Month: January 2025

Top Ten Tuesday – Authors new to me in 2024

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week’s topic is authors new to me in 2024.

I must admit, I wasn’t sure that I would have read enough new authors last year. I was surprised to discover that I had.

  1. The Origins of Totalitarianism – Hannah Arendt (1951) It was interesting reading this in the current climate and I was able to apply it to some aspects of current politics. Depressing how little seems to have changed. 5/5
  2. The Sellout – Paul Beatty (2015) A satirical look at race relations in the USA. 5/5
  3. The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E. Harrow (2019) An interesting premise but ultimately a disappointing tale of travel between different worlds. 3/5
  4. Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay (1990) I started to read this about 25 years a go but didn’t finish it so I think that it still counts as new to me. A very enjoyable albeit straightforward adventure story. 4/5
  5. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel (2009) This was a slog at times but I enjoyed the beginning and the end. 4/5
  6. A Killer’s Wife – Victor Methos (2020) This had been sitting on my kindle for a long time and I normally enjoy a bit of crime but I found the twists in this a bit unbelievable. 3/5
  7. Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty (2014) This was lifted from chick lit by the subject matter of domestic abuse. I haven’t seen the TV programme but I would watch it after reading this. 3/5
  8. Labyrinth – Kate Mosse (2005) I really enjoyed this tale of a mysterious ring and book and the lengths that people will go to get it. 5/5
  9. Between Shades of Grey – Ruta Sepetys (2011) This is set in Lithuania during the second world war and details the horrendous treatment of Lithuanians by the Russians, something I knew nothing about. Another very enjoyable read. 5/5
  10. How Not To Be A Boy – Robert Webb (2017) An interesting autobiography which shows some of the pressures on men and boys to fulfil a certain sort of masculinity. 4/5

Top Ten Tuesday: The Most Recent Additions to my TBR List.

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday, a topic is suggested. This week’s topic is Top Ten Books that are the most recent additions to your TBR list.

I have decided to try to read books that arrive on my TBR list more quickly. I bought Thirteen, Doppelganger and A Heart Full of Headstones with my birthday money and was given Faith, Hope and Carnage by my brother in law. So far I have read two of them and am reading a third. I will try to read Thirteen after that. Next on the list is Postcards from Scotland which I received for Christmas. I’ve put them into a pile on my bedside drawers rather than onto the shelves which has helped me to focus on them. It’s harder to keep track of books on my kindle but I’m hoping I can keep on top of them as well.

  1. The Human Condition – Hannah Arendt
  2. The Boy at the Top of the Mountain – John Boyne 2/5
  3. Faith, Hope and Carnage – Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan Currently reading
  4. The Peripheral – William Gibson
  5. Thirteen – Tom Hoyle
  6. Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World – Naomi Klein 5/5
  7. The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy 4/5
  8. Postcards from Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983-95 – Grant McPhee
  9. A Heart Full of Headstones – Ian Rankin 4/5
  10. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World – Naomi Klein.

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Genre: Academic, politics

Narrative Style: First person academic

Published: 2023

Rating: 5/5

Format: Kindle

Synopsis: Naomi Klein kept finding people confusing her with Naomi Wolf which only worsened as Wolf took a trip into the land of conspiracy theories and misinformation. Klein became obsessed with following Wolf’s Twitter account during Covid 19 and found herself unable to look away. Doppelganger is the result of this obsession, detailing Wolf’s fall from grace and the wider issues of misinformation, conspiracy theories and where it all leaves us as a society.

It was only recently that I discovered that Naomi Wolf had become a darling of the right, promoting conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines and appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. She just hadn’t come up on my feed – not even since Musk’s takeover. I was surprised to say the least. I remember reading The Beauty Myth while I was at university and was impressed enough to go to see her talk at Waterstones in Manchester while promoting Fire with Fire: New Female Power and how it will Change the Twenty-First Century. While I didn’t like this book quite so much, I assumed that she would continue to be a respected academic writer. Boy was I wrong!

