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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Basic, conversational prose. Acceptable but not inspiring, challenging, or particularly persuasive.
A collection of ideas, eloquently written, but it's all not very coherent. Most disappointingly, the author doesn't answer the question she poses in the title.
inspiring
fast-paced
Pop this in some Christmas stockings and see if anyone gets the hint before you get to Christmas dinner
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
I wish I'd come across this in 2020. Although the sentiments are still valid now they are more pervasive and so nothing said in this pamphlet is new.
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
emotional
informative
medium-paced
elif shafak has such a way with words! i wish i read this in 2020, though some issues and events she tackled and talked about in this seem to form a strong parallel with current events, so it felt pretty current. i love this a lot! and i strongly appreciate the various lebanon mentions ;)
No Magic Pill... but Affirming Nevertheless
Review of the Wellcome Collection paperback edition (August 2020)
Turkish-British author Elif Shafak (author of the Booker nominated [b:10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World|43706466|10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World|Elif Shafak|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556019023l/43706466._SY75_.jpg|68011919] (2019)) provides an affirming essay about the importance of education and the amplifying of unheard voices in the current age. Providing a partial glimpse into her own multicultural upbringing she takes the reader through stages of "Disillusionment and Bewilderment", "Anxiety", "Anger", "Apathy" to "Information, Knowledge, Wisdom."
Purposeful quotes from her own grandmother to recent writers are sprinkled throughout:
I read How to Stay Sane... thanks to a shared subscription to Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company's Year of Reading 2020 New Releases.
Review of the Wellcome Collection paperback edition (August 2020)
Turkish-British author Elif Shafak (author of the Booker nominated [b:10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World|43706466|10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World|Elif Shafak|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556019023l/43706466._SY75_.jpg|68011919] (2019)) provides an affirming essay about the importance of education and the amplifying of unheard voices in the current age. Providing a partial glimpse into her own multicultural upbringing she takes the reader through stages of "Disillusionment and Bewilderment", "Anxiety", "Anger", "Apathy" to "Information, Knowledge, Wisdom."
Purposeful quotes from her own grandmother to recent writers are sprinkled throughout:
'Don't thank me, ' Grandma said. 'You focus on improving your daughter's life. We inherit our circumstances, we improve them for the next generation. I had little education, I wanted you to do better. Now you need to make sure your daughter has more than you had. Isn't this the natural way of the world? - excerpt from pg. 51
I get angry about things, then go on and work. - Toni Morrison
What we call the beginning is often the end...
The end is where we start from. - T.S. Eliot "Little Gidding" The Four Quartets (1941)
I read How to Stay Sane... thanks to a shared subscription to Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company's Year of Reading 2020 New Releases.
Shafak is a concise speaker with comforting thoughts in the middle of discomfiting historical analysis. I've heard her speak and now I've read her short non-fiction. Her messages are clear that it is up to us humans to turn this world around and find better ways to communicate and live together. I want to try her fiction, too, and discover how her message is delivered through story-telling. She believes it is only through our stories, shared, that we become individuals and thusly treat one another as people. I've seen this message before. It's about time we start sharing.