Sleepless鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

3,289

pages read

books read

Sleepless Dreamer

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

Shortest Book

186

pages

Longest Book

496

pages

Average book length in 2024

299

pages

Most Shelved

776,901

people also shelved

Least Shelved

people also shelved

Sleepless鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.4

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

4.67 average

The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine

Sleepless鈥檚 first review of the year

it was amazing

This book is fantastic.

I spent a lot of time with Christians throughout this year. It left me with a lot of complicated feelings. With a lot of scholarly and theological knowledge as well as practical experience, Levine managed to untangle some of them.

On the one hand, I was deeply impressed by Christianity as a whole. Every church I've entered was full of friendly people who put genuine effort into making me comfortable. I felt a sense of earn ...more

厂尝贰贰笔尝贰厂厂鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch

liked it

The State of Desire by Lea Taragin-Zeller

Sleepless鈥檚 last review of the year

Review to come!

For now,
PhD Adventuring
- I'm incredibly early in this process. I look ahead and see, quite vividly, months of interviews and applications and emails and visas and advisors and papers. I know that this is a journey and it is one that will take time. I realize it, embrace it. Own it.

- And this, right now, this is the beginning. My list is becoming tangible, entering my details into dozens of entry apps. I'm slowly telling people Review to come!

For now,
PhD Adventuring
- I'm incredibly early in this process. I look ahead and see, quite vividly, months of interviews and applications and emails and visas and advisors and papers. I know that this is a journey and it is one that will take time. I realize it, embrace it. Own it.

- And this, right now, this is the beginning. My list is becoming tangible, entering my details into dozens of entry apps. I'm slowly telling people about my applications, with shaking hands and embarrassed laughter. Yeah, I'm applying to PhDs.

- It says something about me that i'm most scared of admitting to others that I've failed. i'm not scared of not getting accepted- i know i'll find some sort of job regardless and if academia is my path, i'll find my way to it later- but oh god, looking at everyone who believed in me and needing to say a million times, "no, i'm not going abroad, yes, i have a collection of rejection letters instead of a degree".

- It takes a special kind of arrogance to look at 100 years of scholarship on Israel and Palestine and go, "I can add something, move aside and give me some space". It takes endless amount of belief in one's self to apply to the top universities, to believe that I can conduct research in Oxford. But fuck it, 14 year old me had dreams and applying matters. I need to believe that there is value in trying, no matter the results. It's okay if I get a million rejections, as long as there's one "yes".

- Right now, all the concepts I'm interested in blur in my mind. My advisor told me to think of who I want to speak to and man, it's the peacebuilding community and it's democracy and polarization people and it's identity and discourse studies and it's doing ethnography and grounded work and it's IR. This won't do. I'm drawn to the intersection of peoplehood and politics, of nationalism, of the words we use to tell our stories, of the tensions between different groups, of narratives. It's all so connected in my mind but I realize that this journey requires clarification and I need to embrace that I won't fulfill every academic curiosity in one project.

- or, today i thought about how cool it would be to research genocidal humor (Israeli and Palestinian) and the relationship to core narratives or how I'd love to work on the intersection of concepts across disciplines or analyze the mentions of the two state solution across old UN speeches to see growth and it's okay if this happens way way later.

- and I would be lying if I didn't admit that this is, in part, a desire to run away. I just need to get the fuck out of Israel (for a while). This place breaks my heart, crushes my soul, destroys my hopes for a better life. I don't have any illusions about life outside. I expect cruelty when I share my nationality, I know that antisemitism hurts me more than missile sirens. I know that this conflict will live in my brain regardless of where I sleep. Yet the distance between me and other Israelis is growing and I feel like I can't breathe. The moral weight chokes me and I'm just so disappointed in Israelis and Palestinians, this land consumes humanity. Fuck our leaders, fuck our nonchalance, fuck being trapped in our national narratives. I can't stay here now.

- And this acknowledgement also makes me hesitant about doing research about here. I don't want to frame this as cowardice- I have wanted to do a PhD abroad before October 7th- but I also realize that living abroad and doing research about home is not my way. I won't sit abroad and pretend to understand what people here feel.

- This all fills me up with so much anxiety. What if no supervisor likes me? what if my proposal sucks and no one will tell me because everyone is too nice so i'll only know due to the rejections? what if i make the wrong decision? But I am trying to take it step by step. I started this process late because of my deliberating fears, insecurities and doubts. I'm done with that. This is about acting, doing, no more questioning. ...more

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