Category: Bookworm

Following my annual tradition, this is a round up of some of the best books I read in 2023. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022). For a full list of books I read in 2024, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Grid of nine book covers. From top left, The World We Make, by N.K. Jemisin, written in white capital letters on a grey photo background of an apartment building with the stairs going diagonally up the book cover; The Braid, by Laetitia Colombani, written in white letters on a light blue background with orange leaves decorating each corner and an orange flower in the middle along the lower edge; Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki written in a light white font on a dark blue background of space with a red spaceship or rocket launching above the title font, leaving a light blue trail in its wake; City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, a dark purple cover with islamic art inspired design, a young girl wearing a headscarf holding her arm up in the air as the main design and islamic-inspired mosques and buildings to the left and right of her; Jawbone by Monica Ojeda, written in spiky chalk-like writing with two mismatching half faces of girls; The Bruising of Qilwa, by Naseem Jamnia, written in cream coloured font with red curls on the top right corner and a hand above the title; Mother Brain, by Chelsea Conaboy, on a dark blue background with a silhouette of a human head from the side; Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis, on a dark red cover; We, The Heartbroken, by Gargi Bhattacharyya, on a dark blue cover with a minimalist five yellow curved ferns or plants.

This was the year I finally got into audiobooks. This was in large part due to spending the majority of my year with a breastfeeding baby (estimated at 1800 hours of feeding per year – just 160 hours less than working a full time 40 hour week for the year!) – combined with renewed use of the Berlin library system. 10 euros a year, and so many audiobooks and ebooks to borrow, in English and German alike. Here’s a great walkthrough/intro for English speakers.

Even with the audiobooks though, I read fewer books than in previous years, but this is also probably because I wrote a book myself, Machine Readable Me: The Hidden Ways Tech Shapes Our Identities. (Which I feel somewhat obliged to say is available for purchase now – in all good bookshops in the UK, or at your local English language bookshop if you’re in the EU, or as a DRM-free ebook here). Writing it was such a joy, and meant that I revisited many books that I’ve read in previous years during the writing process. I was able to draw on books and passages from many past years too, thanks to a little custom-built citation app I “received” for my birthday a few years ago which let me take photos of relevant passages and tag them according to theme. (#nerdgifts, haha)

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Following my annual tradition, this is a quick round up of some of the best books I read in 2021. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) For a full list of books I read in 2022, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Grid of nine book covers. From top left, the Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, written in white capital letters on an abstract background of two women's faces combined and merging. The Gods of Tango, by Carolina de Robertis, a deep red cover with the silhouette of two people dancing together, the man's back visible and the woman's face. Afterlives, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the title in bold yellow capital letters on a light blue background, with a single image of a Black soldier in colonial attire. When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold, by Alia Trabucco Zerán with Sophie Hughes (Translator), a white cover with cut out images of four women's eyes scattered across the cover. You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi, a bright red cover with a photograph showing part of a black woman's face with a tree behind her and a red flower, the title text written in white handwriting style font across the cover. Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science by Dr. Jessica Hernandez, text written in yellow on a red background with green leaves behind the text. Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, by Angela Garbes, labor written in large black capitals with an abstract image of a woman holding a baby behind the text. The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, with a dark blue silhouette of a person's head layered on top of a colourful landscape behind, text written in uneven handwriting in white. We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, by Mariame Kaba, text in white on a dark blue background with an abstract drawing of a light with a path leading towards it.

I can’t quite believe it’s this time of year again – the annual book blog post! Books - choosing them, thinking about what to read, and actually reading – took up a tiny portion of my brain this year. I’m astonished to find that I read more than 10 books, in all honesty. I didn’t track them, didn’t think about what I was reading, barely added books to my to-read list, and went to a bookshop more rarely than I have before.

Now that I’ve retroactively added the books I read to Storygraph (I’ve been totally off Goodreads for a copule of years now, and am still on the look out for people I know to follow on there - let me know!) - the only guiding principle seems to have been the Literature Festival in Berlin. I read 6 books by Bernardine Evaristo, who I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with (short write up in the Exberliner here), and two by Maaza Mengiste, who I also interviewed there. Interviewing authors whose books I read remains truly one of my all-time favourite things to do, and I’d love in the future to figure out how to do this more often.

In total, I read 37 books this year, according to Storygraph. Amazingly given I paid no attention to what I was reading and didn’t track it at the time, 28% were nonfiction and 72% fiction, which is one percentage point different to 2021! 32 were by women or non-binary authors; 35 of the 36 were by authors of colour, by my own guessing (all identity mistakes my own!); just 3 were translations.

