The 15-Minute Book Club

Week 23: The Power of Women

Dr. Denis Mukwege is a gynaecologist from The Democratic Republic of The Congo, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his incredible services to survivors of rape, and his global campaigns to end the use of rape as a weapon of war. In his book, he recounts his experience in treating women with injuries caused by sexual violence. He named the book The Power of Women as a tribute to the thousands of women he has treated over the years who have confronted some of the darkest circumstances imaginable but still find the courage to carry on and find meaning in life. 
 
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Oprah’s interview with Dr. Mukwege: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-mukwege-the-power-of-women/id1264843400?i=1000542177023 
Panzi Foundation: https://panzifoundation.org/

Week 22: The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidth is a sociologist, and in this book he examines the decline in mental health among adolescents around the world. He observes the link between the rise in depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide with the introduction of smart phones in 2010. He offers plenty of evidence and statistics that suggest this rise in mental health issues among people is in large part due to, what he calls, ‘the great rewiring of childhood’.
 
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Book mentioned:
Stolen Focus by Johan Hari
 
Further materials: 
anxiousgeneration.com 
The Online Supplement: anxiousgeneration.com/supplement
The After Babel Substack: afterbabel.com 

Week 21: Educated

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir. She grew up in a super conservative Mormon family in Idaho in the United States. She details a very unusual upbringing. Her family had a deeply seeded distrust towards the government, they didn’t believe in modern medicine or the public school system. The book is essentially a story of her metamorphosis, how she leaves the bubble she was brought up in and goes out into the real world, only to have everything she’s ever known challenged. Without a formal education, Tara ends up attending university at the age of 17, and then goes on to attend Harvard University, as well as Cambridge University where she obtains her PhD. 
 
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Tara’s interview with Oprah: https://podcasts.apple.com/jo/podcast/super-soul/id1264843400?i=1000437295457 

Week 20: Stolen Lives

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail is Malika Oufkir's first memoir. It is a full account of her unlawful and unjust political incarceration at the age of 19, along with her mother and five siblings, in various squalid desert prisons across Morocco. For over two decades, they suffered from starvation and diseases in isolation as punishment for their father's attempt to overthrow King Hassan II in 1972.
 
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Ahmed Marzouki’s ten part interview on Al Jazeera: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFF3C67C9E43201CA 
Malika’s interview with Oprah: https://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/after-the-show-with-malika-oufkir-transcript/all 
Books mentioned:
Tazmamart: Cellule 10 by Ahmed Marzouki
Tazmamart: 18 Years in Morocco’s Secret Prison by Aziz BineBine
Freedom: The Story of My Second Life by Malika Oufkir 

Week 19: The End of Eddy

The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis is a memoir that sheds light on a part of French society that are unseen by those in the political centre; people who have been actively excluded from art, film and literature. By revisiting his childhood, Edouard is also trying to unpack the socioeconomic context that he was brought up in.
 
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Edouard Louis on The Guardian Books Podcast: https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2017/feb/28/fact-or-fiction-autobiographical-novels-edouard-louis-books-podcast 
 
Ken Loach and Edouard Louis in conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J89RTrx1_eM&t=1737s 
 
Mentioned films: 
I, Daniel Blake
Sorry We Missed You

Week 18: Man's Search For Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor E. Frankl is one of the most famous accounts of The Holocaust, it also encompasses a basic exploration of the parameters of Logotherapy. Originally published in German in 1946, Dr. Frankl asks why those who have experienced great suffering don't commit suicide. He tries to answer this question through Nietzsche’s assertion that: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how”, and the existential notion that “to live is to suffer and to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”
 
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Week 17: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road is a classic mid-twentieth century novel by Richard Yates. It's a critique of American suburban life in the 1950s and the lies we tell ourselves, and each other, in maintaining a picturesque family life. It raises questions about the nature of insanity, and what happens when our inner selves start to revolt against our forced conforming to the collective norm. 
 
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Week 16: The White Tiger

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a witty and deeply cynical narrative. Our first person narrator, Balram, is under no illusions of righteousness. He understands that he has been born into a broken system, where one needs to be ruthless in order to thrive and prosper. He has awoken from the fallacy of the master and servant dynamic, and takes his destiny into his own hands. 
 
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June 2024 - In Conversation With The Wonderful Mary O'Brien

Join my wonderful friend Mary and I in an extended conversation about all the incredible books she’s read over the years. She talks about Irish writers, old and new; reading obsessions, past and present; the miracle of the written word; and so much more!
Mary is one of my closest and dearest friends and I am so happy that you get to hear from her. She is an extremely avid reader who relishes in having complex intellectual and philosophical discussions. She’s someone who hasn’t lost the art of debate without extreme polarisation, and is always prepared to reflect, rethink and keep an open mind.
 
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Mentioned books:
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
Walking with Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne
Time Pieces by John Banville
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Sinbad the Sailor
Arabian Knights
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Long Island by Colm Toibin
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
The Dialogues of Plato by Plato
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink 
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Short story: Music at Annahullion by Eugene McCabe 
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Mills & Boon books: https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/
The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Foster by Claire Keegan
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Barracks by John Mcgahern
Death and Nightingales Eugene McCabe
Quirke by Benjamin Black (John Banville pseudonym)
Cormoran Strike by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling pseudonym)
The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
Mythos by Stephen Fry
Heroes by Stephen Fry
Odyssey by Stephen Fry
The Odyssey by Homer
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
Notes From a Big Country by Bill Bryson
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
Down Under by Bill Bryson
At Home by Bill Bryson
If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
 
Mentioned films/TV shows:
The Bridges of Madison County
The Remains of the Day
Never Let Me Go
Mystic River
A Time to Kill
Philomena
Michael Collins 
Wilde
Oppenheimer
HBO Mini Series on the American opioid epidemic: Dopesick
 
Other mentions:
MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland): https://moli.ie/
US meat industry lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SjV4vxnaY3U
University of Reading Mills & Boon archive and collection: https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/collections/mills-and-boon-archive-and-library/
Romance Author:  Barbara Cartland
Russian author: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Art of Reading Book Club with Colm Toibin podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9nzyTicyDg&list=PLLWo1zNvgJVO-SU1g0K6CxucAq7cKQ1b7
Short story writer: William Trevor
Stephen Fry talks about God on The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo
QI (Quite Interesting) BBC Game Show

Week 15: On Beauty

On Beauty by Zadie Smith is an incredibly well crafted web of complexities. Its various sub plots tackle different conflicts of identity, such as race, gender, politics and socioeconomics. It's a philosophically thought-provoking narrative that is certainly worth the read.
 
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