Klein begins by discussing the fact that people often mistake her for Wolf and the ramifications of that now that Wolf was promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Klein also does a good job of invoking the strangeness of the Covid 19 lockdowns which contributed to her becoming worryingly obsessed with Wolf and her cronies. At first, I wasn’t sure where Klein was going to go with this – it was interesting to read but seemed to lack Klein’s usual political commentary. However, as the book progressed, Klein widened her argument to include fake news, wellness vloggers, the situation in Palestine and her own Jewishness, bringing each topic back to what she calls the ‘mirror world’ and discussing where that leaves us.

The main topic of this book is disorientation – something that I often feel these days when watching the news or looking at tweets on X (something I can’t seem to stop myself from doing even though it is not a pleasant place these days). I had observed the increase in conspiracy theories during lockdown with a sort of grim humour, sometimes congratulating myself that I wasn’t so stupid. What I hadn’t realised was exactly how apt the term ‘mirror world’ really is. Those who are worried about vaccine shedding are responding to a real worry – the spread of infectious disease. Those who worry about enslavement via the QR codes used to check in to venues are responding to worries about privacy and data usage. Not that I’m suggesting that Wolf is correct when she suggests that vaccine technology can cause time travel and make the vaccinated into robots – these claims are patently absurd – but to dismiss these people as merely stupid is also unhelpful. Klein suggests that it may be that there is something lacking in the way the left has dealt with both these issues that has helped push people towards these theories.

By the end, this seemed more like a typical Naomi Klein book as she suggests that somehow we have to start looking for ways to work together rather than focusing on the things that separate us. As suggested in 2017’s No is Not Enough, Klein ends her book by saying everyone needs to work together if we are going to combat the climate crisis. This means looking beyond surface differences and beyond party politics. We need to stand together despite the fact that our politics and identities might differ. Fighting climate change is more important than all the rest.

Having said that, I find it hard to be especially optimistic about this happening. As I write, Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated for his second term as president with Elon Musk firmly at his side. Both men have used the disorientation that Klein describes to their advantage and I would imagine they will continue to do so. Mark Zuckerberg recently said that there would be no more fact checking on Meta platforms and X already seems like a free for all in this respect. It’s hard to be hopeful for the future.

Reading last year and this.

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I didn’t set out to make this the year I read more female authors although every year when I look at what I read, I think that I should. Nonetheless, that is what has happened. 13 out of the 20 books I’ve read this year have been by female authors. This is a lot more than I would normally read. I’m not sure why I tend to be drawn more to male authors. I tell myself that I don’t think about the gender of the writer but there must be something that directs my attention in that way. Perhaps it is the genres that male and female authors stereotypically write in. I’m certainly no fan of romance (and yes I know, some men write romance. I’ve never read Nicholas Spark and I really don’t like David Nicholls. One Day is one of my least favourite books.) Anyway, for whatever reason, there were more women this year. Mostly, it was a good thing with some very enjoyable reads such as Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and Blue Lightening by Ann Cleeves. The only real disappointment was The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It’s a long time since I read The Lovely Bones but I really enjoyed it. The Almost Moon was nowhere near as good. Given the difficult mother daughter relationship at its heart, it should have been exciting and interesting but it was sluggish and I was bored by it.

I wanted to have a more relaxed reading year after years of doing reading challenges. The aim was to read some of the big thick books that were on my shelves and that I’d been avoiding. I only read 20 books but some of them took a while. (Also I no longer have a long commute or a lunch break when I get to sit and just read.) I felt like I was reading Wolf Hall for most of the year. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable but it was a slog at times. I enjoyed the beginning and the end but almost abandoned it in the middle. I’m not sure if I’m going to read the others.

Highlights of the Year

1. Labrynth – Kate Mosse

2. Mother’s Boy – Patrick Gale

3. Between Shades of Grey – Ruta Sepetys