Apparently I have read 14 books so far this year. Below is very briefly what I think of each of them (in chronological order) along with a link to excerpts I highlighted during reading:
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Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell (clippings) - superb, easily on the top of my list. Brilliantly written, genuinely exciting and educating, and feels very relevant to many modern conflicts in different parts of the world.
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Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death by Katy Butler (clippings) - very similar to Being Mortal by Atul Gawande I wrote about before, but with less of medical details and more emotional, probably because it is written by a professional writer as opposed to a doctor. While the idea is the same, both books are worth a read in my opinion as they provide views from different angles.
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The Roman Guide to Slave Management: A Treatise by Nobleman Marcus Sidonius Falx translated by Jerry Toner (clippings) - the title says it all. Interesting both from the cultural and historical perspectives. For instance, I wasn't aware of that major diffrences existed in the attitude to slaves and slavery between Ancient Rome and Greece, the former being way more progressive - if asked before reading this, I'd say the differences were minimal or that Rome was more oppressive.
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On the Warrior's Path, Second Edition: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology by Daniele Bolelli (clippings) - a couple of interesting thoughts you can see in my clippings, but I doubt it was worth reading the whole book because of them.
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Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford (clippings) - too much of Martin Gayford in this book, but still enough of Freud to be interesting to anyone who likes his art and wants to learn more about his personality as well.
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Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (clippings) - someone on the Tube train was reading it and I decided to give it a go as well. Meh.
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The Eternal Flame: Orthogonal Book Two by Greg Egan (clippings) - The Orthogonal series is probably the most Eganish of all Egan's books, which means I really struggle to name anything that comes close in science fiction. The closest is probably Flatland from 1884, I mean in terms of inventing your own consistent world and the society suited to live in it, but of course it is on a different scale. You will either hate or love The Orthogonal, but you can be pretty sure you haven't read anything like it before.
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Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X Pham (clippings) - not bad, especially when you are an immigrant yourself so sometimes it hits too close to home, but there is a review implying that the author was exaggerating and making things up there.
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Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body by Hugh Aldersey-Williams (clippings) - the first half of the book is better than the last when it switches more to organs' perception in culture (not that it was unexpected considering the title, but still).
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Ghettoside: Investigating a Homicide Epidemic by Jill Leovy (clippings) - too belletristic with fewer facts and more spoon-fed opinions than I anticipated, but can be probably called eye-opening nevertheless.
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England and Other Stories by Graham Swift - meh. A couple of good stories and then too many of mediocre and bad ones which are seemingly different only in characters' names employing the same twist again and again.
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Works of Jeremy Bentham by Jeremy Bentham (clippings) - not a real book, more like letters and articles by Bentham which are very long and explain the same thing paragraph after paragraph. But reading through a plan of a prison (out of all things) written by a celebrated liberal thinker might be interesting.
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The Gilded Gutter Life Of Francis Bacon: The Authorized Biography by Daniel Farson (clippings) - great reading and probably the best of 'authorised biographies' I have read. Definitely better than the book on sitting for Freud's portrait above, but I recomend to read them both as Freud and Bacon used to spend a lot of time together.
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Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories by Terrence Holt (clippings) - another meh. Expected more after Gawande and Butler, but this is just House M.D. type of stuff with no particular idea to express. Not without some good passages (see in clippings), but overall not worth your time.
