Eva

This is based on the horrific real life story of a couple of men in a Mennonite community in Bolivia, drugging and raping the women for many years. Chamber-play style, we spend two days with 3 generations of women of 2 families, while they sit and talk and debate if the women of the community should stay to fight or leave. They are angry and fear for the safety of their children, but they also want to find a way to deal with this that doesn't conflict with their beliefs. They are believers, they live a life of obeying their husbands. They are illiterate, cut off from the world, ignorant of certain words and concepts that relate to their situation. But they are also like all of us, some are stubborn, some are full of doubt, some are forgiving, some are murderous.

Gruesome story, fascinating premises. About reconciling what you believe in with the culture it created. About being revolutionary, while being afraid of the word. The writing does a good job of not over-focusing at the gruesome deeds at its root. Toews also takes good care of giving outsiders a window into the life of Mennonites women without belittling them.

About a friendship in the Italian mountains. About how big or small one's life is meant to be. And about silent fathers and all the stories they don't share. And destinies. About solitary men and the women they hurt in the process. About the seasons and how they never change. And about the river and the lake and the mountain changing. And about finding one's calling in all the mountains, or just the one.

A quiet, yet not too quiet story. I really liked this one. I really like stories of mountains it seems. There could have been a little bit more. Give Berio and Bruno more time to feel more epic.

4.5 rounded up

L'histoire d'une enfance en Burundi, au debut de la guerre. Gabriel est le fils d'une mere rwanduese et un pere francaise. Avec ses copains il court autour du leur petit quartier, nage dans les lac, vit des petits aventures et se gorge de mangues volees. Mais quand le guerre au pays voisine Rwanda commence, alarme et souci aussi invahit Gaby's quartier et ses famille.

Je pense que Faye capte parfaiement la perte de l'innocence et la transformation d'un enfance sans-souci en quelque chose qui vous hantera pour toujours. L'histoire de Gaby, sa famille et ses copains, etait tres touchant sans etra ecrase par le drame. En tres simples and tres peu de mots, en particulier l'histoire de sa mere et sa fin m'a fait pleurer.

Petit pays etait un formidable livre pour lire un chapitre chaque jour, parce que les chapitre etait court, chaque comportant une petite histoire contenue du plus grande histoire.

4.5 arrondi

The adventurous story of a young slave who with the help of an eccentric scientist flees his plantation, sees the world and discovers his true calling. Yet it's far from as simple as this description might make it sound. You add the prejudices a young black man encounters in the 19th century. And his personal conflicting relationship with the figures of his past.

While this was an entertaining fast-paced audiobook to listen to, there seemed to be something off in the balance. It felt it had maybe too few adventures for being good adventure yarn, but it also had too many side quests and quirky characters for being a character study.

3.5 rounded down

I've returned a bit to my Polar obsession, since reading Brother Ice earlier this year. A continent full of ice, beautiful, frozen, cruel, alternating between the eternal night and the eternal day. The romantic ideal of many late heroes.

Terra Incognita is a travelogue interspersed with the history of men on Antarctica. In the mid 1990s Wheeler visits the many international science camps that are distributed over the continent. We learn of all the minute details life on Antarctica entails. We hear of exploding toilets, frozen beards, many delayed flights, dart games over VHF radio, igloo sleepovers, hygiene without showers. In small quarters, shared tents and huts, we meet all these characters - mostly scientists, but also a few escapists - who keep returning to the ice, again and again, despite it's many hardships.

Unsurprisingly it's quite the boys-club down there. Though the unwelcomness that Wheeler experiences at the British camp, really reads like quite a little nightmare. Yet she bites back in her writing, keeping it sharp and funny at the same time.

Reading this book made me curious about how life down in Antarctica has transformed in the last 2 decades.

Ma premiere tentative d'ecoute d'un livre audio en francais. J'ai bien choisi parce que celui-ci ne durait que trois heures. Mais je l'ai ecoute deux fois, et cela a une vitesse lente. J'ai compris des fragments mais pas tout le recit. L'histoire est ecrite a la premiere person, racontant l'histoire d'une fille et de sa famille qui ont immigre du Vietnam au Canada. Il n'y a pas de fil narrative fort, qui etait bon pour moi, parce que je ne pouvais pas me perdre trop loin, mais d'un autre cote, cela m'a aussi rendu difficile de m'interesse a l'histoire.

Je ne me sens pas capable d'evaluer correctement les merites du livre, ni si cela m'a plu ou non. Il est possible que la comprehension du recit soit la cle pour cela ;)

Dark and nightmarish, super atmospheric and rich world building. And so many women.

Merged review:

Dark and nightmarish, super atmospheric and rich world building. And so many women.

A lost love story and how it influences one man's life. From Ankara to Berlin and back.

I liked the writing, the scenery, and the structure of this, but I couldn't warm up to the characters and their passivity. Plus, I am really not a fan of love-at-first-sight as a plot device, and this particular love story is all that. Even though its slow progression has quite a interesting feminist angle.

