Age of the City

Read Age of the City: Why Our Future Will be Won Or Lost Together ( )

In this book, Professor Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin show why making our societies fairer, more cohesive and sustainable must start with our cities. Globalization and technological change have concentrated wealth into a small number of booming metropolises, leaving many smaller cities and towns behind and feeding populist resentment. Yet even within seemingly thriving cities like London or San Francisco, the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen and our retreat into online worlds tears away at our social fabric. Meanwhile, pandemics and climate change pose existential threats to our increasingly urban world.

Felt rushed and superficial in some parts, some others were better. A frustrating read because many very interesting things are said but stay on the superficial level; a good read nonetheless, not too US-centric. Mes notes de lecture en français sont ici.

Refuse to choose!

Read Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams by Barbara Sher ( )

Don’t know what to do with your life? Drawn to so many things that you can’t choose just one? New York Times best-selling author Barbara Sher has the answer–do EVERYTHING!

This didn’t age very well in parts, but I enjoy the sheer optimism and positivity of it. I am definitely a Scanner-Type but I think I’m doing pretty well making the most it, which means I wasn’t the target audience for this self help book aimed at very confused and desperate people. There were still…

La Commune au présent, de Ludivine Bantigny

Read La Commune au présent by Ludivine Bantigny ( )

C’est de leur expérience si actuelle que part ce livre, sous une forme originale : il est composé de lettres adressées à ces femmes et ces hommes comme s’ils et elles étaient encore en vie et comme si on pouvait leur parler. Ces lettres rendent la Commune vivante et présente, par un entrelacement des temps. L’ouvrage s’appuie sur un vaste travail d’archives et de nombreux documents, le plus souvent inédits : correspondances, débats, projets, procès… Il offre aussi au regard plus de cent photographies qui s’égrènent tout au long de ses pages, images d’époque et images d’aujourd’hui, comme un télescopage entre passé et présent.

La Commune de Paris est une époque fascinante, qui mérite qu’on s’y attarde et que tout le monde la connaisse. Ce n’est pas le cas, et j’ai trouvé plus d’une fois qu’il était très difficile de s’intéresser à un sujet pourtant passionnant : les ressources sont si austères, si académiques ! La non-fiction épistolaire de…

Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends

Read Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends by Marisa G. Franco ( )

How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? In Platonic, Dr. Marisa G. Franco unpacks the latest, often counterintuitive findings about the bonds between us—for example, why your friends aren’t texting you back (it’s not because they hate you!), and the myth of “friendships happening organically” (making friends, like cultivating any relationship, requires effort!). As Dr. Franco explains, to make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style—secure, anxious, or avoidant: it is the key to unlocking what’s working (and what’s failing) in your friendships.

I’ve been changing my entire world every decade at most for my entire life, and it gets lonely out there. Moving to a not-actually-new city and having to start from not-really-scratch has been very hard for the past six months, and my whole approach of friendship doesn’t help – I struggle a lot with keeping…

The other black girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Read The other black girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris ( )

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.

Such an excellent book with such a disappointing ending. Mild spoilers for the endingI was really invested in the conspiracy arc and having it end nowhere AND sprinkled with magical realism when the plot could have been just as solid without it? I truly hope fanfic writers will write the conspiracy arc I need to…

Hêtre pourpre, de Kim de l’Horizon

Read Hêtre pourpre by Kim de l’Horizon ( )

Lorsque sa grand-mère commence à perdre la mémoire, Kim tente de combler les silences en invoquant ses souvenirs d’enfance, dans une remémoration d’une infinie et terrible tendresse.

S’ouvre alors une tourbillonnante quête familiale sur les figures féminines qui constituent sa lignée maternelle : un arbre généalogique de sorcières entretenant un puissant lien avec la nature, de femmes subversives en recherche permanente de liberté, parmi lesquelles Kim se crée une place.

Hêtre pourpre m’a dit de faire mon coming-out à ma grand-mère puis a passé le reste de ses pages à me faire passer un très mauvais moment. J’ai pas pu arrêter de le lire. Toutes les dix pages, un paragraphe exprimait tout ce que j’avais besoin de lire et justifiait le reste de ma lecture.…

La masculinité de rattrapage

Read transMasculine Artifice by Lotus Lloyd

Hey, are the prescribed gender roles present in all too many of our “self-made men” a bad defense mechanism? That would be bad right?

En une phrase : La communauté transmasculine semble avoir régressé dans la conviction que pour devenir un homme, il faut devenir l’homme le plus masculin possible. Mes notes détaillées Les hommes trans ne sont pas des « self-made-men » : ils redécouvrent souvent ce qu’il reste des archétypes de la masculinité toxique, et les affichent en ligne…

Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Read Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris ( )

The first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, from railroad capitalists to microchip assemblers, showing how Northern California created the world as we know it

Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce the spiritually and materially ambitious heart of Silicon Valley, whose products are changing how we do everything from driving around to eating food. It is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.

I forced myself to not take any notes or highlights when reading this book, and ended up with three (3) highlights on a 700+ page book, which I consider a win. Palo Alto was a really good book at some points, and felt like a chore at others. I think the images and narratives are…

ada & zangemann

Read Ada & Zangemann by Matthias Kirschner ( )

Zangemann est un inventeur mondialement connu et immensément riche. Enfants et adultes adorent ses fabuleuses inventions. Mais soudain, gros problème : les skateboards électroniques des enfants buggent et les glaces ont toutes le même parfum. Que se passe-t-il ?

Ada, jeune fille curieuse, va découvrir comment Zangemann contrôle ses produits depuis son ordinateur en or. Avec ses amis, elle va bricoler des objets informatisés qui échappent aux décisions de Zangemann.

Un livre pour les enfants et jeunes ados qui pourrait bien leur transmettre le plaisir de bricoler. Un livre sur l’informatique libre, la camaraderie et le rôle des filles pour une technique au service de l’autonomie. Un conte vivant et superbement illustré.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Un livre pour enfants (et jeunes ados) vraiment tout cool, qui raconte une histoire toute mignonne avec une fin qu’on aimerait bien voir dans la vraie vie !

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…