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One of my first consultancy projects is looking at strengthening the open source ecosystem, and as part of it, I’ve been catching up on research that might help inform next steps - such as Nadia Eghbal’s 2020 book, ‘Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software’.

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The secret to blogging, they say, is secretly blogging. I stumbled across this post by Diana Berlin a while ago, and the title has been going around my head ever since. The approach of writing for no audience but myself (and probably my mum - hi mum!) is how I wrote a new blog post every week in 2014, and remains my default way of writing today. (Highly recommended, truly.)

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Following my annual tradition, this is a quick round up of some of the best books I read in 2021. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.) For a full list of books I read in 2021, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Grid of nine book covers. From top left, Cantoras, by Carolina de Robertis, with seaside in background. Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge, with a silhouette of a woman. Butter Honey Pig Bread, by Francesca Ekwuyasi. The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi. The First Woman, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. The Thirty Names of Night, by Zeyn Joukhadar. Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters, Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside, by Xiaowei Wang. What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World, by Sara Hendren.

Reading in 2021 was shaped by two major things for me: first, it was my first full year as a parent, and second, of course, the pandemic and all of those associated impacts. As a consequence of both or some combination of those, I entirely lost the desire to read for the first few months of the year, lost in a fog of sleepless nights and exhaustion – terrifying, now I look back on it! And in the second half of the year, when I did want to pick up a book, I didn’t have the time I usually do to research or even think much about what I was reading.

Instead, I read whatever was at my fingertips. Recommendations from friends, whatever was laying out on the tables at my new and fantastic local bookshop, She Said, or recommendations generated via Storygraph. So unlike previous years, I didn’t have an intentional theme to guide my reading - though looking over the list of books I read, it seems that many of them were stories of womanhood, exploring relationships between women in different forms. I wonder if this was at some level, subconsciously, intentional, as personally, this year (as many of us were) I was forced to be much more intentional about maintaining relationships, many with women.

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Following my annual tradition – this is a quick round up of some of the best books I read in 2020. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and to see all books I read this year, see Goodreads. - I’ll be moving off Goodreads soon though!

This year, two major themes governed my reading habits. The first – the pandemic. In response to the pandemic, I went through a long phase of wanting to read only out-of-this-world fantasy, as a way of escaping lockdown and reality, followed by a time struggling to read at all. The second – pregnancy, and motherhood, as I was pregnant for nine months of the year, and now have a three month old baby (!). I didn’t read much by way of parenting books, but I have been interested in memoirs and fiction exploring themes of parenthood, motherhood and creativity as a way of helping myself make sense of this new role and identity I find myself with. In between those, little bits and bobs popped up, as I’ll describe below – some to do with technology and society themes, others that followed a loose theme that I set myself at the end of 2019, which was to read more books that were published prior to 2015.

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Following my annual tradition – this is a quick round up of some of the best books I read in 2019. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and to see all books I read this year, see Goodreads.

A solid portion of the middle of this year was dedicated to re–reading books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Over and over again, until I knew all the characters inside out, their experiences and lives, everything. And watching everything I could find where she talks about her writing and her books; reading interviews with her, short stories she’s written, major reviews of her work. The reason: I had the (still slightly surreal) opportunity to sit down with her in conversation at the International Literature Festival in Berlin in September, just the two of us.

After four years of moderating literature festival events in Berlin, she is definitely the highest profile author I’ve had the privilege of chatting with – not to mention she’s one of my favourite authors – so it was a true dream come true to sit down with her. We talked about her writing, politics, racism, power, and much more, and I hear a recording of our discussion will be released sometime in 2020.

Stats

Including re–reads of all of Adichie’s novels, I read 55 books this year, of which:

  • 14 (25%) were first published in a language other than English
  • Somewhere between 35-40 where the primary geographic/cultural reference was not Western Europe or North America (this is a hard one to count, as so many authors I read have multiple points of reference!)
  • 12 were by men, 42 by women/non-binary authors.

As ever, recommendations very welcome - below are a few of my favourites from this year.

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Following my yearly tradition – this is a quick round up of some of the best books I read in 2018. For previous roundups, see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and to see all books I read this year, see Goodreads.

Stats

In 2014, I decided to read only books by women - 50, to be exact. Since then, I’ve been more flexible with my reading habits, but still tried to be intentional about hearing and learning from people with diverse experiences to my own.

