A good feminist (?) friend gave me The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood a few weeks ago. I am, as she’s aware of, always sceptical to receiving books from others, especially my parents. But I’ve spent the last few days reading this one. I wonder if she’ll ever read the book she got from me.
While [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Books’
19 Sep
Freedom revisited
26 Aug
Since last time…
I’ve been through two books (and thrown away a few others… why did I only bring two books to Vietnam?).
The first is the Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones, set in 14th century Catalonia and Barcelona. It follows the (fictional) life of Arnau, whose destiny commanded by the historical (facts) of the time is [...]
12 Jul
The Shadow of the Wind
I’ve read few novels so elegant as Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. Situated in Civil War Barcelona, it follows young Daniel’s inquiries into the turbulent background of Julian Carax, an author who tries to delete every trace of himself. Taking us through many subplots, Daniel’s and Carax’s lives are waved into each [...]
11 Jul
The Trial
I could probably appreciate Franz Kafka’s The Trial if I close my eyes, pretending being back in 1925. The lack of civil rights and legal protection at the time probably was in need of a fictional, surreal account of what it means when the defendant cannot take part in legal proceedings.
Today, such a book is [...]
20 Jun
A lawful post-American world
I enjoyed reading Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World almost as much as his The Future of Freedom. Zakaria in both books draws up clear-sighted comparisons between the past and today. In the Post-American, he argues that America, like the British empire before the Boer wars, has already reached its pinnacle. This is not because America’s [...]
14 Jun
1984
Just finished off 1984 by George Orwell… Written in the 50s, with the threat of communism, 1984’s description of a society under totalitarian control by a party might have been an exciting read (except that Ingsoc is very different from communism, some of the ideas remain the same).
But it did not impress me. Drawing up [...]
3 Apr
Taming American Power
I read Stephen Walt’s Taming American Power on the plane forth and back from Norway this spring. The book describes different reactions to how American uses its power (which is also eminently described), arguing that preserving and/or reinforcing US hegemony is the aim.
According to Walt, countries follow a range of strategies to either endorse or [...]
