Paging All Bookworms! discussion

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Read any good books lately? We want to know about them.
How about real stinkers? We want to know about those too!


Enter your reading list and/or reviews here. Did you like it? Hate it? Feel lukewarm?

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Happy reading!

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Jean Bottero, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia [1998, Eng. tr. 2001] 246 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

Having just read Thorkild Jacobsen's The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion from 1976, I decided to read this more recent book on the same subject. I'm not sure how much more recent it is, because although it was "thoroughly rewritten" in 1998, it is actually based on Bottero's earlier book on the subject written in 1948. Neither book references the other; Jacobsen's in not in the rather meager bibliography of this book, and his book has no bibliography at all. Although both books begin with Rudolf Otto's idea of the "numinous experience" at the beginning of religion, they come to very different conclusions, and in fact Bottero often seems to be directly contradicting Jacobsen. For example, where Jacobsen's first "metaphor" is non-anthropomorphic personifications, which later became the "emblems" of the anthropomorphic gods, Bottero says repeatedly that Mesopotamian religion was anthropomorphic from the beginning and never conceived of the gods in any other way, and that we have no way to understand why various gods were associated with certain emblems; where Jacobsen's second "metaphor" of the gods as rulers originated later, Bottero says that the gods were always considered as rulers although they were only later arranged in a hierarchy. Most importantly, where Jacobsen considers his third "metaphor" of the gods as parents to be the highest achievement of Mesopotamian religion, Bottero explicitly denies that the Mesopotamians ever did, or ever could have, conceived of a personal, loving relationship to the gods, who were too far above and too indifferent to man to inspire anything but fear and awe. The one respect in which Bottero seems more recent is in his emphasis on the limitations of our knowledge and the fact that he needs to defend the project of writing about the subject, undoubtedly a response to post-modern criticisms of the enterprise of writing history at all.

The book has seven chapters, but the first four are short preliminaries, on the history of the region, the nature of the sources, and the idea of numinous experience, and the last is a brief and superficial account of survivals and influence, mainly on the development of Mesopotamian astrology into astral religion in the Hellenistic age (He argues that in Mesopotamia astrology was in the context of other forms of divination, and represented signs or omens that the gods used to indicate their decisions, which could be appealed or averted through "exorcism", rather than the later fatalism in which the stars were the cause or at any rate an unchangeable sign of what would necessarily happen.) The bulk of the book, more than half, is composed of chapters five and six, "Religious Representation" and "Religious Behavior". The fifth chapter deals with the same subject as Jacobsen's book, although with different emphases; the sixth chapter deals with the things Jacobsen didn't include, that is the actual religious cult in the temples and the practice of divination and exorcism.

Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory (Richard Burton ed.) v.3 [Kindle, Project Gutenberg] approx. 350 pages

The third supplemental volume, this contains the additional tales which are in the Galland translation but not found in the MSS used by Burton in the text. The tales of "al-Zaynab" and "Aladdin" he located in Arabic MSS, the others in various sources. Among other tales this includes "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves". There is also a long appendix by Clouson giving the translations or paraphrases of various analogues to the included tales. As with the other Project Gutenberg e-book volumes of Burton (very atypical of PG) it was difficult to read because of typos in almost every line, despite claiming to have eight different proofreaders.

Eye Of the Needle – Ken Follett – 4.5****
Wow. Just, WOW. Fast-paced and engaging, this WW2 espionage thriller was Follett’s first successful endeavor as a novelist; he wrote it when he was only 27 years old! Follet uses three story arcs – the German spy, the British intelligence team on his trail, and the innocent woman who holds the key to success for one side or the other. Virtually every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, and Follett keeps the tension high, with the three storylines converging in a heart-stopping scenario.
LINK to my full review

Boubacar Boris Diop, Le Cavalier et son ombre [1997] 240 pages [Kindle] [in French]

