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What I Just Finished Reading
Smoke and Ashes – Abir Mukherjee
Mukherjee’s detective protagonist regularly acts based on wild, unsupported leaps of logic that are frequently wrong and have resulted on more than one occasion in innocent people dying. It’s a refreshing change from the genre standard in which the detective makes wild, unsupported leaps of logic that are somehow always right on the mark.
Pogues Guide to Life – David Pogue
A quick and easy read that compiles automotive, cooking, travel, and other trivia that are sometimes commonsense, sometimes useful, and occasionally incorrect.
What I Am Currently Reading
Japanese Grammar – Keiko Uesawa Chevray & Tomiko Kuwahira
Slogging through the chapter on keigo and kenjougo, for which I do not need much of a review.
The Familiars – Stephanie Hall
My heart breaks for Hall’s protagonist, married off at 14 to a much older man (who is gradually losing interest in her) and desperate not to miscarry yet again. Hall does an excellent job of depicting the time period in an accessible way, but without her characters' interior worlds lapsing into mental anachronism.
Women Talking – Miriam Toews
Based on a an actual crime in which a group of Mennonite men systematically drugged and raped over one hundred women in their Bolivian community, I devoured half of this book in one sitting. Forgive your attackers, the community’s patriarch demands, or be damned to hell for dying with anger in your hearts. The novel begins as a council of the women secretly convenes to debate whether to do as ordered, or take another course of action.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
There are a lot of words in this volume, but hardly any of them are extraneous. Zuboff does an excellent—and terrifying—job of showing how insidiously Google, Facebook, et al. asserted the de facto right to monitor people’s speech, actions, social connections, emotions, and proclivities. "The aim of this undertaking," she writes, "is not to impose behavioral norms, such as conformity or obedience, but rather to produce behavior that reliably, definitively, and certainly leads to desired commercial results."
What I'm Reading Next
Hm, I’m in the mood for nonfiction, so maybe Eddie Izzard’s memoir.
これで以上です。
Smoke and Ashes – Abir Mukherjee
Mukherjee’s detective protagonist regularly acts based on wild, unsupported leaps of logic that are frequently wrong and have resulted on more than one occasion in innocent people dying. It’s a refreshing change from the genre standard in which the detective makes wild, unsupported leaps of logic that are somehow always right on the mark.
Pogues Guide to Life – David Pogue
A quick and easy read that compiles automotive, cooking, travel, and other trivia that are sometimes commonsense, sometimes useful, and occasionally incorrect.
What I Am Currently Reading
Japanese Grammar – Keiko Uesawa Chevray & Tomiko Kuwahira
Slogging through the chapter on keigo and kenjougo, for which I do not need much of a review.
The Familiars – Stephanie Hall
My heart breaks for Hall’s protagonist, married off at 14 to a much older man (who is gradually losing interest in her) and desperate not to miscarry yet again. Hall does an excellent job of depicting the time period in an accessible way, but without her characters' interior worlds lapsing into mental anachronism.
Women Talking – Miriam Toews
Based on a an actual crime in which a group of Mennonite men systematically drugged and raped over one hundred women in their Bolivian community, I devoured half of this book in one sitting. Forgive your attackers, the community’s patriarch demands, or be damned to hell for dying with anger in your hearts. The novel begins as a council of the women secretly convenes to debate whether to do as ordered, or take another course of action.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
There are a lot of words in this volume, but hardly any of them are extraneous. Zuboff does an excellent—and terrifying—job of showing how insidiously Google, Facebook, et al. asserted the de facto right to monitor people’s speech, actions, social connections, emotions, and proclivities. "The aim of this undertaking," she writes, "is not to impose behavioral norms, such as conformity or obedience, but rather to produce behavior that reliably, definitively, and certainly leads to desired commercial results."
What I'm Reading Next
Hm, I’m in the mood for nonfiction, so maybe Eddie Izzard’s memoir.
これで以上です。
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