I really thought 2021 will be better than 2020. But it isn’t, at least when it comes to my focus on the blog. I think it’s because I expected all the worst from 2020, once the pandemic broke out and then from that perspective it wasn’t so horrible (again I’m speaking of my personal experience …
A gothic crime novel that really wants to be stifling and atmospheric and even pulls it off at times. It ticks all the boxes, to a point that it becomes a bit stifled itself. As many of my recent books this is another one from a subscription box. Unlike many of the other books I …
I recalled that in high school drama classes we would sometimes play games of “focus”, in which the winner was the girl who could lie on the floor and stare at one place on the ceiling without giving in to the distractions of the other girls pulling faces and whispering dirty jokes above her. I …
An eerie and dreamy in one moment only to become very blunt and down-to-earth in another. Madeleine Watts wields the language firmly in her debut novel. It is a tale of crisis, despair, being lost, but also finding one’s way in a world that doesn’t offer much consolation. Personal and climate crises constantly intertwine in …
Can an artist single-handedly impact an entire city? Considering that the city in question is Rome, probably not. But add to the mix an influential politician and you have a recipe for success. Loyd Grossman’s book, The Artist and the Eternal City, charts the path of Gian Lorenzo Bernini through the streets of Rome.
If last year was weird, this one is even weirder. I completely missed the beginning of the #20BooksofSummer2021 challenge and joined mid-course, with some books already under my belt, thankfully it was not a stressful thing. Now I am late for the closing party. I decided to aim for 20 books this year since last …
Continue reading 20 Books of Summer 2021 – Belated Summary – #20BooksofSummer21
Back in February I posted about rediscovering an old hobby: knitting and crocheting. The madness continues, so in the past few months I managed to finish quite a few pieces. I ventures into more shawls and discovered the world of pillows, but then it came time for really challenging projcest: the blankets! While the patterns …
It has been a while since a book annoyed me so much! And yet I could not find a flaw in Harris’ argument. There is nothing more irritating than knowing you disagree with someone’s claim, but not being able to fight their arguments. I still have the niggling feeling there is a fundamental flaw somewhere …
Al-Andalus is the forgotten heritage of the Muslim presence on the Iberian Peninsula. A thriving educational center where the Muslims, Jews and Christians were able to coexist in relative peace for almost 800 years. It is a period of European history that is rarely mentioned and if it is then only briefly. Yet it left …
What happens when the perfect world of a planned community clashes with the messiness of the reals world? Can we really shield ourselves from chaos with a set of rules for living? Can racism be denied out of a community? Little Fires Everywhere asks those fundamental questions in a serious but often also lightly satirical …
