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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
All the Murakami hallmarks: cats, disaffected young men, alcohol, vinyl records, cigarettes, odd sexual encounters.
Anyways, nothing happens. The constant tongue in cheek metaphors are kinda clever though.
Anyways, nothing happens. The constant tongue in cheek metaphors are kinda clever though.
I told myself I wasn’t going to read so many depressing books this year, and look what I went and did. These short stories are melancholy AF. Clever, but what a downer.
My favorite story was The Intruders, which had real potential to be hilarious, but it was also a downer.
My favorite story was The Intruders, which had real potential to be hilarious, but it was also a downer.
I am so obsessed with this. The artwork is stunning and the writing is hilarious. Plus, the drama. Aaah!
Great concept with lots of fun side notes about soup-related history and pop culture from around the world. The total lack of photos was a bummer though, even a few photos per chapter would make everything seem more appetizing. I also wonder why nearly all soup names got translated into English except the French ones? Rude. It would have been nice to have a note of what the soups are called in their place of origin, especially when English speakers are familiar with many foreign soup names (caldo verde, minestrone, borscht, gazpacho, ramen, sopa de albóndigas)--there's room to learn more.
Before reading this book I knew literally nothing about Mozambique besides that they speak Portuguese so I assumed (correctly) they were colonized by Portugal. When I looked at photos of the capital, Maputo, I thought it looked like a Brazilian city; you can see the how they are cousins in colonization.
Dumba Nengue is collection of accounts of atrocities and war crimes that were committed by RENAMO/MNR terrorists in the 1980s. The introduction to the English edition gives an explanation of the political situation at the time. Magaia wrote to record the stories of peasants "without microphones," not to inform about the political side of things. So some geopolitical backstory was absolutely necessary.
Called a civil war in the foreign press, and RENAMO terrorists were labeled "freedom fighters" by such groups as The Heritage Foundation and Pat Buchanan. Magaia challenges those ideas with questions like: Do these armed bandits have a country? If they are bringing freedom and liberation, then why are peasants fleeing their fields? A civil war is between two armed groups, so what do you call this when one group is armed by outside forces and the other group is unarmed?
In reality, RENAMO fighters were funded and trained by Rhodesian mercenaries (Rhodesia was under UN sanctions at the time), South Africa (apartheid dictatorship), and Portuguese ex-colonists & secret police (still bitter about the country's independence). Some "freedom fighters" indeed. Their purpose was to destabilize independent nations in southern Africa and force economic dependence on South Africa -- if landlocked countries deemed Mozambique's ports too dangerous, they would be forced to go through South Africa instead. Fields and orchards that were completely ravaged forced farmers from financial independence into working in the mines of South Africa. It's a tragedy, on an individual level with girls who were gang-raped and boys press-ganged to commit war crimes against their own families, to the national level with millions of refugees and the loss and destruction of ancestral farmlands and infrastructure.
I am glad I read this book because we so often move from hearing about one tragedy to the next without thinking about how the people affected by it will go the rest of their lives picking up the pieces. These stories, multiplied by millions, begin to approach the scale of the compassion we need to show to others.
Dumba Nengue is collection of accounts of atrocities and war crimes that were committed by RENAMO/MNR terrorists in the 1980s. The introduction to the English edition gives an explanation of the political situation at the time. Magaia wrote to record the stories of peasants "without microphones," not to inform about the political side of things. So some geopolitical backstory was absolutely necessary.
Called a civil war in the foreign press, and RENAMO terrorists were labeled "freedom fighters" by such groups as The Heritage Foundation and Pat Buchanan. Magaia challenges those ideas with questions like: Do these armed bandits have a country? If they are bringing freedom and liberation, then why are peasants fleeing their fields? A civil war is between two armed groups, so what do you call this when one group is armed by outside forces and the other group is unarmed?
In reality, RENAMO fighters were funded and trained by Rhodesian mercenaries (Rhodesia was under UN sanctions at the time), South Africa (apartheid dictatorship), and Portuguese ex-colonists & secret police (still bitter about the country's independence). Some "freedom fighters" indeed. Their purpose was to destabilize independent nations in southern Africa and force economic dependence on South Africa -- if landlocked countries deemed Mozambique's ports too dangerous, they would be forced to go through South Africa instead. Fields and orchards that were completely ravaged forced farmers from financial independence into working in the mines of South Africa. It's a tragedy, on an individual level with girls who were gang-raped and boys press-ganged to commit war crimes against their own families, to the national level with millions of refugees and the loss and destruction of ancestral farmlands and infrastructure.
I am glad I read this book because we so often move from hearing about one tragedy to the next without thinking about how the people affected by it will go the rest of their lives picking up the pieces. These stories, multiplied by millions, begin to approach the scale of the compassion we need to show to others.
Yaaaassss love how everyone is working together finally.
Merged review:
Yaaaassss love how everyone is working together finally.
Merged review:
Yaaaassss love how everyone is working together finally.
DNF @ 60%
I decided to stop reading bc it was making me feel pessimistic and depressed. Head in sand theory all the way.
The main things I learned are that a lot of these mass shooter guys write in their manifestos how much they hate women and want to kill them and there are lots of online groups cheering them on, there are no consequences for threatening a woman with violence, aaand the looksmaxing redpill incel pipeline is real.
I decided to stop reading bc it was making me feel pessimistic and depressed. Head in sand theory all the way.
The main things I learned are that a lot of these mass shooter guys write in their manifestos how much they hate women and want to kill them and there are lots of online groups cheering them on, there are no consequences for threatening a woman with violence, aaand the looksmaxing redpill incel pipeline is real.