andy

A multilayered and ambitious book that explores the public persona and personal life of a fictional eccentric celebrity artist through the eyes of her widow, who knew little about her late wife's past. The worldbuilding isn't perfect, but it's not lacking to the point of distraction. The author did a marvelous job in constructing X's complex personality and her troubled relationships with the people But the depiction of X as a magnetic figure instantly impressing everyone she met, felt overly convoluted and unrealistic. Also, the book often seemed far too long, with sections devoted to either describing X's god complex or showing how everyone seemed to be in awe of her.
Great concept, but not without flaws.
3.75/5

Just like a top reviewer on Goodreads has said, ‘reading the owner's manual.'
The book is highly informative, comprehensive, and very useful for everybody who wants to expand their knowledge, regardless of whether they have a vagina or not. Although I am not an expert on female anatomy or have formal university education on human physiology, her broken-down explanations and the study references (that are so on point) have made me feel more informed without feeling dumb. Also, the chapters are thoroughly divided with topics that can be easily referenced or revisited without feeling like finding a needle in a haystack. I also loved how the author did a little tidbit on how to evaluate the legitimacy of online health information. Not to mention, her non-judgmental attitude towards many usual taboo topics surrounding sexual health is very reassuring.
4.5 stars/5
P.S: I am subscribed to the author's substack newsletter, and she also does a great job there.

I have never been a fan of reading poetry because I find them hard to analyze for some reason so I tend to avoid them but even all of these I found this book amazing. Here the poetry follows the sequence of the actual timeline and I was mesmerized by how she has written such phenomena so masterfully. I knew that European colonizers used to excavate mummies for fertilizer but have never thought they also used to ingest it. She also has written about the robberies of artefacts by them. The poetry was simple, soulful and poignant. Although at the last I did find one or two pieces of poetry a little bit preachy.
4.25 stars/5

I have to think about the book a lot because I have pretty mixed feelings about this. I think I don't vibe with existentialism philosophy properly which is probably why every existentialist philosophy book(except crime and punishment) gives me a pretty hard time understanding them properly without the least prejudice. So I am giving it 2.5 stars The depiction of existentialism here is borderline nihilism IMO, the way he thinks that nothing has meaning in life, everything is an endless void that just gives me an emo teen who hangs out on r/nihlism vibes. maybe I'm thinking this too much rationally or scientifically(and maybe I'm a very noob in philosophy) but looking at his sexual impulse towards his fiancee(ig) and thinking about how our hormones and neurons control our brain so much I was kinda hoping his sense of right or wrong should've been developed a little bit. Morality and ethics aren't only a religious construct, it's also a social contrast even animals have a sense of protective ness and duty towards their tribe and family which shares their genes. On the other hand, I liked the religious talk(or should I say one-sided lecture) between him and the police constable/the pastor. It shows most people's morality is maintained to attain the doors of heaven. It also shows how the protagonist's view toward his punishment. When we exist in a world devoid of meaning, why is it that our actions still bear so much weight?

The details and descriptions of the book are so specific that it feels like written by someone who personally experienced the scenarios that were mentioned in the book. The book doesn't only focus on one direction alone, it has several full-fleshed stories inside the grand scheme of things. even though I am pretty pleased with the experience, I didn't appreciate the highly idealised and saintly version of captured Naxalite youths especially since the book is majorly written in the third-person perspective as opposed to a single first person/second person perspective and I also had issues with the development of solidarity between Bhagoban and the Naxalite youths on the next cell , it felt rushed and half baked.
Calculating all of these I rate it 3.75/5 stars

P.S.: The fact alone that this book is written by someone who didn't know how to read/write until they were in their early twenties is very astonishing.

One of the best books I've read this year. The author delves into many common and less common stereotypes through various case studies, highlighting how minor differences in brain functionality between sexes and their behavioral implications are much more complex than the outdated notion of gendered brain differentiation based solely on behavioral traits. While some readers might find the repeated mention of social conditioning off-putting, it's still very much worth the read.

I started this book's bbc docu-series but I decided that I am not competent enough to remember some useful information for a long time without taking actual annotations so I opted for the book based on the series and I am very glad I did. Tbf I am not very knowledgeable about the interpretation of fine arts in general so I found a lot of relevant info from this book which influenced me to think more critically about these. Among all of these, I found the most interesting point to be the difference in usage and interpretation of male/female sensuality with respect to nude painting

the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior to the man. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others.By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste – indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura. To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.

Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it. That part of a woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated. And this exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. Every woman's presence regulates what is and is not ‘permissible' within her presence. Every one of her actions – whatever its direct purpose or motivation – is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotion of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake.

