The History Book Club discussion

Paul from Abilene Texas, this is your thread for 2017. I have included the link to the required format thread and an example. If you had a 2016 thread - it is archived - but you can still add books to it for the last few days of December.

Please follow the standard required format below - I hope you enjoy your reading in 2017. Here is also a link for assistance with the required guidelines:

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Our Required Format:

JANUARY

1. by Winston S. Churchill
Finish date: January 2017
Genre: (whatever genre the book happens to be)
Rating: A
Review: You can add text from a review you have written but no links to any review elsewhere even goodreads. And that is about it. Just make sure to number consecutively and just add the months.

IMPORTANT - THE REVIEW SHOULD BE SHORT AND SWEET - THERE ARE NO LINKS OF ANY KIND IN THE BODY OF THE REVIEW ALLOWED. NONE. DO NOT REFER TO ANY OTHER BOOK IN YOUR BRIEF REVIEW. THE ONLY BOOK CITED IN YOUR REVIEW IS THE ONE YOU ARE REVIEWING - NO OTHERS. ALL LINKS TO OTHER THREADS OR REVIEWS ARE DELETED IMMEDIATELY - THERE WILL BE NO WARNING. WE CONSIDER THIS SELF PROMOTION AND IT IS NOT ALLOWED AND IS IN VIOLATION OF OUR RULES AND GUIDELINES.

JANUARY

1. by Jonathan Weiner
Finish date: January 8, 2017
Genre: Science
Rating: A-
Review: As the book's title implies, Weiner focuses on Darwin's finches, the baker's dozen of Galapagos species whose beaks so aptly tell the tale of adaptation and selection. But he doesn't stop there. Weiner shows us sticklebacks in British Columbia, fruit flies in labs all over the world, guppies in Venezuela, moth DNA in Ontario, and numerous other animals in numerous other places where scientists are observing evolution occur in front of their faces – a process much faster and more powerful than Darwin could have dreamed.

What is most remarkable, however, is that this book was published in 1994, yet it remains deeply relevant. Weiner was arguably 15 years ahead of his time in describing the threat of bacteria that evolve resistance to antibiotics, and his description of evolution sparked by global warming and other human-caused processes now seems almost quaint in its cautious notes of alarm. He describes cactus finches that mutilate and sterilize the very plants on which they rely for their existence, imperiling themselves and their species so they can get at the cactus nectar a few hours earlier than the others. The tragedy of the commons is not just a human one; as it turns out, the individual selfishness that makes evolution (and capitalism, not to put too fine a point on it) work collectively can backfire on birds, too.

Weiner has written a monumentally helpful book, so well does Weiner explicate and demonstrate Darwin's theory. I'll be recommending this to anyone interested in learning more about what evolution is and whether it's real.

Terrific right out of the gate.

Paul wrote: "JANUARY

1. by Jonathan Weiner
Finish date: January 8, 2017
Genre: Scien..."

I agree .... it's a wonderful book.

Paul wrote: "JANUARY

1. by Jonathan Weiner
Finish date: January 8, 2017
Genre: Scien..."

Thanks for this gushing review; the book sounds right up my alley. I'll be adding it to my pile!

2. by Jessie Burton
Finish date: January 12, 2017
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: B-
Review: Eighteen-year-old Petronella Oortman is newly married and arrives at the home of her wealthy merchant husband in 1686 Amsterdam. And then everything falls apart – the reception is hostile, her husband is uninterested, and when she receives a replica of her new house and contracts with a miniaturist to populate it, life gets a lot more interesting.

This was a fun read – surprisingly so, given how leisurely Burton builds her plot and characters. I was impressed with how well we feel Nella's discomfort in the first part of the book, then get wrapped in to the various twists as the plot picks up steam. In the end, though, there wasn't anything to hook me into giving this one four stars. Overall, I liked it. Parts of it I liked a lot. The ending wasn't a let-down, per se, but I was surprised at how anticlimactic it felt. Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to folks who enjoy historical fiction, complicated characters and mysterious miniaturists.