Diop's fourth novel, like the first and second (I haven't read the third) has a very experimental style with a frame and an included story. The book is divided into three "days". It opens with the narrator, Lat-Sukabé, just having arrived in a town opposite the village of Bilenty, where his girlfriend Khadidja has been living for eight years since she "disappeared". She has sent him a letter telling him to come "before it is too late." He has arranged with "le Passeur" to carry him across the river in a pirogue, but there is some mystery on the part of this businessman, who appears not to want to take him across. During the first day, he remembers his life with Khadidja in Nimzatt, a poor quarter of the capital, and the part-time job she got as a story-teller to a mysterious person she never actually sees. Khadidja herself is an enigmatic personality with a strong imagination; we learn that she has had mental health issues in the past and has been confined in an asylum for the insane.

In the second day, which takes up almost the entire novel, he recounts her last story, the Cavalier and his shadow, which begins as a mythical tale of a knight who rescues a princess from a lake monster thousands of years ago but later incorporates the genocide in Rwanda and other events in recent African history.

On the third day, he has a conversation with le Passeur and embarks for the other side, and we are left as we were with the story of Queen Johanna in Les tambours de la mémoire questioning what has actually happened and what is only imagined.

John Wyndham, The Chrysalids [1955] 127 pages

"In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction." "Life is change; that is how it differs from the rocks." I was surprised to discover that these memorable lines from the Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation are actually quotations from John Wyndham's The Chrysalids (American title, Rebirth). I read this novel probably more than fifty years ago, and thought I must have totally forgotten it, but when I re-read it for our library's book club, as soon as I read the first page I remembered some of the most striking episodes: the girl Sophie with the extra toe, the bigoted religious father getting irate when the son says, "if I had another hand I could have done it myself", the arguments as to whether the religious cult could recognize what the original forms of plants and animals actually were. . .

John Wyndham was one of the early masters, if not the originator, of the science-fiction subgenre of "post-apocalyptic" fiction. While his earlier novels, The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes begin with the catastrophe and people from our world have to adjust to the new life without civilization, The Chrysalids takes place thousands of years after the "Old People"'s nuclear war which destroys most of the world. The scene is a small town in Labrador, where the surviving community believes in a religion based on their two oldest books, the Bible, which of course dates from before the "Great Tribulation", and Nicholson's Repentances from a few centuries after it. This second "scripture" contains a definition of "the image of God", that is humanity, and emphasizes maintaining the "purity" of the race against "blasphemy", the minor mutations which appear from generation to generation. But when a new favorable mutation arises, it turns out that the "Old People" (and their conservative imitators) were not, after all, the crown of creation.

Besides being a good story about change and evolution, this is also about the religious fear and hatred of those who are in any way "different" from the God-given "Norm", unfortunately still very relevant after almost seventy years.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica – Hazel Prior – 3.5***
Veronica McCreedy is an eighty-five-year-old woman who is inspired by a documentary on penguins to visit Antarctica. After all, she can’t leave her fortune to her recently discovered grandson, as he is an unemployed pot-smoker! The plot is outlandish and unrealistic but completely engaging and heart-warming. Veronica reminds me of many other cranky, outspoken elderly main characters (Ove and Olive Kitteridge, to name two). Everyone learns a lesson or two about cooperation and teamwork, and about opening one’s heart to the possibility of love.
LINK to my full review

Giaconda Belli, El ojo de la mujer [1991] 246 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

When a non-Nicaraguan thinks of Nicaraguan poetry, we think of Ruben Dario (on my reading list for next month) or perhaps Ernesto Cardenal; but we should also think of Giaconda Belli. While she is perhaps better known as a novelist (I plan to read a couple of her novels in the next two months, as well as her autobiography), she is an incredible poet, and I am not generally so enthusiastic for contemporary poetry. This collection contains about 135 poems, mostly one or two pages long. The first few poems are about her experience as a woman, followed by a number of love poems. The collection then becomes somewhat more political with poems from her exile, and about the absence of her lover who is fighting in the mountains. The climax of this section is "Patria Libre: 19 de julio de 1979". There are then poems about building the new country and remembering the dead. The collection then continues with more love poems.

