#12Booksof2025 January/Book 1 : I had a few 5-star reads in January, and they were all from the #ToB2025 competition (not that I've finished everything from the shortlist yet, lol)
This surrealist Fahrenheit 451 was particularly captivating!
pickThis dystopian novel which pulls heavily from 1984 follows a book censor as he becomes obsessed in the books he‘s reviewing. It looks at a society where the majority of books are banned and a child having an imagination is considered an illness. The absurdness of it all would be funny if not for how terrifying the parallels to certain things happening in the world.
pickAl-Essa's “looking glass“ is perhaps more than it seems, and we are easily manipulated into caring for characters even though they bear titles, like stock figures, rather than names. The “Everyman“ approach keeps a strange distance, until we come to understand the power of our own imaginations with an ending that has been described as a “narrative rupture“ or a “twist worthy of Kafka.“ #TOB2025 #TOB25
pickI found this entertaining, but also unsettling as more and more book banning occurs around me. I‘m not sure how I feel about the ending.
pickUp until last year, only the 1st book of Ashour's trilogy on the expulsion of Muslim people from 16th century Granada had been translated into English. Luckily, Kay Heikkinen translated all 3 novels, which were released in one volume from AUC Press. Historical fiction that immerses you in the gorgeous detail of Islamic Andalusian society and chronicles the heartbreak of people made to abandon their culture before being forced to leave their home.
pickA humorous, clever and satirical story about book censorship. I enjoyed all the references to Orwell's 1984 and other banned books.
#ToB25
#gottacatchemall (Raticate: betrayal) @PuddleJumper
pickBooks about the future can be really fun and scary, all at the same time. This poor schlub, whose job is making sure allowed books reflect the views of the current government, is caught in a quandary when he starts to fall in love with the stories that are banned. Was never sure where this book was going, but it felt timely and sometimes realistic.
@BarbaraBB
pick#BookReport
Only two books finished this last week. While I‘m enjoying being back in the office it is cutting into my reading time. I enjoyed the tagged book. A very timely fairytale.
pickI loved this little book of travellers tales by Arabic (specifically, a Baghdadi of the Abbasid Empire from what is now Iraq, written while he was living in Egypt in 947CE) writer, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Mas'udi.
His accounts of Persian, Greek, Egyptian, East African,Indian, Central Asian, Chinese, Malaysian, Cambodian, etc. life and cultural practices are fascinating, and there are hints of knowledge of the Americas and Japan, all 👇
al-Mus'ādī is describing some of the wonders of Egypt, including the excavation of a temple lost beneath the desert sands. Uncovering stairs leading to the entrance, a rash man sets foot on the fourth step, triggering two swords to spring out of the walls & slice him to pieces, one of which rolls onto another trigger-step, causing the whole edifice to collapse, burying 2000 people!
I love that Indy's Tomb Raiding has such a venerable lineage! 😃
