Time flies, I can’t believe we’re in the middle of 2021 already! This June I could finally catch up on my summer reading, finished 3 books and an engaging Netflix documentary! What were your highlights of the month?
“Truth and other lies” by Sasha Arango
This witty and suspenseful crime thriller was my first introduction to the author. It was not always clear why we meet certain characters, because you can not always connect the dots looking at their story. Nonetheless I really liked the book. I hope it will be made into a movie one day.
Favourite quotes from this book:
“The struggle for survival is exciting. It is, after all, only scarcity that gives things their value; money loses all meaning as soon as there’s plenty of it… You don’t have to be famous to be happy, especially as popularity is all too often confused with significance.”
“If you make your dreams come true you have to live with them”
“It is well known that our worst mistakes are the ones we don’t notice.”
“Torn out her heart like a weed, she was made for survival, drinking in the scent of his skin. There is no silence like another’s person’s absence”
A Killer’s Mind by Mike Omer
I have joined a book club on instagram and this was the book they read this month.
This serial-killer thriller was my first thriller and I was scared to read it in the beginning. To cut the story short, I finished the book the next day after starting! The plot was really intriguing with dual timelines, realistic and engaging stories in both the past and present. If you like light thrillers, this book is a must read!
Jasper Fforde Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron
A best-selling dystopian novel with a very interesting and catchy plot, but way too many details for my taste.
The story takes place in Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one’s limited color perception. Citizens want to climb the social ladder and improve their color perception by joining more powerful families and defying the harsh rules behind brightly painted façades.
The Social Dilemma – documentary by Netflix
Not an eye-opener, but definitely a good documentary on how technology companies manipulate human psychology. I would highly recommend watching it.
Favourite quotes by Justin Rosenstein (Facebook, Former Engineer):
“We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive, in a world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know that it’s going to leave a worse world for future generations. “
“We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending that time living our life in a rich way. And so, we’re seeing the results of that. We’re seeing corporations using powerful artificial intelligence to outsmart us and figure out how to pull our attention toward the things they want us to look at, rather than the things that are most consistent with our goals and our values and our lives.”
“The way technology works is not a law of physics. It is not set in stone. These are choices that human beings like myself have been making. And human beings can change those technologies.”
Share your June highlights in the comments below 🙂
