Rated A Question of Power 8/10
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Rated What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky 8/10
Wants to read Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850
Rated Tales of Falling and Flying 10/10
With deceptively plain language and within just a few pages a story, Loory paints little universes in which a little magic and imagination overrule everyday reality. Easy to read, hard to forget.
Rated Amsterdam: geschiedenis van de meest vrijzinnige stad ter wereld 6/10
No shocking new information for those familiar with Amsterdams history here but Shorto is a skilled writer and effortlessy weaves the stories of some of Amsterdams defining characters into the city's history and that of the modern world. His enthusiasm for his 'adoption city' is charming and makes this book an easy read but it also seems to inform a lot of his rather bold claims about the city's role in the defining of liberalism as the world knows it today. Interesting approach nonetheless, though somewhat overstretched at times.
Rated The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 6/10
Rated Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern 6/10
Impressive survey of the ambiguous ways black people have been portrayed in Dutch painting, literature and religious discourse over the centuries. Blakely shows how current bias towards black people in the Netherlands has a long history, grounded in the formation of one of Europe's first modern states and its empire.
Rated Ik lieg de waarheid + CD: de beste kronkels 8/10
Rated Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones 4/10
Woa, if life was only as easy as James Clear describes it! I found ‘Atomic Habits’ underwhelming. While the book has some interesting, actionable and useful advice, it suffers from oversimplification all over. Clear shares an anecdote here, cites a psychologist there… then freely associates to come up with conclusions that confirm what seem to be merely his intuitions. This, in addition to the constant bragging and the strong focus on Clear's own physical activity, made ‘Atomic Habits’ little helpful.
Edited 35d ago