3. by Frank Browning (no photo)
Finish date: January 21, 2017
Genre: Science
Rating: D-
Review: Billed as a brave and groundbreaking exploration of scientific and sociological findings into gender, I found this to be a meandering, even rambling, and unsatisfying series of essays that sometimes had interesting or coherent things to say about gender in today's society.

In the end, I struggled to finish it, and my main feeling once I did was relief. If I had to sum up my problems with this book, the conclusions of which I largely agreed with, just for the record, I guess these would be among them:

* Substituting anecdotes for data.
* Lack of cohesion.
* Finally, the book felt drawn out and too long, yet it somehow completely failed to seriously engage with the significant amount of recent evidence that has brought to bear on the question of "nature vs. nurture" in the social differences between men and women.

Overall, it felt like we were "treated" to 300 pages of Browning's rambling discourse on gender with a nonrandom sampling of various LGBT people, surrogate mothers and university professors who happened to be his old friends and acquaintances. Some of them had interesting things to say; many of them did not.

There were parts of The Fate of Gender that were interesting, and none of it was poorly written or hard to read. There was just too much of it, and not enough of that felt relevant to what Browning was wanting to argue. This book needed more science and less storytelling if it was to really make an argument.

It sounds like it was dreadful - sorry that you got one of those.

Bentley wrote: "It sounds like it was dreadful - sorry that you got one of those."

I try to read at least a few spur-of-the-moment books from the library new-release shelves, and that was one of them. Sometimes it works out ... and sometimes not. :-P

Paul wrote: "3. by Frank Browning (no photo)
Finish date: January 21, 2017
Genre: Science
Rating: D-
Review: Billed..."

I no longer finish books that I am not enjoying (that's why my own ratings of books tend to be high).

Peter wrote: " no longer finish books that I am not enjoying (that's why my own ratings of books tend to be high)."

I try to be better about that, myself, but it's hard for me to give it up sometimes. I keep thinking, "Maybe it'll get better!" In this case, it did improve, and the middle of the book was probably three stars in Goodreads parlance, but then it fell apart. It just never got so bad that it was an easy call. C'est la vie.

4. by Robert Louis Stevenson
Finish date: January 23, 2017
Genre: Adventure, Classics
Rating: B-
Review: Kidnapped was one of my "audio classics," the public-domain audiobooks I listen to on my phone when I'm walking the dog, washing dishes or shopping. I picked it on a whim, not knowing anything about the plot – presumably, someone gets kidnapped – and was pleasantly surprised. The first half of the book especially is exciting, filled with suspense as the protagonist arrives at his uncle's house and tries to figure out why he's being received so coldly, even treacherously. The book has attempted murder, successful murder, a major battle on board a ship, a shipwreck and more. Stevenson knew how to write a thrilling adventure story, that's for sure.

Unfortunately, the second half of the story bogs down into a series of slow-motion chase scenes, punctuated by petty arguments between the two main characters, and the final confrontation between the narrator and his uncle doesn't really pay off like you'd expect based on how they met. The ending, too, is abrupt. It feels like it needs at least one more chapter. It's a fun book, and I'm glad I "read" it, but it's clear why Treasure Island has remained Stevenson's career-defining work.

5. by William Goldman
Finish date: January 27, 2017
Genre: Adventure, Satire, Classics
Rating: C
Review: I wanted so badly to like this book more than I did. I mean, The Princess Bride is supposed to have everything – pirates, giants, swashbuckling, romance, yadda yadda. The movie is great. And indeed, the book does have its moments – a whole stretch of them to be honest. Unfortunately, that stretch was broken up by William Goldman's insufferable interruptions. I mean, sure, it's a clever conceit, that Goldman has discovered and abridged a classic Florinese adventure tale. But the point of abridgements is that you don't notice the good ones, not be assaulted by the oh-so-witty descriptions of what was left out.

OK, so I'm a little hangry and that might be coloring my view of the book. I think the main problem is that the book's humor relies a lot on 1970s conceits about gender and relationships that simply don't hold up well forty years later – at least not for me. Ah well. Chalk it up to a missed connection. It's a neat story, and it's well told when Goldman gets around to telling it, so I gave it a solid C.

