Paging All Bookworms! discussion

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Max Frisch, Don Juan oder Die Liebe zur Geometrie [1953, rev. 1961] 102 pages [Kindle, Open Library, in German]

We all know Don Juan was a great lover -- of Geometry? It's amazing to me after reading ten versions of Don Juan (this is the last before the book by Peter Handke) that all of them manage to make it a totally different story. Frisch's play has an afterword which explains his conception of the character.

Atef Alshaer, ed., The Map of Absence: An Anthology of Palestinian Writing on the Nakba [2019] 257 pages [Kindle]

This anthology contains a selection of some of the best Palestinian authors, and writers about Palestine, from the 1930s to the present. It has poetry, short stories and nonfiction. It also has some excerpts from longer works, which I always dislike in an anthology; the novels were not designed to be read in excerpts and the context is missing. Most, but not all, of the selections are about the Nakba, the "catastrophe": the driving out or massacre in 1948 of 780,000 Arab Christian and Moslem Palestinians by terrorist methods to create the single ethnic and religious state of Israel, one of the major atrocities of the twentieth century. The selections which directly describe the Nakba in realistic style are brutal and heart-wrenching, and gave me a better understanding of what happened in 1948; other selections, especially the poetry, are more literary, and describe the events in images and symbols. A smaller number are concerned with the results of the Nakba: the struggle of the Palestinians to regain their homeland, the invasion of Lebanon, and the everyday life of Palestinians both in Israel and the diaspora.

A highlight of the anthology was the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish; I am looking forward to reading more of his poetry next month.

While the focus on the Nakba might seem to limit the scope of the anthology, I imagine most Palestinian writing since that time focuses on the loss of their homeland and the trauma of exile. The Palestinians have been betrayed, first by the Western "liberals" who almost all supported Israel and ignored the Palestinians, secondly by the bourgeois Arab states which gave only token assistance, more fearful of mobilizing their own people than of the Israelis, and ultimately and most tragically by their own leadership.

Of course, after almost three quarters of a century, conditions have changed and the solutions put forward in the past are no longer possible. Having been pro-Palestinian since the 1967 war, I have little respect for liberals who, having ignored the Palestinians when they could have made a difference, now want to get liberal brownie points for being anti-Israel and repeating the old slogans. Most of those driven out in 1948 died in exile, and even the children of that time are in their seventies and eighties; the present Jewish population of Israel are no longer foreign occupiers but were born there, and even second and third generation. No one can say with Darwish, go home and give us back our country, any more than Native Americans can seriously say that in America. The secular democratic leadership of the Palestinian struggle in the fifties and sixties has been largely displaced by Islamicists who think in terms of religious jihad, forgetting that the victims of the Nakba were not all Moslem. Today, the fight of the Palestinians must be, not to destroy Israel, but to forge alliances with Israeli Jewish workers to transform Israel into a secular democratic state with equal rights for Jews, Christians, and Moslems, Arab and non-Arab; and to fight for the same thing in the Arab states and wherever they are in the diaspora.

But having said that, there is no excuse for erasing the history, the facts about the Nakba, and the long and heroic struggle of the Palestinian people, any more than the changed conditions in Northern Ireland would justify forgetting the martyrs of the IRA. If this anthology contributes to preserving that memory, then I can ignore its faults and recommend it.

The Twenty-One Balloons – William Pène du Bois – 4****
This is a classic of children’s literature, for which du Bois was awarded the Newbery Medal. It’s a fantastical adventure story featuring Professor William Waterman Sherman, who leaves San Francisco on Aug 15, 1883, in a balloon, with the intention of going across the Pacific Ocean and enjoying some solitude. He wasn’t counting on Krakatoa’s explosive eruption, however… The illustrations (also by du Bois) provide a visual representation to go along with some of the detailed descriptions of the various inventions.
My full review HERE

Bone Crier’s Moon (Bone Grace #1) by Kathryn Purdie
5 ★

Ailesse is a Bone Crier, one who ferries the dead. In order for her to take her Bone Crier oath she must first complete her rite of passage by killing her true love. Bastien’s father was killed by a Bone Crier and he has been preparing for his chance to kill one himself and avenge his fathers’ death. Ailesse’s and Bastien’s fates collide in an epic fight and now Ailesse’s best friend, Sabine, must overcome her dislike of the Bone Crier’s ritual and save Ailesse.

I am so glad that I started the new year with this book. I absolutely loved it and hope it means I’ll read more great books this year. The story was exciting and the characters were fantastic. I read it in 3 days and it made me cry, laugh and gasp with surprise. The next book doesn’t come out until the end of March and I’m devastated.
Ailesse and Sabine are strong female characters who struggle to do what is right for them and their Bone Crier famille. Ailesse does everything she can to please her mother, the matrone, but never seems to accomplish it. On the same note, Sabine tries to do what needs to be done to get to her rite of passage, but she just doesn’t have the heart to kill the animals to obtain the bones needed to acquire her strengths. She made me very proud though when she disobeyed the matrone and went after Ailesse. Sabine finally finds that strength she needs and takes control of her destiny.
Bastien and his group of friends are loyal to each other and committed to avenging their fathers’ deaths. Their determination and respect for each other is unending. I was not a fan of Bastien’s friend Jules, though. She’s a rough one who doesn’t give Ailesse a chance to explain things and she tries to control her brother too much. Her brother, Marcel, is super smart and I really liked him. I liked how he rambled on about things and showed his knowledge.

