Rishi
A truly remarkable and courageous book. Despite its age, I imagine that many of the complicated issues about identity, both personal and national remain, and in many ways are even more relevant today. I learned that in the ongoing discussions about Israeli-Palestinian affairs, the situation of the Arab Israeli is often forgotten. Grossman approaches this question with empathy, self awareness, and a willingness to acknowledge it's complexity, and the fact that it impacts not only Israeli Arabs, but also the self conception and soul of the entire Israeli population. Highly recommended.
It took me a long time to read this somewhat peculiar novel. I can't quite work out how much I enjoyed it. It's thoughtful, cerebral, but often meandering and difficult to follow. I expected the book to be mainly about Willie Stark, but in reality it was much more about Jack and his internal monologue.
A decent novel with some compelling characters and an interesting historical backdrop. The prose workmanlike.. adequate but plodding at times. The first half of the book is considerably stronger than the second. The writing, dialogue and character development suffer from impatience as the plot comes to a conclusion. Eve's wartime story and character is much more compelling and believable than Charlie's. In fact, the book would have been much better if it focussed solely on Eve. The romantic storyline was somewhat flat and glib. I also felt that the story deserved a more sophisticated conclusion. The subject matter has so much depth, and it just felt a little inadequate to end it in such a Hollywood/ TV series way.
Overall an entertaining and interesting read. It's not hard to see why Sami has been a successful comedian, and it was great to get his perspective on life in Pakistan as well as life as a Pakistani in America and Australia.
I do think that the book feels a bit rushed. Perhaps he was asked by publishers to rush the release to maximise the interest he had gained via the ABC special (just a theory). A few more rounds of editing and more time to think about how to structure the book would have done a lot to improve the overall result. Shah seems to veer too much from one thing to another accross chapters, and while his anecdotes are great, at times it feels like they were sandwiched into the narrative without serving a clear purpose. As a result the book feels like a series of slightly scattershot vignettes that don't integrate fully into a broader narrative.
Whitehead can't seem to decide if he wants to write a novel or an essay. When he focuses on the novel, the results are salutary. The prose is rich and descriptive and powerfully depicts the horrific injustice taking place. But Whitehead can't seem to help adding a didactic element to the prose that doesn't mesh with the protagonist. Whitehead wanted to say something, and shoehorned it into Coras thoughts in a clumsy and obtuse way. We know the thoughts are Whiteheads, not Coras. The same message could have been delivered more deftly and better integrated with the protagonists character, or through other mechanisms. Furthermore, the railroad theme is interesting, but wasn't deployed as effectively as it could have been.
The first 40% of the novel superb , but things start to unravel from North Carolina onward.
A truly ambitious work that charts the history of football and its relationship to broader cultural and political developments. I commend Goldblatt for covering the whole globe, and not just the European and South American game. Note: This is not an almanac. The book isn't about recounting lots of games in detail. It is a broader anthropological work about the game, it's spread and development, and how it impacted and was impacted by the societies that played it.
As thoughtful, nuanced, incisive commentary and reflection, it is difficult to find fault with this work. As a work of narrative fiction, however, it does have its limitations. It's hard to escape the feeling that the narrative arc is only a vessel for the observational aspects. I can't help but think that what the author really wanted to do was to write an incisive essay about these issues, or perhaps a series of short stories that examined the intersection of race and national identity through a more personal lens, but knowing that essays and short stories don't get broad attention and readership, she had to find a way to craft a novel instead. This results in an awkward narrative structure, where too much time is put into expositional dialogue that feels like it has been written to explain rather than to reveal. The result is that the work feels bloated and the pace plodding at times. The snippets of blog posts seem to be the most authentic, well written and visceral parts of the book, but it just feels like what she really wanted to do was write a book of the blog content, and felt forced to turn it into literary fiction.
I do recommend this book. I did enjoy reading it, and appreciated it's thoughtfulness, but couldn't love it as a complete novel.
Applebaum's book is a bit of a hot mess. Her underlying thesis mirrors that of The Narrow Corridor by Acemoglu and Robinson, but her approach is highly personalized and observational to the point that it feels at times to be just a venting of her internal monologue without a truly cogent structure. Much of the book is focused on a few public intellectuals she has known personally that have shifted from the center right to right wing nationalism. It's entertaining in a DC/Brussels parlour game type of way, but all feels a little too insular...
Applebaum is also a little too self referential to be taken seriously. In her point of view, she and her fellow travellers are the enlightened public thinkers, while others are cynical opportunists. The notion that the very nature of elite centrism that controlled the halls of power for generations might have its own problems, blindspots, and failures seems lost on her. Nevertheless, she makes some interesting arguments about how democratic institutions and norms can be subverted from within, with some interesting examples from central Europe.
Overall, an interesting thesis, but there many books that cover this issue more competently.
Some interesting insights into the history of the family and the generational disfunction that might have shaped Trumps behaviour and outlook. The salient information already has been published a long form essay. The rest is filled meandering trivialities that are pretty unremarkable. There's nothing massively revelatory, other than further evidence that his father was a total a-hole, which clearly impacted Trump.. Lots of whining by Mary about getting screwed out of inheritance which is sad for her but not particularly uncommon in big rich families, although the fraud involved is pretty astonishing, and the scale of it would not have been known without Mary giving documents to the NYT
Ironically the book seems like a bit of a cash grab... maybe she feels like she deserves it after losing the inheritance, but I can't help but notice the irony of it all.
