Having somewhat fallen into reviewing what I’m reading instead of the intended writing about why I’m reading a particular book, herewith I attempt to return to the point of all this writing about reading. Ruth Mandel’s Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges … Continue reading
And … here we go again. Another year finishing arbitrarily in mid-ish-October marking approximately an anniversary of when I first decided to blab about whatever I happened to be reading, with the caveat that no, no writing about what I … Continue reading
This is one I haven’t been able to pretend I wouldn’t eventually get hold of, having been greatly discussed on quite a few blogs I read. From anthropology to science-fiction, David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years has been peculiarly unavoidable … Continue reading
This is one book I’ve been waiting for a long time to arrive. It was around August last year when first set to be published, and I was fearing it would remain elusively in the future. So now, the top … Continue reading
Shortly before departing for Brussels, I finished Susan Mann’s brilliant The Talented Women of the Zhang Family, and began Gail Hershatter’s equally sublime The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past, which I’m still slowly chewing through. Both these books … Continue reading
This is the book I was so intimidated by I went off and read Charles Stross and Harry Potter for a couple of weeks. I heard of Gail Hershatter in 2008 (if I was paying attention), but it was an … Continue reading
I once stayed a night in Chungking Mansions, when a flight from Canada arrived too late to catch even the cross-border bus to Guangzhou. I was given the address by a woman at the information booth just past the exit … Continue reading
Nazif Shahrani — The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan
Another year of books. Not as many as last year; I took a pause for some time, unable to find a rhythm with all that I had to read, and at other times I was too impoverished to acquire even … Continue reading
Thomas Barfield – Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History