Julia: A Retelling of George Orwell’s 1984, by Sandra Newman

Julia Worthing is a mechanic, working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. It’s 1984, and Britain (now called Airstrip One) has long been absorbed into the larger trans-Atlantic nation of Oceania. Oceania has been at war for as long as anyone can remember, and is ruled by an ultra-totalitarian Party, whose leader…

Mon Best of de 2024

2024 a été l’année de plein de belles choses. Je vous fais donc un best of culturel, suivi d’un tout petit best of de mes expériences vécues ! Best of : lectures J’ai trop de choses à dire pour les intégrer ici, donc j’ai un article séparé pour elles. https://alexsirac.com/mes-lectures-de-2024/ Best of : sources d’actualité…

Alamut, Vladimir Bartol

Around the world reading challenge: Slovénie Il y a très longtemps, Sara m’a conseillé des romans slovènes pour mon challenge Autour du Monde. Je n’en ai trouvé qu’un de sa liste, Alamut, de Vladimir Bartol, et je ne voulais pas le lire parce que quand je lis des romans de pays que je connais mal,…

Mes lectures de 2024

Note: this article is in French, but there are many recommendations in English. You might want to scroll past the fluff to the Recommandations section if you don’t speak French! Comme chaque année depuis les premiers confinements de 2020 et ma reprise de la lecture intensive, j’ai battu mon record de lecture en 2024 en…

Depart, depart! by Sim Kern

Depart, depart! by Sim Kern is a short novella of a natural disaster. Our narrator, a trans guy who is on hormones and pre-surgery, ends up in a public shelter with no privacy and where nobody seems to get any privacy. Also, the ghost of his grandfather, who narrowly escaped Nazi camps, keeps saving his…

These letters end in tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere

These letters end in tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere, follows a Catholic lesbian trying to find her lost love. The book is in the format of letters sent to Fatima, her atheist lover from a Muslim family. She tells of her search and of her own life with a gay best friend in a country…

Nightbloom, by Peace Adzo Medie

Around the world challenge / MyReadingChallenge54: Ghana Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie follows inseparable cousins − or rather, cousins that live a continent apart and have completely different lives, and who don’t talk to each other, but who were inseparable as kids. Heartbreaking and fantastic.

L’oiseau bleu d’Erzeroum, Ian Manook

Around the World challenge: Arménie Je me suis dit que j’en avais marre d’avoir des lectures déprimantes, alors j’ai lu… …ah ben non, c’est un roman sur le génocide des Arméniens. Le roman suit deux petites filles en 1915 : la grande a 10 ans, la petite six. Elles sont attaquées, déportés, achetées comme esclaves…

Dreamland

Remember how I used to be obsessed with life in North Korea? For weirdly similar reasons, I’m obsessed with life in the United States. That is a messed up country that I would not want to live in. And a fascinating aspect of this hellhole country is its health system and, directly due to that,…

Here for the wrong reasons

In today’s cringe-but-cute sapphic stories: two bisexual women enter The Bachelor. One is a small-town cowgirl, there because she truly hopes to find true love. The other wants fame, because being seen in a tight red dress for a few weeks would really help with her influencer business − and she doesn’t mind a nice hook-up…