It's unusual for me to read as much as I have. In small part, it was the luxury of time for holiday reading, but mostly it's because I've been sleepless for hours at night. Anyway, thank goodness for the large pile of unread books next to my bed: I have a good supply.
1. DoppelgÀnger by
@naomiaklein is incredibly insightful about our binary global politics and about all kinds of conspiracy theories, many generated and sustained by her doppelgÀnger, Naomi Woolf. After the craziness of Covid-era, it was good to read Naomi K's take on why the world has split, and fallen apart. She is not gloomy. She is clever, well-researched and pro-active.
2. Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a sublime novel about very little, and about everything - the universe. It takes place on a space ship and tells a simple story of astronauts orbiting earth. It's the wondrous earth that becomes the central character. What bigger character could you choose?
3. Cape Fever by
@nadiadavidsctla is a deft novel about a young girl from the Malay quarters in a city (Cape Town) working as an underpaid, overworked domestic servant in a white, single woman-settler's home. The twisted relationship between employee and employer is described through an emotional entanglement that is manipulative and unsettling. It's a must-read if you're living in Cape Town. Anywhere, actually.
4. I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man decades ago. A life changing book for me, then. In his prologue Ellison writes: "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.â There is, of course, lots of fashion in A Visible Man by
@edward_enninful but this memoir is about the politics of being seen. Edward writes about why his family left Ghana, about being an immigrant, being Black in a white world, and specifically about being a young talented Black, queer man working in publishing. The context adds so much depth to the wild tales about his 80s and 90s London life. Of course I loved the stories about fashion, about
@katemossagency @naomi and about his editorship of Vogue.
Up next: Iranian graphic novel Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi.
#books