The Growing Season – Sarah Frey – 3***
The subtitle is all the synopsis you need: How I built a New Life – and Saved an American Farm. Frey grew up on the family’s Southern Illinois farmstead, where she learned the value of hard work and determination. Wanting to leave the poverty behind, she was ready to move on, until she faced the imminent foreclosure on the family land, and decided she just couldn’t let it go. She’s a savvy businesswoman and a principled leader. Her story is interesting, but I found it somewhat repetitive.
My full review HERE

Simon the Fiddler – Paulette Jiles – 4****
Set in Texas at the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the reconstruction period, Jiles follows Simon Boudlin and his band of iterant musicians as they try to stay alive and out of trouble, and as Simon tries to win the heart of Doris, an indentured immigrant Irish lass. Simon is a marvelous character: intelligent, quick witted, resourceful, and determined. I love the way Jiles crafts her novels. While the plot focuses on the characters and their reactions to events happening around them, the atmosphere is enhanced by her descriptions of the landscape, the food, and culture of the times.
My full review HERE

Ashfall – Mike Millens – 3.5***
As post-apocalyptic novels go, I found this one is pretty interesting, engaging and compelling. I was quickly drawn in by Alex and his situation. But the book really came alive when he meets up with Darla. I want to read more about HER!
My full review HERE

Peter Handke, Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos [2002] 759 pages [Kindle, Open Library, in German]

I think that this is the longest book I have ever read in German, with the possible exception of Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes, and it wasn't really much easier. Both Hegel and Handke use endless sentences, invent their own words, and are concerned with metaphysics and epistemology. Handke's novel (like many of his plays) is filled with strange compound words and compound phrases, and abounds in seemingly random lists of things that have no apparent connection with one another.

The "plot", if one can call it that, is simple: the protagonist is a middle-aged woman, an orphan from a "Wendish" village, who was once a filmstar and later a leading figure in the world of banking and finance, who commissions an author to write her life story. She is unusual in that she sees "pictures" -- "Bilder" -- which are a kind of involuntary vision or hallucination of places she has been in the past; as long as she is in a picture she is in a different timeflow and cannot be reached by the outside world. She sets out from her unnamed Northern "Flußhafenstadt" to meet the author in La Mancha (yes, there are many references to Cervantes), crossing the Sierra de Gredos, first by car, then by bus, and ultimately on foot. She stops over in several places, each stranger than the last -- or perhaps her perceptions just become stranger. There are also mentions of a brother, who has just been released from prison as a terrorist, and a runaway daughter. As in most of what I have read by Handke, there are no proper names given for any of the major or minor characters, who are all referred to by descriptions -- in this novel often followed by "or whatever he/she was". The real "adventure" takes place in the mind of the woman, the "Adventurer", in her perceptions, feelings, memories, and interpretations.

The woman and the author agree that the author will use his imagination in telling her story; there is also mention of "false authors" who have changed facts or misinterpreted them; and much of the book is mental (or real) dialogues between the woman and the author about what to put in the book -- "is this still said", "find another word", "avoid such and such a word", "should I include this" etc. The narration as we read it is therefore not necessarily "factual" or consistent; many chapters read like dream experiences with the same characters reappearing in different times and places playing different roles, with different occupations and so forth, and with events which are inconsistent with each other or with past reported events, and have no causes and no consequences. We aren't told that these sequences, which are incorporated in the narrative on the same footing as other events, are dreams, although other dreams are mentioned and reported briefly as such.

Throughout the book there is discussion of time, of different relationships to time, of a "great time" which lies behind the normal time we experience, of "clocktime" as against time measured by normal life, and so on. Not surprisingly, then, it isn't clear in what time period the novel is set. There are mentions of cell-phones, computers, the Internet, jet contrails, in-flight movies, and other technologies which suggest it is set about the time it was written; on the other hand, throughout the book there are propeller-driven bombers flying overhead and a threat of war from Africa, which suggests the time of the Spanish Civil War; and toward the end it is mentioned that during her journey the first manned spaceship has landed on Mars. Not to mention the occasional appearences of King and Kaiser Karl the First and Fifth, or an actor in a re-enactment of his life, "or whoever he was."

There are some interesting ideas and much good writing in this novel, as well as much that was just unclear or even boring, but I couldn't put it together as a whole.

Wolfgang Köhler, The Mentality of Apes [1913; rev. ed. 1924; tr. 1927] 293 pages

This book is a classic of primate psychology, based on experiments Köhler carried out on captive chimpanzees in Tenerife in the Canary Islands just before and during the First World War. He was among the first investigators to reject the dogmatic insistence of most psychologists that animals were incapable of intelligent behavior and demonstrate experimentally that chimpanzees, at least, were capable of solving problems by considering the situation and adopting "roundabout" methods, including making and using simple "implements". He also rejects the lay anthropomorphism which exaggerates similarity to humans, and tries to determine what the limits of the chimpanzees abilities are and what that can teach about the origins of human intelligence. Of course, since that time much more has been learned, such as the abilities of chimpanzees to learn sign language and the way they behave in the wild, but this was the beginning.

A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization [1964, rev. 1977] 445 pages

A. Leo Oppenheim was one of the most prominent Assyriologists of the twentieth century; this book, originally written in 1964, was being revised at the time of his death and the revision was completed from his notes by Erica Reiner. It is a very personal, not to say idiosyncratic, but quite interesting account of Mesopotamian (Akkadian) culture. It is not a history (there is just one chapter which gives brief schematic histories of Babylonia and Assyria from Sargon to Nabonidus), but written in his own words from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology; although he takes into account the development through time, the book is organized by topics rather than chronology. While there are occasional references to the Sumerians, the book essentially deals only with the Akkadian culture, from the time of Sargon on. Nearly everything is based on cuneiform texts, rather than archaeological evidence. Throughout the book there is a polemic against what he considered the shortcomings of the Assyriology of his day. Nevertheless, it was used as a beginning textbook for some twenty years (that is probably how it should be regarded, rather than as a popularization for the general reader) and despite being a half-century out of date it is still an important starting point for anyone who wants to know something about the Ancient Near East.