I enjoyed nearly all the poetry in the collection. The poems are all very original and full of striking images, but never seem obscure; they are very personal, but I never felt as I sometimes do with modern poetry that I was left outside without the key.

Taking a break from the heat and humidity and enjoying a little Christmas in July!

An Amish Christmas – Cynthia Keller – 2.5** (rounded up)
A family living the American dream in North Carolina discovers they’ve lost everything. With little more than the clothes on their backs, they head for a family’s home in Maine, only to crash their car in the midst of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where they learn what’s really important in life. It’s a sweet, and somewhat sappy, holiday story.
LINK to my full review

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertalli – 3.5***
The story of this high-school drama centers on Simon Spier, a gay 15-year-old, who’s not yet out to his family or friends. Ah, the drama of high school relationships. There’s a lot to digest here, from family dynamics to first love to what it means to be a true friend, and Albertalli handles it pretty well. I can see why this would be a popular YA title for any teen.
LINK to my full review

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Admiring Silence [1996] 216 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

Another novel by Gurnah about an immigrant worker, this book alternates between Zanzibar and London. The first-person narrator admits that he is often making up stories about his life. A well-written book but many of Gurnah's novels all seem to be describing the same situation.

Pablo Neruda, Residencia en la Tierra [1935] 178 pages [Kindle, Biblioteca Cervantes] [in Spanish]

Residencia en la Tierra, Neruda's first "mature" poetry according to the critics, and his last before the experience of the Spanish Civil War and his turn to political poetry, is actually two collections of poetry which were originally published separately, Residencia en la Tierra 1 (1925-1930) and Residencia en la Tierra 2 (1931-1935). Both are about equal in length, about 90 pages each in the print edition. They were written over a decade in various parts of the world (especially the Far East) while Neruda was in the diplomatic service. A third volume, called "Tercera Residencia" was published a decade later and has more political poetry, so I will read that later on (maybe next month, if I get to it.)

This collection was mostly (with a few exceptions, mainly poems that were inspired by particular people) the type of modern poetry I do not enjoy reading, what the editor calls "hermetic", where the images are so far from what they are intended to represent that I usually had no idea what Neruda was talking about. To some extent, it seems to be like a code: Ocean, sea, salt represent time in its negative, destructive sense; "useless swords" represent I don't know what, but they are present in many of the poems and the editor calls attention to them in the footnotes each time. What little I could understand was very metaphysical with an almost existentialist sense of alienation from reality, of "Geworfenheit", which I expected from the title, "Residence on the Earth," as if the poet was put here to "reside" rather than truly being rooted here. There were a few poems that were more comprehensible, and which I liked (I actually do like poetry which is a bit "hermetic" as long as I can see what it is trying to say.) My favorites were "El fantasma del buque de carga", "Tango del viudo", and "Enfermedades in mi casa".

The editor contrasts the first and second collections, saying that the first was this kind of idealist alienation but that the second was "materialist". I frankly couldn't tell the difference, except that the second had a few more poems about specific people and was perhaps a bit more understandable. I was rather suspicious of the editor's explanations, because he claims that this type of idealist, metaphysical "Angst", which reappears from time to time in his later works, is the "real" essential Neruda and (although not in so many words) that the political and social poetry, which makes up most of Neruda's work and which he himself considered his real contribution, should be passed over in embarrassed silence. It's that poetry that I look forward to reading.

(By the way, I had forgotten about the Biblioteca Cervantes, which I will now add to my list of free e-book sites. It has an incredible selection of Spanish language authors.)

