Eva
A WWII story written during WWII, cruelly left unfinished due to WWII, and still a masterpiece.
In part one we travel with several families and characters, as they escape Paris due to the impending arrival of the Germans. In part two we live in a German-occupied French village during the armistice. It's survival and egoism, midnight escapes, worry and heroism, youth wasted and forbidden feelings.
This was a literary joy to read. Némirovsky's writing and her character studies are wonderful. She's gentle even while she sharply picks at everyone's selfish trades. I liked how she slowly strings together what you first think are disconnected characters. Obviously more of this would have happened during parts 3-5.
Despite this not being my kind of novel - I usually don't get drawn to quirky fun novels, let alone travelogues - I actually enjoyed this. It's warm without being cheesy, witty and occasionally very heartfelt. The part about the couple splitting up after 20 years, and those 20 years representing a success, and not a failure, was fantastic.
L'histoire d'une famille perse, l'histoire de l'Iran, les troubles, les persecutions, l'histoire de la rebellion, de la fuite, de l'immigration et de la reconstruction de sa famille et de sa culture dans un nouvel endroit.
C'etait genial, vaste, mystique et moderne. Le debit etait bon, meme s'il y avait beaucoup de sauts dans le temps.
A novel based on the real lives of French surrealists and lovers Lucie Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who defied conventions and gender and recreated themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. We follow their lives from their first meeting and immediate attraction in adolescence, to the art scene Paris - including encounters with Salvador Dali and Andre Breton, and all the other surrealists I am ignorant of - to their resistance movement and subsequent incarceration during WWII, up until their last days. Their life is challenging, occasionally dark, but their bond is strong and never really in question. I enjoyed the unafraid intimacy and openness they shared, and I liked that the book stayed with them until old age.
What I'd like now, is a website that shows all the original photographs they took, and that Thomson wove into the narrative.
I enjoyed it, but I was never really swept up in it. Apart from Suzanne's touching quiet last years maybe. Therefore 3.5
A politician with a dark past and a violent temper, and a woman who wants to expose him. This was a quick and engaging listen, though I feel like I missed parts, due to the time jumps. I wouldn't have minded getting all the in-between details as well, as I felt invested in the story.
The plot is mostly set on an unnamed (fictional) South American island. Yet lots of references are made to the influential rich country “in the North” who helped bankroll a previous fascist leader. So it feels like a book about the US after all.
I blasted through this too fast, because I had to return it to the library, to fully appreciate it all. Harari is obviously good at this. Here he does a great job dissecting the many ways we humans run on stories and belief systems - from nationalistic pride to religious faith. 21 topics might have maybe been too many, but his analytic thoughts are always interesting.
The chapters singling out Israel and Judaism gave the impression of being (entertaining) payback for nagging critiques he had received for his earlier works from his own countrymen lol.
Wonderful. This novel is so many things at once - dystopian horror, office satire, immigration story - that you'd think don't go together, but Ling Ma does it perfectly. Another 2018 novel that intriguingly mixes quirkiness and (magical) realism into social commentary. It fits right in next to [b: My Year of Rest and Relaxation 36203391 My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1513259517s/36203391.jpg 55508660] and [b: The Pisces 32871394 The Pisces Melissa Broder https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500926737s/32871394.jpg 53479347].
AIDS hitting Chicago in the mid-eighties and how it pulls a circle of gay friends apart. Sex becomes politics, and a lot more complicated. Sickness, betrayal, secrets, regret and guilt. And what losing most of your friends does to those that remain, who become sole bearers of someone's memory, forever dealing with the aftermath of the experience.
Super well written, an all-around solid novel. The writing alternates between the Eighties and the present, with lose ties between the two stories. I loved everything about the Eighties and Yale a lot more. I thought Nora's exhibition, her dedication to her lost love, was beautifully - but not too neatly - woven into the whole narrative.
First hand account of the genocide and atrocities committed by ISIS against the religious minority of Yazidis in Northern Iraq. Murad tells us of her upbringing, Yazidic traditions, Iraq's many communities divided by religion and ethnicity, the tumultuous years of the Iraq war, the rise of ISIS. In 2014 ISIS takes her village, kills most of the men, and takes her and all young females to become sex slaves for Islamic State militants in Mosul.
A hard book to read. Not the best written book. But absolutely worth it.
Very chilling and conflicting: Murad first had a hard time talking about what happened to her, as victims of rape bring shame to families in her culture, and honor killings do sometimes happen.
A not-unrealistic Germany of the near future, post Merkel, with a right-wing government that focuses on efficiency and slowly eradicates democracy. While the population is more and more disillusioned and disinterested, the suicide rates are rising. Our protagonist - who has long since dropped all political engagement - leads a successful business that on the storefront helps people with suicidal thoughts, while in the backroom makes big bucks by connecting the unhelpable to terrorist organisations.