6. by Roald Dahl
Finish date: January 31, 2017
Genre: Children's, Fantasy, Classics
Rating: C-
Review: This was a bedtime readaloud to the kiddos, and frankly, if they hadn't been enjoying it so much, I wouldn't have finished it. All three said they enjoyed it better than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so we had a good hour-long conversation about the perils of recency bias. Kidding. But really, this book is not great. I remember enjoying it as a kid, but adults beware: the plot is a mess, the jokes fall flat (especially the borderline-racist ones), and despite some good moments, the overall impression is that Dahl was more interested in capitalizing off the success of Willy Wonka than telling any kind of a coherent story.

7. by Judith Mackrell (no photo)
Finish date: January 31, 2017
Genre: History, Gender Studies, Biography
Rating: A
Review: Judith Mackrell has written a riveting history of the 1920s through the lives of six famous, stubborn, groundbreaking and often conflicted women. These women ran wild, blazed their own trails and demanded equality with men – in the bedroom, in the workplace and in society.

I can't praise this book highly enough. Mackrell picks six women whose lives are distinctive enough not to be repetitive but also overlap to an extent that she can layer them into a book and come out with a coherent picture of a decade. Opening with Diana Manners Cooper's hospital service in World War I and closing with Josephine Baker's conquering of Paris in the early 1930s, Flappers presents a top-down cultural history of a turbulent time, one that proved more fragile than any of its participants knew at the time.

Although Mackrell sometimes unleashes a flurry of names and places that can leave the reader reaching to pick the narrative back up, she for the most part keeps these stories taut and fascinating. The epilogue is particularly masterful, concluding the stories in a way that brings them together and reflects on the fact that most of them can fairly be described as tragedies.

It's not hard to see parallels throughout the book between today's ongoing feminist struggles and the ones faced by the likes of Tallulah Bankhead and Tamara deLempicka. Many of the women featured in Mackrell's book faced physical and mental illness, isolation and/or obscurity as depression and war overwhelmed the world and left women's roles seemingly more home-bound than ever by the 1950s.

As modern-day feminism licks its wounds in the age of Donald Trump, Judith Mackrell's work is a brilliant reminder that progress does not occur in a straight line, that the battle for women's sexual and financial independence was fought with only partial success by a small group of fabulous women in a fleeting era of jazz, art deco and silent films. Yet their success nevertheless made the fight a little bit easier for the next set of warriors. Their personal lives may have tended toward the tragic, but we can hope that when the final story is written of the movements they birthed, it will be triumphant instead.

FEBRUARY

8. by Colson Whitehead
Finish date: February 5, 2017
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating:

Great review, Paul. Moving it up on the to-read stack and hope to get to it soon.

Good review of this book. I read it and agree it was a very good book. The History Book club will also be reading it as a group in August so that will be a good time for everyone to get involved with it.

Alisa wrote: "Great review, Paul. Moving it up on the to-read stack and hope to get to it soon."

Hello, Paul and Alisa!

We are reading this book as part of the Book of the month project in August. Be sure to join the discussion.

Samanta wrote: "

Hello, Paul and Alisa!

We are reading this book as part of the Book of the month project in August..."

Cool! I'll have to make sure to lurk around in there. :-)

9. by James Gleick
Finish date: February 9, 2017
Genre: History, Science, Philosophy
Rating: C-
Review: Time Travel is a really good long-form magazine essay unsuccessfully lengthened into a book. Technically, I didn't finish it. I made it about a third of the way through and realized that my enjoyment was decreasing and the redundancy in each chapter was increasing. Although technically unfinished, I'm marking this as "read" because I feel I received the entirety of the book's value in those first eight chapters (100 pages).

10. by William Golding
Finish date: Feburary 9, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Classics
Rating: A+
Review: Stop me if you've heard this before:

An ostensibly democratic society falls under the sway of an undisciplined, somewhat charismatic figure who uses fear of an unknown terror to undermine the group's leadership, which he denigrates as out of touch and elitist.

No, not the story of the United States, or Britain, or France, or Poland, or Hungary, or Russia in the past couple of years. This is the plot of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a chilling, horrifying dissection of the forces at work in any given group of people and how even those begun under good intentions can quickly and irreversibly collapse into paranoia, oppression and bloodshed.