Cold Snap (Lucy Kincaid #7) by Allison Brennan
5 ★

Three stories in one. Patrick is in San Francisco trying to help the daughter of a family friend while Lucy and Sean are snowbound at a hotel in Denver surrounded by dead bodies. All the stories are intriguing and fast paced.
Patrick’s story was a hard one for me because it had to do with missing teens and human trafficking. Some of the scene are brutal and heart wrenching. Ella Santana is a strong female character who gives Patrick a run for his money and possibly wins his heart. I liked Ella and her determination to save all teens that are on the streets. Jack makes an appearance in this story and it made me smile. I look forward to watching how the relationship between her and Patrick grows.
Lucy, Sean, Dillon and Kate are all stuck in Denver due to a snow storm that has grounded all flights. One dead body turns into 3 and now the race is on to catch the killer before the storm lets up and the killer gets away. I really liked how well Lucy and Kate work together. The case is solved rather quickly and the story itself was good, but it didn’t catch my attention like the others. I did like how Lucy’s and Patrick’s stories run simultaneously.
The final story takes place at the hospital where everyone has gathered. Lucy’s father, Colonel Kincaid, has had a heart attack and Lucy, Patrick and everyone else rush to the hospital as soon as they land. What surprises them all is that there has been an incident and Carina has been taken hostage by a man with a gun who is demanding the truth about his sister’s death. I enjoyed this story the most, maybe because I work in the medical field. Lucy shows that she is going to be an excellent FBI agent. She is able to keep the gunman calm and knows what will set him off.
This book gave me the feeling that things are changing for the Kincaid family. In this case, change is good.

Daisy Jones And the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid – 3***
A book within a book, that purportedly tells the story of a famous rock band of the 1970s, told as an “oral history.” It’s a love story, a history of the 1970s rock scene, a coming of age story, and a story of how addiction steals the best parts of our lives. I didn’t like the main characters. And as for plot – it just didn’t seem to be going anywhere, or at least not anywhere I wanted to go. And then I got to the ending and my breath was taken away. Those last twenty pages made me bump the rating up from 2 to 3 stars.
My full review HERE

Peter Handke, Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) [2005] 159 pages [Kindle, Open Library, in German]

Near the ruins of the Port-Royal convent, an unsuccessful innkeeper is sitting in his garden, when Don Juan leaps over the garden wall to escape pursuit from a couple on a motorcycle. For the next seven days, Don Juan narrates the story of the previous week, a day at a time; or rather the innkeeper relates his narration. This is another version of Don Juan, neither a seducer or a victim of women, but someone with a great sadness, who somehow liberates women's desires with his "look" and then feels a "duty" to satisfy them for the night. The stories are all very sketchy, especially after the first three days. Hard to follow, this is written in the same style as Der Bildverlust with the same metaphysical ruminations on time: even the same confused pizza delivery boy on a motorbike shows up everywhere, as in the earlier novel.

Jane Glover, Handel in London: A Genius and His Craft [2018] 430 pages

Jane Glover, a British conductor, has written a very readable popular biography of Handel for the general reader, focused mainly on the performances of his operas and oratorios. This was not intended as an original contribution to scholarship, and there is a minimum of references and a very short bibliography. There is no technical analysis of his music. Despite its length it was a quick and enjoyable read.

Hidden Bodies (You #2) by Caroline Kepnes
4 ★

First things first…if you watched the TV show You, you may be disappointed reading this book. The characters, for the most part, are the same, but the storyline is very different. I really liked Love in the TV series, but not so much in the book. She reminded me of Peach from book 1 and I was surprised that Joe would fall for a girl like that. Love’s brother Forty is the same in both. He’s a goofy drug addict with dreams of making it big. He’s actually a fun character. Sometimes the worse make the story. Dr. Nicky returns and remember the cup of urine from book 1? Yep, it makes an appearance as well.
I did enjoy the book for the most part. It’s a good story that moves quickly and has you sitting on the edge of your seat during some parts. Joe kills multiple people throughout the book, as expected, and I find it interesting how he decides their fate. He truly has a twisted mind.
The book ends with a huge cliffhanger that isn’t in the TV series. I look forward to the next book in the series and will probably read it before I watch the next season of the series.

Adonis, Mahmud Darwish, and Samih al-Qasim, Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry [1984] 165 pages

An anthology of three of the most important twentieth-century Arab poets, translated by Abdullah al-Udhari. Each is represented by fifteen poems, written shortly before the anthology was published; in fact many of the poems are published here for the first time in Arabic, and all for the first time in English translation. Mahmud Darwish (Palestinian, born 1942) is probably the best known; one of his anthologies is next month's reading for the World Literature group I belong to on Goodreads. Samih al-Qasim (born 1939) was also Palestinian. Both were represented by a small number of poems in the anthology by Alshaer (The Map of Absence) that the Goodreads group read for this month. Adonis (pen name of Ali Ahmad Said, born 1930) was the oldest of the three, and one of the pioneers in modern Arabic poetry; he was born in Syria, but after being imprisoned for his political activities (as were the other two as well) he went into exile in Beirut when he was 26.

As always, I have to begin by admitting that I am unqualified to review modern poetry, and particularly when I don't read the language of the original; however, I did find all three poets enjoyable and full of striking images -- although in some cases I think I didn't have the cultural knowledge to fully appreciate them. A highlight was the long poem "The Desert" written by Adonis during the 1982 siege of Beirut.

Flash And Bones – Kathy Reichs – 3***
Book # 14 in the very popular Temperance Brennan mystery series, featuring the forensic anthropologist who splits her time between Quebec and North Carolina. Reichs is great at plotting intricate mysteries and this is no exception. There are plenty of twists and turns, old and new murders to consider, red herrings and suspects galore. My main problem with the series is that Tempe manages to get herself into serious trouble, but is always rescued by a conveniently handy big, strong man.
My full review HERE

Mahmoud Darwish, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? [1995, tr. 2006] 197 pages

A bilingual collection of poetry by Mahmud Darwish, translated by Jeffrey Sacks. The collection begins at least as a kind of verse autobiography, which gave the poems more of a sequence and connection than in some of his other collections which I am reading, and I really found much that spoke to me; toward the end, on the other hand, I couldn't understand a lot of what he was saying. What I understood was incredible.