This year, for the first time since 2014, I stopped keeping track of how many books I was reading by whom on a week-by-week basis (partly in annoyance at the glitchy Goodreads app, partly to reduce my self-quantification!), and instead, picked up whatever took my fancy, or whatever was gifted my way. At the end of the year, I looked over what I’d read, and discovered that I read 40 books, of which:

  • 72% were by people of colour
  • 88% were by women or non-binary people

These seem like pretty arbitrary quantifications of ‘diversity’ - so to add another axis, in 2019, I’d like to read more books in translation. If you have recommendations, I’m all ears!

From these 40, I picked out a few favourites below.

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This post is a run through of my favourite books from 2017 – the majority of which are written by women. This post follows on from my end-of-year reading round ups from 2014, 2015, and 2016. To see a full list of the books I read this year, see Goodreads.)

For me, this reading year was mostly one of trying to understand how we got to where we are today, and of imagining alternatives. As ever, speculative fiction helped me with the latter. Fictional stories that gave me new ways of thinking about things helped me with the former.

My top three

If I could recommend just one fiction novel, it would be Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife. This is the book that I wish everyone would read.

In a review of the book in The Wire, Deepa D. writes a list of “people you should give this book to” and describes far better than I ever could, why the book is so important. From that review:

"Like climate change, domestic abuse is pervasive, inescapable and universal. Either you know what it's like to have a home become unsafe, or you know someone who does, or you're part of the problem with your ignorance that disinvites confidence sharing."

If there’s anything I’ve come to realise in the past year, it’s this: our collective societal inability to grant violence the complexity it deserves leaves us paralysed when confronted with it. We look for black and white, good and bad, and we barely have the words, let alone the processes and social and cultural nuance, to really grasp the combination of social skills + abusive behaviour.

Kandsamy addresses that head on. She tells of her abusive marriage, her words painting a vivid picture of the cruelty, the maze she finds herself dropped in, her disbelief at finding herself in this situation and her battle to remove herself. It’s spellbinding, and more than being beautifully written, it’s important.

My two other favourite books this year, I now realise, touch on similar themes - of violence, of humanity, and complexity. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is a politically timely, engrossing and thoughtful novel. Without giving too much away, she tells of a Muslim family in the UK with a father convicted of terrorism, and the resulting effects for his three children. It’s a tense story, one you can lose yourself in.

The final one in my top three is Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. Again, politically incredibly timely - telling interwoven stories of the ancestors of two half-sisters, starting from 18th-century Ghana all the way up until modern day California. Gyasi shows in detail how racism may have changed in the way it’s exhibited, but stays a deafening constant throughout the centuries.

Understanding the US

Speaking of the United States: somehow, my normal habit of reading about a country prior to going there fell out of the window when it came to planning for my time in the US this year. Around the time of the inauguration, I remembered this and realised that aside from what I know through pop culture, I actually know very little about US-ian culture, politics and society - and what better time to learn than when it felt like everyone was searching for answers.

I found three books in particular to help me out, all of which were incredibly enlightening, thoughtful and gave me more insights into what I was finding to be an incredibly confusing political and social landscape. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think I was the only one.) The first two were similar in that they took what could have been complex, abstract topics, and used stories of real people to paint an accessible picture of the problem. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Hochschild, was eye-opening in its analysis, combining sociological findings with her own, more personal take. The second, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond, focused the problem of eviction in the US. He follows eight families and highlights the chain reaction of events that can lead to eviction, and describes how difficult it can be to recover from.

The third was The Making of Asian America: A History, by Erika Lee. It was particularly striking to me, for a number of reasons. It covered a complex history of which I was almost completely ignorant previously - of Asian Americans, of different waves of immigration and the battles between immigrants of different Asian countries, of the battle itself to unite under the umbrella ‘Asian America’, and so much more. Some events of the book took place near to where I was living for the year in NYC, which added a layer of personalised neighbourhood history for me.

Speculative fiction

Learning more about the state of the US (and many other countries) today made me look for alternative futures. A few books helped me: Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction, edited by Kathryn Allan, highlighted many areas of ignorance for me - like the fact that the large majority of speculative fiction that I’ve read imagines a future where disabled people are totally erased, their conditions “cured” or “corrected.” I can’t imagine how excluding that must feel for disabled people reading those stories, and I’m incredibly grateful to this book for imagining what some more accessible, alternative futures might look like.

Another was Naomi Alderman’s The Power – a book which was recommended to me so many times, I was almost nervous to start reading it. There was no need to worry - it was imaginative, dystopian and feminist but in fantastically unexpected ways, encouraging the reader to question power no matter where it lies.

Another much-hyped book for me was the final novel in N.K. Jemisin’s incredible Broken Earth trilogy, The Stone Sky which somehow managed to live up to the sky-high standard of her two previous novels. It’s dystopian but full of strength. I’d suggest reading this as part of the trilogy to get the full effect.

