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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="The Future of Truth" data-author="Werner Herzog">
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<img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1736396163l/223120418._SY500_.jpg" alt="The Future of Truth" class="goodreads-cover-img">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223120418" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Future of Truth</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Werner Herzog</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 21/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">In this short sequel to his acclaimed memoir, the legendary filmmaker and global cultural icon explores one of his favourite the nature of truth.
What if a lie is told to reveal some underlying truth? Are feelings that seem inappropriate, such as the hysteria following the death of a celebrity, any less real or true than the grief we feel over the death of a loved one? Even if the plot of an opera seems preposterous, can’t it still express strong human emotions that ring true with the audience?
At the heart of the book lies Werner Herzog’s concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ – a truth that is often hidden behind the facts and our conceptions of reality but can be gleaned through the poetic imagination, in art, literature and cinema, when we open ourselves up to an aesthetic experience.
Written in Herzog’s inimitable tyle, the stories, anecdotes and reflections take us from present-day deep fakes and the opportunities and perils of AI to Ancient Egyptian and Rome, where rulers resorted to lies and propaganda in the same way as governments do today; from Scott’s and Amundson’s race to the South Pole to alien abduction stories and the making of Herzog’s own films.
With its singular vision and unique voice, The Future of Truth is a compelling meditation on the relationship between fact and fiction, evidence and the imagination, by one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic thinkers in the world today.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="Cruel Optimism" data-author="Lauren Berlant">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11347563" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cruel Optimism</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Lauren Berlant</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 16/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted.
People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”
Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory—with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary—is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary.
Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="How to Be a Rock Star" data-author="Shaun Ryder">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59486144" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How to Be a Rock Star</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Shaun Ryder</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 15/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">Shaun Ryder is a 1990s rock 'n' roll legend. Now, for the first time, comes his hilarious, swaggering, hugely entertaining account of just what it takes to be a rock star.
As lead singer of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, Shaun Ryder was the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of his generation. A true rebel, who formed and led not one but two seminal bands, he's had number-one albums, been a figurehead of the Madchester scene, headlined Glastonbury Festival, toured the world numerous times, taken every drug under the sun, been through rehab - and came out the other side as a national treasure.
Now, for the first time, Shaun lifts the lid on the real inside story of how to be a rock star. With insights from three decades touring the world, which took him from Salford to San Francisco, from playing working men's clubs to headlining Glastonbury and playing in front of the biggest festival crowd the world has ever seen, in Brazil, in the middle of thunderstorm.
From recording your first demo tape to having a No.1 album, covering tour bus debauchery, ridiculous riders, record company run-ins, drug dealers and the mafia, Shaun gives a fly-on-the-wall look at the rock 'n' roll lifestyle - warts and how to be a rock star - and also how not to be a rock star.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="The Coming Insurrection" data-author="The Invisible Committee">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6447374" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Coming Insurrection</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">The Invisible Committee</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 11/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">Thirty years of “crisis,” mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy... We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it.
The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors).
One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of “spreading anarchy and live communism.”
Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.”
Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God" data-author="Will Durant">
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<img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1418103906l/21412198._SY500_.jpg" alt="Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God" class="goodreads-cover-img">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21412198" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Will Durant</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 05/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">Praised as a “revelatory” book by The Wall Street Journal , this is the last and most personal work of Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian Will Durant, discovered thirty-two years after his death.
The culmination of Will Durant’s sixty-plus years spent researching the philosophies, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations from across the world, Fallen Leaves is the distilled wisdom of one of the world’s greatest minds, a man with a renowned talent for rendering the insights of the past accessible. Over the course of Durant’s career he received numerous letters from “curious readers who have challenged me to speak my mind on the timeless questions of human life and fate.” With Fallen Leaves , his final book, he at last accepted their challenge.
In twenty-two short chapters, Durant addresses everything from youth and old age to religion, morals, sex, war, politics, and art. Fallen Leaves is “a thought-provoking array of opinions” ( Publishers Weekly ), offering elegant prose, deep insights, and Durant’s revealing conclusions about the perennial problems and greatest joys we face as a species. In Durant’s singular voice, here is a message of insight for everyone who has ever sought meaning in life or the counsel of a learned friend while navigating life’s journey.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice" data-author="Virginia Roberts Giuffre">
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<img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1756130705l/193388653._SY500_.jpg" alt="Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice" class="goodreads-cover-img">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/193388653" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Virginia Roberts Giuffre</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 01/01/2026</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.
Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.
Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="The Lost Daughter" data-author="Elena Ferrante">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59684725" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Lost Daughter</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Elena Ferrante</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 29/12/2025</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">Leda is a middle-aged, divorced mother devoted to her work as an English professor. After the departure of her grown-up daughters, she takes a holiday on the Italian coast. But after a few days things become unsettling; on the beach she encounters a family whose brash behaviour proves menacing.
Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. The tale of a woman's rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with the past.
The Lost Daughter is a profound exploration of the conflicting emotions that tie women to their children.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="Black and British: A Forgotten History" data-author="David Olusoga">
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32809816" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Black and British: A Forgotten History</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">David Olusoga</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 24/12/2025</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">In Black and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offers readers a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.
It reveals that behind the South Sea Bubble was Britain's global slave-trading empire and that much of the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery. It shows that Black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of the First World War. Black British history can be read in stately homes, street names, statues and memorials across Britain and is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World" data-author="Branko Milanović">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/229163390" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Branko Milanović</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 21/12/2025</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake?
Drawing on original research, leading economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point. In The Great Global Transformation, Milanovic provides an invaluable guide to the new 21st century.</div>
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<div class="goodreads-book" data-title="The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan" data-author="Lyse Doucet">
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<img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1752028668l/238299552._SY500_.jpg" alt="The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan" class="goodreads-cover-img">
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<h3 class="goodreads-title">
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238299552" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan</a>
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<p class="goodreads-author">Lyse Doucet</p>
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<span class="goodreads-date">Finished: 03/12/2025</span>
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<div class="goodreads-description-text">When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world.
More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls.
Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan.
It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days—an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Asia’. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con’s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the story of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy—only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021.
The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.</div>
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Scrapbook Note •