Eva
Women's oppression and mystical lionesses that haunt and hunt a village in Mozambique. It's a fragmented poetic tale told from 2 perspectives. The focused solitude of the hunter, and the forced solitude of the violated and silenced girl, both finding an escape in the power of words.
I liked this for it's magical realism that left a lot of ambiguities. It could have been a bit more linear in the narration timeline and a bit less mystical with its words, but I can also blame my easy audiobook-distractibility.
A very basic yet all-encompassing and systematic look at how numbers and words are used in lies. Levitin goes through all the different ways one can obfuscate or twist the truth, trying to teach the reader on how to approach information more critically. A good companion to [b:How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking 18693884 How Not to Be Wrong The Power of Mathematical Thinking Jordan Ellenberg https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387726285s/18693884.jpg 26542434].
This is a nightmarish book, and for a long while you can't tell if it's all allegory or if the main character is losing their sanity and going paranoid. It does a clever thing, where the victim slowly moves into an oppressor. Taunting us with how we all never seem to question our own goodness in the stories we inhabit. The suspense and the weirdness of it all is masterful. So well written, and so consistently uncomfortable to read.
Hadrian, Roman Emperor from 117 to 138, writes a letter to his successor Marcus Aurelius. The letter becomes a retelling of Hadrian's life, his triumphs and losses, enemies and lovers. It shares his beliefs and philosophies, that made him a mostly stabilising and constructive influence on the Roman Empire. The book is heavy on historical detail, yet it never reads like a slog. The words are all carefully chosen, and often ask for repeat reading to marvel at their beauty. You come out of it admiring this (fictionalised version of) Hadrian for all his strengths and faults.
The first-person prose of the letter and the beautiful constructed sentences that evoke an older Latin grammar must make this is marvel of an audio-book with the right narrator. The physical FSG paperback is a beauty itself, with the art prints of Roman sculptures mixed in, and even the feel of the cover.
A Kafkaesque dystopia in an unnamed Middle Eastern city, where the population is gaslit and trapped by an authoritarian surveillance regime in a loop of bureaucracy. Everyone is endlessly queuing up at a gate, to receive various permits and certifications. Life in the queue becomes the new norm, and people adapt to it, form alliances and support networks, reminiscent of what happened at the Arab Spring protests. Yet the gate never opens, new laws continue to wear them down and conditions never improve.
I'd say the setup is brilliant, in its style of abstraction, yet it could have been a bit more tightened and heightened, by taking out some of the long-winded parts (mind, this is a short book, yet still) and pushing the abstraction even more towards a modern-day Kafka novel.
With an artsy protagonist (a fictional or not-so fictional representation of the author?) that's obsessed with polar expeditions and explorations of the void and snow crystals, this felt like a book for me. The book itself is an interesting experiment, mixing research notes and non-fiction fragments and diary entries. It mostly succeeded I'd say.
This is the story of a lake house east of Berlin and all its inhabitants for the last century. As time passes, we quietly encounter the changing set of characters that inhabit and care for the the building. We witness the harshness and terror of the many tumultuous decades that shake 20th century Germany, while living through small moments with the inhabitants. The flow of time itself becomes a character, as physical and emotional memories of the past keep resurfacing (become unearthed).
I absolutely loved that scene in the beginning where the farmer's daughter sees the ghosts of the future, by the lake shore. There's a lot of beauty in how Erpenbeck describes small silent moments, like when she makes you feel the calm of lying on a wooden landing stage of the lake, feeling the sun and the warmth of your own skin, while watching the water ripples ...
