Welcome to Litsy!

An autobiographical novel by a young Syrian atheist in exile during the war. Poor writing, marred by both excessive swearing (which doesn't offend me but betrays a lazy, unconfident attitude towards the writing process) and verbose, jargony academese that made large parts of this virtually unreadable. Still, read as a document coming out of and reflecting the Syrian crisis, much of it was strangely compelling.

Şanlıurfa, I have just learned, is a city in south-eastern Turkey.

#2017Book19
The premise of this book is great. The plot, however, is all over the place, jumping into flashbacks randomly and making the story difficult to follow. The main character is far too arrogant and I find it unbelievable that he has any friends because all he does is tell them how stupid they are and lecture them about not being aware of what's happening in the world, even though all of his news comes from videos on Facebook.

I'm not at all sure this is a novel yet, but am I ever loving his badassedness!

Yowsa, he has gotten my attention and how!

Hey folks, I was fortunate enough to make contact with Asaad Almohammad and he answered some questions for me about his amazing book. Here's the link if you are interested 😊: https://doddyaboutbooks.com/2017/01/14/qa-with-asaad-almohammad-author-of-an-ish...

(P.S. if I have tagged you, it's because you have this book stacked :) )

Difficult, powerful, heartbreaking. You want to read this book.

Edited to add: This is my first #litsyatoz and #readingaroundtheworld book.

Asaad Almohammad opens with some truth bombs.

Books/bookish presents. The scarf features text from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by #MayaAngelou. Happy and Merry Everything, everyone!

#seasonsreadings2016
Day 15: #weneeddiversebooks
@RealLifeReading

Dealing with a bought of insomnia again & woke up to hear the devastating news out of Aleppo. I'm heartbroken & horrified for the people of Syria. Sending love to anyone who may have family/friends there. 💔🕯

If you're like me and resort to books to make sense of the world when it all seems terrible, I urge you to check out some of these books by Syrian authors or about the Syrian War. They are #ownvoices except for one & are all recent. 🇸🇾

Here's my #diversereading #litsyatoz . Let me know what you think!

Feeling pretty happy with myself at the moment - I've managed to put together a #diversereading #litsyatoz list for the 2017 challenge, all based on title. 🎉🎉🎉

I will type it up and post it this week (I hope). This is mainly a mix of books from my reading around the world challenge and books by Aboriginal authors with a handful of others thrown in.

@BookishFeminist I apologise that Oreo is on this list. I'm a bad reading buddy.

Adam is a young intellectual raised in Syria and now living in Malaysia where he encounters misogyny, racism, and bigotry while attempting to become a global citizen. While not a fun or easy read--and with a heavy dose of theory--it was a good one for me as I feel very ignorant about the culture and political philosophies surrounding the crisis in Syria. Very educational!

A very powerful book, I hope a lot of people will read it. 🌟🌟🌟🌟4 Stars

This book is just filled with great lines and passages.

Heavy stuff

I'm making great headway on my Netgalley pile--I was at 76% (so close!) but then I saw this one in the "read now" section and I just had to get it before it disappears. Oh well, I'm back at 75%. #willgetthereeventually