"Snow" and on how we read

Going through my lecture notes on Orhan Pamuk's "Snow", I feel the urge to remark upon two things.

1. My notes (the quotations) tend to target things that "judge" the Islamic culture overwhelmingly, or that at least emphasize the difference. I really think that Islam and the Arab world, generally speaking, are the world's ultimate alterity in the present time. I made few notes on things that struck me as "poetic" and many notes on things that struck me as "unfair" and the whole phenomenology associated with it.
And of course, my question is, first and foremost, this: How much would my lecture notes differ from what they are now if I was from another culture, or differently educated etc? How much does my tendency to be biased by feminist themes and a certain eurocentrism impact what I chose to retain from this book, in terms of "quotable" bits? Is this bias only slight or stronger than I like to think? And finally, did this bias "ruin" this book for me? (I must note that the reading was quite enjoyable in spite of what one could understand from this post and these inquires).

2. I tend to think, not only because of this book but the thing is more visible using this one, that literature cannot be as apolitical as it partially succeeded to be before. Because, in a complete contradiction with the diminished political involvement of present times (political skepticism and the large number of people not showing up to vote, a general cynicism regarding the whole political class etc) the world is more politicized than ever. Maybe it's because of the overrated term of globalization, maybe not. What I'm pretty certain about is the fact that the two go together and are faces of the same coin: the more political the whole society gets (and politics pervade literature and all domains of the thought actually), the more disgusted people become with concrete politics, not being able to ignore their failure any more. So the world is becoming more and less political at the same time.
And incidents like being quick to label things as "discriminative" etc (aka to politicize them), things that before would have been anywhere between common and outrageous, but not necessary political, is just another tendency to confirm that. A heightened awareness is everywhere. And we're a bit injected with hysteria (see the violent political debates from recently) because of it. Nothing is apolitical anymore. And in some regards, this flux of enriched awareness is welcome. But I can't help wondering if it isn't also: first of all, an obstacle to "true"-er feeling and abandoning yourself to it; and second of all dangerous in terms of society itself becoming ultimately unable to settle anything about how things should be run.

About "Miriam" (Completely offtopic)

Not about books or anthropology, just about my name.
I long knew its quite complex and various meanings in different cultures, which I'll not detail here now for lack of space and patience and point; but I was surprised to see The Urban Dictionary's explanations of what "a miriam" is.

So, here goes my least scholarly post on this blog (well, maybe if you consider The Urban Dictionary as part of a larger frame of clashing discourses in a funny way exposed by a blurry elite of a postmodern system of meanings... it could pass as appropriate, were there not still the un-randomness of picking precisely the entry on "miriam" out of it all):

Next paragraphs will completely quote The Urban Dictionary mentioned above.

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