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Of course not enough. Every year I tell myself: instead of asking yourself a lot of silly questions, why don't you start by reading books by people who dedicated their life to some subset of issues? First, I'm trying, but you know how is life. Second, I have this fear that many things are not worth reading and try to build an a priori knowledge of what really matters but that itself requires some time-consuming research, thus fueling an embarrassing vicious circle. I should probably just stop worrying and just read, and that's the plan for 2021.
My English is not good enough to translate some of the comments specific to some French works, so sorry for switching language. 🍷🥖
Snowden writes his autobiography, starting from being blown away by the Internet as a child to his exile in, what the hell, Russia.
I was amazed to discover how much we have in common in our early lives and how we just kind of ended up at doing cybersecurity for the military, because why not, public service is good for the people right?... I have not seen Citizenfour so I don't know how much they overlap, but it's a good book with an engaging and fun writing style. We all owe him much.
Ligotti is a horror fiction writer, and The Nightmare Factory is a big collection of his novels. I have read a good half of it and continue to open it some evenings.
There is a great variety of themes and it's fascinating to read Ligotti playing with different layers of reality to depict both intriguing and dreadful worlds. One of my favourites, "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise", masterfully intertwines the flows of narration to mislead the protagonist to his doom. One way or another, every tale is transcended by his art of the suggested, the grotesque, and fleeting visions of eternal hell.
I enjoy Ligotti as much, if not more, as I enjoyed Lovecraft years ago, so if that's your thing, I highly recommended it.
Ce livre raconte à la première personne l'histoire de Josyane, une fille qui grandit dans la France des années 50. Le ton est assez glaçant et décrit violemment les méfaits des politiques natalistes qui ont fait pousser ce qui pourrait être décrit comme des fermes à ouvriers dans les banlieues de Paris, où chaque enfant est une nouvelle allocation qui permettra de s'acheter un lave-vaisselle ou de réparer son auto. De plus, le livre touche à des thèmes particulièrement sensibles comme la pédophilie ce qui rend sa lecture d'autant plus dérangeante.
Le travail littéraire de Christiane Rochefort est incroyable, je n'ai jamais lu une autrice manipuler l'ironie avec autant de finesse, au point où les formes du texte déphasent la narratrice du personnage, et où les frontières des réalités se floutent suffisamment pour douter, par moments, de la personne qui parle et du véritable propos sous-jacent : est-ce Josyane, est-ce la narratrice (Josyane plus tard), ou est-ce Rochefort ? C'est d'autant plus troublant lorsque le ton pessimiste de Josyane, auparavant furieuse et indépendante, se mue en amour hébêté pour un glandu quelconque.
On m'a reproché d'avoir fait une fin optimiste. Ha ha ha. C'est un roman d'épouvante si vous voulez savoir. Je hurlais : CES MAISONS, VOUS VERREZ, ÇA TUE.
This is a book on the Scrum Agile methodology. Sutherland participated to the creation Agile Manifesto and this book is well regarded on that matter; as I was kind of elected to be Scrum Master at work and am very skeptical towards management shenanigans, I took this book to get the pith of it.
It was not a very good read. The author keeps throwing off track military anecdotes to justify the basis of his method and the success stories we're told feel embellished. Sure, if you take a team with terrible performance due to abysmal management and spend some time to teach the whole hierarchy what sounds like… basic elements of mutual respect, then I guess it can only progress?
Scrum may be efficient with specific teams and environments, but I can attest that when the conditions (mood, project, fucking covid destroying us) aren't all met, it fails quite hard.
Un ouvrage politique compliqué à résumer tant il touche de sujets et avec autant d'aggressivité — dans le meilleur sens du mot possible. En une phrase, Houria Bouteldja traite du point de non-retour dans la ségrégation des noirs et arabes en France, comme un feu qui couve et qu'on ne pourra bientôt plus espérer éteindre : en envisageant le futur proche, pessimiste, elle s'interroge sur les formes que vont prendre les luttes des non-blancs, et n'émet que peu de doutes sur la violence qu'elles incomberont.
Un des aspects les plus marquants du livre est l'étendue de la répression médiatique subie : les citations tronquées, les questions volontairement incomprises et les justifications ignorées. Tout a été fait pour faire passer Houria Bouteldja comme incapable de discernement ou de nuance, et il apparaissait rapidement que ses détracteurs n'avaient tout simplement rien lu. Le livre traite son sujet avec une rare honnêteté. Si on peut être critique vis à vis de certains passages un peu trop à vif, ça me parait tout à fait malhonnête de nier la profonde humanité de l'autrice et la tragédie, plutôt que la jubilation, que serait à ses yeux la réalisation de ses pires prédictions.
On verra ce qu'il en sera. Pas plus tard qu'hier, la Ministre de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche déclare vouloir ouvrir une enquête sur l'emprise de « l'islamo-gauchisme » à l'université.
This is the tale of an Afrikaner in South Africa who leaves a peaceful life as a teacher, until one of his few black acquaintances starts to look for his son, gone missing after a riot against the police. As the teacher goes to help him, initially dismissing the urgency of the matter (he must be alright, what could possibly happen?), the search for truth slowly evolves into a call for justice, but also gets more and more uncanny as he discovers, week after week, the absurd amount of repression aimed at black people and that his research quietly and irrevocably made him an enemy of the state.
Even though somewhere in the middle there is a romance that did not feel very necessary, the characters are interesting, as is their development. It's a sobering story about the atrocities of the apartheid.
This book tries to connect the dots between the witch-hunts of past centuries with the feminicides of our days ("Sorcières" means witches in French). I went into this book because I was curious about the trend of young women that took esotericism, witchcraft and astrology quite seriously as liberating outlets, and what links it had with feminism; right at the beginning of the book Mona Chollet acknowledges this trend and says that this is completely off-topic (lol). But my interest was caught so I kept reading!
It touches a lot of feminist topics while staying concrete and easy to read. There are some very interesting aspects, such as the injunction made to women to give birth, that I did not really realised before. I was a bit confused about the links she established between the oppression against women of yesterday and now, even though I'm convinced that a common essence of hate is at work; besides, it is thoroughly informative and I recommended it.
Note: this is a (great) French translation of the 2007 2nd edition of "The Ethical Slut".
This book is aimed at people curious about polyamory and its related subjects: love, family, children, sexuality, jealousy, etc. It's more a practical guide than a study of polyamory history. The authors have put a lot of thought to make sure that their advice is firmly based on ethical behaviour, mutual respect and genuine care of the feelings of everyone involved. Whether you want advice on how to be part of this parallel world of love and bonds, or are simply curious about what exactly polyamory people are doing, it's an interesting and entertaining book, and it kind of aligned with a lot of things I thought about love, but that's for another post!