Hi there! I'm Jen. This is remembered
reads. And this is going to be a wrap up
with the last few things that I read - or
listened to in a couple of cases. I feel
like I need to talk about this before I
forget it rather than doing another
video exclusively on these pinguin
little black classics, but I read "how to
use your enemies" by Balthazar Gracion,
who was a 17th century Spanish priest
and this book is like it's almost a
self-help book in the style of like Dale
Carnegie kind of "how to make friends and
influence people" except - even more
cynical - as the title "how to use your
enemies" kind of suggests. It's actually
hilarious in the sense that it is tips
that you could still use to manipulate
people into helping you have and it's
just funny to see something like this
that you expect to have been written in
the 20th century,
maybe the 21st century, back in the 17th
century - and especially from a priest! So
yeah, this was surprisingly relevant in
terms of being similar to self-help
books that you still see today. And I was
gonna say surprisingly cynical but I
suppose back in the 17th century back in
17th century Spain I imagine priests
had a lot of political power. So yeah
that was an interesting thing. As with
all of those, they are 50 pages long, I don't
have a huge amount to say about it. Next
up I read a graphic memoir "poppies of
Iraq." This is written by Bridget Findakly
and drawn by Louis Trondheim,
although she also does the colouring she
is a colourist by profession and this was
translated by Helge Dasher. This is a set
of memories that goes through the
author's child she was born in Iraq in
the '50s. Her father was Iraqi her
mother was French, and she eventually
moved to France as a teenager. And this
is mostly a set of memories of her
childhood as well as a few bits and
pieces of notes on life and culture, and
how political changes hit the economics
of her family, and political pressures on
different people. Her father was
an Orthodox Christian, and at various
points she went to schools in which they
were taught
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Catholic
Christianity and Islam, and she came out
of all of that an unbeliever. Some of
that is a little funny some of that
starts out as being kind of funny when
she's young and as she gets older it s
becomes sadder as a lot of the kind of
political and ethnic and religious
tensions rise and then later on issues
surrounding the family that's back in
Iraq who are suffering economically
later on because obviously series of
wars with first with Iran and with the
United States even if you ignore the
actual damage of being at war being like
just the economic damage is huge as well
in any case it's not particularly story
driven this is one of those very French
graphic memoirs in which people are
sharing memories with you. So don't go
into this expecting a narrative, but it
is quite lovely the end the art style
has a kind of simplicity to it
that I think almost hides some of the
depth that's in here.  I also
read an arc from Net galley of a book
that's coming out I believe next week
and that is "Outsiders at home the
politics of American Islamophobia" By Nazita  Lajevardi.
 she
is a associate professor at the
University of Michigan and this book is
put out by Cambridge University Press.
it is the style of the writing in it is
a little more more accessible than a
purely academic book, but it is heavily
statistics focused, so I wouldn't say
that this is really aimed at a popular
audience. I do feel like this is
something that somebody might read in a
second year at University class maybe.
This is a fairly broad overview of
trends in resentment and just general
attitudes towards what the author is
categorizing as "Muslim-Americans" which
is not exclusively people who would
check the Islam box if they were being
asked about their religion
it is so highly racialized in a way that
it's not necesarily and say Western
Europe or Canada where there's more
overlap with xenophobia as opposed to
racism. So that was interesting. There's a
lot of dividing up of "if you were given
a photo of a person and they these three
people have the same name but one is
white and one is brown and one is black
how do you act?" or how does the general
population react to that.
And I thought that kind of thing was
really interesting that is actually why
I requested this book because I found
that particular element to be really
interesting when I lived in the u.s.