Under the Mercy Trees – Heather Newton – 3.5***
Oh, what a tangled web we weave… There are so many things going on, so many secrets, so many betrayals. We have people consumed by alcohol (and/or drugs), mean-spirited control freaks, unfaithful spouses, guilty consciences, mental (and physical) illness and abject loneliness that comes with keeping all that bottled up. I’m exhausted by the effort required by these characters to hide so much and still co-exist in such tight quarters. This is Newton’s only novel; I wish there were more for me to read.
My full review HERE

Elevation – Stephen King – 4****
This was a delightful novella with an unusual plot device, but that focuses on human kindness and respect. King gives us a lesson on what it means to be a good neighbor, and how to support one another despite our differences. I like the way that they slowly come to know one another and resolve their conflicts. My edition also included a bonus short story, “Laurie”> about a widower and his new puppy, which was a nice break from King’s well-known horror genre.
My full review HERE

Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly's Burden [2007] 327 pages

Another bilingual anthology of poetry by Mahmud Darwish, this one translated by Fady Joudah. It actually contains three of his collections: The Stranger's Bed (1998) is mainly love poetry; A State of Siege (2002) is about the siege of Ramallah; and Don't Apologize for What You've Done is both personal and political. All were consistently good; this is probably the best poetry I have read in a long time.


Mahmoud Darwish, Almond Blossoms and Beyond [2005, tr. 2009] 95 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

Another collection of great poetry by Darwish, translated by Mohammed Shaheen.

Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence [2006, tr. 2011] 171 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

(Translated by Sinan Antoon) This is a "self-elegy", a classical Arabic genre; it presents itself as a sort of funeral oration at his death (it was written two years before he died), in a dialogue between his two selves, the self of presence and the self of absence. It's not poetry (although it incorporates poems, usually at the end of each chapter), but neither is it exactly prose; it's written in the same style of images as his poetry. It includes a certain amount of autobiography, but is really more of a self-portrait, looking back over his lifetime and what it meant. It combines personal feelings, political commentary, and aesthetic discussions of poetry.

Mahmoud Darwish, A River Dies of Thirst [2008, tr. 2009] 153 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

(Translated by Catherine Cobham) His penultimate collection, this and I Don't Want This Poem to End were both published posthumously. It has both normal poems and prose poems, the latter predominating. There are many subjects treated, including some of his most biting political satire.

Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9) by J.R. Ward
5 ★

I love a book with a strong female main character and Payne is that character in this book. Jane comes in a close second. The way these two women handle Vishous is high-five worthy. The reader learns more about Vishous and his tragic upbringing and there are reasons he’s rough and gruff. Seeing him loosen up a bit and finally face his past (Thank you, Butch!) made me admire his strength and perseverance.
Payne is a unique female in the vampire world. She is a fighter and I hope we get to see her Xhex in action together at some point. I was a bit worried about Payne in the beginning and the way she interacted with Dr. Manello. She fell for him hard and quick. Manny ends up being a straight up good guy with an interesting family heritage.
I’ve about had it with Quinn and his “pity me” story. I wish he would just man up and tell Blay how he feels.
The high point is Payne and Vishous’s past. Xcor has been looking for Payne for centuries and he gets a big surprise when he finally finds her. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him, though. He’s not Wrath’s biggest fan.

Dance Hall Of the Dead – Tony Hillerman – 3***
Book two in Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn series, set on the Navajo nation of southwest United States. I love Joe Leaphorn as a character, and the way he deliberates before taking action. I also appreciate learning a bit of Native-American culture with each mystery. Definitely a series I’ll continue reading.
My full review HERE

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland -and- Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll – 3***
Believe or not, I had never read this classic of children’s literature before. Oh, I knew the basics of the story. I certainly understand why this story is so beloved by so many legions of children. There is absurdity, fun word play, unusual situations, talking animals, and a slew of outlandish characters. Still, I think I just may be too old to really appreciate it. I just couldn’t let my imagination run wild and enjoy it
My full review HERE

Bloodline by Jess Lourey
4 ★

After being mugged in Minnesota, pregnant Joan Harken moves to her boyfriend’s hometown of Lilydale. Although the town is full of friendly people, Joan feels that something is off and fears for herself and her unborn child.
The main storyline centers around the real life disappearance of a child from a small town in 1944. Although there are Rosemary’s Baby vibes throughout the whole book, I did enjoy the story. When the truth is revealed near the end, it really got interesting. The whole concept that the town’s Fathers and Mothers follow is truly disturbing.
Joan Harken has a good head on her shoulders and knows that something is off right from the start. Her boyfriend, Deck, is obviously involved, but she continues to trust him, which ends up being a mistake. Most of the residents of Lilydale are afraid of the Fathers and Mothers and turn a blind eye to all the activities. The whole town had a cult like feel to it.
Most of the book was a slow read for me, but the last 100 pages or so really held my attention.

Mahmoud Darwish, I Don't Want This Poem to End: Early and Late Poems [2017] 242 pages

This anthology, the book I read for the Goodreads World Literature group that is reading Arabic literature in translation this year, contains three collections of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry translated by Mohammed Shaheen, and some additional matter in the back, most importantly his essay "On Exile" which I think is very important for the understanding of how his poetry evolved over time. The three collections represent three different phases of his writing, although I think the subtitle is somewhat misleading. The first collection, The End of Night (1967), is from his earlier period, when he still lived as an "internal exile" in Palestine, and the earliest poetry I have read by him, but from what I have read about him it is already in a more mature poetic style than his first few collections (the earliest is from 1960) which were apparently more directly political without much poetic sophistication, although I would love to read some of them. The second collection, It is a Song, It is a Song is not really early or late, but belongs to his "middle" period when he was in exile in Lebanon, Tunis, and France, and the third collection, I Don't Want This Poem to End was put together posthumously, after the establishment of the "Palestinian Authority" when he divided his time between Ramallah in the PA and Amman (the Introduction by Elias Khoury explains how the poems were found and edited after his death.)

