In Which I Ramble

I have like five things on my mind, none of them really long enough for a post by themselves, but my time on the computer is coming in short bursts today, so there shall be several posts for the price of one. Sort of. If you think like that. Hey, you don't like it, go read a real book.

Which I actually just did, and it was awesome, so you guys should all read it too. Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire. Brooks is an Australian reporter who spent something like ten years in various Middle Eastern countries, reporting about the lives of women in Islamic nations. They have varying levels of misogyny and control, and womens' lives vary hugely between one and another, and even within the same country in different areas and at different times. The book is completely fascinating and absorbing; I picked it up in a German bookstore and read a chapter and immediately decided to say hell with it and shell out the twelve euros required. And I'm not sorry I did, although I would have preferred being able to find it at a local library. That's definitely not meant as a slam on the author, though. Brooks is concise and relevant, and the book reads like a series of very interesting newspaper articles. She has a journalist's unbiased style and good transitions. As a reader, you have to be careful, in fact, because although Brooks presents many facets of a complex issue, she clearly has very strong opinions about it, and it's easy to fall in to agreeing with her without thinking about it. Not that her ideas are wrong, just me being a paranoid philosophy major. Anyway. The book covers various facets of life, such as wedding customs, genital mutilation, guerilla warfare, and belly dancing, but it never feels rushed or jumpy. Definitely a feminist read (I've been on kind of a feminist kick lately) but interesting, I think, for people of all backgrounds.

Now I'm reading a 500 page history of Western civilization. Which is tons better than it sounds, but so far I'm only on chapter two.