Murder 101 – Maggie Barbieri – 2.5**
Alison Bergeron is an English professor at a small, private college on the banks of the Hudson River in the Bronx, who finds herself the focus of a murder investigation when the body of one of her students is found in the trunk of her Volvo, which she reported stolen a few days previously. As a mystery, this was not very well plotted, and I found the reveal completely unrealistic and dissatisfying. But I did find the nascent romance between Alison and Crawford interesting. And I might read another book in the series just to see how that pans out.
LINK to my full review

Gorky Park – Martin Cruz Smith – 2.5**
As the snow begins to melt, three frozen bodies are found in Moscow’s Gorky Park. This is the first in a series, and Smith gives us an interesting cast of characters, including a dwarf who does reconstructive sculpture from bones to help identify crime victims, and a rich, ruthless and well-connected American mogul. Investigator Arkady Renko will have to battle the KGB, FBI and New York City police to solve this case. It started with a bang, but I began to lose interest with all the subplots and political intrigue. And I found the ending disatissfying.
LINK to my full review

State Of Terror – Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny – 3.5***
Clearly Clinton provided the behind-the-scenes information on the workings of government on this scale, while Louise Penny crafted the plot, which was fast and furious and held my attention throughout. I wish Clinton hadn’t relied so much on taking digs at # 45, because the basic plot would have worked without that, and it just makes the book seem like a thinly veiled criticism of our former leadership.
LINK to my full review

Popol Vuh: Las antiguas historias del Quiché [ca. 1544, Sp. tr. 1952] 185 pages [in Spanish]

When the Christians conquered the Quiché and other descendants of the Mayans, the first thing they did was to destroy all their books and try to eliminate their culture, just as their fathers had done with the Moslem literature of Grenada a few decades earlier, and as the ancient Christians had done a millennium before to the literature of the Greeks and Romans. While some (a pitiful few) of the ancient books survived the burning of the libraries -- just enough to let us imagine how much was lost -- the vandalism in the New World was far more thorough; essentially nothing survived. One of the books that was lost (mentioned in this book) was apparently a book of the kings called the Popol Vuh, which meant something like the book of the community. Sometime after the Conquest (probably about 1544), an unknown Quiché author tried to reconstruct part of what had been lost by writing this compendium of Quiché myth and history. It is not the Popol Vuh, and we have no way of knowing whether it is an attempted reconstruction of that book, or what its written or oral sources may have been. The use of the title Popol Vuh for this book comes from a later French translator (Brasseur) and is certainly inappropriate, as was his subtitle Le Livre Sacré et les mythes de l'antiquité américaine (the original Popol Vuh may or may not have been a "sacred book", if that even has any meaning in the context of a non-scriptural religion, but this compendium is not) although it has been known as the Popol Vuh for so long that it is too late to object to the title. Fortunately, the Quiché manuscript of this book fell into the hands of an unusually intelligent Spanish priest, who instead of destroying it transcribed the Quiché and translated it into Spanish, and published it under the name Las historias del origen de los indios de esta provincia de Guatemala. This is not that translation, but a modern version translated by Adrian Recinos from 1952.

The edition I read had a brief introduction and notes, but I could have used much more background, especially to the historical parts, and at least a map showing the many places named in the text, which the notes identify with modern cities or villages. The text itself is divided into four parts; the first part is the creation story, the second part is a long myth primarily about two brothers, Hunapu and Ixbalanqué, who fight with and eventually overcome with magic the inhabitants of Xilbaba, a sort of underworld, the third and fourth parts describe the origins and subsequent history of various tribes and families, from the viewpoint of the Quiché. The narrative is occasionally difficult to follow and there are inconsistencies, as one might expect in myths; some details may reflect contamination with Christian teachings, although it is hard to rule out that the Mayans and ancient Hebrews may have independently come upon similar mythical explanations of various phenomena. In any case, this is unfortunately the closest we will ever be able to come to the pre-Conquest beliefs of one the handful of autochthonous civilizations in World History.

