Recommended

Cancer

9:58 pm in Greaves, Mel, Recommended, science | No Comments

Cancer

The Evolutionary Legacy
by Mel Greaves (2000)

A comprehensive analysis of the disease with a lucidity that will engage both layman and specialist readers alike.


Life: A User’s Manual

4:09 am in Europe, fiction, France, Perec, Georges, Recommended | 2 Comments

Life: A User’s Manual

by Georges Perec (1978)

A quilt of stories of inhabitants of a Parisian apartment block, frozen in time. The layered stories are interwoven with hundreds of lives, minutiae of details, literary and historical allusions, written with self-imposed constraints.


Piano Stories

9:49 pm in fiction, Hernández, Felisberto, Latin America, Recommended, short stories | No Comments

Piano Stories

by Felisberto Hernández (1993)

Fifteen short stories of fluid, phantasmagorical animistic worlds where everyday objects take a life of their own, eliciting delicate forgotten responses, thoughts, feelings and memories, all of them inevitably in one way or another relate to a piano.


Synaptic Self

8:40 pm in LeDoux, Joseph, Recommended, science | 1 Comment

Synaptic Self

How Our Brains Become Who We Are
by Joseph LeDoux (2002)

Analyses the way the psychological, social, moral, aesthetic or spiritual self is realised through the interconnectivity between neurons.


A History of Modern Indonesia

4:20 am in history, Indonesia, Recommended, Ricklefs, M.C., social science | No Comments

A History of Modern Indonesia

since c.1200 (3rd ed.)
by M.C. Ricklefs (2001)

Designed as a stepping stone for those overwhelmed by the wealth of specialised information, or those wanting relatively detailed panoramic view of Indonesian history in English without the overemphasis on colonialism and exoticism.


The Melancholy of Resistance

2:09 am in Eastern/Central Europe, fiction, Krazsnahorkai, Laszlo, Recommended | No Comments

The Melancholy of Resistance

by László Krasznahorkai (1989)

A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the whole world, arrives in the dead of winter in a small town in Hungary, prompting bizarre rumors.


Darkness at Noon

11:31 am in Eastern/Central Europe, fiction, Koestler, Arthur, Recommended | No Comments

Darkness at Noon

by Arthur Koestler (1940)

A fictional account of a show trial during Stalin’s 1930s purges, Rubashov, the protagonist, once a revolutionary disillusioned by the regime, is abducted, jailed, tortured (psychologically) and finally confessed to a series of “counter-revolutionary” crimes he didn’t commit, for the ideals of the Revolution.


Voices from Chernobyl

9:48 pm in Alexievich, Svetlana, biography & memoirs, current events, Eastern/Central Europe, environment, history, Recommended, Russia & USSR | No Comments

Voices from Chernobyl

Chronicle of the Future
by Svetlana Alexievich (1997)

“This is not a book about Chernobyl, but about the world of Chernobyl,” a wide range of oral, first-hand testimony, accounts, sometimes occasional rant and condemnations from broad range of people involved and/or affected by Chernobyl.


The True History of Chocolate

11:45 pm in Coe, Michael D., Coe, Sophie D., food & drink, history, Recommended | 1 Comment

The True History of Chocolate

by Sophie D. Coe, Michael D. Coe (2003).

Examines the origin of processed cacao and its history and sociological importance/pervasiveness from pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture to present day.


The Balkans

1:00 am in Eastern/Central Europe, history, Mazower, Mark, Recommended, social science | 1 Comment

The Balkans

by Mark Mazower (2000).

A short but broad-ranging history book, it challenges the common one-dimensional stereotype of “the Balkans”


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about books@cc.

A division of coffee-cat.net that houses reviews of books I have read, sporadically written. (More info)

If you live in Surabaya, Indonesia, you can find (most of) these books available to borrow from C2O library . cinematheque . cafe.

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