I caught up on another trilogy this year, which starts with The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. I loved it at the time, and went straight into the following two novels. This first one is set during China’s Cultural Revolution, and has a fascinating premise - where a secret military project has sent signals into space, and an alien civilisation responds and prepares to come to earth. The first in the trilogy is almost imaginable, but the second and third take so many plot twists it spins way beyond imagination. Since then, I’ve seen some feminist critiques of the books, and I now wonder if I need to go back and re-read with a more critical eye.

I also read the second in Ada Palmer’s trilogy Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota, #2) – ahead of reading it, I re-read her first, which I loved. While writing this, I realised the third one in the series just got released, on December 19th – I’m looking forward to catching up. For complex, feminist scifi (which require some concentration, but are totally worth it) – read these. On a similar note - I re-read one of my all-time favourite feminist speculative fiction novels, Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. It’s become a bit like comfort food for me, and I learn a little bit more each time I read it.

I’m not sure whether this last recommendation is quite speculative fiction or simply just fiction, but The Unseen World by Liz Moore was just wonderful. It has a wonderful balance of human story + technology story, interweaving the story of a relationship between a girl and her father, together with the development of artificial intelligence and associated technologies from the 80s until today.

Travels: Sri Lanka

I travelled to Sri Lanka for the first time this year, and looked for books to help me gain some insights in preparation. The top two I found were Rohini Mohan’s The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War and Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy.

Seasons of Trouble is clearly well-researched and thoughtfully put together - in it, Mohan tells the real stories of three people (and their families) during and after the Civil War in Sri Lanka in a raw and honest way. I find that books of this style - where the author is telling someone else’s story - often run the risk of coming across patronising or with too much of the author’s perspective, but this book avoids those traps completely.

In a way, it reminded me a little of a book on a totally different topic - Antjie Krog’s fantastic book Country of My Skull, about the Truth Commission in South Africa (which, if you haven’t read, I can only recommend.)

Funny Boy offered a new angle to the tales of people’s lives during the war that I came across, incorporating a more personal angle around a young boy realising his sexuality while the war goes on.

Non-fiction

I’ll admit: I don’t have data to hand to back this up, but it feels like I come across a higher percentage of non-fiction books written by men, than other types of books. Two non-fiction books by men stood out in particular this year: one, a beautifully appropriate gift I received called The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, with lots of lovely pearls of wisdom reminding me why I love to read. The second, the perhaps boring-sounding but fascinating The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber, which made me vow to get better at bureaucracy because as the book shows all too clearly, it’s totally worth it. It’s dense but fantastic for helping you really see structures you might take for granted, and understand their origins.

One book I read from the wonderful ‘microhistories’ genre was Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel. It’s niche, but fascinating, full of anecdotes and interesting facts.

My colleagues will vouch for the fact that I couldn’t stop talking about this book for weeks (maybe months) after I finished reading it: Kim Malone Scott’s Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, which whet my appetite for reading and learning more about leadership and communication techniques this year. I suspected the book might be a little Silicon Valley for my tastes, but was pleasantly surprised - despite the packaging, there were a lot of good, multicultural examples and scenarios, as well as practical tips to take away. I’ll be re-reading this for sure, and am on the look out for other books to help me in this area (tips welcome!).

All in all…

Goodreads tells me that in 2017 I read 55 books (an all-time high!) though that included a lot of re-reads. 12 were by men (far more than in previous years – some of these were out of my control as they were for work!), 43 by women. At my best estimate, 33 of the 55 books were written by writers of colour.

In 2018, I’d like to read more non-fiction, and focus less on “just published” books and instead look to previous years for what I could read, and continue to read more writers of colour. As always, recommendations for books I should check out are very, very welcome!

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I went to see Hidden Figures last week after being excited about it for a long time. There are a lot of reasons I loved it. Loooooved it. Go and see it. But it also made me think about the harder-to-tell parts of that story - insecurity, uncertainty and flaws.

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When somebody asks me how I got to where I am, there are a few words I use generously: luck, serendipity and kind people. I want to give credit where it’s due, and acknowledge the people who helped me and supported me to get to where I am. If I’m honest, it also makes for a better story, too.

Part of me wants that tale I tell to be engaging and modest-sounding (I’m British! Boasting is Terrible). But that mythology I find myself trying to build up is probably harmful to others as well as myself.

Telling a story of finding a job in Berlin through luck, settling in here through the help of kind people, being in the right place at the right time through serendipity - that all gives a much easier impression of my career, of not trying too hard but finding my way. It’s charming, but not threatening. It’s also an incredibly gendered approach to talking about myself.

