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**On Freedom, by Timothy Snyder**
Finished. I have mixed feelings about it though. The book is, broadly, Snyder’s case for positive freedom in the context of Russian incursion into Ukraine. He leans on the Körper-Leib distinction, which is interesting, but eventually resorts to repackaging his older tirade against social media, support for local news, etc.
**Power of the Powerless, by Václav Havel**
Revisited again to see how relevant it is in this day and age, esp. on the 17th November (the anniversary of Czechoslovak “Velvet revolution”). And it is relevant indeed. The analysis of “post-totalitarian” society can be applied to large swaths of neoliberal society almost verbatim.
Finished:
– **The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey**. This book suffered from clunky exposition, but I liked how strongly the plotline was grounded in the specifics of 1920s Indian society. It reminded me a lot of Nilima Rao’s Fijian mysteries; Rao is better (in my opinion) at incorporating exposition into the action and dialogue, but focusing on a female protagonist allowed Massey to address a different set of social issues and tensions, and I think she did a really good job of that. Another thing that stood out was the characterization—in particular, the dynamics of the different families (Muslim, Parsi, and British) that the book revolved around.
– **The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder**. This was good—a little like Cather’s *Death Comes for the Archbishop*, albeit more patronizing—but based on its reputation (not to mention the Pulitzer), I had been expecting more.
Started: **The Dark Domain, by Stefan Grabinski**
Finished:
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, by Mary Shelley
Carmilla: A Critical Edition, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (edited by Kathleen Costello-Sullivan)
Started:
Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
Continued reading: **The Celebrated Cases of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**. This week I read the story “The Dancing Men”.
It was good. A code that got more of a showing than the one used in “The Gloria Scott”. I’m usually good at solving cyphers in fictional books, but I couldn’t do this one. Maybe because I had comparably fewer samples to work with than other works that I have solved the cypher on. Maybe because it was unclear how much deviation a single glyph could undergo while still counting as the same letter. I got that a flag meant a separate word in a sentence (not that it was used consistently). And I tried to just reduce them from actual human symbols into numbers to make it easier. But again, I never got to solve that cypher.
But it did make for a good mystery, with a few good observations. E.g. one character believes, when seeing the cypher, and seeing an addition some time later that someone came back to amend their message, not realising that >!it is two characters in conversation with each other!<. There were some other general observations made to help solve the case with. Such as the sequence of number of gun shots made, with or without a window being open, etc.
Not sure I followed it all, but I think this was a much better mystery than a lot of what I’ve read of Sherlock recently.
**There will be Bodies, Lindsey Davis**
Another Flavia Albia roman whodunit mystery.
This week I read Babel by R.F. Kuang, I found Yellowface hilarious and the plot here seemed really interesting but I ended up not liking it as much, I thought it follows history too close so I didn’t even understand the need for the silver bars as in irl the British Empire wrecked havoc in the world without them. Also the characters read like they knew what TikTok is, which felt very distracting. Overall it was an easy and enjoyable read but I think the book would have been much better off had it not been so accurate historically/had it just created its own world with silver bars
Finished
**To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck**
Started
**The Crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon**
Finished:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab
Witcha Gonna Do? by Avery Flynn
(Re) started:
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
**The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne**
**Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor**
**Enclave, by Claire G. Coleman**
**The Melbourne Book: A History of Now, by Maree Coote**
Finished:
Changes by Jim Butcher
Started:
The House On The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Finished The Wish by Nicholas spark
Started The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Started – The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
Was recommended to me by a friend of mine. About a hundred pages in and I wouldn’t be surprised if I finish it in the next couple days. Really enjoying it.
Finished:
**The Bridges of Madison County, by Robert James Waller**
Started:
**The Rachel Incident, by Caroline O’Donoghue**
Finished: The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
Started: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Mythos by Stephen Fry
Quite an easy and light entry into the Greek genre before I eventually try and pick up The Illiad and Odyssey. I’m torn between Fagles and Wilson with those
Finished: Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
Started: A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
Finished: The Shadow of the Gods – John Gwynne
Immediately followed by
Started: The Hunger of the Gods – John Gwynne