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archytas's reviews
1708 reviews
Return: A Palestinian Memoir by Ghada Karmi
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
This is an admirably candid memoir of Ghada's time in the West Bank as an advisor to the Palestinian Authority. It reads a little like the writing is a way to make sense of her own experiences, especially perhaps her disillusionment with the PA, her attachement to the people of Palestine, and her abiding anger at the binds that tie them. The scenes set in Gaza were hard to read because of the 2025 context of reading them, and trying to understand just how much worse what is going on now is than what could possibly have been imagined.
Identitti by Mithu Sanyal
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
This is a strangely rollicking adventure through the modern politics of race, identity, migration, social media and postcolonial studies. Nivedita's world comes crashing down when her beloved mentor and chair of postcolonial studies Saraswati is exposed as having been born, well, White. Under siege for her perceived loyalties, with friendships cracking, and with her career as much as her emotions at stake, Nivedita retreats into Saraswati's world for several days to sort it all out.
Sanyal is les interested in making a point here than in exploring our times. This does require some sitting with discomfort, but somehow she makes her characters arguments stop just short of the point where they would feel circular, and her lashings of humour assist. Ultimately, this is not a book about Saraswati as much as it is about Niv, and the uncertainties of being between.
In a particularly clever move, the mock tweets/Instas that accompany the text were largely written by the (real) names individuals, who Mithal approached to ask them to consider what they would say in this situation.
The translation, which gifts us a fabulous afterward, does I suspect inevitably blur the role of English in this German world, but the book also does feel global - which is, of course, part of the point.
Sanyal is les interested in making a point here than in exploring our times. This does require some sitting with discomfort, but somehow she makes her characters arguments stop just short of the point where they would feel circular, and her lashings of humour assist. Ultimately, this is not a book about Saraswati as much as it is about Niv, and the uncertainties of being between.
In a particularly clever move, the mock tweets/Instas that accompany the text were largely written by the (real) names individuals, who Mithal approached to ask them to consider what they would say in this situation.
The translation, which gifts us a fabulous afterward, does I suspect inevitably blur the role of English in this German world, but the book also does feel global - which is, of course, part of the point.
Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin
informative
medium-paced
2.5
The thematic organisation, and the anecdotes, mean that there are great flashes of content here, but the overall felt hard to follow, and sometimes hard to distinguish between good story and verified history.
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum
hopeful
inspiring
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
This was my last read of 2024 or my first of 2025, depending on time zone views of various platforms, and a tad on your definition of when a book is read. I'm not a big fan of what is now being called "healing fiction", but this one came highly recommended, and I can see why. The premise is a little less smoothed over than in some of this genre - Hwung injects some considered critique of waged work in via, among other things, book club recountings, and her characters work for their epiphanies, which don't occur overnight. But it retains the comforting sense that things might be better if we just took a breath, which is a hallmark of this fiction.
Also books and coffee, which is pretty much anyone's escapist paradise isn't it?
Also books and coffee, which is pretty much anyone's escapist paradise isn't it?
A Recipe for Daphne by Nektaria Anastasiadou
emotional
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
At the start of this, I really thought it was going to be awful, but it evolved into quite a charming romance-with-a-point that explores the worlds of early 21st century Rum in Istanbul. The characters do deal with past trauma and present prejudice (not unrelated) but the emphasis tends towards sweet - and the arc is that of a traditional romance.
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I am a little younger than Naomi Klein. Close enough, that like her, I read Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth when it came out, and, like her, found it more stating-the-obvious than revelatory, on the other hand, felt like something else entirely, the beginning of a new world Gen Xs would form, which rejected commodification of everything. And looked really cool - best No Logo Logo ever.
So there was a strong pleasure in discovering that Klein has aged into a wry sense of humour, a severely decreased sense of hubris, and a seasoned analytical brain that can make a little sense of this moment we find ourselves in.
The focus on this book is, in its own way, a sensibly small issue. The infuriating reality that Klein and Wolf are constantly confused, and, now that Wolf has become a anti-vaxxing, pro-Trump intimate of Steve Bannon, this is starting to be more than irksome.