This was a fun read. A dystopian misogynist Finland where women are nurtured and genetically bred into dumb submissive blondes, eager to please their fairy-tale future husbands. Naturally our heroine is a rebel, secretly revolting against the status quo. She's also addicted to chili, which is the only drug left on the market. She bands together with a drug dealer and a group of growers, hoping to escape while desperately trying to keep her loved ones safe. Then the plot goes off into a bit of magical realism that's very entertaining. What I found a bit cheap and irritating, was the the dumb bimbo stereotype callout considering this subgroup of women does exist in most cultures. There was something slightly vicious about it, that could have fit more into a satire than a dystopia. (Though, this probably qualifies as satirical dystopia). One thing that saddened me was, that the grandma didn't even try to educate the sister into a conscious non-drone. Was the statement of the novel, that it's all nature and not nurture? But I really enoyed how the novel wove eugenics and experiments into the difference between the sexes (the toy truck test) into the world building. (A novelization for the [b:Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference 8031168 Delusions of Gender How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference Cordelia Fine https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348833681s/8031168.jpg 12635310] readers)Small detail: I would have preferred if the main character's synaesthesia would have stayed unmentioned. It was a neat detail up until it was explicitly called out.
A saga spanning 2 generations, spanning from the Indonesian massacre in 1965 to life in exile in Paris back to the revolts in Indonesia in 1998. Lots to to learn about the atrocities and the government lies committed, and I would have liked even more details, dug a bit deeper into the horror (that short mention of the stingray at the torture facility?!). But the book feels more a novel for the people in the know, considering the sleeve text of the English translation has to explain some of the historical/political context to the reader. It also states that this is one of the first novels to openly explore the crimes committed by the Indonesian Suharto government. So, all the kudos for that.
Between the political plot points, the novel has a few love stories, that were too surface-level for my taste, with their focus on physical beauty and love-at-first sight. The writing style in general was pretty simplistic and also had this irritating habit of repeating facts, as if they had happened a long time ago and not just on the previous page. It was hard to tell if that was a stylistic choice that somehow got lost in translation, or an oversight.
I did enjoy it though, mainly for learning more about a culture, historical event that I previously was ignorant of.
A group of women is locked away in the desolate Australian Outback. It's their punishment for their femaleness and their sexuality. What starts like prison turns into a tale of survival. Some of them manage to rebuild their broken selves into new stronger versions, fed from animal instincts and feelings of revenge.
I like that the book stayed abstract, and focused more on characters than plot. Delving into the details of why and how, probably would have made it fall apart.
I did not expect that a book about the scientific breakthroughs and the partnership of two psychologists would make me cry. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman are opposites in many ways, one extrovert and always the centre of the party, the other introvert and self-doubting. Their shared interests and respect for each other's intellect made them fall deep into a successful and intense partnership. Their collaborations over decades almost bordered on a love story (without the sex). They inspired each other, balanced out each other's strengths and weaknesses, and together set out to proof that people are far less rational as economists and common sense would like to believe. They jumpstarted the fields of behavioural economics and set the foundation for Big Data projects. Yet all love stories have highs and lows, and this unexpectedly ended up being a very touching story.
A great mix of biography and science and insights into our own less-than-rational minds.
Ana is 10 years old when her country Croatia, in seeking independence from Yugoslavia, succumbs to civil war. Childhood games are replaced with the harsh new realities of air strikes, and enemy patrols and child soldiering. Through outside help, she and her younger sister manage to escape the war atrocities and are adopted by an American couple. 10 years later Ana is now a student in New York City, grappling with her complicated past. She decides she needs to visit, to locate the people she left behind, and to visit places of her childhood, that despite all the horror she had to experience, still hold a part of her.
Touching, in how it tells the story of the breakout of war through the eyes of a child, and in how it communicates ones feelings for family, home, and home country. The relationship between best childhood friends Ana and Luka was precious, and also resolved (left-open) in a rewarding way.
An exceptional memoir about the hard path of escaping a religiously-fanatic, isolated upbringing by a violent and mentally unstable family. Tara's family is ruled by her biopolar Mormon survivalist father, who forbids his children to go to school, avoids the government, and shuns all modern forms of medicine. The upbringing for her and her 6 siblings is wild and dangerous and full of scary injuries. In addition Tara has to fight all the religious, misogynistic rules of what Mormon women are allowed to wear, to do, to think. Her wish to acquire an education despite all odds, becomes the vehicle that allows her to escape the emotionally and physically abusive home.
