by Sayaka Murata
★¾
Category archives: ★★
Rental House
by Weike Wang
★★
Arboreality
by Rebecca Campbell
★★¼
Touched
by Walter Mosley
★★
Wylding Hall
by Elizabeth Hand
The Mary Poppins-speak is beyond belabored, alongside amateur journalist mythmaking with the principal characters speaking about themselves as if they were their own fans (‘history in the making‘, ‘we were all young and beautiful and gifted‘). The author compares characters to celebrities instead of … Read more
The Two Mrs. Abbotts
(Barbara Buncle #3)
by D.E. Stevenson
This one ages awfully on multiple fronts, not least Markie’s fixation on phrenology
The Hacienda
by Isabel Cañas
★★
The Book Eaters
by Sunyi Dean
** spoiler alert **
When All Is Said
by Anne Griffin
★★
The Cartographers
by Peng Shepherd
★★
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void
by Jackie Wang
★★
Beneath the Rising
by Premee Mohamed
Flows well enough at the start but as soon as the stakes are set it becomes something like when you humour a friend who wants to recount an incoherent dream they had the night before. Lasting impressions are of unfunny banter, both connection and conflict that don’t ring … Read more
Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism
by Amelia Horgan
Well intentioned but not damning nor transformative. There’s a flash of technosolutionism and ‘A taxonomy of slacking off’ in chapter 7 is embarrassing. Paraphrased: Some people take up smoking so they can take smoke breaks. Another thing you could do is learn a rare skill so your boss … Read more
Migrations
by Charlotte McConaghy
** spoiler alert **
The Futures of Feminism
by Valerie Bryson
In the introduction, after talking about trans rights, the overrepresentation of wealthy white women, and anticapitalism, she promotes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Emma Watson, and Sheryl Sandberg. Despite arguing for coalitions and solidarity in difference, Bryson gives immoderate space to anti-trans fearmongering in chapter 4. There’s a school report … Read more
Have His Carcase
by Dorothy L. Sayers
★★
Heimat
by Nnedi Okorafor
★★
Der Geruch von Häusern anderer Leute
by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
Zu viele Zufälle und Klischees. Ich hätte das nicht auf Englisch gelesen, aber es ist das erste Buch, das ich auf Deutsch fertiggelesen habe 🙂
Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love
by Houria Bouteldja
She talks about colonialist principles being applied to Europe in WWII (Césaire), conditional absorption into whiteness, and revisionist histories—in riddling analogies and immoderate irony. She writes more straightforwardly about internalised racism and white men in Europe claiming to stand up for women only when they can pin patriarchal … Read more
The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches
by Malcolm X
I didn’t expect so much patronising flattery and unscientific claptrap in the opening speech. Very little of this collection is agelessly thundering in exposing the crimes of imperialism, the prison walls of America, and the artifice of white liberal allyship.