koolkas
A collection of great essays by Chinua Achebe.
What is Nigeria to Me: Criticism on postcolonial Nigeria on how unfit it is to be anybody's motherland because it is a "child". The state is unable to fulfill its primary obligations, and thus much work needs to be done to make Nigeria a proper country.
Travelling White: An essay about travelling around Africa. I found this one a little schadenfreude with its Rosa Parks moment. It was enlightening seeing the differences between different African countries, I confess I was unaware of this prior.
Africa's Tarnished Name: Chinua Achebe highlights the reputation Africa has, perpetuated by writers such as Joseph Conrad. He mentions the dehumanisation of Africans are on purpose to justify pro-slavery takes. I think he forecasted the future need for sensitivity readings when representing other races.
Africa is People: An OECD meeting shows how so-called expert economists fail to consider Africa as people and instead, a testing space for their theories. He admits he, as a writer, has limitations on what he could do, but criticises the approach of other attendants who dehumanise his people.
Overall, I liked this collection of essays; Chinua Achebe is an engaging writer and the criticisms he made is still relevant today. His points about mass media and representing Africa is still relevant today. (He also really hated Joseph Conrad.)
"If the philosophical dictum of Descartes 'I think, therefore I am' represents a European individualistic ideal, the Bantu declaration 'Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu' represents an African communal aspiration. 'A human is human because of other humans'
Contains spoilers
Crom Cruach had a lot of potential, but it didn't deliver. I liked the themes in the book: Conflict between the Garda and local paramilitary, heaven and an angel being the main antagonist instead of hell and devils, and Nazis being the surprise villain.
However, I didn't find the prose as "lyrical" as expected, instead I found it somewhat disjointed and lacking rhythm? The diction was like that of a modern novel and didn't read like a folk story at all. I just expected something else, I think.
The first story was interesting: a collection of testimonies on a murder and they conflict each other. The second one was alright, it chronicles the deaths of multiple people in the narrator's life. I didn't really like the last one, it's a collection of very short somewhat connected stories about the narrator's life. It felt very depressing to read the last one.
Decent enough read.
The Sea Raiders: I liked this one. Carnivorous deep sea molluscs suddenly attacking humans.
The Land Ironclad: A semi-historical account of the first use of tanks, though it seemed like it was describing something else. From the viewpoint of a war correspondent.
The Magic Shop: The weakest of the bunch. A man and his son enters a magic shop and suspects the magic is real. It doesn't feel that scary unless the parental fear of your child going missing or getting the wrong influence is your biggest fear.
I actually liked this collection of short stories better than The Hour of the Star. They're quite beautifully written and I do think there's multiple interpretations for each.
The first one, I think, is about the ennui of being a wife, and how the expected feminine future is simply being a wife and how it subtly traps a person despite its romanticism. I noticed the woman's drunkenness as an escape and how she revelled in another man's attention due to the stagnancy of her own life.
The second story is about "violent mercy" or the guilt from having a happy life; a woman feels upended after witnessing a blind man and spirals in pity.
The third story is about the uncertainness in a household and depicts a very natural strain in family relationships. It's very aptly described.
Contains spoilers
It's a collection of essays.
Chapter 1: Poetry is Not a Luxury: This one is about poetry as a necessity to elucidate with words, hope and dreams as part of a process to turn it into action. "I feel, therefore I am free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of freedom"
Chapter 2: Uses of the Erotic: Talks about eroticism as feminine power in which it represents internal satisfaction (?) and separates it from pornographic, which is "sensation without feeling". It's about living life to its emotional fullest, bringing out the "eroticism" within us.
Chapter 3: Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House: This one is really good. It's a treatise on how interdependency within a community should highlight differences. "divide and conquer should be define and empower". its mostly a critique on white feminism but i can see this applicable elsewhere
Chapter 4: Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism: this one is a stronger critique against white feminism and how they dont consider people of color. and that anger from people from colour is considered "intimidating" when it should be simply a way to communicate. "If I spoke to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you".
Chapter 5: Learning from the 1960s: Audre Lord mentions the infighting in black communities and advocates to stop horizontal struggle and unite against oppression.