But in resigning herself to this entanglement, Klein sets off on a journey into how we got to this strange moment, with the rise openly contested truths. Klein starts the book with a highly engaging dive into accepting that she does, in fact, "have a brand problem" with the Wolf confusion, and what accepting that means to someone who built their career on boldly declaring that no person is a brand. This leads into a sense of how the world has played out not in the way we hoped (including her noting that getting a global top designer to do her book cover before the book was written may have been a sign that she wasn't as clear on all this as she thought she was).
This disarming self-assessment carries us through COVID, as she frankly admits that, despite believing that due to the analysis that underpinned her second book Shock Doctrine, she figured she was immune from the distorted judgement that follows a crisis, she plunged headlong into a Wold/antiVax/far right obsession. There is a particularly funny scene when her husband finds her doing her evening yoga wind-down listening the Bannon's podcast. I suspect they are also evident in the way Klein dualities - of various kinds - everywhere.
But these early meanderings, while amusing, also set up the slow build to a stronger analysis and thesis in the second half on the book as Klein tries to understand politically why people confuse her with Wolf and how Wolf - like so many Americans - flipped into conspiracy territory so quickly. A chapter on anti-Semitism, Palestine and Israel - all jumped off from the possible role anti-semitism has in confusing the Naomis - is one of the best things I've read on the topic of being Jewish in this moment.
She delves into Wolf's political trajectory, and looks at how white women, especially those in caring roles, often broke in the pandemic years, noting that Klein's belief in political established power set her up for disillusionment.
Klein raises, without needing to be resolved, the way that identity has becomed tangled with brand for many younger people, and the realities of being encouraged to mine or perform trauma in order to get into college. Her focus on the need to organise, to manage human solidarity in the face of commodification, remains, even as the articulation is different.
I don't quite know what many of her fans will think of this book. It feels like a product of the pandemic, a messy, personal, slightly-on-the-TMI-edge book, a product of not being able to get entirely out of your own head. But it is a joy to read, and very thought provoking. At one point Klein describes the book she intended to write in a long paragraph too boring to quote in full "planned to draw more heavily on Freud’s theory of the uncanny, as it relates to doubles and the repressed id. I would contrast it with Carl Jung’s theories of synchronicity and the shadow self. I would apply these notions of the repressed unconscious to works about doubles by Poe, Saramago, and Dostoyevsky, and to Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.". This may be scattier, but it is, I think, a much more useful and definately more fun, book.
So there was a strong pleasure in discovering that Klein has aged into a wry sense of humour, a severely decreased sense of hubris, and a seasoned analytical brain that can make a little sense of this moment we find ourselves in.
The focus on this book is, in its own way, a sensibly small issue. The infuriating reality that Klein and Wolf are constantly confused, and, now that Wolf has become a anti-vaxxing, pro-Trump intimate of Steve Bannon, this is starting to be more than irksome.
But in resigning herself to this entanglement, Klein sets off on a journey into how we got to this strange moment, with the rise openly contested truths. Klein starts the book with a highly engaging dive into accepting that she does, in fact, "have a brand problem" with the Wolf confusion, and what accepting that means to someone who built their career on boldly declaring that no person is a brand. This leads into a sense of how the world has played out not in the way we hoped (including her noting that getting a global top designer to do her book cover before the book was written may have been a sign that she wasn't as clear on all this as she thought she was).
This disarming self-assessment carries us through COVID, as she frankly admits that, despite believing that due to the analysis that underpinned her second book Shock Doctrine, she figured she was immune from the distorted judgement that follows a crisis, she plunged headlong into a Wold/antiVax/far right obsession. There is a particularly funny scene when her husband finds her doing her evening yoga wind-down listening the Bannon's podcast. I suspect they are also evident in the way Klein dualities - of various kinds - everywhere.
But these early meanderings, while amusing, also set up the slow build to a stronger analysis and thesis in the second half on the book as Klein tries to understand politically why people confuse her with Wolf and how Wolf - like so many Americans - flipped into conspiracy territory so quickly. A chapter on anti-Semitism, Palestine and Israel - all jumped off from the possible role anti-semitism has in confusing the Naomis - is one of the best things I've read on the topic of being Jewish in this moment.
She delves into Wolf's political trajectory, and looks at how white women, especially those in caring roles, often broke in the pandemic years, noting that Klein's belief in political established power set her up for disillusionment.