Miguel Angelo Asturias, Leyendas de Guatemala [1930, 2nd ed. 1943] 117 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

Popol Vuh meets the Surrealists: this collection of eight legends, or poetic stories, and a play, all inspired by Mayan mythology and in particular the Popol Vuh, and written in a poetic and surrealist style, were Asturias' first published literary work. The Leyendas (including the play which was added in the second edition), were written in Paris in the 1920's, where Asturias was studying anthropology and he and his close friend Alejo Carpentier were involved with surrealist circles. Actually, the stories of the Popol Vuh, like most genuine myths, are "surrealist" in themselves, with their transformations of humans, plants and animals and their events which do not follow the normal logic of everyday life, but Asturias also uses European surrealist stylistic devices such as associating words through similar sounds and bringing together objects which are not normally associated. He has reworked the myths in various ways, in some cases retelling the pre-Columbian myths in post-Conquest settings or combining various myths.

The first two legends are introductory or "frame" stories. "Guatemala" opens in the present (1920's) with an elderly couple with goiters approaching a city. He then turns to describe the country as made up of various layers, cities beneath cities, which of course is archaeologically true in some cases, but here he presents it as if the older cities were still alive and inhabited, like the stories of a large building, an allegorical way of saying that the Mayan cultures and the colonial Spanish heritage are still part of modern Guatemalan culture. The breath of the trees, rooted in all the cities of the past, awakens the Cucu de los Sueños (the Cuckoo of Dreams) which gives people the view of a great city, that is the city made up of all the layers of the past. The remainder of the legend gives brief descriptions of the past cities and what is happening in each of them. The legend ends with the repeated exclamation, "My country! My country!"

The second legend, "Ahora que me acuerdo" (Now that I remember) returns to the elderly couple of the first paragraph, Don Chepe and la Niña Tina, and introduces a first person narrator whom we learn is called "Cuero de Oro" (Golden Skin). Allegorically, the elderly couple, who are magicians, represent the Mayan culture and Golden Skin the present-day mestizo culture. The couple mention a tree and a bird which annul time, and then Cuero de Oro launches into a narration of how he has gone into the forest at night and his adventures therein, culminating in his meeting with the Tiger of the Moon and his rescue by feathered serpents, which is essentially an initiation myth. After they hear this, the couple recount to him the following legends.

The next five legends ("Leyenda del Volcán", "Leyenda del Cadejo", "Leyenda de la Tatuana", "Leyenda del Sombrerón", and "Leyenda del tesoro del Lugar Florido") are relatively short and concentrated, and I recognized some elements from the Popol Vuh which I had just finished reading although Asturias is also using oral traditions. They are all quite interesting and written in poetic but fairly understandable language, but I won't try to summarize them all.

The eighth legend, the last in the first edition, is "Los brujos de la tormenta primaveral" (The sorcerers of the spring storm), which is very long and divided into six parts, is about a river-spirit named Juan/Juana Poye and features struggles between metals and vegetation, vegetation and humanity and so forth. It is all quite allegorical and difficult to understand. "Cuculcán", the play added in the second edition, is also divided into six parts (scenes, named for colors: Yellow, the color of the morning, Red, the color of the afternoon, and Black, the color of night, each repeated twice), and is also difficult. It is quite explicitly about reality and illusion. The title character, whose name means "Plumed Serpent", is the god the Mexicans called "Quetzalcoatl"; here he claims to be "like the Sun"; the deceitful Guacamayo (Macaw) tries to get him to claim he IS the Sun. (In the Popol Vuh there is a story of a sorcerer who claims to be the sun and is destroyed by the heroes.) There is also a plot about a girl named Yellow Flower, who is also a flower and an arrow, who is intended as a sacrifice.

The book ends with a series of alphabetically arranged notes by Asturias on some of the words and phrases used in the legends.