Many words have been written about Golding's symbolism in the book, and I'd simply be embarrassing myself in an effort to contribute much on that score. Needless to say, I found it to resonate deeply given the current American political situation, as Ralph and Piggy represent the hapless "establishment" among the boys marooned on a deserted island, railing against the tendency of those who elected them to go off hunting pigs instead of tending the fire that could summon help, or to gorge themselves on fruit rather than help build shelter in anticipation of the next downpour. But democracies depend, for good or ill, on the will of the governed, and when fear of an unknown beast creeps across the island, admonishments to maintain a fire seem less attractive than a take-charge attitude that promises change from the status quo – never mind that Jack, who challenges the power structure, has already proven himself immature, short-sighted and completely ill-equipped for leadership. We can only hope our result is less terror, manipulation, bullying and death than experienced by the boys in Lord of the Flies.

11. by Bryan Cranston
Finish date: February 11, 2017
Genre: Autobiography, Film/TV
Rating: A-
Review: After tearing through A Life in Parts in two days, I feel like I sat down and had a great conversation with a good friend.

Cranston writes in a breezy, conversational style that is easy to digest; he has lived a life, filled with enough unique and/or bizarre experiences, that lends itself to an anecdote-heavy memoir like this. The decision to divide the book into the literal parts he's played over the course of his life (such as "son," divorcee," "father," "Hal," Walter White," etc.) was inspired. Only once or twice did it ever feel like a stretch.

It's easy for an autobiography to come off as an ego project (probably because they tend to be ego projects!), but Cranston seems to genuinely be a humble guy who is grateful for the opportunities he's had. What struck me was how hard he worked to become an actor, that while he certainly has incredible natural gifts, he approaches acting the way anyone else might approach their profession – by training for it, then continuing to tweak his approach and picking up tips along the way so that he does the best he can in whatever his current project happens to be. I had not expected him to approach acting so intellectually, even academically.

Cranston clearly has a solid perspective on who he is, what he does, and how that fits into the broader picture. That makes his musings on life, parenting and acting much more interesting – and much more worth thinking about and potentially applying to my own life. This is a guy with impressive maturity and intelligence who happens to act and has some interesting perspectives worth listening to. I'm better off for having "chatted" with Bryan Cranston this weekend.

Wonderful review of the Lord of the flies. I read that book many years ago when I was a kid. I do not remember the plot exactly, but, to this day, I remember the anxiety I felt upon reading it. I haven't picked it up again.

by William Golding

Paul wrote: "10. by William Golding
No, not the story of the United States, or Britain, or France, or Poland, or Hungary, or Russia in the past couple of years. This is the plot of William Golding's Lord of the Flies"

Well, that is a good reason to become a classic: continued alligorical relevance. Maybe I should read it again, in school it was the ultimate assigned bore.

Samanta wrote: "Wonderful review of the Lord of the flies. I read that book many years ago when I was a kid. I do not remember the plot exactly, but, to this day, I remember the anxiety I felt upon reading it. I h..."

Yeah, that's why I shelved it as horror/thriller, because while there aren't any ghosts or zombies or serial killers, there is a bunch of dread and suspense that just builds throughout the book. Really well-paced in that regard, and very scary, imo.

Dimitri wrote: "Well, that is a good reason to become a classic: continued alligorical relevance. Maybe I should read it again, in school it was the ultimate assigned bore."

On one level, I kind of feel like I got robbed because our high school lit classes didn't really assign many/any of the classics (maybe because they all have content our fundamentalist Christian school would have found objectionable). On the other hand, it now means I get to discover them as an adult, and that's probably a better stage in life to be introduced to some of these works.

Good progress Paul and good reviews - just remember the following:

DO NOT REFER TO ANY OTHER BOOK IN YOUR BRIEF REVIEW. THE ONLY BOOK CITED IN YOUR REVIEW IS THE ONE YOU ARE REVIEWING - NO OTHERS.

I know that sometimes that is hard (see message one always if you forget) but great job overall.

12. by C.S. Lewis
Finish date: February 15, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Children's, Classics
Rating: A+
Review: Still an all-time favorite. I've read it out loud to each of our three children now, plus at least once with my wife years ago, and who knows how many times as a kid. One of the few childhood classics that arguably deepens and becomes more meaningful as I age.

