Phil Santiago

The Satanic Verses threatened to be a bad time with an impenetrable plot. Were the two characters introduced in the plane crash literal angels and demons or was this some overstuffed metaphor? Was the whole book an exercise in Rushdie's linguistics gymnastics at the expense of a solid story? It turned out that Rushdie had plotted something compelling and once I was able to progress through the experiences of Gibreel and Saladin, I came to appreciate all the context that the language imbues in what we can call the "A" plot.

Verses is a story about cultural history and the narrative it bestows upon each of us and is particularly a look at how immigrants are perceived. It's about the herculean amount of mental energy it takes to actualize yourself and it's also about how the powerful will bend the narrative to suit themselves. My favorite chapter was one I would have written off in the first third as yet another set-aside short story built to waste my time. But following the village on a pilgrimage rife with doubt, compelled by groupthink and ultimately engulfed in faith was a pretty beautiful echo of the main plot.

This got tremendously overhyped for me as a book that may actually address the root of time management issues under our social and economic system, but instead it read a lot like "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***," if that book were written by a snooty guy who was afraid of profanity.

Completely enraging and eye-opening regarding the persistent use of medieval forms of imprisonment to control women no matter how much stardom, wealth, and fame they acquire.

Kara Swisher seems to attract a lot of ire from my circles of social media, claiming she has spent a lot of time being a stenographer to power for Silicon Valley oligarchs, or at least a useful tool in their PR machine. But if that's the case, Swisher seems to be trying to morph her career into something else and the result is a memoir that's pretty interesting to me regarding the threat wealthy titans of tech pose to us in the 21st century.

I do wish she would rely less on the Arrested Development "Narrator: Contradiction of the above statement" meme.

The go-to for these types of memoirs is witty, but Komail's prose truly integrates a sharp wit within a compelling life story that has incisive commentary on multiple cultures. The writing is just *good.*