Smart social critique, very political and cynical.
Sex, drugs, myths, frats and feminist activism. A campus novel set in the mid-90ies that looks at rape culture. Our female protagonist lives in both worlds, partying and dating a frat-boy, while sharing a house with radical feminists, and reading about misogyny in Greek myths. The plot of the novel escalates when her roommates go to drastic measures to fight for what they believe in, without minding the collateral damage.
This book quite sucked me in, with the slightly scandalous fast moving plot. I especially enjoyed Karen's secretive tempting meetings with golden boy Bruce Comfort. Poor Bruce (and poor me) as he never gets the chance to either prove or damage the mythological pedestal Karen puts him on. But, while I enjoyed the book, I can't say I fully understand what it wanted to communicate. There is something muddled and unfinished about the intentions, the resolutions, the scenes set in the present. I also have to say that Karen still remained a bit of an unresolved engima to me, how she could balance the two worlds, simultaneously be curious about but also ignore and condone what happened in that frat house. All the characters had potential, but they never reached that visual clarity that their counterparts in The Secret History had.
Not your typical campus novel. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Girl joins religious cult. This is a novel about faith, one protagonist grapples with having given up his faith, while the other flees to faith in order to make amends.
The language is poetic and experimental, sometimes I had to reread sentences making sure they were even proper sentences (verdict still out). Of the three perspectives Will's is the strongest, as we're really in his head. While the other two are Will's attempt at reconstructing their voices. John Leal's parts - even though they were short - felt superfluous to me, as they soon turned into religious ramblings disconnected from the narrative.
The introduction of college rape culture into the plot was poignant, as it was somewhat downplayed by us seeing it through Will's eyes. Even though the book makes interesting points about exploitation and radicalisation of believers, I think the offhand “nice guy” turn will stay in my mind a bit longer.
3.5 (rounded up)
This was a heartwarming book. All the characters were fundamentally good and innocent, which usually doesn't make for stories I'm attracted to. But this one had the right mix of misery, melancholy and hopefulness.
With all the fish gone, people are leaving a fishing town in Newfoundland. The government is about to shut down all infrastructure, forcing the few remaining inhabitants to resettle. While their parents go off alternately to make money in Alberta, Will and Cora find creative ways to deal with their dilemma.
The audio book voice was perfect, full of warmth, with a thick Irish accent (at least I think it was Irish). She sang all the song parts beautifully, which contributed to the charming atmosphere of the book.
Tamment has mild autism, synesthesia and a unique relationship to language. For him words don't just hold meaning, but they also ring and shine and sparkle. He prefers his words to harmonise, visually and sonically, and to build sentences with care. Reading him describe his love of words, made me slow down and notice the beauty of his words. His chapters deal with his personal discovery of language, novel ways of teaching language, the history and current state of Esperanto, identity through language in ex colonies, preserving the Icelandic language, sign language, and the collaborative game of conversing on the phone. I was more enchanted with his personal stories at the beginning, and sped through some of the later chapters, but all in all this is a beautiful compendium on language and word tales.
What to do if you're having a hard time getting over your ex, while also being stuck with your PhD thesis on Sappho? You move to L.A., join a support group for love-obsessed women, try Tinder sex, and eventually fall in love with a merman. This book is a wild mix of fun and weird, mixed with darkness, depression and magical realism. Tonally and arc-wise it reminded me a lot of Ottessa Moshfegh's [b: My Year of Rest and Relaxation 36203391 My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1513259517s/36203391.jpg 55508660]. How it perfectly captures an aspect of modern life by taking it to an extreme. And yes, there's lots of merman sex. Not just the erotic kind. Also, everything is very female, and fishy, and wet, and ocean and vagina related. Really, there are UTIs and period sex and yeast infections. Without being too gross. The good kind of gross!
A fun regency romance featuring bickering cousins, that falls apart for me, when the 20 year old heroine turns too superior and adventurous in her masterminding of everyone's romantic and business affairs. Sophy is a wanna-be Emma that lacks Austen's sharp side commentary that would take her down a notch. Also, the ending seems very rushed.
2.5 rounded up because the first half was fun.
First it pulled me in with the story of four friends and young love, then it increasingly annoyed me with everyone's reluctance to help our protagonist recover her memories. But in the end I had to admit that the twist worked really well. Especially in how it made you recall small details from earlier and made you go “aaah of course”.
Civil war, guerrillas, kidnappings, violence, outages in Columbia in the 1990s as seen through the eyes of 2 young girls of different standings. Chula, who is nine, lives in a gated community together with her sister and mother (and a generally absent father). Petrona, who is thirteen, lives in the slums and is her large family's only provider. When Petrona comes to work as a maid for Chula's family, the young girl is fascinated by her. A bond of secrets ensues that soon becomes dangerous.
Intertwined with their personal tragedies we follow along with Pablo Escobar's terror on Columbia, his flight and capture. Which was informative, what frightening times.