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This year, I loosened my resolve to read only books by women, partly for practical reasons and partly to see if I could notice a difference when starting to read books by men. (Spoiler: most of the time, I can - if only thanks to terrible descriptions of women’s feelings or bodies.) I just about read fewer books than in previous years, but more pages, according to Goodreads.

I’ve put *s by my favourite picks, and lists of the books I read are under each section. Recommendations are always very welcome.

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I’m coming up to two months in my fellowship at Data & Society, and I’m trying my best to appreciate it, and not take any of it for granted. The fact that I’m getting paid to read, learn, discuss and debate is still a little bit surreal!

One thing that I have been thinking a lot about is the privileges and the opportunities that the fellowship grants me. Along with the fantastic Data & Society network and community, it’s been such a nice break to be assigned reading lists and books in preparation for discussion groups, debates and seminars.

With that in mind - and as someone who thoroughly appreciates when others make curricula public - here’s everything that I’ve been assigned to read over the past two months.

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I’m almost 2 months into my stint here in the US, which means I’ve spent a lot of time on subways over the past few weeks, and I’ve been listening to a lot of podcast episodes. I love reading lists generally, so here’s a list of my favourite podcast episodes.

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"I thought then: no matter how deep the dung, no matter how long the task, if you just go at it one shovel at a time the day will come when you can see clean earth at the bottom of the pile.
...I know better now. The unit of time that must be taken into account here is not decades but centuries, and tens of centuries. It has meaning only in the context of eternal time... I was a human being; I was ill-prepared to set my mind to plans that must be based upon thousands and thousands of years. Nothing about me was large enough to stretch itself to such a scale. And so, because there was quite literally nothing else to do, I set Time aside. I pretended that there was no such entity as Time; I abandoned it utterly. And then I set my shovel to the pile. I began to do whatever I humanly could. Outside the context of Time.

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Warning: really long post. For a reading list of books, blogs and more which take a critical perspective on tech/data and are written by women, scroll to the bottom, or check out this Twitter list of the women mentioned below!

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In 2014, I followed the #readwomen movement very strictly, and prioritised reading 50 books by women. In 2015, I loosened slightly my resolve of reading only women to reading mostly women, and I set myself the target of reading 25 books. I did that for a number of reasons; it meant I took my time over books more, and I wasn’t so bothered about reaching the target, though it turned out I did quite comfortably, as I read 37 books in the end.

I carried on trying to focus my reading habits around areas I was travelling to, and I also read a lot more non-fiction than in previous years, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I discovered a new sub-genre of books, too: microhistories, the “intensive historical investigation of a well defined smaller unit of research”, as Goodreads puts it. This year, issues around accessibility annoyed me more than in other years - I was trying to do a lot of reading as research for my podcast, but came up against paywalls a lot, unfortunately.

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I recently spent a couple of weeks in South Africa. Beautiful landscapes aside, it was a fascinating trip, and I was lucky enough to come across some wonderful books to give me a tiny insight into the culture and history. Anyway, I love reading lists, so here’s a post of book-related recommendations about, or from, South Africa.

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A couple of weeks ago I was invited to speak at Datengarten, the Chaos Computer Club Berlin’s (CCCB) monthly meet up. I decided to talk about technology in international development; partly because it’s a topic I feel comfortable with, but also because the narrative and general conversation among the development sector is a world away from what I imagine CCCB to be talking about.

One of the biggest issues I’ve come across with those working in international development, or ICT4D, is low levels of technical literacy. People are keen to tout the benefits of technology, but they have little training or critical perspectives on the potential consequences around security, data (mis)management, and more. The audience I was talking with at CCCB are, in a way, the polar opposite of this - all very, very technically literate, but potentially with not as much exposure to people in vulnerable situations, for whom technology could have big benefits.

The video of my talk is below, along with the slides I used. It’s also the first public talk I’ve done in German, which was a nice milestone to reach - especially as it happened to be on my 4 year anniversary of arriving in Berlin! It was great to have such a friendly audience for the talk, and some interesting questions afterwards, too.

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Hidden in the darkest and deepest corners of the web are secrets beyond what most of us would believe possible. Jamie Bartlett’s book, The Dark Net, dives into these secrets, and gives us a guided tour - the fora that many of us never frequent, the places where you can place a bounty upon someone’s head, or order illegal substances and have them delivered to your door.

But Bartlett’s attitude to many of these online spaces and the resulting behaviour, is largely uncritical, perhaps in his attempt to be a neutral and objective guide to the space. Take this statement about a Reddit community whose aim was to “troll” other community users, “generating laugh at someone else’s expense”, as he puts it.

