Guapa, by Saleem Haddad

I heard about this book in an article about modern Middle eastern fiction, and it seemed interesting. I was not disappointed, it's an excellent book. Very well written, moving and strong, a story about a young gay man coming of age in the Middle East, and the best depiction I've read so far of the feelings aroused in young local people by the Arab spring, a promise turned sour.

It reminded me very much of The City and the Pillar, by Gore Vidal, and it pained me a lot to think that 70 years later the situation for gay men has not changed in some parts of the world - actually, maybe it has gotten worse. Saleem Haddad is a very good writer, and I'm looking forward to his next book.

The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

I like to read books about life and death experiences, and this one seemed interesting. It is interesting, and somewhat uplifting - a celebration of life by a man who is doomed to die in a short time, of pancreatic cancer, and that leaves this collection of life lessons to his kids. I couldn't but empathize with the author's words - he lived fully a good life, he seemed like a really nice man and most of his advice is sound and sensible.

Yet, I couldn't help but think: "how American he is!". All the positive thinking, the sharing of his dire situation, the help groups he and his wife belonged to, it's really such a different reality from ours. It always impressed me how in the American culture people like to have everything so neatly organised and labelled - if you have cancer, you go to cancer supporting groups, if you find your son is gay, you join a gay men's mother's group, and so on. Also the use of therapy and counselling for all kinds of problems, in the optimistic belief that for every problem there are professionals who know better and that can help you deal with it. Of course there's nothing wrong about that, and if it's helpful, I guess people should go for that. But it's so different from my own individualistic approach to life and its problems, I never believed there to be neat labels and formulas to deal with problems and suffering.

Anyway, the book is a nice read and uplifting. And I heard about the alice.org project, that seems very interesting, I think I would like to explore it, maybe it will be a way for me to learn something about computer language!

Dynasty, by Tom Holland

I always loved the history of the Roman Empire in general, and the Cesar dynasty in particular. I've read it so many times, since I, Claudius to Suetonius, Tacitus, Cassius Dio and even Colleen McCullough, and I never get enough. So, I was curious when I read a positive review of Dynasty in the Times Literary Supplement, and I ordered it right away.

I thought it would be a history book, but it's more like a fictionalized history; the author bases his narrative on the known sources but surmises a lot, namely regarding the personalities of the main characters, and often the events themselves. Even so, it's an extremely interesting and enjoyable book. The author clearly loves its subject, and he comes at it with gusto and passion, and the whole book reads almost like a page turning thriller. What I found most interesting was the way the author weaves the story of the Cesar dynasty in the Roman history and Roman mores, the depiction of the transition from the Republic to the Empire, so the part from Augustus to Tiberius is the most well achieved, in my opinion.

All in all, a very good book about the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

The Queue, by Basma Abdel Aziz

I like dystopian novels, I think they're a clever way to depict present problems in a way that makes us think: what if it was lie this? The Queue is a very good dystopian novel, in the tradition of 1984, Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale; it's clever and thought provoking. The kafkaesque absurdity of the totalitarian rule of a faceless dictatorship is extremely well described, as the struggle to keep leading normal lives under extreme circumstances, which is something I always find fascinating. The grim situation in Middle Eastern countries is indeed impressive, and one cannot but wonder how the sane people there can cope with sheer everyday insanity.