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

What is striking about this story? They became aware of being naked because, as a result of eating the apple, each saw the other differently. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder. The second striking fact is that the woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man. In relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of God.

It is worth noticing that in other non-European traditions – in Indian art, Persian art, African art, Pre-Columbian art – nakedness is never supine in this way. And if, in these traditions, the theme of a work is sexual attraction, it is likely to show active sexual love as between two people, the woman as active as the man, the actions of each absorbing the other.

The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.

Alternatively the anxiety on which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing you will be nothing.

Money is life. Not in the sense that without money you starve. Not in the sense that capital gives one class power over the entire lives of another class. But in the sense that money is the token of, and the key to, every human capacity. The power to spend money is the power to live. According to the legends of publicity, those who lack the power to spend money become literally faceless. Those who have the power become lovable.

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.

An ode to reading/books, this book reveals how passionate Calvino was about books, the art of reading, censorship and literary translation. These themes seemed very apt with the plot itself. even with all of these, this book has its fair share of shortcomings especially the alienation of anyone who isn't heterosexual male, the second-person narrative in the later chapter seemed rather exhausting and out of touch, this review has described this issue perfectly in my opinion. Also, his fragmented bits of each named chapter seemed like a knack for pushing the boundaries of how fiction can be written and it personally didn't seem appealing or very groundbreaking to me.

overall 3 stars/5. would recommend it to anyone who is looking for an avant-garde/experimental fiction.

I went in totally blind for this book and needless to say, it exceeded my expectations. The main reason why it bumped my rating is the way he portrayed all of the main characters as diverse and raw (especially since for the 2/3 of the book most of the female characters had a very stereotypical and passive aura but in the last 1/3, his characters came to be more humane and more of a real character than a cardboard piece). However, I think that the brevity of this novel made some important aspects like Their mother getting separated from her first husband, Runu's letter which broke her marriage at the last moment seem like merely a plot device than a real trajectory.
3.75 stars/5

Rich descriptions of the surroundings and the continuous back-and-forth of multiple time jumps made the book quite hallucinatory. Not to mention, the touch of gothic fiction was quite apt for the core matter of the book. Although the time jumps can be quite jarring sometimes, I think the translator has put it into a good analogy for its aptness for the book itself. The line breaks and lack of chapter divisions make the text itself river shaped, its short sentences lapping at the silence like waves on the shore. The book also beautifully encompasses several thematic materials (toxic masculinity, complex familial relationships, trauma), some of which were explored quite masterfully, although I do think that elaboration on Siomara's circumstances would have been welcomed by me. Maybe 4/4.25 out of 5. P.S: I am very hyped to read [b:Brickmakers 56041871 Brickmakers Selva Almada https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631855976l/56041871.SY75.jpg 25188317] now!!

This book has some very important facts on one of the most overlooked bodily functions ‘sleep'. Although the title is a bit misleading and some claims didn't have any proper references, the book itself is quite an info dense on how sleep affects us, how important it is to maintain proper sleep etiquette, and how broad the spectrum is on the effects of low-quality/high-quality sleep. His book essentially debunked most of the claims some people make on how sleep is a waste of time/sleep is for the weak. This book has its critics and I found this follow-up article about it which captured the whole fiasco https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/18/is-matthew-walkers-why-we-sleep-riddled-with-scientific-and-factual-errors/

3.75 stars/5 stars.
p.s- the last two chapters were unnecessary.

this book is divided into two parts/essays. the first one is Baldwin's letter to his nephew where he expresses the contemporary situation of US racial politics in an easy, raw and personal manner. The second essay was more complicated and heavier than the first where he talked about his rise and fall from being a religious Christian and how religious institutions preach hate psychology to manipulate the wounded souls which also complimented his visit to Elijah Muhammad where he once again got close association with the hypocrisy and double-faced reality of the supposed unifying organisation. I was also glad to see that even though Baldwin lived in an age when many renowned personalities were sexist, he recognised the error and considered the inequality unjustifiable.

Protect your women: a difficult thing to do in a civilization sexually so pathetic that the white man's masculinity depends on a denial of the masculinity of the blacks. Protect your women: in a civilization that emasculates the male and abuses the female, and in which, moreover, the male is forced to depend on the female's bread-winning power.