especially because one of the points
that she makes is this pulls in people
who again their religion is not as long
they might be Sikh or
or Eastern Orthodox Christian or
Hindu or non-religious completely. And
significant portion of it is about
racial perceptions as opposed to
anything else so because it is so
statistics heavy, I feel like it's not
really designed for a popular audience
and I think there is a version of this
that would be very interesting for a
popular audience, but I don't know this
specifically is that. But if you are
interested in this and you do want to
see the statistics I do recommend
picking this up. This comes out I believe
next week. So yeah, after that I had also
read two other things that I picked up
from NetGalley. One is a graphic novel
that has just been released and that is
volume one of Ghosted in LA which is
written by Sina Grace and drawn by
Siobhan Keenan and colored by Cathy
Le who, I don't mention the colourist
but the colours in here are worth
mentioning because there was some
creativity involved in that. This is a
story about an 18 year old who picked
her university based on the fact that
her boyfriend was going there he dumps
her almost immediately and she ends up
leaving the dorm to go live in a haunted
mansion with a bunch of ghosts. And it's
actually really charming. It has a lot of,
it has some really light like religious
commentary and social commentary that I
thought was surprising in this. The art
style is lovely we get flashbacks to the
lives of the past lives of
ghosts. And that's why I wanted to mention
the colorist because the color scheme
changes in those the art style stays the
same. There are some books like this
where if you had a flashback like that
the style would change and what changes
instead is the colour. So I thought that
was really effective. The dialogue is
snappy. Sina Grace writes a number he
doesn't has done a number of superhero
books and a number of graphic memoirs
and he writes good dialogue, that's nice.
T issue that I have with a lot of the
BOOM! comics - because this is put out by BOOM! -
is that they keep doing these
collections of four issues at a time. And
it's just not enough of a story arc to
read on its own reading for issues at a
time. I suppose it's better than reading
the floppies, but it's just not
satisfying. I feel like if they made
collections of six to eight issues it
would just be such a superior product so
I'm baffled as to why they do these four
issued collections because I think it
really hurts the book. I think if
I'd had slightly more story I would have
walked away much more impressed than I
was by this and it's exclusively because
I feel like I had a tiny segment of
story. I don't understand why the
collections are so small with this. I
also read another sort of a graphic
novel but really a collection of comic
strips and that was Debbie Tung's
"happily ever after and everything in
between." This is a series of one-page
strips, similar to - she has a book about I
think it's called "book love," another one
that's without introversion. They are
kind of like newspaper comic strips in
that every page has a punchline. These
are really designed for people to smile
more than they are to really laugh or
chuckle at them but I think they are
successfully cute. I am slightly too
cynical for this particular book because
it is very "oh look at the newlyweds, yay"
and so I kind of groaned at that. But at
the same time I think this is a great
wedding gift or anniversary gift. so
there is definitely a market for this. I
think if you're a fan of her other work
this is more of the same. If you enjoy
the "Sarah scribbles" books this is a very
similar sense of humour, so I think this
would be your thing too. So this was not
a book that I particularly would be
reading for myself but as a gift
I think this is a great thing that one
could pick up and give us gifts or that
I would give this a gift. And I believe
this is also coming out in a week or so.
I also listened to two
audio books this week one of which was
Mohsin Hamid's "discontent and its
civilization: dispatches from Lahore, New
York and London." This is basically a
collection of articles and essays that
he's published elsewhere. The first
section is "life" and is basically memoir
pieces. The middle section is "art" in
which he discusses art writing how
review the other people's writing. And in
the final bit is "politics." The arts
section was the weakest section which
surprised me I feel like when you read a
collection from a novelist that would
often be the strongest section. But in
this case the first section made me wish
he'd write a memoir. And the
final section made me appreciate the way
he changes his writing for his audience,
because there were some things in there
that was clearly written for an American
audience, some that was written for a
British audience, and some one was
written for a Pakistani audience. And you
could tell and see the points that he
was making and I appreciated that
because I think there are some authors
who are so invested in their own
righteousness that they sound the same
regardless of their audience. so I
appreciated that about this. although I
don't know that that's necessarily going
to be to everyone's tastes. It is
relatively short. He narrates the
audiobook himself which I was uncertain
about because I've seen him interviewed
and he seems like a good speaker, but
with some authors like this-  it's not
like with the comedian memoirs where
that's always the right choice - but it
would definitely was the right choice
here. He was very good at the tone bits.
So I thought this was quite enjoyable I
think I enjoyed this more than I enjoy
his fiction writing actually. So I think
that's it. That was my week. If you've
read any of these I'd love to hear what
you think. Alright, that's it for now. Ciao!