Overall, extremely dense and worth multiple re-reads to truly "get it".
This book reimagines proteins as transistors, metabolic networks as evolution-driven neural networks and biochemical processes as computational processes. Interesting stuff but it could be a little outdated since it was published in 2009. He did not predict LLMs as it is in 2026, instead worrying over a robot future as normal to that time period. He also used the lock and key mechanism to explain protein mechanism – it's the age of induced fit! Glutamate is also framed as if it's the “only” neurotransmitter, when it is only the commonest one.
I honestly expected more of an argument against epistemicide as a method of social control, but I do think Brave New World did it better in that aspect. Fahrenheit 451 focuses more on the encapsulation of humanity in books (“90% of what [life has to offer] is in books”, mentioned in the book) so it's less of a political satire and more of a love letter to books in general. Apparently Ray Bradbury was somewhat inspired by Stalin's censorship but doesn't hammer in the point that Stalin did that to prevent the propagation of contrasting political ideals, not limit cognition entirely. However, Bradbury did foresaw the decline in intellectual pursuits and rise of instant serotonin like Tiktok reels and Youtube Shorts (lol). I think Brave New World's Panem et Circenses approach was more accurate as speculative fiction over the mass burning mentioned in Fahrenheit 451 but I do like the writing style of Fahrenheit 451 better.
I did resonate deeply with his arguments on how life is all about the dew in the morning grass and all those little things you can only appreciate if you had taken your time with literature and how literature opens new viewpoints. Lovely book.
Aldous Huxley has some good ideas. I agree with his opinions on mass media and advertising as a form of brainwashing. But I'm not sure about his opinions about overpopulation and his solution of smaller governing communities. It's 2026 now and the greatest problem isn't overpopulation. Birth control access is actually being fought for, not against. Smaller governing communities don't seem like a fit for all situation either. He has some good points about mass media though and is accurate with his predictions for modern imperialism.
I didn't expect this book to be a memoir of sorts. I thought the book had an academic approach, but it was more of a collection of musings by Omar El Akkad. I liked his writing though, it was very emotionally moving. I liked the analogy of the currency of fear and how certain people had less purchasing power. Fear is incredibly political to justify genocide and war.
Criticism about consumerism and capitalistic beauty standards. I had to reread the climax scene because it confused me since it lacked the sufficient descriptions for me to form an image of what was really happening in my opinion. This happened not once or twice, sometimes I have to reread because the next chapter would change settings without prefacing where they were which made me have to infer. I guess it's the writing style, since I've been reading lots of literature with verbose descriptions.
A very slow read written in a stream-of-consciousness prose style. I did feel like the pace was sluggish at some parts, and that I skimmed through some of the medical details a little too much. The medical details were in an awkward place where there was too little detail to be scientifically interesting but too much detail to be interesting as a plot device. It was successful at inciting some medical anxiety though.
I liked the message, that life has simple pleasures that we need to be grateful for. A good weekend casual read.
I have some problems with this book. First: the arguments about faith are so on the nose it feels juvenile. Thora and Santi's arguments felt unrealistically written. I don't, for a second, believe any 19 year old Physics student speaks like that.
Second: the book takes some common tropes and just genderswaps them. Santi is The Maiden and is patient and faithful. Thora is aggressive and a realist. Which is fine, usually, but Santi gets the Fridging treatment at the end where he literally DIES for Thora's character development. Why can't we have Thora's character development occur 100 pages earlier instead of the last few pages where she thinks she's making a sacrifice and realises the weight of her choices after Santi's death?
Lastly: I feel like the ending was rushed and poorly resolved. It would have been better if we had a glimpse of Real Life after spending years and years in simulation.
Overall, I think this book was a 3star read.
Decently “cozy” low-stakes book where Nothing Really Happens. Cameron acts like a realistic 30 year old manbaby but has a super quick coming-of-age moment in the last few pages. Tova is a typical “strong, older woman” type of character. Marcellus is the only interesting character. The language and prose kept me going though. It's an easy read that I've picked up to fill the time, but it's really not a serious read.