Paul wrote: "On one level, I kind of feel like I got robbed because our high school lit classes didn't really assign many/any of the classics (maybe because they all have content our fundamentalist Christian school would have found objectionable)"

Hehe. Score one for European Catholic education. Alltough I pushed the limit when the subject of an group role play was an uncensored extract of Pulp Fiction (the part where they have to clean the car)

13. by Blake Crouch
Finish date: February 18, 2017
Genre: Sci-fi, Thriller
Rating: A
Review: No number of words can do justice to this incredible novel, which I devoured in less than 24 hours. Mind-bending scientific theories meet tight pacing and excellent characterization. There's a reason why Dark Matter has received so much hype: because it's an amazing work, far more than simply a sci-fi novel. Rather, I'd argue it's foremost a book about love, loss and regret – about the path not taken and how it made all the difference. Recommended for all humans.

14. by Stephen King
Finish date: February 26, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror/Thriller, Western
Rating: C
Review: I liked Wolves of the Calla, but it suffers from the problems I've come to associate with late-career King – primarily bloat and annoying dialog that does not match the demographics of the speaker. I also was a bit let down by the ending.

But King does actually tell a story that I found hard to put down. It's too long and has moments of aggravation, but in the end, it was too exciting not to like, almost in spite of itself. Here's hoping Book 6 gets us back on track.

Good progress Paul

MARCH

15. by J.D. Vance
Finish date: March 4, 2017
Genre: Memoir, Sociology, Politics
Rating:

16. by Emily Ruskovich
Finish date: March 6, 2017
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: C+
Review: I'm at a loss as to how to review this novel. I just don't know what I think about it. I feel like I should like it more than I do. I feel like I should dislike it more than I do. Some of that is probably due to misplaced expectations; the blurb writers did no favors to this book, which is really an exploration of loss – loss of life, of memory, of childhood, of innocence – wrapped in an ostensible story about murder and dementia. But if you go in expecting a mystery to be solved, you will be disappointed. Ruskovich unspools the thread; she's not interested in winding it back in.

The plot jumps around, from POV to POV, from 2004 to 1979 to 2025(!) to 1995 and back again. Secondary characters suddenly become the focus for a chapter, then recede to irrelevance again. It almost works, but I'm not sure it works well enough.

The writing is gorgeous. Ruskovich is very talented, especially considering this is a debut novel, and she kept pulling me through, even when the cynical part of me kept screaming, "MFA! MFA!" There are moments that are utterly sublime. More generally, Ruskovich has an observational gift that lends the novel a sense of reality despite its stylized prose; her descriptions of childhood are the best parts of the book.

Overall, however, the tone is bleak. The style, though poetic – or maybe because it's poetic – too often prevented me from really connecting with the characters. I felt several times that I was supposed to cry, but never actually got close to doing so. If I had known I was reading a "literary work," perhaps I would have enjoyed it more. Instead, I kept waiting for the big plot twist, the sudden revelation, the climax. It never came, leaving me a little empty, a little ... lost.

17. by Marcel Proust
Finish date: March 13, 2017
Genre: Classics, Romance
Rating: B-
Review: If I were to truly write a review of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, I would write one incredibly long sentence, allowing it to meander across your computer screen like a stream I remember exploring in the woods behind my school when I was a child, a stream whose origins and ultimate destination are ultimately unknown but whose existence in the presence was both permanent and transient, each molecule of water flowing over my feet on its way to some larger river yet the presence of the stream itself unceasing, sort of like many of the sentences and paragraphs in Swann's Way, which somehow managed to maintain my interest despite often feeling like a mountain of prose to be scaled rather than a plot to be explored or the introduction of a set of characters to be known.

But I wouldn't write a review like that. Because this is 21st century America, and we want our writers to get to the point. Proust is not interested in getting us to the point. He, as I said, meanders as the narrator describes his childhood and introduces us to the cast of characters that populates his life – and thus engages in some beautiful discourses on maternal attachment, time and dreams, and books and reading, as well as some frankly difficult discourses that are tedious to plow through. And that's just the first half! The second half is more straightforward, as it describes how Charles Swann met and fell in love with Odette deCercy, as well as the course of their unhealthy relationship. Proust really seems to have a knack for capturing thought processes and internal dialog; I found his descriptions of Swann's various self-appraisals, -justifications and -deceptions quite good, and this part of the book sped along.