I alternated between being intrigued, feeling lost and wanting to be done with it. The world building is quite good, and if you don't read up too much about it before, then there's an interesting twist ahead for you. And I also quite liked the characters Dey created, they're dreamers and rebels and lovers, locked into a frozen bubble of a world. But there was so much jumping around in time, and characters with multiple names, that I got quite confused, obviously also due to my higher distraction rate with audiobooks. At the very end I finally connected that The Heavy's best friend was the boy's father, but I don't know if that knowledge was kept as a reveal or if I just failed at tracking those family details from earlier descriptions. Because there obviously also were certain other revelations, that clearly were set up as reveals. So in total, I'd note this one down as intriguing, but maybe not fully successful.

About a shapeshifting little girl and heroes and villains and the roles they play. Super funny, smart and original. Blackheart and Goldenloin's nemesis/love was adorable.

When your radiologist dad gives you a couple hundred x-rays as treatment for your sinus infection...

I pretty much stayed up all night to finish this, that's how much I love Sally Rooney's characters and her delicate and intimate way of writing them. This is a love story. Connell and Marianne feel the most themselves in each other's company, yet youthful insecurities, family and class issues, anxiety, depression and the discovery of sexual kinks, time after time pull them apart. Rooney does this thing so very well, where she slowly weaves psychological complexities into what you first think is a pretty straight forward story. Her scenes and her characters are frail and emotional, their insecurities and pains are palpable, and I shed tears multiple times while reading the book. Also, interesting to note, that similarly as with [b:Conversations with Friends 32187419 Conversations with Friends Sally Rooney https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1500031338l/32187419.SY75.jpg 52827120], the book does finish a bit open-ended. As if Rooney wants to tell us that the dance never ends.

Fascinating and very elegantly executed literary scifi with a touch of Cultural Revolution, lots of science, a long-standing math problem and first alien communication. The Trisolarian game world with dehydration and rehydration reminded me of the abstract mind twisting of [b:The Inverted World 142181 The Inverted World Christopher Priest https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1245646253l/142181.SY75.jpg 2226603]. The idea that alien civilisations would mess with our scientific research in order to stop our progress, feels entirely possible

In order to get more serious about my financial planning, I read this guide book from 1989 :) But it's a big Canadian hit apparently, though I gave it a try.

It's common-sense finance knowledge packaged with a few characters and minimal plot. The jokes are aged yet still chuckle-worthy. Less chuckle-worthy is the fact that back then it was quite realistic to get 10% interests on mutual fund investments.

Definitely helpful in getting you thinking about savings, rsps, insurance, taxes, etc.

The first half of the book is fine enough, somewhat corny and simplistic, but fine, as it tells the story of a white Irish girl growing up among the slaves at a tobacco plantation. But then the second half pushes all the melodrama too much, over-relying on secrets and misunderstandings as plot points. Also, the main character is rather maddening, as she never grows out of her little-girl naivety.

Sara Maitland's “Silence” is a solitude, experienced in a wide open nature exempt of the sound of humanity. She spends 1-2 decades exploring and searching for the perfect space, and the perfect silence. The book recounts her explorations (in deserts, and moors, on walks and lock-ins), the practical and the psychological, and mixes it with quotes and stories about other famous hermits and solitude-seekers.

She learns that there are 2 different ways of seeking solitude/silence: the romantic and the religious way. While the religious seekers attempt inner emptiness, a purging of the self, the romantic seekers attempt to find and strengthen their own self while in solitude. A writer in profession and also deeply religious, Maitland wants to find a way to combine these two opposing usages of silence.

Reading this book made me very aware of the city noises around me, and made me long to own a little cottage far from civilisation.

Oh the rage of a heartbroken and too proud half-god. This was very wonderful, and then quite a welcome tearjerker at the end. It's hard to read or judge the book without comparing it to Miller's newest return to Greek mythology - [b:Circe 35959740 Circe Madeline Miller https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508879575s/35959740.jpg 53043399]. I found Circe more playful in its writing as the character offered more grey morality, while Patroclus' and Achilles' story mostly was pretty straight forward and (oh so) sweet. But The Song of Achilles has a stronger focused plot arc and the book really excels in its last chapters, when depicting Achilles' fury and torment, and then closing with Thetis' and Patrocluses' fantastic final encounter.

Carlo Rovelli first takes apart our Newtonian and instinctual concept of time, and then builds it back up based on quantum and thermal time. He shows us how time is not (necessarily) a variable in our world, but how time -and space- emerge from the relations between quantum events. There are some hard to grasp metaphysical leaps once in a while, but mostly the book is beautifully written, philosophical and lyrical exploration of time.

There's a special kind of magical state one enters when listening to a metaphysical book on audio on headphones, while walking through our world full people and objects and all its mundanities. Especially when the audiobook is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch with a beautiful voice and much grace.

I did listen to the audio book twice, attempting to pay better attention to the details on the 2nd time around, but all the metaphysical talk really invites me to get distracted with daydreaming. I was very intrigued with thermal time but won't even attempt to describe it here. I might have to get a hardcopy to be able to fully dig my teeth into that.