Darwish is widely regarded as the "National Poet of Palestine"; a young child at the time of the Nakba, his entire life was spent in internal or external exile, and his poetic work is imbued with the ideas of resistance, exile, and return, although the forms in which he envisioned them changed over time. (I should apologize for one comment I made in my review of Alshaer's anthology of writings on the Nakba, where, mislead by Alshaer's introduction and not yet knowing much about Darwish, I attributed to him the statement that the Israelis should go home and give the land back. Actually, he explained that the one poem in which he said something like that was referring to the territories seized in 1967 and not to Palestine as a whole, and because of the misunderstanding he never included that poem in any of his collections or allowed it to be anthologized.) Darwish always clearly focused his fire on the Zionist enterprise of establishing an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, and unlike some of the dubious supporters of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world (and elsewhere) never descended into anti-Semitism or ethnic or religious hatred, which he considered the characteristics of the enemy, and refused to dehumanize Israeli Jews. He attributed his knowledge of literature to a Jewish teacher, and pointed out that his early political activity in the Israeli Communist Party was side by side with Jewish comrades. This is exemplified by two of the best poems (and the most criticized by extremists) in The End of Night. One is "Rita and the Rifle", about his Israeli Jewish lover (a comrade from that time; apparently they lived together for a couple years, but of course marriages between Jews and non-Jews were not allowed by the Zionist government, an example of their apartheid mentality.) Some critics think that much of his anonymous love poetry is actually about Rita, although he did have two short-lived marriages. The other is "A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies" about an Israeli soldier who admits to committing atrocities and just wants to go home. (The Israeli military has always had problems with soldiers who resist committing war-crimes.) In fact, the soldier was Shlomo Sand, who later became a famous historian who undermined the "historical" justification for Zionism in his book The Invention of the Jewish People.

All three collections are about exile, but the second and third collection have a somewhat wider focus; the second collection seemed a bit more disillusioned, more about coming to terms with an extended exile, and the third collection is concerned also with personal death; there is also more about poetry as such, and about love. This is some of the best poetry I have ever read.

The Odds – Stewart O’Nan – 4****
Subtitle: A Love Story Art and Marian Fowler travel to Niagara Falls for a sort of second honeymoon. Their thirty-year marriage is in shambles, and they’re facing financial ruin, so, of course, they cash in their life’s savings and decide to bet it all at roulette. Oh, I love O’Nan’s writing! He gives two wonderful characters, warts and all. At the end I’m betting on THEM.
My full review HERE

Stories I Only Tell My Friends – Rob Lowe – 3.5***
In general, I’m not a great fan of celebrity memoirs, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. From summer stock as a teen in Dayton, Ohio, to starring roles in the Brat-Pack films of the ‘80s, and on to The West Wing, I found his story engaging and interesting.
My full review HERE

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day [1945] 895 pages

This is probably the best-known book in English on the history of philosophy. Russell describes it as an attempt to provide the history of philosophy with its historical context; in fact, he gives a certain context for the philosophers themselves, when and under what circumstances they lived and wrote, but there is very little to connect the historical context to their actual doctrines except in the most general terms. The historical background itself, although certainly better than the twenty years older book by Durant (The Story of Philosophy) that I negatively reviewed previously, is rather superficial, though not actually wrong as in that book; it is also very outdated, not just because the book was written during the Second World War, but because, to the extent that he cites sources -- the book is poorly documented and has no bibliography -- they are almost all from the teens and twenties, if not earlier.

My major problem with the book is that it is less a history of philosophy than a description of Russell's own philosophy using the past philosophers as opportunities to bring in various aspects of his own as criticisms or commentaries. Of course, to some extent any history of philosophy will do this, especially when written by a philosopher, but it is very noticeable here. The philosophers from the nineteenth century on, in particular, are briefly described, and in some cases caricatured, before presenting Russell's views on the subjects they deal with. The earlier writers are dealt with somewhat more fairly.

In short, this is an important book for understanding Russell and the analytic tradition in philosophy, but not a really good source for understanding the history of philosophy. For that, I would still have to suggest Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy for the Greeks and Copleston's History of Philosophy for the Middle Ages through Kant; I've never found a really good book on more recent philosophy -- I suppose any book would be tendentious, but perhaps the nineteenth and twentieth century writers don't need much context. In any case, there is no substitute for reading the philosophers themselves.

Thad Q. Bartlett, The Gibbons of Khao Yai: Seasonal Variation in Behavior and Ecology [2009] 170 pages

This is a summary of the author's field studies of a population of white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lars) in the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. The study focuses on two groups (i.e. two pairs of male and female with associated infants, juveniles and adolescents) over a period of a year, from February of 1994 through January of 1995. Since most studies of gibbons had been done in rain forest environments which were more or less similar year-round and many of the hypotheses about gibbon behavior assumed a year-round equal abundance of fruit, the author wanted to study a population in a seasonal environment where fruit was scarce during parts of the year. For example, some hypotheses suggested that gibbon social structure evolved as an adaptation to a preferred diet of figs, but the data from this study showed that figs were not preferred but a "fallback" food when fruit was scarce. The book ends with discussions of various hypotheses to explain why gibbons evolved territoriality and social monogamy; this was very interesting and did not come to any definite conclusion beyond a preference for defense of scarce but stable resources.

Fortunately, the Milk – Neil Gaiman – 4****
This is a delightful fantastical romp of a story. There’s so much in this book it would almost be easier to list what is NOT in the book (no broccoli … that I recall). We have pirates, spaceship abduction, a stegosaurus in a balloon, sharks, piranhas, a volcano, unpredictable time travel, vampires, and, fortunately, the milk.
My full review HERE

Cherry Cheesecake Murder – Joanne Fluke – 1.5*
Book Number Eight in the Hannah Swenson cozy mystery series, featuring the Cookie Shop proprietor, her two sisters, and their mother, along with a regular cast of town residents. This is bad on so many levels. I am completely over Hannah’s dithering over her two suitors, her mother’s constant interference, her sister Andrea’s histrionics, and Hannah’s penchant for correcting everyone’s grammar. On the other hand, the cookie recipes are very good. Fluke should write a cookie cookbook and leave the tortured plots behind.
My full review HERE

Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq [Third ed., 1992] 547 pages

A history of Mesopotamia from the Neanderthals of the Middle Palaeolithic (c. 70,000 years ago) to the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BC (with a short chapter on the later Persian, Hellenistic and Parthian periods). Georges Roux, though very knowledgeable about Mesopotamian history and culture, was not an academic (he was a medical officer for Iraqi Petroleum) and the book is written for the lay reader, as readably as one could expect, given the large amount of information which is hard to assimilate in a relatively short book (relatively short for what it deals with, as compared to say the Cambridge Ancient History). He discusses the literature, art, and general culture, but it is integrated with the history and the book is in general chronological, as opposed to the topical organization of the last book I read on the subject (Oppenheim's Ancient Mesopotamia).

