marcynewman's reviews
3095 reviews

This is an extraordinary book in so many ways - from the way it's narrated, beautifully weaving Sireen's story and Sami's context to its politics. Sireen's story is the very definition of sumud, steadfastness and ins deeply inspiring and moving as a result. The story is also quite harrowing to endure, albeit vicariously, what they all must go through as a result of settler colonialism in Palestine. 

I love that Sireen's brother, who much of the story revolves around, is not an easy hero to read about for most people in the West. And yet there Iyad is in all his glory as a dedicated resistance fighter. I love how the book makes you feel like you are re-living the second intifada as you follow Iyad's journey and Sireen's attempt to retrace his steps. I love the way Iyad's experience in prison is depicted and how resonant it is with the ongoing captivity of Palestinians in Israeli jails. Indeed, I love how Sami and Sireen's choice of language - using words like captivity - to accurate depict what it is for Palestinians who are kidnapped from their homes and loved ones and tortured in Israeli jails. I love how whenever Sami narrates the story of going to parts of 1948 Palestine - whether to follow Iyad as he goes from Israeli prison to Israeli prison or to follow the different resistance fighters as they pull off their operations - we get a history of that land: what it's origianl name is, what happened to the Palestinians who were forced off that land. It's a beautiful model for storytelling. 

Sami and Sireen's use of language and their contextualizing of the land - including the insistence of Arabic place names written in the Arabic script - brings all of historic Palestine to life in profound ways. 

Reading this book now - in 2025 - in the midst of massive campaigns to kidnap and imprison hundreds of Palestinians across the West Bank, especially in towns like Jenin and Turlkarem where so many of the people whose stories you will find in these pages, makes the book all the more timely, powerful, and resonant. 

Peter Beinart's book is a gift every antiZionist Jew should give to every Zionist relative, friend, neighbor. That is the audience here. Still, I found some parts of the book - especially the opening chapter - to be extremely profound because of the way he links Torah and Talmud to antiZionism. I expect that it may be a game changer for a lot of American Zionists. 

What I didn't appreciate so much was how he talked about Palestine in some places. His choice of not using the word genocide to talk about the last 15 months in Gaza I think is atrocious. Using that word isn't inviting comparison, as he suggests; it's about a legal term that legal scholars have decidedly demonstrated applies to Gaza. I also take issue with the fact that when discussing campus protests and how college students in the US have been impacted, he spends pages upon pages on Jewish students but never mentions the fact that the only people who were murdered or maimed in the US in the last 15 months were Palestinians. 

Still, I think this book presents an important opening and way of understanding how Israel has become a false idol for Jews and I think it's critical that this book is widely distributed in Jewish communities. 

I can see how Rogers' work would have made an impact when it was first published, but the book overall is not very well put together. So much of it is redundant and doesn't really live up to its promise. The case studies presented seem out of context and even outmoded. I think this would have worked much better if it had been highly condensed.

I picked up this book because I want to understand the neuroscience behind reading. I want to know how it affects the brain and how we are damaging that by spending too much time on screens. The first part of the book did engage with this aspect, but it increasingly deviated into how to fix society and the damage caused to society by not ensuring we have enough deep readers from an early age. Unfortunately, the book is extremely American-centric so much of that part didn't really apply to my context (I live in India). I also don't think that the whole epistolary form works here. It's just a gimmick - it's not like these are really letters in any structural or literary sense of the form. 

Such a delightful, clever graphic novel detailing the marvels and wonders of book readers and writers. 

I read the original pamphlet by Ghassan Kanafani many years ago. This translation is a masterpiece with respect to the care that was given to the process. Also, the ancillary material - timeline, glossary, introductions and afterword all bring a great deal more context to Kanafani's meaningful analysis of the Palestinian Revolution.

The novel is as convoluted as the film. Still, I enjoyed the description and the language of Chandler's prose.