As a result, I went from reading this book more as a vanity project (I can say I've read Proust now!) to being invested enough in Swann's life that I might give the second book in the series a shot. But not for a while. I know that stream will still be there whenever I'm ready to dip my toe back in.

18. by Timothy Snyder
Finish date: March 15, 2017
Genre: History, Politics
Rating: A+
Review:
"History does not repeat," Timothy Snyder begins his booklet, "but it does instruct." Of course, history instructs best when mediated through capable interlocutors like Snyder, who uses his formidable knowledge on the rise and fall of totalitarianism in mid-century Europe to assess what concerned Americans should do as they see their own democracy taking its first sliding steps backward into potential tyranny.

I cannot recommend this work highly enough. It's quite short – no surprise, as its genesis was a Snyder Facebook post gone viral that he expanded and published, and is now riding the best-seller list. I finished it in under an hour. But perhaps no book published in 2017 will pack so much importance into so little space.

Snyder is careful not to overstate the case. He isn't arguing that Donald Trump is a fascist; in fact, he never uses the president's name. But he is arguing that Americans should be learning the lessons from when fascism, Nazism and Stalinism overwhelmed previously democratic regimes in the 1930s and '40s, so that the troubling parallels evinced by Trump and his administration over the past year do not advance further down that road. It's a fine line to walk – certainly Trump's supporters will not be happy with the parallels Snyder draws between Trump's statements and actions, and those of early-stage regimes in Italy, Germany, Russsia and Czechoslovakia – but Snyder does it well. There are parallels there, and to act as if there aren't is to engage in some of the very false equivalency that has proven so toxic to the system in the first place.

I'll excerpt one passage, a prime example of what I feel is the careful yet emphatic way in which Snyder makes clear the crossroads we as Americans face in the present age:

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share.

Post-truth is pre-fascism.

Buy this book. Share it with friends. It may be the most important book to be released this year.

19. by C.S. Lewis
Finish date: March 20, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Children's, Classics, Series
Rating: A-
Review: The only thing keeping this from being an A+ book is my ongoing dislike for the Bacchus/Silenus parts of the story. However, I still think Lewis' description of the discovery of Cair Paravel is one of the best moments of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I loved getting to share that with my daughters one more time (although not much of a surprise anymore, as they'd seen the movie, which does justice to that moment, though not to very much of the rest of the story).

Every time I read the Chronicles, I seem to find something new in it; this time around, it struck me that the last couple of chapters are Lewis' first crack at using the books to describe his eschatological vision, which he ended up fleshing out more explicitly later in the series.

20. by Pankaj Mishra
Finish date: March 24, 2017
Genre: History, Politics, Sociology
Rating: B+
Review: If it feels like the world recently has been splitting in two, along comes Pankaj Mishra to let you know: You're not wrong! Describing what he calls a "global civil war," Mishra in Age of Anger describes more than 200 years of rhetorical, even bloody conflict between two conflicting worldviews: The Enlightenment modernism of Voltaire and his ideological descendants, and the reactionary nationalism of Rousseau and his.

Mishra's book is incredibly well researched, stretching as it does from 18th-century France to 21st-century China, with stops to sketch ideological histories of Italy, Iran, Germany, India and Russia, among others. I am frankly dazzled by how he manages to condense so much information into such a relatively short book; no matter how well read you are, you almost certainly will learn new things and likely be introduced to new people.

Of course, it's that very trick – packing so much into just 300 or so pages – that left me struggling to keep up. At times, concepts and characters flow into each other. I often found myself re-reading paragraphs and flipping back to make sure I could understand the flow of Mishra's thoughts. The book was worth the struggle, but I felt a longer book with more room to structure the concepts in a more traditional way would actually have made this a more enjoyable read.