To Be Continued – Charmaine Gordon – 3***
I wasn’t expecting much from this coming-of-middle-age book, but I found it to be pretty entertaining. Oh, I did have some issues with the main character, but she eventually got her act together, found a new therapist, a new best friend, a new guy, and a new career. It was a fun, fast read.
LINK to my full review

Miguel Angel Asturias, El Alhajadito [1961] 104 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

Written about the same time as Leyendas de Guatemala and El Señor Presidente, that is to say in the 1920's in Paris, but first published (with some reworking) in 1961, the novella El Alhajadito is also written in surrealist style. It is from the conciousness (although in third person) of a boy who has (apparently) been kept from any knowledge of his parents, who have mysteriously "disappeared", and has been brought up by servants "with long braids". He discovers a "little corridor (corredorcito)" hidden behind the walls of his room. No, it doesn't lead to Narnia or anything like that; in fact it doesn't literally lead anywhere, and seems to have no function at all. However, when in "his" corredorcito, the boy gives himself over to imagination, or possibly dreams, which in surrealistic fashion are difficult to distinguish from reality, but express his hopes and anxieties.

In the first part, which is most of the book, after his discovery of the corredorcito, he is next with a group of fisherman mending their nets, then meets up with a stranger, an ill-dressed old man with a cane. There is a storm which floods the area, and he rescues the old man and takes him to his corredorcito. The man apparently dies, in the care of the servants, and the boy realizes in typical dream fashion that he has had breakfast with the old man every morning and that it is his grandfather. When he asks about him he is told that he has "disappeared" like the rest of his family. The next morning, a circus suddenly appears in the back yard, and the head of the circus seeks him out and asks his permission to set up their tent, as with the death of his "grandfather" he is now the owner of the house. He is treated as an honored guest, and the circus is about to begin when a torch falls and kills the head of the circus, which is then postponed. The next day, the various performers wage a civil war over who will be the new head of the circus, between the daughter of the old head and the lion tamer, who threatens to loose the lions and tigers if he is not made the new head. There is much fighting over the keys to the cages, which are eventually stolen by a monkey who gives them to his "brother", a Black man who is apparently some sort of janitor, who then becomes the new head of the circus.

I would have to dock the story by a couple stars because of the offensive way in which this character is presented, with ungrammatical and mispronounced dialogue that could be rendered as "No hurt neglo . . . Neglo not bad, neglo sweep with broom . . . No laugh, monkey, this how neglos smoke cigar at wedding . . . " and so on ad nauseam. The Chinese cooks are also treated in the same racist fashion; no one can understand them because they speak "chino o cocino" (Chinese or kitchen-ese). Asturias was well in advance of his time in his recognition of the human dignity of the Indians and mestizos, but unfortunately doesn't seem to have applied the same insight to Blacks and Chinese.

Meanwhile, a "counterfeit fisherman" for no apparent reason is attacking the circus performers with a slingshot, until they put aside their internal dispute to beat him almost to death. The Black man eventually decides to set him free and he ends up somehow in the corredorcito. The following night there is a second performance, but as soon as it begins the fishermen capture the performers in their nets. Without any transition, we are back in the corredorcito the next morning and the circus is leaving. One of the fishermen from the battle, sitting in the corredorcito, tells the boy the story of his (the boy's) family, who are pirates captained by the devil himself but will all eventually return. He then tells the boy the story of how his great-great-grandfather, whom the boy says is his great-grandfather and is apparently the same old man who was the grandfather before, married a girl who was a flying barrel, and then describes the casting of a giant bell that instead of sounds gave out odors.

There follow two shorter parts. In part two, the boy is on a small boat searching for a ghost ship. This was by far the most boring part of the novella. In part three, we are apparently in the real world, and the boy remembers two women he lives with who are called his mother and sister but whom he cannot tell apart. He makes friends with a gardener and his blind son, who overhears a conversation between his father and the boy's "mothers" which reveals his real situation, and the boy realizes that everything he has apparently experienced before, including the large house, the servants with braids and even the corredorcito itself may have been all dreams. The book ends in an ambiguous way.

If not for the unfortunate racism, which could perhaps be ignored if it had been published when it was written in 1929 but is clearly unacceptable in a book revised for publication as late as 1961, this would have been a wonderful introduction for students to the style of surrealism, with just enough plot to make it somewhat understandable.