Game of Trolls was eventually banned by Reddit; a highly unusual step for the otherwise liberal site, but testament to the pervasiveness and persistence of the Reddit trolls.

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Full list of books I read at the bottom of this post!

I just reached my 2014 reading challenge target of 50 books this year, all by women! I’m so glad I did it, for a number of reasons. I wrote about some of these when I was halfway through the ReadWomen2014 challenge. As well as reading more this year than I’ve done in a really long time, this year has also been the first year that I’ve written so regularly, and I can’t help but connect the two; maybe putting so many new ideas and perspectives in my head had to result in a bigger “output”, too.

Looking back on the list of books I read revealed a few surprises to me, such as that the majority of authors I read are from the US. I had an inkling that this was happening about halfway through the year, so I tried to avoid books from North American authors in an effort to widen my perspective - but it proved more difficult than I had thought! I found that lots of writers were African-American, living in the US, when I had thought that they wouldn’t be related to the US in any way from a quick scan over their initial biography and writing topic.

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One of my favourite things to do while travelling is to read a fictional novel set in the place I’m travelling in. Whether that be region, country or city, especially in areas I don’t know very well, I’ve found it to be a brilliant way to get a feel for the country. Some of my favourites have included reading Shantaram while backpacking around northern India (there’s nothing quite like sitting in the same cafe as the main character in your book!) - and, more recently, Indonesia Etc while I was in Indonesia last month, which, although non-fiction, is written in a really engaging and easy-to-read way.

So, as I’m travelling to Costa Rica tomorrow, I’ve been looking for books written by Costa Rican women, or set in Costa Rica, that I can download on my Kindle. Somehow, I’m having very little luck! Among all of the books in this Goodreads list of ‘Books set in Costa Rica’ none of them really take my fancy, or they aren’t available on Kindle (or, are written by men- which I’m not reading this year)

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On Monday, I co-presented a short show on Berlin Community Radio, with my friend Kate McCurdy, on a topic that has been fascinating us for a little while now – feminist science fiction. We looked at a few key pieces of science fiction from as far back as 1905, with a short reading from Sultana's Dream, another reading of Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness (one of our favourite pieces!), and talked briefly about Afrofuturism, too. We were joined by April who provided us with some awesome spacey tunes.

We did a fair bit of research for the show, which I've arranged below into an article, with links to works we mentioned– we said much of what is written below in the radio show though, which you can listen to online here. Suggestions for future radio show segments are welcome, as are recommendations of other feminist science fiction books to read! 

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Image credit: Joanna Walsh, who came up with the campaign

It's July already, which means I'm six months through my challenge of a. reading 50 books this year, and b. only reading books by women, as part of the #readwomen2014 campaign, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

People close to me have now stopped recommending books by men as default, and caveat recommendations with “Next year, you could check out...” – which I appreciate. Other people who I tell about my women-only reading habits have been pleasantly curious, and upon thinking about it, have almost unanimously agreed that they probably read many more books by men than by women.

One of the nicest things, though (and this is perhaps more related to the quantity side of the challenge) – is that for the first time in years, I've started to set aside time for reading. Prioritising a few hours each week for the delicious act of curling up in my chair and delving into a book feels like such a luxury, and yet practically speaking, relatively easy to obtain.

In an era when complaining about being busy has become somewhat of “a boast disguised as a complaint”, escaping 'the busy trap' and making space for those few hours was initially slightly bizarre for me. Sorry, I can't meet you for dinner, I have to read. No drinks after work, I have reading to do. These reasons sounded strange to my ears to start with, but I soon lost that hesitation, and realised that actually, they are very valid.

I've been keeping track of my books over on Goodreads, after I realised last year that it was difficult to remember what I'd read throughout the year. Having them all set out in a list allows me also to find patterns among my reading choices: Ursula K. LeGuin is by far my most preferred author (6 books out of the 23) and the majority, just, of the books are written by women of colour (12 books out of the 23).

My favourite book out of all of them – and one that I've passed on to friends and recommended to more people than I can remember – has been The Left Hand of Darkness, which was a book which genuinely changed my behaviour, and made me realise things about myself that I hadn't really considered before. In terms of reading, it was the first science fiction book I've read, and it hugely whet my appetite for a genre which I'd previously ignored, proof of which can be seen through the 7 other scifi books I've read this year.

