Autobiography is still my favorite genre, crime, courtroom and a little bit of politics

My favorite genre is autobiographies. The author is not so critical of him or herself, nevertheless, I do not demand controversy. The author speaks as a first-person, about what goes in his or her mind. Reiterating human experiences that we may all have something to resonate with. Here are my most recent autobiographies.

Married to a Bedouin

Marguerite van Geldermalsen

A New Zealander woman visiting Petra in the 70's of last century, fell unexpectedly in love with a Bedouin, and married him. For all of their lives, she lives the life of a Bedouin, until her husband died.

Reviewed on medium.

Born a Crime

Trevor Noah

One of the most sinister things about apartheid was that it taught colored people that it was black people who were holding them back. I read this book before the events in Gaza, and the exposure of a more sinister apartheid system in Palestine. But I wasn't impressed by Trevor Noah's reaction to the genocide.

A Worrier's Life: A Biography of Paolo Coelho

Fernando Morais

I must say that this actually makes Paolo Coelho come out as quite arrogant, perverted, and despicable character. I wonder if he had that in mind, but I doubt it. It just is the case, he is a nobody.

Autobiography of Mark Twain

This book is quite cheap in kindle store. The book is rich and full of amusing stories, that reflect his era and sheds light on bits, Hollywood misconfigured. It is such and enjoyable read from start to end. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is a cynical funny bone. And it is quite apparent in his autobiography.

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Novels and stories

My favorite fiction genre is crime, and courtroom thrillers. But I also added a couple of political old novels this year.

After the funeral

Agatha Christie. I probably read all of her novels, and this is some of the left overs.

Time for Mercy, The Whistler, The Judge's list, The Litigators

John Grisham. My all-time favorite courtroom author. Time of Mercy is the second chapter of Time to kill. The Whistler and the Judge's list are a series of the same characters. The Litigators is an older one, absolutely beautiful, law and order kind of novel.

Presumed Innocent

Scott Turow. Twisted, and a bit disgusting in some of its pages, I had to skip few pages. But the twist all in all is quite well written.

1984

George Orwell

Everybody knows this novel by now, everybody speaks of it. They even refer to our times as the "Orwellian times." I was not quite impressed. Orwell thought that a police state is a state that deprives people of lust. He was absolutely wrong. Dip people deep into lust, you control them. Everything else, is an Englishman's version of a dictatorship. He thought his country was a bless to the world. Read his autobiography before and during World War II. Absolute supremacist! Today, Europe and America, and the Western world are living the Orwellian times. It is the time for the global south to be free.

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Mother

Maksim Gorky

This book is huge, out of date, and a bit boring. But I had to read it. Though the autobiography of Maksim Gorky is much more enjoyable to read. Here are the quotes I gathered, not many, are they?

A workman must be handled with care! He may go on patiently enduring and suffering everything that's heaped upon him for a long, long time, but then he can also explode all of a sudden!

First, you see, we must equip the head, and then the hand.

Everyone, she knew, wants to fill his stomach to-day, and no one wants to put his dinner off even for a week, if he can eat it up at once.

The police, the gendarmes, the soldiers, the spies—they are all our enemies, and yet they are all such people as we are.

And in the middle stand the people who lick the hands of those who beat you in the face and suck the blood of those whose faces are beaten. That's the middle!

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

This story is written as first speaker by Huck, the companion of Tom Sawyer. According to Mark Twain in his autobiography, he thinks this one is better than Tom Sawyer. So I skipped ahead to read it. Mark Twain is very funny, and the story is so addictive. It is a bit longer than today's stories, but filled with short stories of what Huck had to go through. At one point I was disappointed and frustrated by Tom's character, but at the end of the story I was very satisfied. The language it is written in is the slang southern accent, and dialect. Jim's character speaks in an almost inapprehensible dialect, but you can manage the general gist. The "N" word is used throughout the story but Twain only follows the terms of his time, there is no offense intended.

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The Crowd: A study of the popular mind

Gustave Le Bon (1896)

Very old book written about the crowds, their characteristics and beliefs, and how they work. The author states his opinion with almost no proof. The book is translated from English, the text is either too posh, with style not easy to decipher; thus it was a boring read.

An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand which the wind stirs up at will.

The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which is exercises on the most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statements is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged.

These differences of race explains how it is that there are almost as many different forms of socialism and democracy as there are nations.

I find his comment on how different races need different levels of freedom, and how certain races gravitate towards dictatorship, quite racist!

Judging by the lessons of the past, several of our modern civilizations have reached that phase of extreme old age. It seems inevitable that all peoples should pass through identical phases of existence, since history is so often seen to repeat its course.

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Think! Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye

Michael R. LeGault

In 2017, during a visit to Prague, I visited the science museum, which had a dedicated section for photography history. It displayed the chronological advancement of the Camera, starting with the Greek scientist, then jumping into the Italian era, skipping a good amount of a 1000 years, where Ibn Alhaytham, dubbed "Father of optics" invented the first dark room. I did not know whether that was on purpose or a mistake, but the rest of the museum clearly gapped out on everything related to the Islamic empire, as if the western civilization was incepted out of thin air.

The author of this book, although blabbers about critical thinking, fell into the same rabbit hole of thinking, the scientific method was invented by the Italians. That is not his only pitfall, he comes across as quite condescending to anything not American. I don't know if it is pure ignorance or arrogance. After few chapters, it becomes obvious that the author was filling up pages for the sake of reaching minimum mass to sell.