Eva
A retelling of a part of the Old Testament, from the perspective of the women, with a focus on the women. And it's a really good yarn! Of multiple mothers, jealousies, the secrets of mid-wiving, young love, deadly betrayals, and the power of curses.
The title-giving menstruation tent, which in reality is often associated with shunning and uncleanliness, becomes the sacred place for the women, where they rest, luxuriate, tell stories, and celebrate their female goddesses. The author has acknowledged that this is not historically accurate, but, one really wishes it was. 3 days of rest and leasure, what a great idea.
Almost equally entertaining: reading the low-star reviews of Christians who are outraged over the ‘wrong' depiction of their male heroes from the bible :)
This would have made a great movie in the 90ies. A stone hard killer, who's a loner, never deviates from their self-set rules, and is therefore really good at their job. The twist - she's an old woman. And at the end of her life, she gets a little sentimental. Cue - a murderous villain who tests her newfound sentimentality and also unearths a story from her past.
It's plot-driven and quite short and entertaining. All good, yet, I am not so sure this movie would work well these days. Especially since it's lacking depth, and any form of humor.
A very moving and delicately told story about Germany, about the division of east and west in the past and about reemerging radicalism in the present. How do you uproot your life and change sides? How will it affect you and the remnants you leave behind?
The second half featuring the Enkelin was definitely the stronger one. What a fascinating problem that's very close to various divisions in our societies today. How do you convince someone to join your side? With arguments and insistence, never backing down, or with compassion and patience, keepig your distance? Thought-provoking.
My return to young Tove! We're in pre-WWII Copenhagen, Tove is 15, jobbing to help support her parents, freezing in unheated rooms, going to dancehalls and kissing in dark dark corners. She dreams of a room of her own, a room to write her poems. She seeks love, yet the young men don't interest her. She's a pragmatic. She learned that in relationships both parties want something from the other. She wants someone who can help her become a poet.
Still exquisite. Looking forward to part 3.
I really didn't think [b:The Idiot 30962053 The Idiot Elif Batuman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1474782288l/30962053.SY75.jpg 51577226] needed a sequel. Of course I am going to read a sequel should there be one. But wow I do regret this now. While other recent unnecessary sequels (André Aciman's [b:Find Me 44581535 Find Me (Call Me By Your Name, #2) André Aciman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557077508l/44581535.SY75.jpg 66927396] after Call Me By Your Name, or Sebastian Barry's [b:A Thousand Moons 52255586 A Thousand Moons (Days Without End #2) Sebastian Barry https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1566404592l/52255586.SX50_SY75.jpg 71765449] after Days Without End) manage to stay detached from their successors, Either/Or feels like a weaker copy of the original that not only wasn't very enjoyable but also made me question my attachment to the original. If I would reread The Idiot right now, would I find Selin and her meandering thoughts and her tendency to self-insert herself into every fictional story she encounters equally annoying? Did Selin change or did I change? Should there be another part about Selin's adventures in Russia, I think I might skip it. This is a super harsh and possibly too-harsh review I realize.
A gem of a story, that is quiet and unhurried, yet never boring. We spend a winter and a summer with Sergej, an elderly apolitical beekeeper who mostly prefers the company of his bees to those of his fellow humans. His village is nearly deserted due to the ongoing war in the Donbass. Only he and his childhood enemy, now frenemy, are left. They occasionally drink and quarrel or commiserate, but mostly stick to themselves, worrying about coals for the winter, and which neighbor-house will be hit next by bombs. Then, at the onset of spring, Sergej decides to drive his bees to greener more secure pastures.
Kurkov finds the perfect tone, I think.
I am not sure I could sleep on bees though.
A portrait of a nation through a tapestry of Ukrainian fates centered around 2013/14s Euromaidan protests in Kyiv. There's a longing for home, of returning to sites that have been battered. Of wanting to help, of having no option but to fight for one's believes. There's betrayal of one's country, of escape and exile. There's brothers and friends fighting on different sides. There's loss and despair, and yet always renewal and new beginnings. There's new love amongst all the rubble.
Segmented with news snippets and Ukrainian folk lyrics, this felt occasionally disjointed, but always lyrical and quite dynamic. And I very much appreciated how it all tied together in the end.
I must have misheard something in the beginning of the book, because what I thought was a given, didn't actually come to happen. And while I kept waiting for it, the story took a turn, and ended ultimately in what I felt was a a cop-out.
There is a lot of potential in this, it's a critical look at how you seemingly never can run away from a religious conflict if your whole culture is drenched in it. But, we're too in the main protagonist's head and I increasingly came to dislike her.
The title word of the book appears once in the (English edition) text. Aliide and her sister and niece are on the way home from a terrible night. Her sister Ingel tells her to ‘purge' her face of the tears and snot that cover it. Before they all would enter into their home, pretending nothing terrible had happened to them.
The female characters in this novel have a lot terrible things happen to them, and out of shame or fear they decide to hide it. They recognize the truth in the eyes of women who've lived through the same.
My second Oksanen, and again it's quite a thriller of a novel, featuring female protagonists living through rough times in Eastern Europe. I learned a lot about Estonia.