Scifi aside, my favourites so far have probably been Alice Walker's The Colour Purple, which is one I'd been meaning to read for a while, Mia McKenzie's The Summer We Got Free, which was beautiful and mesmerisingly written, or perhaps Taiye Selasi's debut novel, Ghana Must Go, on identity and immigration.

In terms of non-fiction, bell hooks' The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love is another one of those books which left a long lasting impression on me, and which I've recommended widely since. My other favourite is on a very different topic; Emily Parker's “Now I know who my comrades are: Voices from the Internet Underground”, which looked at internet activism in Cuba, Russia and China, and was a wonderful example for me of recognising cultural differences when considering online behaviour.

It's also pretty satisfying, looking through my list of books read in 2014; next up is I Do Not Come To You by Chance, and The Book of Unknown Americans, which will be my first book this year written by someone from Latin America.

I've also started taking note of lists compiled by others of books written by women:

Any other recommendations – especially those written by women from Latin America, Asia or Africa (especially Francophone Africa – I feel I'm missing that perspective) – would be really welcomed. I'm looking forward to see what else I learn about in (hopefully) the next 26 books over the rest of 2014!  

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genderless

For me, a good book is one that makes me change how I think about things, or how I behave- for better or for worse. Thanks to multiple readings of Anne of Green Gables when I was younger, I still recognise an occasional gut feeling of trust or tribe with strangers by categorising them in my head as 'kindred spirits'; last year's Americanah has left me unable to read anything about the “global” feminist movement that's written by white feminists without feeling deeply suspicious; and now, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness has left me questioning my own, and others' behaviour, through a stronger gender-critical lens than I think I've used before. 

A bit of background: the inhabitants of the planet the book is set on, Gethen, are permanently without gender. The main character, Genly Ai, is from another planet, and he is a man; for this, he is considered strange and alien, and the very idea of a whole universe out there with 'permanent' men and women is the biggest hurdle for the people of Gethen to understand about their planetary neighbours. Any of the people of Gethen can, once a month, assume either gender, during which they go through a period of being “in kemmer”, ie. able to mate with a partner. Crucially, as anyone can be male or female during this time (and it can change month by month), anyone can become pregnant and go through childbirth, meaning that caring for children is, by definition, equally spread throughout society.

I found Genly Ai's description of the difference between 'permanent' men and women, particularly interesting:

“I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners – almost everything. Vocabularly. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones.”

I also found very clever the way that Le Guin used gender to describe certain behaviour, throughout the book – for example, when describing a mistrusted character:

“Estraven's performance had been all womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit.”

The same character is later classed as having “effeminate deviousness”.

This gendering of characteristics and qualities came back to me several times this week, as the first day of my new job role also happened to be the first day of a week long conference, which brought together people from around the world, all of whom were essentially experts on the topic of my new project.

Firstly, the reactions of people to this were rather telling:

“Wow, throwing yourself in at the deep end, that's great!”

or

“Wow, lots of input... that's really brave of you!”

Guess who said what?

Though perhaps loosely related here, it came back to me again while having lunch one day. A young woman and I got talking about how we had ended up working in this sector; she held two degrees, had years of experience in the field, and yet, sometimes, she said, she felt like a bit of a fraud amongst all these experts.

I found myself nodding along; I have, occasionally, felt like I've somehow found myself sitting among a lot of people who know a lot more than me, though I generally value (and cherish!) my 'blagging' skills to get me through those bits without too many issues.

Someone (a man!) who was sitting on the other side of us called us both out for this though, as he found it ridiculous that either of us would feel like that, given our experience, skills, and knowledge.

And then, of course, it hit me. We were displaying minor signs of Imposter Syndrome!* This would never happen on the planet of Gethen. The thought that society's expectations and treatment of women might have had such an influence on how I perceive my own actions terrifies me, and has left me determined to think more closely about how I attribute my successes. It's also left me determined to encourage my peers to think about this too. And all because of a planet named Gethen.

There are many, (many!) other aspects of the book I found thought-provoking, and I'll probably write about them once I've finished reading it, for the second time, in a week. And if that's not a strong recommendation, I don't know what is.

* For a hilarious parody on this, see here.

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Before I forget, and before I start making more lists of things I want to read this year, here are the top books I read this year.

Fiction

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Sharp, funny, accurate, and refreshing to read a book about people leaving their home country not because of conflict, but simply because of (perceived) lack of opportunity, or 'choicelessness'. I also read Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun this year, both by the same author, but Americanah was by far my favourite.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo. A child's perspective on experiencing a complete culture clash.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – this was full of terrible, terrible events, but written in a way that made me pick it up and barely put it down until I had finished it. Warning: emotionally very difficult to read.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri – a collection of short stories. The stories centre around people moving from Bengal (either Bengali regions of India, or Bangladesh) to the UK or the US, and its accuracy of relating the experiences of the first or second generation immigrants moving between those two cultures genuinely startled me at points.