This is darker than I thought it would be. The book started very strong but when we get to the chapter named ‘When we cease to understand the world' the semi-biographies fizzled out as methodical and the same formulaic all over. These parts also annoyed me because the author acknowledged that the % of fiction progresses as we get more into the book so IDK if he had made up the existential crisis and having sex with anybody and having erotic dreams about random people common for many of the quantum mechanics pioneers
I was also not satisfied that he didn't mention any of the female scientists associated with ww1 and ww2 eras.
Now if I consider all of these opinions then I have to say that other than the unsavoury part in the middle it was very interesting. Although I am not a fan of fast-paced work the transition was smooth so I will not consider this as folly.
3.5 stars out of 5, I thought I would like it much more than this

The art style and the Kafkaesque aesthetic match quite well for most of the short stories. However, the first one was very hard to grasp in an e-copy since the alignment was wonky. Also, the short stories I have previously read in the original form seemed to be more enjoyable than the ones I read for the first time, which seems to be a ‘me' problem. The 9 shorts consisted of Kafka's most popular novel and some of the more obscure ones.
Overall it was decent. You can check it out if you like Kafka's aesthetic along with equally depressing art form 3.5/5
Thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC.

The content of the book was quite intimidating and difficult to comprehend for me, I was kind of lost in some parts of their conversations and I had to read the whole thing again to understand that properly. I supplemented my reading with https://iep.utm.edu and https://plato.stanford.edu. These two made my reading much more enjoyable and comprehensible. Honestly I liked reading abou Plato's Utopian philosophy because it's quite similar to my personal political philosophy.

I read this book at the advent of women's history month after years of Tbr-ing it. My primary reason for the lack of enthusiasm for reading this was that it is too old and maybe the proposals and scenarios mentioned here would be drastically different than this 21st-century world but to my surprise, they weren't exaggerated and the topics mentioned in every chapter still hold relevance to this age which makes me think even if we have progressed so much in terms of wealth distribution, educational opportunities and technology how much unjust discrimination and scorn are still prevalent in the depth of the human mind. How we are still fighting against prejudice, hypocrisy, stereotype and the eternal case of making us the ‘other' party who has no place other than the shadow of the ‘superior' sex, the marginalised group who are still considered competitors and not someone who has equal rights to the fairer sex.

Especially the first half of the book mindblown me and made me think deeply about things like the deeply flawed logic of misogyny and how a sexist mindset deeply affects all the people of our society especially harms the marginalised section of our society. I was also fascinated by how volatile the sexist parameters are and how they changed in terms of human conclusions like how Virginal blood is considered to be harmful to male virility and brides were being deflowered before she was officially wed. At some point(and it still prevails), these perceptions and conclusions changed and how virginal maidens are considered pure and worthy of their male counterpart My favourite parts of this book are vol 1 part 1 chapter 1 biological data, vol 1 part 2 history, vol 1 part 3 myths chapter 1.
p.s- Gonna throw the second sex at someone's face(metaphorically!!) the next time I debate with someone on misogyny.
4.5 stars/ 5 stars

The bits of advice provided in the book seemed too basic and if you have read a couple of other productivity/self-help books or have watched a couple of YouTube videos of mainstream productivity gurus then I doubt you would find anything new to add to the table. Coupled with the fact that most of the pop culture references sounded hella lame and forced to me, this book wasn't a very useful one.

This book has more personal anecdotes rather than Murakami discussing his writing that's why I was not invested in some chapters (I have no interest in personal life tbf). The chapters where he discussed about originality and how he writes were my favourites other than that it was a decent read. 3.5 stars out of 5.

A little book largely inspired by the life of the author herself. It shows the challenges of growing up in an unwealthy Hispanic-American family/neighbourhood where you are expected to follow certain behaviours and codes to be a woman. I liked how the author used imagery in her writing to bring more life to the prose along with her incorporation of racism, sexism and the identity crisis of the Mexican immigrants and their second-generation children. I liked that the author didn't shy away from bringing up some valid circumstances(which are faced by the poor Latin American second generations) in this book.
On the other hand, I don't think I like the core writing itself cause it sometimes felt too much jumbled up and the paragraph breaks were inconsistent too. I know this is supposed to be written from a perspective of a young girl but I didn't find much difference in the latter portion too.

3. 75 stars from me.

I didn't plan on reading this book before reading Rushdie's Midnight's children, but oh well, here I am for a reason that majority of people already know. This book started with a silly, comical tone but it was laced with satire and criticism at the core. sometimes the story is incomprehensible in terms of what's actually happening in the book and what's happening in the dream but If I look past some of these unnecessary whining and confusing storylines, the book itself has many qualities of being a revolutionary book.