Klein raises, without needing to be resolved, the way that identity has becomed tangled with brand for many younger people, and the realities of being encouraged to mine or perform trauma in order to get into college. Her focus on the need to organise, to manage human solidarity in the face of commodification, remains, even as the articulation is different.
I don't quite know what many of her fans will think of this book. It feels like a product of the pandemic, a messy, personal, slightly-on-the-TMI-edge book, a product of not being able to get entirely out of your own head. But it is a joy to read, and very thought provoking. At one point Klein describes the book she intended to write in a long paragraph too boring to quote in full "planned to draw more heavily on Freud’s theory of the uncanny, as it relates to doubles and the repressed id. I would contrast it with Carl Jung’s theories of synchronicity and the shadow self. I would apply these notions of the repressed unconscious to works about doubles by Poe, Saramago, and Dostoyevsky, and to Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.". This may be scattier, but it is, I think, a much more useful and definately more fun, book.
Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
There is such subtlety in Dovey's work here that I'm not sure I can really do it justice. To state what this book is doesn't help much - a set of stories narrated after death by animals which describe their deaths, most of which occur during human conflicts. What the book is about is hardly easier to pin down, which is what is terrific about it. Dovey explores what it is to connect, the nature of humanity as well as the nature of animality. She brings a perfect blend of poignancy and irreverence to the mix, managing to have gravitas about war without ever touching maudlin. Her narrators each have distinct voices - Collette's cat being perhaps the most memorable, although there is a somewhat odious ape - but all are curious about the people around them, giving the volume a warmth towards our relationships with individuals of other species. It is about hard things, but still very fun to read, and often very, very funny. It is, in short, a gem. And I can't wait to read Dovey's latest.
Turkey Under Erdogan: How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West by Dimitar Bechev
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Depressing, but informative, this book focuses more on the context and broader environment that produced Erdogan than on biography, and is better for it. The chapters are loosely thematic/loosely chronological, and at times it is easy to get confused about what is happening when as Bechev does loop around a bit. There is an excellent timeline in the beginning, which does help for those, like me, with less detailed memory of the last 20 years of Eurasian politics. Bechev pays attention to the rapidly changing environment, broader politics (it is surprising to remember how much was different before 9/11 in the way politics was drawn) and the changing political nature of Islamism. I don't really know enough to critique Bechev's analysis, but it made a lot of sense, and explained some of the rapid turn about in relations with the AKP. Published in 2022, nothing since has contradicted his prediction that Erdogan will continue to balance a relationship with Putin with other strategic allies.
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This is a beautifully written, immersive novel, which weaves stories across generations to explore queer and trans lives, the Syrian migrant experience, and the ways which birds (nature would read better in this sentence, but frankly we are talking about birds) can connect us to something ineffable.
Joukhader is at the top of his form here, with a complicated structure which reads effortlessly, and several distinct, compelling voices. He also manages to show the difficulties that queer people find in reaching joy, while celebrating the pathways to it that are nevertheless created. In other words, there are tragic elements here, but this is no tragedy: a good read when you need something with a good dose of hope at the end.
Joukhader is at the top of his form here, with a complicated structure which reads effortlessly, and several distinct, compelling voices. He also manages to show the difficulties that queer people find in reaching joy, while celebrating the pathways to it that are nevertheless created. In other words, there are tragic elements here, but this is no tragedy: a good read when you need something with a good dose of hope at the end.
Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation by Robyn Arianrhod
informative
medium-paced
2.5
By halfway through this, I will confess to having to admit the maths had the better of me, and calculus will need to remain the obscured art it has been for some time. I found it very difficult at school, so I suspect this is more me than the writing.
I did enjoy the history here, and I know understand much better how mathematics advances were essential to physics advancing, and also how they have laid the basis for so much modern technology. Maths is about modelling how things work, an approach I still wish I had had more embedded in my teaching. And by using abstractions, we can model things that we can't easily imagine (or measure - it was a revalation to me to realise how difficult calculating the length of a curve is when you can't just use string).
I did enjoy the history here, and I know understand much better how mathematics advances were essential to physics advancing, and also how they have laid the basis for so much modern technology. Maths is about modelling how things work, an approach I still wish I had had more embedded in my teaching. And by using abstractions, we can model things that we can't easily imagine (or measure - it was a revalation to me to realise how difficult calculating the length of a curve is when you can't just use string).