She writes this memoir with a history PhD in her pocket, and I found it fascinating how she comments on the complications of writing (her family's) history due to the existence of multiple conflicting voices. At times she also questions her own memories, as her family progressively attempts to gaslight her and downplay the cruelties that happened.
There are a lot of disturbing moments in Tara's life story, yet she manages to convey them with a lyrical voice and a deep longing for the good in her family. I found her relationship to her mother especially devastating. There's a moment where they almost find a common branch, of bonding together against the violent bullying of her brother, and then it hurts so much more when it all falls apart.
What a gripping real life story. With real people, you can google on the internet. Very curious how the family, their neighbors and the larger Mormon community is reacting to the popularity of the book and all the media attention it must bring.
A story about mentorship and feminism and morals. How it's important to build people up, but also equally important to then push them away (actively or accidentally) so they can build their own path. While I definitely enjoyed reading this - it's very well written - I feel it could have used more bite. It was especially disappointing that neither Faith nor Greer did anything to fix the problem with that botched program in Ecuador. At least one of them could have attempted to be a hero (or whistle-blower), instead of the little-evil-for-the-greater-good message. In the end, Cory's story - how he dealt with his family falling apart, up to his beautiful videogame idea - moved me the most.This gets marketed as the female empowerment book, but a way more thought-provoking book about feminism is Naomi Alderman's [b:The Power 29751398 The Power Naomi Alderman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462814013s/29751398.jpg 50108451]. So why did I give those two the same rating? Probably because The Female Persuasion is still a very good story to lose oneself in.
A multigenerational story of family, loss, music, politics and revolutions, told in a layered and cyclic way, resembling the rewriting and reworking of music and literature, as it is present in the plot of the novel. The title is a line of a Chinese left-wing anthem, and the story unfolds across the devastating times of the Great Chinese Famine, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the deadly student protests at Tienanmen Square. Family members and lovers are separated, and everyone's life is in general made worse by the oppression of the Party. It was upsetting to learn about “struggle sessions”, mandatory denunciations and self-criticism practice. But there's also a love for music that gives the characters hope, a purpose and helps them form deep bonds. All the love stories (the obvious or less obvious ones) were told gentle and with great care. The writing is splendid and it's really quite the sweeping saga, with a very political heart.
A little book that in the first half gives a good overview on how phone apps are meant to addict us and how they succeeded in just a few years to rewire our brains to form attention-deficit habits, and in the second half takes you through a 30 day mindfulness step-program on how to detach again.
A quick read. I enjoyed the first half, there's nothing too new, but it's always good to be reminded of these points. The second half definitely looks useful, if you're willing to commit. I picked and chose random advice.
Decent historical fiction about an Englishman coming to a small-town New York of the 18th century. He's got a bill for 1000 pounds but won't disclose what they are meant for. We have to wait until the very end to find out about his intentions, and they are intriguing and color previously encounters in a more interesting light, but it comes a little too late, I find. Because most of the adventurous he stumbles into before, feel a bit trivial. Though I did love everything about the dynamic between him and bitter Tabitha, who's a character I haven't encountered much in literature. Sometimes we all like the cage to much. The writing is good.
La narratrice raconte l'histoire de son adolescence au Vietnam dans les annees 1930. Ce'st un histoire de premier amour, d'eveil sexuel, de secret et de honte, et d'instabilites mentales qui detruisent une famille. L'ecriture est lyrique, luxuriante et brumeuse, pleine de sentiments et de scenes atmospheriques. Je n'ai pas tout compris car la narration etait tres fluide et vague a certaines occasisons, mais je pense que ce'st un livre fait pour etre lu en francais :)