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The Winds of War – Herman Wouk – 5*****
Book # 1 in the Henry Family saga introduces us to Commander Victor Henry, his wife Rhoda, and their children: Warren, Byron and Madeline. Victor wants a battleship, but he’s been selected to serve as Naval attache in Berlin. It’s 1937 and he’ll have a front-row seat to history. This is a larger-than-life story to tell, and Wouk captures the reader’s attention from the beginning, weaving the family’s personal soap opera drama into the fabric of history. This was a re-read for me, but I found it just as engaging and thrilling as the first time. I’ll probably give in and re-read the sequel as well.
LINK to my full review

A Fistful of Collars – Spencer Quinn – 3***
Book # 5 in the Chet and Bernie mystery series, has Bernie Small hired to “babysit” a notorious bad-boy Hollywood actor who’s the star of a movie being shot on location in his area. Of course, Bernie goes nowhere without his partner, Chet, who is a dog and also narrates the tale. I just love this series. I never get tired of Chet’s way of interpreting what he witnesses.
LINK to my full review

The Upright Piano Player – David Abbot – 3.5***
This work of literary fiction is a striking debut. Abbott gives us the story of Henry Cage, a successful businessman who seems to have it all: a fine home, a successful career, and a reputation for being a principled and upstanding man. But his outward success hides personal failure. Although I liked it, the structure of the book left me feeling dissatisfied, and with more questions than answers.
LINK to my full review

Giaconda Belli, Waslala: Memorial del Futuro [1996] 331 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

A novel by the Nicaraguan author Giaconda Belli, one of whose poetry books I read earlier this month, Waslala is a near-future science fiction story with elements of fantasy, or perhaps magical realism. The novel is set in a tropical rain forest in a place called Faguas, primitive and abandoned by the developed world (which has shut itself off from the poorer countries by a wall -- as with many near-future science fiction stories, not only is much of the futuristic technology already now commonplace, but also unfortunately many of the dystopian elements). The premise is the search for a lost utopian colony called Waslala. One of the central characters, the first we meet, is Melisandra, whose grandfather Don José was a founder of the colony but was unable to find it after leaving to get his wife, and whose parents were lost when she was three trying to find it again. Not only is the colony lost, but the valley in which it was located has also disappeared entirely; one theory that her grandfather has proposed is that it was inadvertently built on some sort of fissure in space-time. The idea of Waslala has become a myth to the people in the region, a hope for salvation from the poverty and violence of their daily lives. Now in her early twenties, Melisandra has decided that the time has come for her to search for Waslala and perhaps find her parents. A little later in the first part (the book is divided into parts, subdivided by short chapters) we meet a journalist named Raphael (as Don José notes, the name of the discoverer of Utopia in More's novel) from the developed world who is apparently also trying to find Waslala, although we learn very soon that this is a cover for investigating the trade in filina, a hybrid of marijuana and cocaine. To complete the set-up, we learn that the region is subject to endemic warfare, originally between political groups, which has degenerated into a self-perpetuating struggle for survival between the remnants. The official government has no real presence, and the main power is a gang of drug lords led by the Espada brothers (espada = sword, obviously symbolic).

Rafael proposes that Melisandra go with him as a "guide" to search for Waslala, and they set out up the river into the interior of the country. Of course, they soon become lovers. The next two parts are devoted to the trip upriver and their stay in the city of Cineria (again symbolism, "cineres" is Latin for ashes; compare also the English "cinders" and "Cinderella"), where we meet Engracia, who is engaged in the lucrative but dangerous enterprise of sorting out and burning or burying trash from the developed world and is the major opponent of Los Espada. This subplot reminded me very strongly of two more recent books by Asian authors, the fantasy Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-yong and even more the science-fiction novel Waste Tide by Chen Qiu-fen. The majority of the book is dominated by the struggle between Engracia and Los Espada. Finally, Melisandra and Raphael set off again to find Waslala and there are unexpected revelations.

