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simsbrarian 's review for:
All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World
by Zora O'Neill
This was just okay, really. Even as a language major with a semester of Arabic in my past, I had to start skimming the over-long passages of grammar and Arabic class descriptions. The author's travel memoirs were the more interesting aspect. The wanderings through the Arab World and chance encounters were definitely the most compelling portions. Overall, though, it seems the author went on her journey hoping to become proficient in all of these many nuanced and narrow slices of various Arabic dialects, to the detriment of her actual enjoyment and experience of the people and places around her. So worried about rules of grammar and conjugations that she missed out a bit on just living and speaking without fear. It does end a bit hopefully with a nod to "as long as you communicate, great things can happen" but it was a truly laborious bit of reading (and skimming) to get there.
Worth reading for the chance encounter stories or, perhaps if you're vastly more fluent in Arabic perhaps those grammar sections would be of interest too. If not, I'd suggest skimming those sections to instead enjoy the tales of random strangers met and conversations had and the ways that a slight error in wording can lead to laughter, misunderstandings, or fast-friends.
Worth reading for the chance encounter stories or, perhaps if you're vastly more fluent in Arabic perhaps those grammar sections would be of interest too. If not, I'd suggest skimming those sections to instead enjoy the tales of random strangers met and conversations had and the ways that a slight error in wording can lead to laughter, misunderstandings, or fast-friends.