The most interesting parts to me were the earlier chapters on the development of agriculture, pottery, and urbanization, and the Sumerian invention of writing; the later parts rather overwhelmed me with the political and especially military history, but at least (unlike the Oppenheim book) it had a few maps, which were very necessary. I wish it had had more, and in particular maps for the different periods rather than putting all the sites mentioned in the book onto the same maps. I would recommend reading this along with H.J. Nissen's The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 BC which is the best book I have read on the subject.

Roux points out in the preface to the third edition that in the twelve years since the second edition there had been an incredible amount of new archaeological research which had already made that edition outdated, so I was worried that after twenty eight years this might be similarly outdated, but then I read his statement that archaeological excavations had "temporarily" ended because of the Gulf War, and realized that given the history since then it might not be so obsolete after all, unfortunately.

Small As an Elephant – Jennifer Richard Jacobson – 3.5***
This children’s book deals with mental illness. Jack Martel emerges from his pup tent to find that his mother is missing. Eleven-year-old Jack must find his mom before the authorities intervene and separate them forever. I loved Jack; he’s resilient, intelligent, resourceful and brave. He’s also scared. But he’s determined to find his Mom and hopes he can forgive her for leaving him alone.
My full review HERE

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – 5*****
My all-time favorite novel, which I re-read every few years. This is a singularly powerful novel that had a great impact on me when I first read it at age 13, and has never failed to move and inspire me as I’ve re-read it over the years. It’s a well-paced novel, a fast read with elements of suspense, family drama, humor and moral lessons.
My full review HERE

Khaled Khalifa, In Praise of Hatred [2008, tr. 2012] 299 pages

In Praise of Hatred is a novel about the violence in Syria under the regime of Hafez al-Assad in the late 1970's and 1980's. I know very little about the history, but according to the introduction this is the background: In 1970, a section of the military, composed mainly of the members of the minority Alawi sect (Shia), and led by al-Assad, took power, claiming to represent the interests of both the Alawi and majority Sunni peasantry against the Sunni urban bourgeoisie. By the mid-70's, the regime had shown itself to be corrupt and repressive, and the government and security forces (the army and the mukhabarat or secret police) were dominated by the Alawi sect. The regime also intervened in the Lebanese Civil War on the side of the right-wing Christian Phalange militias, also supported by Israel, against the Moslem, leftist and Palestinian alliance. As a result, an opposition was formed, led by the Muslim Brotherhood. In order to win support against the government, the opposition promoted ethnic and religious hatred against the Alawis, and of course the religious fanatics soon gained control of the organizations. The government responded with increased repression, the opposition launched a campaign of assassinations not only against the government but against the Alawi civilians and those who were insufficiently fanatic against them, and the situation spiraled into a virtual civil war which resulted in tens of thousands killed, mainly by the government. The uprising was crushed by the early 1980's. (The regime of al-Assad, followed in 2000 by his son Bashar, has remained in power, although a second uprising which was ongoing at the time the introduction was written (part of the so-called "Arab Spring") has led to the Syrian Civil War which has been going on ever since.) I don't know how accurate this description is, but it sounds reasonable, although I suspect a fuller account would involve world politics. In any case, this is the situation presupposed by the novel.

The book tells the story of one family in Aleppo; the unnamed first-person narrator at the beginning is in her early teens, for some reason disliked by her mother and living with her unmarried aunts Maryam and Safaa after the death of her grandparents. The household is very religious and strict even for Aleppo; at school, she and other religious girls form a small group which is made fun of as the "Penguin Club" for their conservative black clothing. From the beginning, the narrator is lonely and repressed, and considers herself a victim of persecution. Another aunt, Marwa, returns to the household after an unsuccessful marriage; there are also three uncles, Bakr, Selim and Omar who occasionally visit, and a blind servant named Radwan. Later on, Bakr's wife Zahra also joins the family, while Safaa leaves to marry Abdullah (who is connected to the mujahideen in Afghanistan). These are the major characters.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first part, "Women Led By the Blind", begins rather slowly, and deals with the household and her school days. It is also sometimes a little obscure without more knowledge than I have of the cultural background; in particular, I'm sure that the various surahs of the Quran that are mentioned have a significance to the narrative. Eventually, through her Uncle Bakr, a leader of the opposition organization (throughout, Khalifa avoids naming historical people or organizations; the Sunni and Alawi are only referred to as "the sect" and "the other sect", the Muslim Brotherhood is just "the organization" and so forth), the narrator (now a medical student) becomes involved in a "prayer group" which is actually an activist cell. Here she learns to hate not only the death squads and the regime (which is understandable) but "the other sect" and virtually everyone who is not part of "the organization". She comes to be contemptuous of her family (other than Bakr and her brother Hossam, also an activist) for their "weakness" in not hating the "other sect". For a time, she is very repellent as a character, and finds her meaning in life in "praise of hatred." The novel is really a study in the psychology of fanaticism. The second part, "The Embalmed Butterflies", follows the family through the state of siege in Aleppo; the third part, "The Scent of Spices", shifts to another setting (I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers.) I'm not sure how the novel originally ended; the translator's afterword tells us that the ending was modified "with the approval of the author". In the translation at least, the narrator eventually overcomes her devotion to hatred and adopts the tolerance which is the message of the novel.

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text [1930, 1985] 267 pages

Faulkner is a classic American author that I have somehow never read much of; in fact nothing except The Sound and the Fury in college a half-century ago. I read in a review of one of the next books I am reading (Khaled Khalifa's Death Is Hard Work) that it was similar in plot to (perhaps modeled on?) As I Lay Dying and decided to read it first. Probably too well-known to require much summarizing, this is a dark comedy about a poor family taking the body of the mother to be buried in her hometown some forty or fifty miles away, despite multiple obstacles (the rivers were flooding, bridges washed out, etc.) Like The Sound and the Fury, written the year before this, it treats a basically realistic story in an experimental manner, using multiple, not entirely compatible perspectives in a sort of "stream-of-consciousness" technique. I will probably want to read more of Faulkner at some point.

A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) by Sabaa Tahir
5 ★

The final battle. The war that brings enemies together and makes them allies. The Blood Shrike, Laia of Serra and The Soul Catcher must bring down Keris Veturia and the Nightbringer to save the empire.