A Golden Age by Tahmima Aman. I've mentioned this before on my blog, and this is one of the very few English language fiction books about Bangladesh that I could find.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng– in a funny twist, some friends sent me this book the day after I booked flights to Malaysia. By far the most emotionally taxing book I read this year (with his other novel, The Gift of Rain, coming in a close second) – but so, so beautifully written.

Non fiction

Las venas abiertas de América Latina, or Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. I started reading this in preparation for a visit to Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, purely because it was banned by right-wing military governments in all three countries in the 70s. This was also the book that Chavez presented to Obama – an amazing gift.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns. An incredible and engaging introduction to the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was recommended to me by friends who have spent time in the DRC, so I have faith in its accuracy too.

Two Lives by Vikram Seth – I took far too long to get round to reading this, not least because Vikram Seth is one of my favourite authors. It focuses on the life of Seth's uncle, from India, while he moves between Berlin (where I was reading it) – and London. A gorgeous memoir, a lovely story, and a new perspective on the Second World War.

A Woman in Berlin (Anonymous) – a close contender for 'book that made me cry most this year'. Another new perspective on World War II, or at least the terrible consequences. The book was actually a diary, and the author has remained anonymous (and it was only published after her death.) Haunting to read, but highly recommended.

This was so hard to put together that I've resolved to start using Goodreads this year. You can find newly created account here

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I've been looking for some books to read about Bangladesh for a while now, both fiction and non-fiction, so when a discussion about books covering the historical and political context of the country came up in an online group, I wanted to make sure these great suggestions didn't get lost.

Thanks to Jenny Gustafsson, Uzumaki Kyuubi, Allison Joyce, and Andrew Bostrom for the following suggestions! (And if you needed any persuading as to why you might want to find out more about this gorgeous country, check out this A-Z of what to love about Bangladesh by Jenny Gustafsson)

Non-fiction - history and culture

Economics/development

Literature

Memoirs/personal experiences

Any other suggestions, tweet me @zararah! 

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I just finished reading Mohammed Yunus' first book about the Grameen Bank, 'Banker to the Poor'. I'm starstruck, and impressed, and in awe, of the incredible work he's done. He took an idea and turned it into real, concrete action, having positive effects on millions of people's lives, in a tough environment to work in.

The distinction he makes between the poor and the very poor – the most destitute, those who don't have a roof over their heads, or enough food for themselves or their family, is key to the scheme. He rightly identified that identifying the poor and the most destitute together in one bracket generalises over some key differences; namely, that the most destitute have just one chance to get out of their poverty, and they were given this chance by being allowed to borrow tiny portions of money. They had everything to lose if they didn't make the most of this chance; this, as Yunus describes, makes them ideal borrowers, as they needed to pay the loan back if they were to continue on their path away from destitution. (and the figures have proven that his hypothesis was correct, with over 96% of loans being paid back on time – this is higher than in most commercial banks)

Identifying that women were the key change makers in families living in extreme poverty made a huge change, too. At least in Bangladesh, it is/was traditionally the man's role to deal with financial matters for the family; subverting this trend has proven to be a great success, and the associated issues of men feeling threatened by their spouses' newfound 'power' is also dealt with in the book. Receivers of loans from the Grameen Bank are 97% women, and the bank is actually owned 95% by its borrowers.

From the conclusion of the book, one paragraph in particular stood out for me:

Information and communication technology is raising the hope that we are approaching a world which will be free from power-brokers and knowledge-brokers... Any power built on exclusive access to information will disintegrate. Any common citizen will have almost as much access to information as the head of government. Leadership will have to be based on vision and integrity, rather than the manipulation of information.

This book was written in 1999. Nearly 15 years later, these predictions haven't come true, but they should have. In part, I was thrilled to see that the the basic message of the organisation I work for, the Open Knowledge Foundation, is/was shared by Mohammed Yunus; but isn't it sad that we need to be actively campaigning and working towards a world free of 'knowledge-brokers', as he puts it? Shouldn't it have justhappened naturally?

Happily, the tide is beginning to turn, thanks to the incredible open movement across the world, but Yunus' hope that 'any common citizen will have almost as much access to information as the head of government' is still a long way off.

One last quote to think about:

Easy access to credit, and easy access to a global network of information for the poorest women and men anywhere in the world will eliminate poverty from our planet more surely and speedily than anything else will. 

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