I think a 5 star history of modern India would be almost impossible to achieve, because the task of building a cohesive, coherent, substantive and readable history about such a broad, complicated topic is a gargantuan task. Guha does a pretty good job, however, effectively balancing broad trends while making sure that regional issues are also documented. Guha, like myself, is clearly an advocate of a secular democratic state that recognises the realities of historical injustice and seeks to address them. Therefore, his perspective about Nehru and other early leaders will necessarily not reflect the perspective of many on the political right of Indian politics.
Overall this was a highly educational book for people looking to understand modern India and how it has evolved.
A detailed and well researched book about Iran in the 20th century, culminating in the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. The author does have a clear perspective that is sympathetic to the Shah, but he is also clear eyed in his criticism of the Shahs personality traits that played an important part in the way history unfolded. Given the popular revisionist narrative that the Shah was a brutal, corrupt buffoon, I think it was fair for the author to set the record straight. The Shah was flawed, but not nearly as brutal or bloodthirsty as made out. His inability to deal well with critisim and bad news, and his poor judgement of character was a fatal Achilles heel, but it was only one part of his narrative.
The book also does a good job of explaining the intentional brutality and extremism of Khoemeni, who in some western eyes was seen as a popular liberator.. He was not.
I agree with some of the other reviews that the author is ridiculously over exuberant about Queen Farah. He should have toned this down, because it sounds almost like a PR agency working on a client account.
History is never completely objective, but it is hard to imagine a counterfactual where the Shah surviving and continuing would not have been a net positive for Iran, the Middle East, and possibly the world.
Hard to review this. I knew a fair bit about the issue already so it wasn't particularly revelatory. The book is pretty disjointed and some of it is repurposed from articles he has written. The detailed bios about a few alt right and alt light personalities is interesting but not particularly salient to the supposed thesis. Overall a slightly dissapointing read. After listening to his interview with Ezra Klein I thought the book would be a bit meatier and less tabloidish than it was.
Sophia is a good salesperson. I listened to her on the recode media podcast and bought the hype. Unfortunately it was mainly just that. No doubt she has had an interesting life and career, but instead of crafting an interesting narrative with what I am sure are interesting anecdotes and recollections from her time in the music industry and the hip hop world, this book is basically a very inwardly oriented chronology of her life. Unfortunately chronologies can often be boring because they often trade depth and reflection for inconsequential factual details. We don't get much insight into what she really thought about the industry in which she built an incredible and unlikely career, which is a shame.
She also really over sold things by name dropping guys like Method Man and indicating that they made significant contributions to the book, but they were basically poorly recorded pre canned lines ... I was expecting them to share little stories about her, or a shared experience or at least have some real conversation but it was literally a phoned in line she asked them to say. I think there was an element of dishonesty there , which I did not like.
A good insight into the life of British scouts and the evolution of scouting on the island. The book can be meandering at times, and suffers a little from a lack of editing. I thijo Calvin wanted to include a lot of personal stories about people who are often unacknowledged and forgotten, which is admirable, but detracts a little from the flow and readability of the book. It would have been interesting to see a contrast between scouting in the UK VS other top European and South American leagues, but I can understand that the research and resources involved in doing that might be challenging.
Choudury is undoubtedly a gifted writer who has a rare ability to simultaneously describe physical surroundings and the emotional, human stories that they contain. This is not so much a travelogue but rather a reflective work about his enduring connection with Calcutta, where he finds the enduring push and pull of hope, suffering, tradition, culture, modernity, and history. His evocative style reflects his love of poetry.
I do think the first 2/3 of the book is better than the final section, which suffered from a little too much didactic anthrpolologising, and at times became almost too specifically personal to effectively resonate with the reader.
Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and learned a lot about the history of Calcutta.
Firstly I have to give respect to anyone who attempts to write a book of this scope and scale and I think it is an admirable attempt. My issue with the book was that he seems to spend a lot of real estate on somewhat esoteric subject matter. While it might be interesting to learn a lot about French film history or the inner workings of the radical left movement in Italy, it seems like a poor trade-off given the monumental events taking place. It also makes the narrative disjointed. The other thing that got my goat was his characterisation of Britains withdrawal from India as relatively orderly (I'm paraphrasing). This is a ridiculous assertion about one of the most bloody, painful and chaotic events in world history. I think I understand what he was getting at but this level of flippancy is a bit much. Overall, it's decent but suffers from many distractions.
Probably 3.5 stars. In many ways a fascinating book with a lot going on and a lot to think about. The first 2/3 of the Nov were brilliant. The last third seemed to lose a little direction, with some storylines that didn't seem to fit in the larger narrative, while the central storyline seemed somewhat unconvincing... Solomon's choices seemed contrary to his personality and upbringing.. Perhaps there is more to it that people in the community would understand, but the exposition was quite vague. I also thought that, given the central role of women in the epic, thier characters (with the exception of Sunja) seemed under developed.
I enjoyed this book. It's hard not to root for the protagonists, and the plot moves forward at a good pace. But it could have been so much more. Of all the characters, only Neneh seems to be well rounded and feel real. Although we spend a lot of time with Jende, we are rarely allowed deeper than just below the surface. Most of the other characters are fairly simple, limited by the narrative style that does not let us enter thier minds.
The dialogue is often stilted and sounds and feels more like a middling television drama than a work of literature...entertaining but not entirely fulfilling
Lastly, the novel starts to get tedious in the last third, and although I know this is partially intentional, it still feels like the writer started to lose a little steam, and it shows.
A good book, but not a great one.