Wow, in the end Aliide had quite the body count on her conscience.
Super interesting and important view on how our planet, workforce and society are impacted while we're marching towards a future that will contain more and more computation. There are so many invisible aspects to computation/the-cloud/A.I. that are glanced over while we drool over all the good it can do.
I especially enjoyed the chapters on mining of the previous metals it takes to build the A.I. infrastructure, the chapter on labor about how A.I. driven workplace management treats humans as machines. While the middle of the book had more well-known A.I.-warnings with a focus on where the data comes from and all the ways we wrongfully classify it, it ends really strong with a chapter on the power dynamics that are encoded into A.I., that reinforce existing exploitative and unbalanced power structures. A whole chapter dedicated to emotion-recognition felt a bit too detailed and narrow for this scope. But it wouldn't be an ‘atlas' if it wouldn't contain all the avenues.
Mon retour a la serie Vernon Subutex, et je l'aime toujours autant. Maintenant que Vernon a enfin atterri dans la rue, il est devenue sans-abri (SDF - sans-dominicile-fixe). Mais il y trouve une certaine liberte. Il developpe un tel contentement avec sa nouvelle vie, qu'il l'iraddie a tous ses nouveaux et anciens amis. Il devient le gourou du parc, attirant les gens et inspirant une rencontre des esprits et de l'empathie entre les ennemis.
Outre les sentiments hippies, l'intrigue des bandes d'Alex Beach se poursuit et insuffle a histoire un peu de suspense, ce qui etait egalement bienvenu.
I really enjoyed Filipenko's [b:Der ehemalige Sohn 56935879 Der ehemalige Sohn Sasha Filipenko https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612353756l/56935879.SY75.jpg 41321441], so i was going into this with maybe too high expecations. This is the story of a Russian football player, his corrupt oligarch father, the journalist who investigates the father, the criminal who bullies the journalist and the criminal's pianist brother. So, potentially an interesting setup, yet the parts are all very segmented and uneven, and even though it all ties together in the end, it really left me frustrated. As the whole subject matter is really dark, I either could have used a more central sympathetic character to connect to, or the whole thing should have gone even more dark satire. Or maybe I've just had too much Russian fiction and reality for a now.
Centered around a school for the deaf, this was quite an interesting immersion into a culture I don't know much about. Nović - who is deaf herself - intersperses the plot with little informative segments about deaf culture: unique aspects of sign language, the differences between ASL and Black-ASL, the history of Deaf President Now...
She ends with a list of US-based mostly closed-down schools for the deaf. The whole book is a reminder, that while integration of deaf students into regular schools is a good intention, but it also robs them of their safe haven, the place where they are not seen as deficient or lacking.
While I don't think the plot and structure fully succeeded, I thought the characters were great vessels to introduce us to the various aspects of living within or around deaf culture. How hard parents want to fix the problem, and how hard it must be growing up in a world you feel you never can fully communicate with. Videophones, interpreters, botched cochlear implants, direct action ...
Quite the interesting experiment, pairing science fiction with science writing, in envisioning the improvements and challenges that the future of A.I. might bring. And I'd say it's a successful experiment, as it gives life to the rather abstract extrapolation of an A.I. visionary by accompanying them with narrative short stories exploring the same themes. Stories are what sticks. Big data - and how you keep deep learning from adopting the mistakes of our past. Deepfakes - and how we're so easy to influence to swing this way or that wayEducation - and how A.I. could become a teacher customized to our unique needsLove - and how pandemics could keep us isolated while technology connects us furtherMixed Reality - and how we're going to live on so many planesAutonomous cars - and how saving lives is easier when you don't know it's realityQuantum computing - and how with big powers we also enable platforms for big villainsJobs - and how a new industry will emerge that deals with layoffs due to A.I.Happiness - and the eternal challenge that even the smartest sensors and code can't solvePlenitude - and how to achieve self realization in a world beyond moneyI am really eager for a new scifi book by Chen Qiufan, as I thought [b:Waste Tide 39863294 Waste Tide Chen Qiufan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532473758l/39863294.SY75.jpg 53488132] was fantastic. Most short stories here feel rather clean and constructed in comparison to his gritty style in Waste Tide, but there is one - Quantum Genocide - where he really hit a stride. Considering it's the longest of the short stories in the book, it probably also was a favorite of his to write. So, again, I am really eager for a new book of his.
A novel that leaves you right at a cliffhanger, and you can pick your own ending. In a good way. Because everything about this was propulsive, vivid and raw. Part mystery, part grifter story, with a protagonist who's an anti-heroine you want to root for. This is a novel about the downfall of the soviet-union and the many ways its former citizens pull themselves out of the rubble. Drugs and coal mining in Donetsk, modeling in Moscow and Paris, fertility clinics and crime syndicats in Dnipro. Definitely will try to read more by Oksanen.It was quite interesting reading this at the same time as [b:Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia 21413849 Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Peter Pomerantsev https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407196452l/21413849.SY75.jpg 40714614] and and finding a lot of overlap.