This week’s reading plans and Wednesday’s Wishlist

Review posts are on their way! I finished Young Stalin last night and am working on a review. Together with that review I want to finish my review of The Whisperers, which I finished already in January. ***Blush! Blush!*** I am pretty sure that that book will end up in my top-reads of this year, so I really-really-really want to review The Whisperers! Besides, I have most of the review finished already and have had it finished for quite some time. I don’t know what is keeping me from getting back to the book and finish the review.

I will finish The First Sex this week as well, probably over the weekend. And I have two short stories to read, one by Jeffrey Eugenides that I took from The New Yorker’s site and Tali, The Miracle of Chegem by Fazil Iskander. Both to be duly reported on when finished.

I have read tons of non-fiction recently (and enjoyed it immensely), but I feel that I am getting fed-up with that. It is time for some good novels. Lucky me, I have some exciting prospects, but they are all connected to the Orbis Terrarum Challenge. And that isn’t starting until April 1st. So I am reading some shorties and finishing up current reading to get ready.

And now for the most recent additions to my wishlist. From now on I plan to do a Wednesday Wishlist post every week or every other week. I just realized that all but one of the books have a Middle-Eastern and/or Muslim theme.

I have seen several reviews of The Night of the Mi’raj by Zoe Ferraris and I am getting intrigued. The Independent describes it as “[a] look at how Saudi Arabia’s Muslim mores and sharia laws affect gender relationships, wrapped up in a murder mystery”. Nayir is a Bedouin desert guide and a devout Muslim whose help is asked when a girl is found dead in the desert. “The search throws Nayir together with Katya Hijazi, a forensic pathologist [...], whose forthrightness and independence clash with Nayir’s traditionalist views of women. The guide quickly learns too, that the Islamic law he is devoted to prohibits serious investigation of crimes against women. As Katya and Nayir discover what really happened to Nouf, they find that the people and social structures they trust hide darker realities.” But at the same time it “is not a crime novel”: “The figure of Katya [a forensic pathologist] adds something approaching a police procedural touch, but the real focus lies on the way in which her investigations are hindered by her gender.”

The next one is Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright, another book I have seen multiple reviews about. Wright is a long-time journalist based in the Middle-East.

As [Wright] puts it early in “Dreams and Shadows”: “This is a book about disparate experiments with empowerment in the world’s most troubled region. My goal was to probe deep inside societies of the Middle East for the emerging ideas and players that are changing the political environment in ways that will unfold for decades to come.”

Despite one apparent flaw, as signaled in the New York Times review, I am still interested in this book:

The spirit in the region that animated [Wright's] quest three years ago has been exposed as more illusory than real. This leaves her book somewhat off key. It was supposed to help understand the future, but ends up being a series of visits with some wonderful people who remain marginalized and powerless. Instead of helping readers to see how the Middle East is evolving, Ms. Wright offers a set of portraits of failed efforts.

In Continuum Philip Lewis tries to find an answer to this question:

There are moments when, by some strange osmosis, everyone wants answers to the same question. For the past few years, that question has been: why do young, British-born Muslims become radicalised to the point where some become suicide bombers?

From the review in the New Statesman:

What comes across is a vivid picture of young Muslims’ struggles to navigate the sometimes conflicting currents of school and work, family and mosque. The overall picture is grim (the statistics for educational underachievement and unemployment are by now well known) and Lewis fleshes out the consequences in stunted lives and what he terms a “communications crisis” across the generations. The communities he describes are still shaped by the cultural practices of rural Kashmir, from where so many of the first-generation immigrants originally came. Now, increasingly, young Muslim men and women no longer accept the authoritarian patriarchy that earlier generations took for granted.

The odd one out in this wishlist is Run by Ann Patchett, which I read about on Dovegreyreader Scribbles (she is coming up with way too many great books these days!):

Run is set in snowy Boston and as widower and ex-Mayor Bernard Doidge and his adopted sons Tip and Teddy leave a political rally and walk out into a blizzard, Tip’s life is saved when an apparent stranger pushes him out of the path of an oncoming car and falls under the wheels herself. Tennessee Moser is seriously injured but her young daughter Kenya mysteriously seems to know all there is to know about Family Doidge and Tip and Teddy in particular.
I’ve given the barest bones of plot and even if you think you’ve guessed a bit from that, think again, Ann Patchett makes it very tricky to second-guess.