Eddie's Monthly

I am redeeming myself from the little I have read last month, and for the first time, we are starting with a compilation of poetry and prose:

If I Must Die – Refaat Alareer

For once, I'll talk about the author before moving on to the book. Refaat Alareer was a Palestinian professor who taught literature and creative in University in Gaza. He was critical of the israelian genocide of the Palestinian people (shocker), and wrote about it, leading to his murdered on December 6th 2023 by Israel, who targeted his residential building with an airstrike killing other civilians with him, including his sister, brother and nephews.

It is pretty clear-cut that Israel is committing genocide over there with the full support of the US and the complicity (even if sometimes by way of inaction) of many other western nations. There is nothing I can say that hasn't already been said a thousand times better, so this is as much as I'll comment. If you are looking to do your own research (which you should) please beware of the pervasive zionist propaganda in our western medias. The lies and gaslighting are prevalent, and so are attempts at manufacturing consent.

The book is a collection of writings about Pr. Alareer's life in Gaza and his thought on the israelian genocide, interspaced by poems. I will admit that I do not have the greatest sensibility for poetry, and it may have been lost on me, but the writings were really something. He was already saying how the situation is crazy and inhumane in 2014, and 2021, but his more recent writing say that what's been happening since 2023 is way worse than what they've experienced those years. He shows through his writing how untenable the situation is for him and his family. But the real situation for the average Gazan is much worse than what he puts on paper, as he says himself that he is in a very privileged position, with money, access to the internet and not being an anonymous Palestinian face.

He is very candid about his thoughts and what he thinks are his shortcomings about protecting his family and raising his children in this environment, it was very moving.

Babel – R.F. Kuang

I had previously read Yellowface, another book by R.F. Kuang and really didn't care for it. It was entertaining, but I found the characters to not be consistent or even make sense and the story not be and to make as well. I brushed it off as it being a side project of a different calibre, when the author's claim to fame is her fantasy book, like Babel. I was very charitable. But not anymore.

I was thoroughly disappointed with Babel. While I gave Yellowface the benefit of the doubt, this will not get a pass. There is so much wrong with this book, I don't understand all the praise it gets. The world building is atrocious, and I wouldn't dare even calling it worldbuilding — there's nothing. The setting is regular 19th century earth with magic runes in it, basically. Those runes can almost do anything, as long as you can find the right words for it. With this monumental change in the way the world works, you would think world events would have unfolded differently, but no. The world is the exact same, it's lazy and boring. At first, I thought in the book that the runes had been recently discovered, justifying the fact that everything just evolved the same way until the 19th century. But it is revealed later in the books that the Romans discovered the runes and how to use them; and the world didn't substantially change for all 2000+ years with this discovery!? Then, let's talk about the magic system. The silver rune thing is a seemingly interesting concept, but it is so underutilised and inconsistent. Even if its functioning and the functioning of specific runes is also explained ad nauseam. The writing as a whole is very repetitive and the 'themes' are really ham-fisted. The fact that they are also very, very surface level, while being discussed non-stop, was also annoying. It is also not saying anything very interesting about them. What really did me in is at the end when the leader of the union is like: “you realise it's about class, right” and our main protagonist is like “yes I do now” which makes no sense as this whole time they had only been focused on race and colonialism and after this little dialogue, the book picks back up with the main character solely focusing on race and colonialism. Speaking of our main character, he is such a serpillère, always being pushed toward something and having zero agency. He is so passive and the whole time he doesn't really move things forwards, he's just barely reacting to things just happening. The rest of the cast is somehow worse, and are just one-dimensional caricatures. Nothing is meaningful about them, they have zero personality, and we are told about how they are such interesting and diverse characters, but we are never shown anything. The “family” that was built at Oxford doesn't feel genuine and organic. And how can I forget about the footnotes — they are utterly useless. They do not make sense in the context of the story as this is not a text found and annotated by a historian or someone after the fact, or a journal, and they are literally just full of stuff that should have been cut out. I feel like during the editing process, whenever a section of the book was asked to be removed, it was instead turned into a footnote. They are not consistent in their tone and what they are saying; at one point it's to clarify a reference to a real world historical event, sometimes it's about a historical event in the fictional world and then sometimes it's about some truly meaningless piece of detail about one of the characters. The only redeeming quality of the book is that it is consumable; it's a very easy read. But not an interesting one and barely an entertaining one.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

An apocalyptic event happened, most life on earth is extinct, including plants. We follow a father and his kid trying to survive the aftermath.