The book holds two coming-of-age stories, and starts out as decent storytelling, and then towards the end becomes quite haunting with its conclusions. Experiencing the causes and effects of trauma through Chula's eyes, without having the external explanatory perspective on it, was very touching. Sometimes the girl's thoughts and observations felt a bit too wise for her age, but it definitely made for good reading.
Stories of urban Indians, all converging towards a big Pow Wow in Oakland. We meet multiple generations of Native Americans, all struggling with questions of identity. Far from reservations, we meet torn-apart families, feelings of regret, a meta story about recording stories. It all results in a big portrait of what it must feel like to exist in this modern-day society, that has run off, killed and mistreated your people for centuries.
The storytelling is great, I just wish he'd maybe split it into fewer characters. And maybe not have it end on such a negative event.
After decades of being shunned, psychedelics have slowly made their way back into official medical trials. Researchers are now repeating experiments, that already back in the 50ies+60ies showed the positive effect of psychedelics for people dealing with addiction, depression and death anxieties. Hadn't it been for Leary, the whole field probably wouldn't have been illegitimized and tabooed. In a need for rebranding, the field now reorients itself in the direction of “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy”. It's not about the wild-hallucinatory-color-trip, it's about the long-lasting effects on your brain that a temporary loosening of your ego-structures can have.
When our default mode network becomes too rigid, it shows itself in too heavily ego-focused behavior. If we're backwards-focused this results in depression, if future-focused it represents in anxiety. Neuroimaging of the effects of psychedelics (and heavy meditation) on the brain shows decreased activity in the region that represents the default mode network. It's a state of hyper mindfulness, that allows for more connections across all areas of the brain, which is not unsimilar to the entropy-rich brains of young children. It's a window of mental flexibility, neuroplasticity, that allows for a “reboot”, a rewriting of too rigid mental models.
I found the historical and political section of the book slightly too long, but I really enjoyed all the insights into the neuroscience, the current medical trials, and especially Pollan's own trip experiences. He does a good job of describing all the fears and concerns an outsider would have, planning and undergoing a first trip.
The story of a young girl's life in Nunavut, full of spirits and mystical wildlife, physicality, darkness and abuse. I liked all the descriptive parts about life in these northern parts of Canada, the arctic tundra, the midnight sun, the animal world, people's habits, stories. The lemmings that burrow into her hair, the Northern Lights tingling in her belly, everything is very visceral. But the style being more poetry than prose, and often very segmented, or lost in dreams and visions, made it hard for me to get into this. I appreciated it more than I enjoyed most parts of it. Only late into it, when it reaches the pregnancy, the novel hit a stride for me, as it channelled its focus. The sexual abuse and too-early sexuality are very raw and require trigger warnings. There's a moment when I thought it found an empowering ending to that arc, yet then it undid itself again, which felt more honest yet tragic.
3.5
This was a weird delight. Our heroine is rich and pretty, petty and anti-social. Sick and tired of the world, so she wants to reinvent herself by sleeping as much as possible, with the help of as many pills as her quirky unethical psychiatrist is willing to prescribe. She downs various combinations of sleeping and knockout pills that put her under for days at a time. She lives in a constant daze, between endless naps, watching VHS tapes on loop. Her only contact with the outside world are trips to the neighbourhood bodega, and that one persistently annoying friend who continues to stop by. Around 2/3 in, when her minimalist lazy lifestyle is established, and her dysfunctional upbringing was explored, the book felt a bit unsure about where to go next. But then it suddenly energised again, and I loved everything about her new stricter sleeping regime, the experimental and artsy nature of it, and especially the ultimate outcome. Moshfegh managed to hit a wonderfully sharp and cruel tone, in describing this seemingly vapid posh character, while also giving her a lot of sympathy and tenderness. This might be one of those books that keeps resonating within, after you've finished. I already like it more, the more I think about it. It's hitting this topical itch, of trying to find ways to be more mindful and positive towards this world. And there's just something very alluring about the concept of hibernation. Here it's part cry for help, but also a smart prescient self-preservation move. Which is empowering. Also, it was definitely interesting to read this in parallel with Michael Pollan's [b: How to Change Your Mind 36613747 How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence Michael Pollan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545030338l/36613747.SY75.jpg 58370652], considering the experience she had on her final sleep, and how it ultimately transformed her.
Over several years, guided by coin flips, anxieties, family history and mood swings, the author grapples with her biological clocks whether to have children or not. Stream of consciousness, part diary, Heti examines the question through the lenses of cultural conventions, feminism, relationship, fulfilment. It gets very personal, as we dive into her relationship. It gets a bit too lofty, when we spend too much time inside her dreams. Yet I liked a lot of what she had to say. Especially about women in the creative field. Women who create. And of being ends in them selves, and not just passage-ways.