What does it mean to be human in a world that is rapidly changing thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, of automated decision-making that both draws on and influences our behaviour? Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency – and shatter our illusion of free will. AI is alrea ..read more

I love this readathon and try to take part every year! There are new themes and prompts every year but when it comes down to it, the main premise of the readathon is to read Asian authors and to try and read books from different asian ethnicities. So there are five prompts and ideally you should read a different ethnicity for each prompt (unless you find a book that covers multiple prompts and then you’re golden). This year the theme is ‘Past Lives’ based on the film and I’m really hoping to get to the film in the month (since it is actually accessible for me). The Storygraph challenge is her ..read more

That month went by really quickly. It was the month when we get the Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist and when the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction is announced! It was good that I was trying to get through all the Non-Fiction longlist because I was really in the mood for non-fiction this month (and when I did pick up fiction, it was short books or graphic novels). Books I Read A Flat Place: A Memoir The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder Empireland Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & La ..read more

What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost ..read more

During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis. There is no other time in a human’s life course that entails such dramatic change-other than adolescence. And yet this life-altering transition has been sorely neglected by science, medicine and philosophy. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo. In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalis ..read more

Noreen Masud has always loved flatlands. Her earliest memory is of a wide, flat field glimpsed from the back seat of her father’s car in Lahore. As an adult in Britain she has discovered many more flat landscapes to love: Orford Ness, the Cambridgeshire Fens, Morecambe Bay, Orkney. These bare, haunted expanses remind her of the flat place inside herself: the place created by trauma. Noreen suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder: the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety ..read more

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and ..read more

April means it’s time for the Orilium readathon again! This is a magical readathon with maps, lore and prompts, and you can build on it year after year (or join whenever). I have such great fun with this readathon, though I do sometimes struggle with monthly readathons. My career choice is Beast Master so I’m continuing with that this year. There a couple of new careers but I want to stick with the career I have right now, until I reach the level of Master (I’m an Adept right now). There is also a side quest focused around Lore, which means extra prompts. There is a Google Drive with all the ..read more

The shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist has been announced! Here is the link to the website for it. Out of the longlist of 16 books, I have finished 5 books and have started another 5. I have really enjoyed getting through the longlist and finding new non-fiction books that I may not have picked up if it hadn’t been for this prize. I’ve had a great time so far with the first ever Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction longlist and I wish I had another couple of weeks to finish some of these books before the shortlist. Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Lau ..read more

Earth Hour is an hour in March when you do something to help the planet, even if it’s just turning out your lights. The website, with many ideas, is here but as this is a reading blog, I’m going to talk about the books you can read. There are several Storygraph challenges (which have book ideas) available. Nature and the Environment, 2024 Nature Challenge, A Literary Adventure into Nature, 2024 Nature Reading Challenge. If you’re on Storygraph, the one thing you can do for nature in your hour is signing up for one of these challenges! Book recs further on, all covers link to Storygraph! All t ..read more