their riders out of their fares. Teachers set up English schools, without knowing any English themselves. The fixation on money-making and the low importance of morality is a fertile ground for pyramid schemes to take off. One of the most successful books in China's recent past is “Square & Round” and basically teaches how to scam your way upwards.

While a lot about this world sounds dark and dire to Western eyes, Chang does a good job at highlighting how these jobs help transform the fates of young Chinese women. If they had stayed in their villages, their lives would have been controlled by their families. Now as they earn their own money, support their families back home, and experience independence, their convidence levels grow and their status improves.

Great portraits, fascinating topic, great read. I'd only say it maybe was slightly too long and that Chang's own personal family story felt a bit out of place.

Mars has been colonized and successfully fought for independence from Earth. Now in the 22nd century, after decades of isolation, Mars and Earth take up talks again and organize delegation visits. Built around competing philosophies, the cultures of the two planets couldn't be more different. Terrans live in a world of extreme capitalism where everyone sells private information for gain, while Martians freely share intellectual property for the greater good in a highly structured society. Yet all societies breed unrest and the wish for reforms.

There's a lot to like about this novel and the philosophical questions it poses. How do societies diverge in isolation? Are revolutions a natural developmental step for humanity? Does the size of our environment influence the structure we organize into?

As this is written by a Chinese author, it's hard not to see Mars as China and Earth as the western countries. Her main protagonists grew up on Mars, yet got to spend a few years on Earth. Now on returning, they see their home planet in a new light, and need to compromise the freedoms they experienced on Earth with the security their home planet offers. It's hard not to read this as a metaphor for the experience many Chinese must have after spending years abroad.

Great social scifi setup, and I loved a lot about it, that's why I'm even more annoyed by the small imperfections. I found the first part really strong, but then felt it partially diverged into YA territory in parts 2 and 3, with more plot inconsistencies and an unnecessary focus on romantic entanglements. My biggest disappointment probably is, that this is written by a woman, yet in her vision of the 22nd century, politics is still ruled by men, and all engineers are men, while the female characters dabble in dance, fashion and poetry. Which makes it hard to rate.

Chinese writer Yu Hua reflects on Chinese culture and history in chapters grouped around 10 themes. He combines personal memories with public history and reflective thoughts. Published in 2010/2011 this is a fantastic portrait of the country's transformations over the last century.

We learn about the importance of big-character posters during the Cultural Revolution, and the starving for stories in a world that's limited to texts by Mao and Lu Xun. We learn about denunciation and self-criticism sessions in a culture where losing face is of substantial value, and 9-year olds send their teachers to the hospital as misbehavior and violence is legitimized by the revolution. We learn about the symoblism and open fights over official seals, and how the country's recent economic gains are produced by a government that shows no concern for individual lives. Since the Tiananmensquare massacre has supressed all internal voices for human rights, China seems to be driven only by making money. According to Hua, this economical progress and democratic regress has led to a breakdown of social morality. Modern China is a world where everything is pirated, everyone cons everyone, and fake news and scams are so common that they are socially accepted.

This book was first published in a French translation in 2010 and then published in Chinese in Taiwan in 2011. Naturally, this book is banned in China.

An optogenetics PhD student researching addiction reflects back on her Ghanaian family's upbringing in Alabama, her brother's opioid addiction and her mother's subsequent depression. She works through her past and tries to compromise her religious upbringing with her scientific beliefs. Missing the grandeur of [b:Homegoing 27071490 Homegoing Yaa Gyasi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490.SY75.jpg 47113792] for me. Or maybe it's the fact that there are simply too many US-set immigrant stories out there already. It gives it a well-trodden path feel, even though the writing is great and the characters are compelling. 3.5

Those who travel to mountain tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

Told as the history of mountains and moutaineering Macfarlane investigates humanity's fascination with high altitude. He documents our relationship with mountains over the last couple centuries: from storytellers of geological history, to romantic pursuits of solitude, to fatal obsessions to reach earth's highest points.