Une science-fiction francaise, placee sur et sous terre. Deux histoires, l'une des humains, et l'autre des fourmis. A la fin les convergent.

On apprend beaucoup de la societe de fourmis et comment elles communiquent, cultivent et combattent. Tout est assez realiste and base sur la biologie, Werber ajoute seulment un peu de agence pour rendre l'histoire de les fourmis plus attrayante. L'histoire humains se sent plus irrealiste, meme.

Les fourmis sont plus familiare avec les mort, et j'aimais beaucoup comment l'histoire a perdu son protagnoist suppose soudainement a mi-chemin.

Interessant, mais je pense je ne suis plus dans le group cible pour ce livre. 2.5

A powerful and reflective story about domestic abuse in India, based on the author's own marriage. After a quick courting period and marriage, there's no idyll, instead the marriages falls apart immediately. He starts to mentally and physically undermine her independence. He isolates her and controls her every action. He takes over her email account, monitors her phone calls and sabotages all her work opportunities. When she tries to rebel against these shackles, he uses physical violence all the way up to rape in order to push her back down.

At the beginning, from my Western POV, I was attempted to victim-blame (she's clearly educated, why didn't she get out earlier?) but the more the book goes on the more it becomes clear how deeply misogynistic Indian culture is. (Which isn't a surprise considering the child/women abuse articles that usually come from there. But I definitely hadn't heard about the common practice of Bride burning beforehand). Society is so patriarchal it won't listen to women, it doesn't even ask women for their opinion. Even her parents tell her to wait it out, to obey her husband.

It's a hard subject to read about, but Kandasamy's writing is smart and witty and sad and lyrical, all at the same time.

Fantastic. While Pinker's [b:Enlightenment Now 35696171 Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress Steven Pinker https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1502223499l/35696171.SY75.jpg 57185511] is more in-depth, Factfulness gives us a very lucid and easy-to-read guide to all the misconceptions we have about world progress. The book is based on the alarmingly low percentage of correct answers expert and non-expert audiences from all over the world give when Rosling polls them on questions about global trends in poverty, life expectancy, education etc. Divided into separate chapters, the book explains the different negative instincts that make all of us believe in the worst possible of futures, while teaching us the tools on how to overcome those instincts. Mixed with statistical graphs, and interesting anecdotes from Rosling's experience as a medical doctor in crisis situations, Factfulness is an engaging read that will definitely make for good Christmas presents this year. The fact that Rosling and his son and daughter-in-law are Swedes makes for a welcoming change, by having for once a book like this that doesn't heavily focus on the US.

“If we were trapped in a body, then we would do bodily things.”

On Ada's birth the gates are left open, and evil spirits - Ọgbanje - flow in. From early on the Ada is many, a mass of brothersisters, children of Ala, the goddess of earth, who shield her and split her to protect her from her own memories. But only when she encounters strong physical trauma, the many crystallise and a personality emerges that learns to take possession of Ada's body. The new self is aggressive yet protective, loves Ada, but also sets out to violently damage her and those she loves.

A spiritual and dark take on split personality disorder, that I liked more than I originally thought I would. I especially loved the ambiguous push-and-pull dynamics of how the spirits simultaneously want to protect and harm Ada, how Ada asks for their help but also wants them gone. Trigger warnings, there are many turbulent and painful images of them going wild within and with her body.

A tentative summer love between shy and simple Harriet and careless and cruel Vesey falls apart before it can bloom. Two decades later they are brought back together again, discovering they had held on to their long-ago feelings.

I really thought the narration of Harriet and Vesey's adolescent love was exquisite, capturing the awkwardness and fast heartbeats of crushes and first touches. Taylor's writing has a unique style, observing and subtle, detached yet also sharp. She makes jumps sometimes, inserts you right into situations, without connecting the dots, it was intriguing.

I loved the first part more, for its shy romance. The second part features too many secondary characters, I mainly wanted the attention back on our main protagonists. Towards the end everything becomes gloomier and gloomier, plot and my perception of it, but the ending was great again.

Not nearly as dark and disturbing as some of the reviews made me believe this would be. It's the story of a strange pull between step-siblings, experienced in a handful sexually-tinted, slightly abusive encounters across their adolescent / young adult years. There's a power-dynamic that tilts in his favor, which ultimately leads to a break in their connection. Though a scene towards the end shows, that they would have been compatibly after all. So I am sad they didn't get to fully explore their kinks ;)

The background, an coming-of-age in the 50ies in a dysfunctional family, was interesting. The dynamic with the mother was intriguing, but never felt fully outlined, or pushed towards its potential.

What a captivating and thought-provoking memoir. Clemantine tells the harrowing story of her 7 year long journey of escaping the war in Rwanda together with her strong and resourceful sister Claire. In parallel we learn about her arrival in the US and the hardness of what it means to reacquaint yourself with a life of safety. How charity - the economy of givers and takers, saviours and saved - establishes a degrading hierarchy. How anger and trauma go hand in hand, and how families that have been torn apart don't just automatically heal.