I don’t even know where to start. This whole series was a delightful rollercoaster of emotions. The characters have grown up so much throughout the series and the author made me, the reader, feel like I was on the journey with them. This is one series that I will greatly miss.
This final chapter in the lives of Laia, Helene (Blood Shrike) and Elias (The Soul Catcher) is packed with surprises, hope, devastation, and joy. I cried and laughed throughout the book. The deaths were the hardest for me. Many times while reading a book I may question why a character had to die. This was not a question I had with this book. Each death had a meaning and strengthened the other characters. I also like how the author did not spare the main characters. All of them suffered tremendous pain and injury during the battle.
As I turned the last page I did it with a tear in my eye. A tear of sadness and happiness. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending and relieved. There is still so much story left with this group of characters, in my opinion. There are no unanswered questions, just a want of more. This author is truly a great storyteller and I can’t wait to see what she does next. I highly recommend this series to everyone.

Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter
4 ★

This is a vivid account of a school bombing in 1927 that took the lives of 38 children and 6 adults. Some of it was hard to read due to the detailed descriptions of the injuries and destruction. Andrew P. Kehoe blamed the whole town, and his wife, for his financial issues and the tax put on the town to help build the school was his biggest complaint. It’s sad that he felt like punishing the townspeople in this way was the answer. If all the explosives that he had planted had detonated the whole town of Bath, Michigan would have been gone. The story is told in great detail and gives the reader the background behind the town and Andrew Kehoe.
The book also contains the story of Charles Lindbergh and his 1927 nonstop flight from New York City to Paris. His adventure takes places during the same time as the Bath bombing. The author also mentions many other crimes that took place during that time period. One that is told is the story of the murder of Albert Snyder by his wife, Ruth Snyder, and her boyfriend, Henry Judd Gray. There are also many cases mentioned in the book that involve child culprits. Thankfully none of these are told on detail.
All in all, the book was interesting and well written. I have enjoyed many books by Harold Schechter and I look forward to reading more.
(Advanced readers copy courtesy of NetGalley)

Khaled Khalifa, Death Is Hard Work [2016. tr. 2019] 180 pages

Khaled Khalifa's Death Is Hard Work retells the story of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, set in Syria during the still-ongoing Civil War in that country. Three estranged siblings, Hussein, Bolbol and Fatima, transport the body of their father, Abdel Latif, from Damascus to be buried in his native village of Anabiya outside Aleppo, as he desired. The trip, which should take no more than four or five hours, takes three days; the place of the flooding rivers in Faulkner's novel is taken by the checkpoints set up every few miles by the al-Assad regime, the Free Syrian Army, and the Islamist extremists, the three warring factions which have divided Syria since the "Arab Spring".

The novel combines the personal stories of the three siblings, presented in memories, and the depiction of the ravages of the Civil War, as they pass dead bodies lying in the roadside and bombed out and abandoned villages; they are continually passed by convoys of tanks and witness bombings and shellings in the near distance throughout the trip. As the body of the father decomposes, so does what is left of the family, just as in Faulkner's novel. This is a very powerful book; while Khalifa seems obviously more favorable, or least less unfavorable, to the FSA, the essential message is that the violence and hatred on all sides are destroying the country.

Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher [1991] 334 pages

This book divides more or less into two parts; in the first four chapters, Vlastos argues that the "Socrates" of the early dialogues of Plato, through the Gorgias, is essentially the historic Socrates, while in the last four he examines these dialogues to try to work out the major features of Socrates' moral philosophy.

He begins by showing that the "Socrates" of the earlier dialogues, ironic and "elenchic" and limited to moral philosophizing, is significantly different from and incompatible with the "Socrates" of the middle dialogues, who presents positive theses and deals with non-moral questions of metaphysics and epistemology and has distinctively Platonic theories about the Ideas, the tripartite soul, and so forth. Oddly, he spends much time arguing that the "Socrates" of the middle dialogues is Platonic rather than historically Socratic, something which no one would question, rather than what he needs to prove, that the "Socrates" of the earlier dialogues does not represent an earlier Platonic theory different from that of Socrates. He then deals with the evidence of Xenophon and Aristotle, showing that it is broadly compatible with the early Platonic dialogues; where Xenophon differs from early Plato, he tries to show either that the features in Xenophon which differ from Plato also contradict other claims in Xenophon himself, or are unlikely on general principles. He makes a big point of the fact that Plato was "closer" to Socrates' circle than Xenophon, who was in Anatolia at the time of the trial and execution of Socrates; he also argues that Plato as a philosopher would have understood Socrates better than the "litterateur" Xenophon, although this really cuts both ways. I think it is probable that the early Plato is basically still following the philosophy of Socrates (as he understood it), but I find it difficult to believe that he didn't add or change anything until after the Gorgias. Without the lost dialogues (which we know existed) of those like Crito, Phaedo and so forth who actually (unlike both Plato and Xenophon) belonged to Socrates' "inner circle", I think it is really impossible to be sure. (Guthrie's history still seems to me to be better balanced.)

The second part is a good discussion of some of the major questions of the early Platonic dialogues; it doesn't really matter if we consider it a study of Socrates or of the early Plato. He focuses especially on the rejection of "retaliation" and the relationship of virtue to happiness, and everything he says is interesting if not completely convincing.

One point I need to make is that while Vlastos says he is trying to write in ordinary, non-technical language for non-scholars, this is disproved by his constant polemical references to other writers (not to mention his frequent untranslated Greek quotations.) This is a book for students of the history of Greek philosophy with a certain amount of background.

Naguib Mahfouz, The Mirage [1948, tr. 2009] 385 pages

Since one of my reading projects this year focuses on Arabic literature, I'm taking the opportunity to read more of one of the best novelists I've read, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, in roughly chronological order. Written three years after Cairo Modern and a few years before The Cairo Trilogy, two of my favorites, The Mirage is a very different kind of novel, with no politics or history; it is a psychological study of a man who was raised by an overprotective mother and is pathologically shy and fearful, with no confidence in himself. It is written in the first person, as a kind of confession. Everything Kamil, the protagonist and narrator, attempts ends up in failure or tragedy; at the end one is not really sure whether or not he has changed in any real way. Definitely a good book but not really in a class with his more political novels.

