The Upanishads are a collection of sacred Sanskrit texts that were written over the course of a few centuries. Which texts were written in which centuries is a hotly debated question, but according to Valerie J. Roebuck, the translator and editor of the Penguin edition pictured above, the “consensus view” is that “the principal Upanishads were…
Goodreads blurb: From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human. My review: Sudan. Afghanistan. New York. Iraq. Syria. Nigeria. Ukraine. Gaza. Israel. In the first quarter of this century, countless civilians have died, caught…
Goodreads description: When Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, all she knows about harvesting sugar beets (Beta vulgaris) is that her paycheck will cover a few months’ rent on their Brooklyn apartment. She’ll try anything to escape the incessant debt collection calls—and chronic anxieties about her body and her relationship. But as…
The Rig Veda is the oldest surviving text originally written in Vedic Sanskrit, the earliest known version of Sanskrit that was preserved orally until the invention of writing. These hymns probably originated around 1500-1000 BC/BCE, and they have been organized into 10 books, or mandalas, that amount to thousands of pages of hard-to-interpret text. I obviously…
Goodreads description: To find a missing young woman, the new tribal marshal must also find herself. At rock bottom following her daughter’s murder, ex-Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation that raised him, but they need a new tribal marshal as much as…
Hello! Welcome to my January reading wrap-up. I finished reading 9 books in January, including The Epic of Gilgamesh, which I talked about in-depth here. I say “finished reading” because there were a few that I started but hadn’t finished yet by the stroke of February, so I’ll mention those briefly at the end of this…
I’ve read The Epic of Gilgamesh several times, and it never fails to amaze me how accessible something so old can be. If you’ve ever read a comic book or watched a superhero movie, you might recognize a lot of elements from Gilgamesh, the legendary tale of a real king of Uruk in the 2nd millennium BC/BCE.…