Amid turmoil and mass protests here in Serbia, my reading year still got off to a good start, with some good novels and interesting non-fiction. I hope to write about some of them in more detail, but in the meantime, here are the highlights.

The Art of Memory by Frances Yates

I hadn’t read the description carefully enough so was expecting more practical aid in memorising things. The Art of Memory didn’t really do that, but it did take me on a fascinating historical journey through memory techniques from classical times to the Renaissance, with interesting observations on how the evolution of the techniques reflects the values and priorities of each era.

The Last Days by William Tham Wai Liang

This Malaysian novel was a purchase from my trip to the country in 2023. The “last days” in the title refers to the demise of the Communist insurgency as Mahathir Mohamad takes power in 1981. It’s a fascinating glimpse of a time and place that I knew little about, and the novel has elements of both thrillers and literary fiction.

Quaker Faith & Practice

I’m not a member of any organised religion, but if I were, I’d probably be a Quaker. I’ve been running into Quakers at protests for decades and always admire the uncomprising stances they take on things like peace and social justice. So I enjoyed reading more about their ideas and practices. This book is not the “Quaker doctrine” or anything as prescriptive as that—it’s a kind of compendium of things different Quakers have said and done over the centuries, and I found it quite inspiring in places.

Why Machines Learn by Anil Ananthaswamy

Another one where I didn’t get what I was expecting but got something else valuable (I should probably read blurbs more carefully!). The “Why” in the title made me think it would be something more philosophical, but really this is a lot of mathematical detail on how machines learn. I couldn’t follow all of it, but it was good to grasp some of the principles of machine learning and how AI works.

The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

This was a bizarre Russian novel about a Moscow scientist who conducts an experiment on a stray dog and a recently deceased human and ends up creating an obnoxious creature that combines the worst aspects of both species. It’s a successful satire of Communist social engineering efforts, but for me it wasn’t up to the level of Bulgakov’s masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. (Side note: there’s also a fabulous pizza restaurant by that name here in Serbia.)

Disobedient Women by Sangeeta Mulay

I enjoyed this deeply political novel about religious bigotry, violence and misogyny in contemporary India. The book starts with a vicious sexual assault and then traces the events that led up to the attack. Those causes are very broad, taking us deep into the lives of multiple characters across decades, with the rise of the BJP overshadowing it all. It’s depressing at times, but as the title and cover suggest, there’s also a large dose of hope in the form of those disobedient women fighting the status quo all the way.

Playthings by Alex Pheby

This historical novel is based on the true story of a 19th-century German judge, Daniel Paul Schreber, who wrote an account of his schizophrenia. This is the unreliable narrator taken to an extreme, as we don’t know which characters are real, which events are real, what reality even means, etc. It’s a fascinating and compassionate insight into what schizophrenia is like from the perspective of the person experiencing it.

Faded Souls by Mladen Jakovljevi?

I picked this one up at a bookshop in Belgrade, knowing nothing about it but liking the sound of the title. It turned out to be a literary novel about people in a remote Serbian village getting caught in a kind of limbo between life and death due to an ancient curse. A priest tries to solve the problem by dabbling in black magic, while a young man who’s just been decapitated by Turkish soldiers must find a solution before he fades out of existence. I enjoyed it, although I found the translator’s decision to render the rural Serbian dialect into rural American dialect a bit distracting.

Over to You

What good (or bad) books have you read lately? Do you know any of these or would you like to try them? Let me know in the comments.