I had seen this book recommended by a couple of people in the bookclub group chat, which ironically enough is rarely talking about books, and saw that it was available at the library. The prose was initially very distracting and off-putting, but once it clicked that it was part of the experience™ I was able to enjoy my reading. It's kinda like in L'Étranger (The Stranger) — I don't know how well it was translated in english — but in french the prose is very particular and peculiar on purpose. The Road is definitely not for everyone but I really liked it. I found refreshing that this was a truly a tragedy of everyday life — there might be smalls ups but it doesn't distract (and even further reinforces) the hardships and struggles of day to day living. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no hope, life is just objectively unbearable. Good little book.

Brave New World Revisited – Aldous Huxley

Guess who's back... After my presentation at theory night, I had acquired the last bit of motivation needed to finally finish the article about this book. However, I got some pertinent questions from the gang and I had to revamp the article a bit to address those. The article will have come out before this (it's here!), so I can now promise it is the last time I count this as a reading. (I do not wish to read this book a seventh time, believe me)

A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin

You all know what this is, so there is no need for a synopsis. I had seen the show when it came out with my parents (horrible parenting, I know, I was only 12 years old). We all know how it turned out, but I had heard the books were goated. The world building is good, the dialogues are good as well, and the characters are great. They have their own personality and motivation and act accordingly. Every POV of the book is interesting, and it is also great to see the conflict from different angles and how each influence the other POVs. The only little issue I have is with the writing sometimes — when a character is witty, it feels a bit too forced how other characters are gobsmacked or lose their tongue. Another thing is the antiquated “man writes woman” that appear mostly in the Daenerys chapters. The books have been written in the late 90's, so I'm sure the sensibilities were different, and I'm just thankful it wasn't much, much worse, which it could easily have been.

Grappler BAKI – Keisuke Itagaki

Underground Arena Saga – Chapters 1-77

What the- If any of you are familiar with BAKI, I don't need to explain to you how insane it is. For the blessed others, BAKI is a fighting manga where people just duke it out using ancestral or extremely rare techniques that are always “backed up” by scientific reasoning (which never makes a lick of sense). For instance, one character's defence is impenetrable because he learned to move his eye independently like a chameleon. Or some techniques are just stupid as hell, and they are never consistent in universe. Like one character is doing the “unstoppable force” advance that cannot be stopped by anything in the world, but then the opponent one is using the “immovable object” stance which cannot be moved under any circumstance. It is absolutely beyond idiotic, and I love it. The only issue I would have is the beginning of this manga, the flow of movement is kinda hard to read, and it is not helped that fighters are doing things that almost defy physics.

There is also no official translation for this, so you have to rely on fan one, and the most readily available one is from the wildfang project (actually just one guy) who not only doesn't speak japanese and only “translated” by using context clues in the drawings, but after a while he starts to change the plot just because he doesn't like this or that thing. Dodging this translation was a nightmare, but I thankfully could try to find a version in either french or italian (turns out it was a mexican flag and not an italian one) for the chapters that we only available through that horrendous wildfang translation.

I'm thinking we're back. Some good reads overall, and some not so good, but I have read. I'd like to get back to some reading in a language other than english very soon, as — it might sound weird to say — I'm growing bored of it. I'll try to sneak in a bit of french or maybe a cheeky ukrainian book in there. There will probably be a couple less books next month as I am away to Japan, and also have to prepare my feminist theory presentation.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author