In the end, Mishra's thesis is compelling. By tracing the history of nationalism through the way stations of anarchism, nihilism and terrorism, he places in the same ideological bed both Islamism and Trumpism – both of them rising from disaffection with the failed promises of gilded modernity, just as terrorism and nationalism rose together for the same reasons in the late 19th century.

It's this hard work of making connections, both within our time and across centuries and continents, that makes Mishra's work so powerful. We are all connected, to each other and to our past, and although many pundits and politicians portray a clash of civilizations between the modern West and the anrchic Middle East, Mishra shows that in fact the clash is within and between us all, for we are all children of both the Enlightenment and its dissenters.

Paul wrote: "20. by Pankaj Mishra
Finish date: March 24, 2017
Genre: History, Politics, Sociology
Rat..."

I read a review of this - I think it was in NY Review of Books, but might have been NY Times Book Review - that was quite negative, mostly saying that Mishra lumped all sorts of things together that didn't belong together.

21. by Barbara Brown Taylor
Finish date: March 31, 2017
Genre: Spirituality, Religion
Rating: C+
Review: Our priest referenced this book in his sermon the first Sunday of Lent, and it sounded like it would be a good read for the season. And it was! Barbara Brown Taylor is of course an Episcopal priest herself and an excellent writer. This short book is essentially three connected sermons on how Christians, both liberal and conservative, have lost a meaningful language of sin and redemption, and how (and why) we can recover it.

For liberals like me, it's challenging because she critiques our tendency to cloak sin in the language of medicine – a disease that we all have, and which is therefore not something for which an individual can truly take the blame. For conservatives like those in the tradition I was raised, the challenge is to move away from the language of law – where each individual stands condemned, with no discussion of the Bible's focus on systemic sins like injustice against the poor.

Taylor argues we need to recover a robust concept of sin as both individual and corporate, and along with that recover the notion of penance as a key step on the path to redemption. Lent is coming to a close for 2017; there might be just enough time to read it before Easter. But even if you don't get it done by then, it's well worth reading any time of the year. It will challenge you and maybe even provoke you to change how you think of your own missteps.

22. by George Orwell
Finish date: April 1, 2017
Genre: Dystopia, Political Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics
Rating: B-
Review: "If there is hope, it lies in the proles."

This sentence is the thread that runs through the heart of 1984 – and, arguably, through the heart of our own political moment.

1984 is a deeply political book, so it makes sense that it has been politicized. Growing up, I heard the language of Orwell's book used in defense of conservativism, particularly its notion of an overweening Big Brother bureaucracy. Today, however, 1984 is enjoying a renaissance as a critique of the forces of right-wing nationalism.

This critique is truer to the book, which was written by a socialist and invests such faith and hope in the proletariat. Yet Orwell does not idealize the struggling masses that his protagonist, Winston, hopes will rebel and overthrow Big Brother. Rather, his description rings truer than ever today:

In reality very little was known about the proles. ... Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. ... All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. ... The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

Orwell's prescience is impressive. Writing immediately after World War II, he had a front-row seat to the rise of totalitarianism and the forces that abetted it. That 1984 feels so current is a testament to his own perception and to the reawakening of the same alarming forces in our own time.

That said, I found the novel itself uneven. Orwell's story starts out as a compelling masterwork, but it becomes increasingly didactic – two chapters are devoted to simply reading aloud a book that explains the history and philosophy of the Party, while the final sections feature lengthy Q&A sessions – and the end ... well, I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't that.

In the end, 1984's applicability wanes as Winston's fate becomes clear. But that single bright hope in the proles remains as relevant as ever. If our culture is to change and defeat the illiberal forces arrayed against us, we must be vigilant, focused and ready to fight.

Interesting - I have found it eerie.

Orwell's observation that every society can be classified into three classes, with the Middle Class as the engine of revolution (French Reolution, Italian Unification, off the top of my head), is a treasured political wisdom... one that the Arab Spring only discovered when the ambition of the peasant masses didn't allign with those of the "Facebook Revolution" middle class.

Dmitri, I'd forgotten about that, but yes, I found that insightful as well, although I feel like he was more updating Marx for the 20th century than creating a new principle out of whole cloth.

