Alex

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they/he, il. Wikipedian and book reader, mostly. Localization and sociology enthusiast.

Salt Crystals by Cristina Bendek

Read Salt Crystals by Cristina Bendek ( )

San Andrés rises gently from the Caribbean, part of Colombia but closer to Nicaragua, the largest island in an archipelago claimed by the Spanish, colonized by the Puritans, worked by slaves, and home to Arab traders, migrants from the mainland, and the descendents of everyone who came before.

For Victoria – whose origins on the island go back generations, but whose identity is contested by her accent, her skin color, her years far away – the sun-burned tourists and sewage blooms, sudden storms, and ‘thinking rundowns’ where liberation is plotted and dinner served from a giant communal pot, bring her into vivid, intimate contact with the island she thought she knew, her own history, and the possibility for a real future for herself and San Andrés.

This is the second-to-last novel of an old Charco Press bundle I bought. Charco Press is a small but mighty independent publisher which started in 2017 in Scotland and specialises in translation of novels from Latin America. Their books are out of the ordinary, make me discover new horizons, and they also look really pretty…

Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High-Performance Sport by Rob Beamish & Ian Ritchie

Read Fastest, highest, strongest : a critique of high-performance sport

Explores the use of drugs and other performance-enhancing practices in sport, tracing the development of the situation through its socio-political history. This work presents a critique of the use of athletes as representatives of political regimes, and the constant striving for medals that has altered the ethos of the Olympic Games.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking read on high performance sport and mostly on doping. Doping is a highly emotional issue and going through its history with a new lens took me out of my comfort zone − and it was fascinating. Beamish seems to have a very clear opinion that anti-doping policies are a…

Sur la dalle

Read Sur la dalle by Fred Vargas ( )

– Le dolmen dont tu m’as parlé, Johan, il est bien sur la route du petit pont ?
– À deux kilomètres après le petit pont, ne te trompe pas. Sur ta gauche, tu ne peux pas le manquer. Il est splendide, toutes ses pierres sont encore debout.
– ça date de quand, un dolmen ?
– Environ quatre mille ans.
– Donc des pierres pénétrées par les siècles. C’est parfait pour moi.
– Mais parfait pour quoi?
– Et cela servirait à quoi, ces dolmens? demanda Adamsberg sans répondre.
– Ce sont des monuments funéraires. Des tombes, si tu préfères, faites de pierres dressées recouvertes par de grandes dalles. J’espère que cela ne te gêne pas.
– En rien. C’est là que je vais aller m’allonger, en hauteur sur la dalle, sous le soleil.
– Qu’est-ce que tu vas foutre là-dessus ?
– Je ne sais pas, Johan.

Fred Vargas fait partie de mes amours littéraires adolescentes. J’étais obsédé par les « colocs du vingtième siècle », je voulais tellement être eux ! J’ai oublié, ensuite, ses romans, et l’ai perdue de vue une bonne décennie. Jusqu’à ce que Quand sort la recluse fasse son apparition dans une boîte à livres de mon…

Liked Round-Up of October 2023 IndieWeb Carnival by Pablo Morales (lifeofpablo.com)

Alex has a written a great post on self-care by focusing on news consumption. Right away you wrote, « Not only do I spend too much time on the Internet – I spend way too much time consuming content and news. » You took the words right out of my mouth. News isn’t limited to listening to reading it online, or watching it on the television (or historically radio). Now the news in the 21st comes in so many different mediums such as podcasts. I’ve seen an increase of this negative news. It discourages me to use any form of social media, even decentralized social media. I want to ignore but it seems hard not to even if you don’t click links. « Curating a me-friendly news experience » by « find[ing] the things that bring you joy and give your brain a break from the hate. » It’s important to step away from even if it’s for a little while. We can’t let it consume us to the core. It will make use dark and bitter. I catch myself becoming angry. You make a great point on finding the right sources and filtering things out by using an RSS reader. Even I as an avid New York Times and leftist news person, have to turn off my computer and throw my phone across the room to reattach myself to the world around me. It’s got to the point where I have to go into my terminal and turn off the Docker container and turn of my RSS reader. There has to be a better way for everything. Support local journalism because we need to know what’s happening in our hometowns and the places we live. We need to now what’s happening in our communities to make a difference and become aware what’s around us.

My government means to kill me

Read My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson

A fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story, following the personal and political awakening of a young gay Black man in 1980s NYC, from the television drama writer and producer of The Chi, Narcos, and Bel-Air.

What an interesting little book. I’m not sure how I feel about it, really – probably because I enjoy reading memoirs, and reading a « fake memoir » makes me feel a bit icky. But for those who have always struggled to bridge the gap between fiction and nonfiction, this might be your perfect introduction. The protagonist…

Practical Doomsday

Read Practical Doomsday: A Sensible Field Guide to Surviving Disasters by Michal Zalewski

You’ll learn:
• How to identify and meaningfully assess risks in your life, then develop strategies for managing them
• Ways to build up and diversify a robust financial safety net—a key component of nearly all effective preparedness strategies
• How to adapt your prep plans to a variety of situations, from shelter-in-place scenarios to evacuations by car or on foot
• Sensible approaches to stockpiling food, water, and other essentials, along with recommendations on what supplies are actually worth having
Disasters happen, but they don’t have to dominate your life. Practical Doomsday will help you plan ahead, so you can stop worrying about what tomorrow may bring and start enjoying your life today.

The first two thirds were really really good. The third section is about self-defense and wasn’t too interesting to me, so I skipped most of it. Good book overall with some very solid foundations. Si ça vous intéresse, vous pouvez aussi découvrir mes notes de lecture.

Sociologie du sport

Read Sociologie du sport by Pascal Duret

Performances, concurrences, compétitions, jeux, tout semble aller de soi dans l’univers sportif, et pourtant … Quelles sont les fonctions sociales du sport? A quoi rime la passion de nos contemporains pour sa pratique et son spectacle? Pourquoi le sport semble-t-il à ses adeptes si important à défendre, et à ses détracteurs si critiquable? En quoi ce qui se passe dans les stades permet-il de comprendre l’articulation des valeurs, parfois contradictoires, qui façonnent notre société? Par-delà les réponses toutes faites et les a priori, cet ouvrage offre une vue d’ensemble des recherches les plus récentes en sociologie du sport et propose une synthèse de ses avancées les plus marquantes.

Les informations sont très bien (même si parfois un peu périmées parce que manifestement pas mises à jour d’une édition à l’autre). Par contre, la maison d’édition a été lamentable : le livre est bourré de fautes d’orthographe sur les mots en langues étrangères et sur les noms des sportifs, ce qui gâche la lecture.…