For example the reimaginations of the origin of Islam and blending it with relevant situations of today was done extremely well. In the other dreamscapes rebirth of Ayesha in a different situation and how she ends up being a symbol of metamorphosis and change(I am not sure how accurate my analysis is though, so don't come at me) Now If I talk about our two protagonists here then I want to say that The contradictory ending of them !!! Gibreel turned to an angle at first and his luck was pretty good but his life became so much pain after his repeated negative actions toward people who are close to him. On the other hand, Saladin had a tough time after becoming a supposed devil but his life turned out to be much better than before even though I can't say that he was any better than Gibreel tbh but IMO it so nothing can be (at least something which has independent consciousness) on the edge of any extreme pole, we all have angle and demon qualities in us.All these aside I love how He incorporated immigration identity in some of the really catalytic events like the cafe fire

all that being said I do think people who would want to read this for enjoyment purposes only would be disappointed cause the book is often draggy and if you are not into a religious allegory that much you would find most of the book meddlesome and unreadable but if you do like allegory and you want to broaden your horizon, you sould give it a try.

3.5 stars out of 5

About the audiobook: The narrator has done an excellent job, particularly during the more complex sections where the protagonist, narrated in the second person point of view, converses with her therapist while reminiscing about leaving her ancestral home and childhood friend simultaneously. I didn't find myself confused, so kudos for that.

Regarding the content: The structure may be a bit confusing at first, but fortunately, the author and translator have managed it well, minimizing any confusion. The author skillfully paints the lives of both women with rich doses of nostalgia. However, there seems to be a lack of critical information about the disappearance of “the missing one,” leaving readers to speculate about the details. Additionally, the portrayal of motherhood struck me as somewhat preachy, depicting it as an all-consuming role without much personal identity beyond being a mother to one's daughter.

P.S. I absolutely loved the symbolism behind the title of this book; it feels very fitting and distinctive.

Overall, I'd give it a rating of 3.75 out of 5 stars, rounding down to 3 stars.
Special thanks to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for providing the ARC of this audiobook.

I was initially hesitant to delve into this book, despite its widespread acclaim throughout the latter half of 2023. The blurb, which hints of a psychologically abusive relationships while paralleling them with complex historical contexts, didn't quite entice me. However, upon learning of its longlisting for the Booker Prize in 2023, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a chance. Now, I find myself quite ambivalent about this book.

The doomed relationship between Hans and Katharina seemed rather overwrought, especially as their dynamic soured to its nadir. While the portrayal of Hans's domination and psychological manipulation of Katharina, purportedly to salvage their love or redeem her, served as a poignant device to illustrate how both the individuals and the state, particularly GDR, have doomed their citizens for what is perceived as the greater good. It was fascinating to observe how their relationship evolved—from idealistic to manipulative to destructive to eventual emancipation—amidst the turbulent political backdrop. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that Katharina's infatuation with Hans seemed somewhat forced. There's little mention of her being enamored with Hans's appearance; in contrast, he's often described as lanky, scrawny, and pale. Nor does Katharina exhibit intellectual admiration for Hans; rather, she appears to conform to the mold he's shaping her into, with Hans assuming the roles of both teacher and maternal figure, some might argue.
Despite my reservations about the central relationship, I appreciated the subtlety with which the book explored historical nuances. Rather than employing heavy-handed allegory, it delves into the complexities of the past with a more nuanced touch, casting a murky yet intriguing atmosphere that isn't easily discernible.
In my opinion, the book could have benefited from toning down the magnification of Hans and Katharina's relationship; a more restrained approach would likely have resulted in a more compelling narrative. It felt quite exhaustive to get through all of these.
3 stars/5

This is, my first time reading a comical novel and in terms of that it scored decent, it made me giggle quite a few times throughout the book. The plot itself is quite entertaining and unique, an angel reincarnating as a mortal baby with his memory intact, rather uncomfortable to fit in the new society since his days of paradise are ingrained in his mental space quite prevalently, it makes me think about whether the author created this illusion to portray his life incidents. As for other things we see that the mythical paradise is nothing like the religious scripture portrayed to be, the paradise is like a mortal world, There's classicism, sexism, xenophobia, scandalous affairs and perverted/tyrannical superiors. Although most of the book of quite entertaining it fell flat after Samuel and Little Pisser's behemoth rescue mission.
Overall it was a nice read 3.5/5

The descriptions of the surroundings in this book were quite vivid and felt easy to visualize without pretentiousness, although I'm unsure how apt and believable the ending was for me. The theme of a child's trauma and fear of inheriting harmful traits from their parents is something I haven't read much about, so I was quite intrigued. However I'm not quite sure if the author needed so many graphic violence against women scenes to establish this factor. I'm kind of on the fence here to be frank. 3.75/5.