I thought the discussion of perpetual war as a tool to destroy excess wealth and maintain inequality was interesting. I'm not conspiratorial enough to accept Orwell's motivation in a real-world context, but the idea that perpetual war can be used to maintain imbalances of financial and political power certainly continues to be accurate.

APRIL

23. by Tiffany D. Jackson
Finish date: April 3, 2017
Genre: YA, Fiction
Rating: A+
Review: Below is an incomplete list of adjectives I would use to describe this book:

Searing. Brutal. Amazing. Horrifying. Sobering. Real. Breathtaking.

This is easily one of the best books of 2017. Although technically in the YA category, the audience deserves to be much wider. Mary was 9 years old when she was accused of murdering a 3-month-old baby. Allegedly, as the title implies, unpacks the effects of the crime – including the ambiguity of exactly what happened between Mary and her mother on that fateful night – on Mary's life now that she is 16 and has dreams of attending college. But, as becomes clear, the world is unforgiving and the American system anything but just, especially when you are black and have a criminal record.

Although the fact that this is Tiffany Jackson's debut novel makes me want to throw all of my work in the trash, I can't help but applaud her ambitious and audacious novel. It deserves every award it will win, and my brain will be chewing on it for a long time to come.

24. by Mohsin Hamid
Finish date: April 5, 2017
Genre: Literature, Fantasy
Rating: A
Review:
"The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart."

So reads the beginning of a paragraph in Exit West, a short and moving novel that seems perfectly suited for today's turbulent times. Mohsin Hamid tells a story of migration with a sci-if/fantasy twist: Immigrants can travel to other countries through doors that have opened up for some reason. The device helps compress the novel's timeframe; it also allows Mohsin to experiment with how countries in the West would respond when their border controls became meaningless.

The focus, however, is less on the geopolitical machinations of any particular refugee crisis – although the novel certainly echoes real life, with the protagonist couple escaping an unnamed Middle Eastern country to Greece, then London – but on the effects of migration on the migrants themselves and the places where they choose to pitch their tents.

This more intimate approach matches Hamid's conversational, almost rambling style. It's a quick and easy read, and packs a punch that belies its small size. In the end, the reader is left wondering what could happen if we listened to our better angels and welcomed those fleeing war and persecution, rather than building ever-higher, ever-more-militarized walls and fences.

by Mohsin Hamid

I read the above book and engaged with the author Hamid in one of his book discussions. I thought he came off rather preachy and having a bit of an elitist viewpoint. I thought the book I read was good but I did not think that I would pick up another book by the same author. You seemed to have liked this one.

Bentley wrote: " by Mohsin Hamid

I read the above book and engaged with the author Hamid in one of his book discussions..."

I did like this one. I could see some feeling his writing style is pretentious, but he pulls it off so well, it never gave me that impression.

25. by Beth Macy
Finish date: April 12, 2017
Genre: History, Race
Rating: C
Review: A deeply researched telling of the lives of George and Willie Muse, African American albino brothers who spent decades as the stars of circus sideshows – and their mother's attempts to find them after they disappeared.

It's about much more than that, however, which is sometimes a strength and sometimes a weakness of this book. Beth Macy writes with clarity and authority, but sometimes tackles too many topics – as big as Jim Crow racism in Virginia, as small as the restaurant owned by their grandniece – making it hard for the reader to regain the thread when she returns to the brothers' story, even as the book's breadth provides a plethora of context for its focus.

My one major complaint is that Macy too often injects herself into the story. As a former journalist, I usually find first-person journalism unnecessary and self-aggrandizing, and this was no exception. The brothers' story is interesting enough; Macy's monthslong journey of getting their grandniece to finally talk to her is less so. I found her constant self-insertion distracting and off-putting, never more than when she concludes one chapter this way: "A branch in Truevine had sprouted a stray tendril in a surprising place, and it was up to me to follow its fickle, creeping path." My philosophy is: Get out of the way and let the story tell itself. I wish Macy had done more of that.

Especially since the story itself is so interesting. Overall, it's strong enough to overcome my various objections and allow me to recommend it as worth reading. Still, I can't help feeling that with all of the side trails and first-person narration that this is a really good long-form magazine article masquerading as a book.