Mountaineering is build on myths of glory, it's a collection of tales from those who survive and those who don't. And those stories exert forces ons us that pull us upwards. They propell us to go where no one else has gone before, to explore the unknown, to risk our lives for the bliss and clarity that awaits on mountain tops.

I loved this, as i love all tales of explorers of the unkown.

Similar to [b:Freshwater 35412372 Freshwater Akwaeke Emezi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1500884500l/35412372.SY75.jpg 56785192], this novel is a wild and hypnotic swirl of sexuality, gender, reincarnation, and cultural identity. More plot-driven than it's predecessor, it unspurls the tale that led to the death of beautiful and troubled Vivek. Son of a Nigerian father and Indian mother, Vivek is passionate and unashamedly different. I found some of the plot points were teased out and kept a secret unnecessarily long (Vivek liking to crossdress, in those photos). And after all the buildup towards his death, I found the actual cause a bit of a letdown.

C'est une merveilleuse petite nouvelle qui imagine le sejour de Michel-Ange Buonarotti a Constantinople au debut des annees 1500. C'est une histoire ancree sur quelques traditions ecrites et quelques lettres, mais avec une interpretation libre entre les deux.

On rencontre Michel-Angel comme jeune artiste, ambitieux et pauvre, qui est dechire entre le pape et le sultan, entre l'ouest et l'est, entre les desires evidents et les desires caches. Et Constantinople elle-meme est une ville en conflit, accueillant des gens de toutes cultures et religions, mais troublee pas les traces d'occupations et de guerres.

Merveilleusement poetique et romantique et un grand portrait imagine de la vie d'un artiste.

Quite a unique, short and seemingly light-weight novel that packs quite some heavy subjects. In a world that's probably just a tiny bit ahead of us, disaster tourism flourishes. Eager tourists flock to special destinations to glimpse (and occasionally also volunteer, if they are early enough) at sites where tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes have devastated human lives. These travel packages feed on their guests's fascination with tragedy and invoke in them a new gratitude for their own lives. The heroine in this novel works for the company planning the travel packages. Now she's stranded at one of the disaster sites, and suddenly gets to witness how that tourism has transformed the life of the local inhabitants.

Fast-paced and entertaining. Speculative, and close to satire, which was appreciated considering the gloomy picture of humanity at its heart.

3.5

This was wonderfully entertaining. With detached words, Randt describes the relationship of two 30something Germans, Tanja and Jerome. You could describe them as hipsters, but maybe there's a different word for these people now. They are possible more grownup, possibly better-off financially. They love their phones, they pose for well-thought-through selfies and snapchat videos, they party, they medidate, they appreciate their anti-sport highs, the dose their drugs and carefully plan the aftermatch. They wear the occasional designer clothes, have hip jobs like author and webdesigner, they talk and talk, they cherish each other's world views and jokes, they love each other, and yet they still don't fully commit. They live in separate cities and enjoy their long-distance relationship as a repetition of 3 steps: first intense sex-heavy togetherness, then communication-heavy apartness, and finally longing-heavy anticipation of reunion.

Randt balances his prose so perfectly, that one reads this as a cheeky satire about modern hipsters, while at the same time reading this like a modern day ‘serious' love story. Yes, these two are obviously halfway ridiculous people, with their carefully crafted experiences for maximum enjoyment and contemplation, but you still relate to them and their realities, and wish for them to succeed.

The protagonist of this novel becomes addicted to reading books while lacking the intelligence to properly understand them. This novel itself is foremost wild, incredibly smart, imaginative, hilarious and overall constructed on so many layers, that I no doubt missed a lot of meaning as well :)

It's a dystopia set in a Russia after a blast, where society progressed backwards into superstituion-driven poverty that runs on trading and eating of mice, and more resembles a pre-industrial age than a future.

There's brilliance in this novel, and yet it felt hard to read it in that ‘enlightened' state. I felt like drifting in and out of appreciating all the wondrous things it does.