Betrayal in Death (In Death #12) by J.D. Robb
4 ★
A serial killer strikes at the Roarke Palace Hotel and Lt. Eve Dallas works hard to stop him before he gets to his possible finally target – Roarke.

Poor Roarke. He always seems to be indirectly involved in all of Eve’s cases. You would think this would make reading this series tedious, but it really doesn’t. The cases are all interesting and suspenseful. It’s been a while since I read the previous In Death book, but I feel like Eve is starting to loosen up a bit and I believe her relationship with Roarke has been a good thing for her. The term “opposites attract” rings true in this series.
Mick, an old friend of Roarke’s shows up in this one and Eve doesn’t trust him. I got bad vibes from him too. With everything that was going on, his sudden appearance seems obvious. Peabody and McNab really have issues in this book. Hopefully we will see them together soon. They are a perfect match. Mavis makes a short appearance, but makes a big show out of it. I love this character! Somerset plays a bigger role in this one and I was hoping that the situation would resolve the issues between him and Eve. I was wrong, but that doesn’t upset me. I would miss the snarky remarks.

A Bookshop In Berlin – Françoise Frenkel – 4****
Subtitle: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape From the Nazis. Originally titled ”No Place To Lay One’s Head”, this is an interesting first-hand account of the author’s ultimately successful journey to safety in Switzerland.
My full review HERE

Melissa wrote: "
Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter
4 ★..."

Love true crime .... this sounds interesting. Adding to my tbr.

Peter Handke, The Afternoon of a Writer [1987, tr. 1989] 86 pages

A translation of Handke's 1987 novella Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers.

I've been working my way through Peter Handke's writings in the original German for over a year, since he won the Nobel Prize at the end of 2019. I bought his first novel, Die Hornissen, a collection of his plays (which he is probably best known for), and his three most often mentioned novels, Die Angst des Tormanns am Elfmeter, Wunschloses Unglück, and Die linkshändige Frau, apart from which I limited myself to the five novels available free on Open Library. Although this gave me a fairly representative selection, it left one long chronological gap of over twenty years. So when I noticed that the local library (where I work, until I retire in two months) had acquired this book which fits right into that gap, I decided to break my rule against reading translations of works I could read in the original and borrow it.

The subject is just what the title suggests, one afternoon in the life of a writer. He writes his usual one or two sentences and then goes out for a walk through the nearby city (unnamed as often in Handke) and the wooded outskirts, stopping at a restaurant and later a pub, and coming home to go to bed. The style is typical of many of Handke's works from Die Hornissen on, a sort of stream-of-consciousness but with special attention to minute descriptions of sights, sounds and smells. The writer reflects on the relationship of writers to critics, readers, and "second-hand readers" who are hostile to reading due to their school experiences (I could expound here on my own theory of high school English classes as vaccination, but I won't.) This probably represents Handke's own opinions. In light of how prolific a writer Handke is, it's less likely that the difficulty the fictional writer has in transferring his experiences onto paper reflects Handke, although perhaps it represents an anxiety which most original authors must have about developing a long-term "writer's block" eventually -- his book I am reading now, Die Morawische Nacht is about a former author who no longer writes.

One typical feature of Handke's prose which I missed here was the constant hesitation of his narrators between near-synonymous words that my German-English dictionary translates by the same English word, one of my biggest difficulties in reading his books. I don't know whether he doesn't use that device here, or whether the translator just omitted it as untranslatable.

This short book is more readable than much of his writing and would probably be a good introduction to him for English readers, which may be why the library chose it (usually we wouldn't buy a fiction work more than thirty years old, other than recognized classics.)

Ibrahim Nasrallah, The Lanterns of the King of Galilee [2012, tr. 2014] 549 pages

Ibrahim Nasrallah has written many novels, including a long (and still ongoing) series called The Palestinian Comedy. The title is obviously modelled after Balzac's Human Comedy, but apart from being made up of numerous independent (but somewhat interconnected) novels, the two series are quite different. Where Balzac's novels are mainly contemporary fiction, and none are set more than about fifty years before it was written, Nasrallah's novels span some four hundred years; even in those which are set in the recent past, the purpose is to present historic events rather than as with Balzac to present the mores of a class or geographic area. As far as I know, only three books of Nasrallah's series have yet been translated into English, The Lanterns of the King of Galilee, A Time of White Horses (next month's reading for the World Literature group I am in on Goodreads, covering the first half of the twentieth century through the Nakba) and Gaza Weddings, which is set in the near past.

The subject of The Lanterns of the King of Galilee is a part of history I was not acquainted with, the rebellion of Daher al-Umar of Tiberias at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which for a time wrested Palestine, much of Lebanon and part of Syria from the control of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, Nasrallah chose this subject to demonstrate a historical context for the later struggles of the Palestinians for independence from foreign domination, by focusing on the closest they came to achieving it. There is some anachronism; as with those of Tariq Ali's The Islam Quintet, the hero is sometimes too perfect to believe, too modern and tolerant and too "feminist" to be really credible for the time and place he was in. This is a matter of opinion, of course, and I remember Ali argues for the reality of a more tolerant Islam in the past, but this is not the Middle Ages but the Ottoman Empire. Less debatable anachronisms are in the military history, with cannons firing explosive shells far into cities constantly, something that dates from the American Civil War (to some extent) and the Franco-Prussian War -- cannons at the time of the novel fired solid cannonballs. None of this, however, affects the basic theme of the book.

Whether the rebellion could have actually created a lasting independent Arab state in the region given the power the Ottomans still had at the time, is open to doubt. The fatal error of Nasrallah's Daher, and presumably the historical Daher so far as the little we know about him goes, was the same as that of Alexander the Great: the failure to establish a definite succession. At least Alexander had the excuse of dying young; Daher was 85 when he was killed. Whether his sons and generals would have accepted a settlement of the succession question of course is also unknown; this is the Achilles heel of any hereditary absolute state.

This was a well-written and fast-paced novel which never became boring despite its length, and I learned a lot of history from it.