#NonficNov
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New hosts this year for Nonfiction November!
Thanks to Liz (Adventures in reading, running and working from home),
Frances (Volatile Rune),
Heather (Based on a True Story),
Rebekah (She Seeks Nonfiction),
and Deb (Readerbuzz)

📚📚📚

Since the beginning of November, I finished three nonfiction, so here are short reviews about them.

🎧 The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,
by Masha Gessen
Narrated by Masha Gessen
Nonfiction / History / Russia
2017
515 pages  / 16H44

I am impressed by Masha Gessen‘s writing (I read The Man Without a Face), so this was a treat.
Plus she’s a great narrator.

Though the picture she draws of her country is far from rosy, to say the least!
It was fascinating to see the elements that slowly led to the restart of totalitarianism in Russia, after a few hopeful years.
The evolution is presented through the lives of four main people, so it doesn’t read like a dry political or sociological book.

She published her book in 2017, so you can already see the beginning of Putin’s views on Ukraine. And we already have Navalny‘s imprisonment.
There are quite a few passages on the LGBTQ community (the author is one of them). Originally, I thought it was taking too much room in the book, but then I realized how the government treated this minority, an example of how they treat other minorities, and how this could be a good way to know where a government is going.
Indeed, the trick is to know how to recognize the signs, and to act before it’s too late…
I know a few countries which would do good to be attentive to these signs…

📚 Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women,
by Kittredge Cherry
Nonfiction on Japanese lit and feminism
2002
162 pages
Copy lent by a friend

The title has a double meaning intended by the author: you can read it as ‘woman’s word‘, meaning words use to talk about women, but also as ‘woman sword‘, highlighting the author’s ultimate purpose to “cut incisively to the heart of cultural assumptions”.

This is an excellent perspective on women in Japanese culture and society, based on the vocabulary used for them. The book is full of insightful social and sociological information.
It is divided into seven chapters (Female identity, Girlhood to wedding, married life, motherhood, work outside the home, sexuality, aging).
In each section, the work is presented like a dictionary with words given in hiragana/katakana and English translation.
I really enjoyed how the author gave a broad image of the place of women in Japanese society, based on language and all kinds of expressions. Definitely not a very envious place!
The sections on women in the work place were quite consistent with Amélie Nothomb’s Stupeur et tremblements (Fear And Trembling), where she shares about her experience in a Japanese company.

My only regret with the book is that it was written in 1987. I would be very interested to know to what extent the conclusions of the author are still current today.
I see now an updated edition came out in 2016! A friend lent me her old copy, so I didn’t even check! I’ll have to read at least the introduction to see what has changed or not.

📚 Transfiguring Time: Understanding Time in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition,
by Oliver Clément
1959 in French/2019 in English
Translated by Jeremy N. Ingpen
Nonfiction / Theology / Orthodoxy
174 pages

Wonderful considerations and meditations on time, from an Orthodox perspective.
Clément writes in a simple style, but his thoughts are very deep. Check for instance my post on a previous book I read by him.

I especially enjoyed the last part, about building the Kingdom.
Hoping to share more about it soon.

“Clément’s Transfiguring Time is an early work, written when he was 37. It carries all the excitement of his fresh encounter with Orthodoxy and the Fathers of the Christian Church. He draws on his deep study of Hinduism, Buddhism and Indian myths to differentiate the understanding of time and eternity in archaic religions, in Hinduism and in Buddhism, from the Christian and specifically Orthodox understanding of time and eternity. “

HAVE YOU READ THESE BOOKS?
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
WHAT’S THE LAST NONFICTION YOU FINISHED?