According to Wikipedia (not always a trustworthy source) Belli was a guerilla with the Frente Sandinista and after the Revolution became the FSLN's international press liaison in 1982 and the director of State Communications in 1984; she was later one of the founders of the Sandinista Renewal movement, which attempted to return to the original ideas of the Sandinistas after the FSLN abandoned them during the presidency of Daniel Ortega. (Her autobiography is one of the next books on my reading list.) The novel was begun in 1990, shortly after the defeat of the Revolution. I think the book was a way of coming to terms with that failure. Waslala in a sense represents the socialist society which the Sandinistas tried to achieve, which has been "lost" but remains in the memories of the people as an inspiration to new generations of activists, as a "memorial of the future". This is not to say that the novel is in any way an allegory, or that the history of Waslala is similar to that of the Sandinista Revolution; the plot is imaginary and follows its own logic as a story.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos [1980] 365 pages

The best-known and most influential popularization of nineteenth-century science was Alexander von Humboldt's Kosmos; based on lectures given in 1827-1828, it was published in five volumes between 1845 and (the fifth volume posthumously) 1862. It covered most of the known science of the time, from astronomy and geology to botany and zoology and a bit of anthropology, as well as devoting one volume to the history of science from antiquity to the time it was written. I don't know whether Carl Sagan chose the title Cosmos with reference to von Humboldt's earlier work, but it covers much of the same ground, although it is obviously less detailed, and the various sciences and history are mixed together in a more discursive fashion. It was also like the earlier book based on another media, the television series of the same title. Both books were criticized for not discussing God; in the case of Sagan, who never disguised his atheism, I was glad to see that he did not, like so many other popular science books recently, feel it necessary to devote any space to direct anti-religious polemics -- the science and history speaks for itself, to anyone who is willing to hear. In fact, he is very respectful of traditional mythical explanations of the cosmos, and many of the illustrations are of Mayan, Aztec and other non-western mythologies.

Although von Humboldt's work continued to be read and influenced science as well as literature and art for much of the remainder of the century, in some respects it quickly became out of date; the year after the fourth volume was published, the last in von Humboldt's lifetime, Darwin published The Origin of Species, and the discovery of the ice ages came about the same time. Likewise, after some forty years, Sagan's book has become out of date in many respects, especially in astronomy, with the discovery of dark matter and dark energy. Other discoveries were clearly expected by Sagan, such as extra-solar planets, and he constantly mentions ongoing and planned research, such as the projects for space telescopes and Mars rovers. Nevertheless his book is still worthwhile reading, not for the scientific details but for the general viewpoint of humanity within the cosmos. Much of the book is concerned with the possibilities of life elsewhere in the galaxy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, one of Sagan's major interests. It ends with a very moving chapter on our capacity for self-destruction and a plea for nuclear disarmament.

The Kill Artist – Daniel Silva – 3***
This is the first in a series starring Gabriel Allon, whose cover is that of an art restoration specialist. The action is fast and furious and sometimes confusing, as is to be expected in an espionage thriller. There are more twists and turns than a casual reader can keep track of. And a basic knowledge of of Israeli / Palestinian relationships and politics is necessary. This is a long-running series, with over twenty books, but I doubt I’ll pick up another. Just not my cup of tea.
LINK to my full review

Pablo Neruda, España en el corazón: himno a las glorias del pueblo en la guerra [1937] 65 pages [in Spanish]

In 1936, Neruda was assigned to the Chilean consulate in Madrid, where he was shocked by the brutality of the fascist war and the murder of his friend, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. As a result, he abandoned his previous metaphysical style of poetry for a very direct political poetry. This book will not be to the taste of those who prefer their poetry to be abstract, anodyne and obscure, but I found it very moving. I believe he later achieved a more balanced compromise between politics and literature, although since I am reading him chronologically I cannot be certain, but to the end his poetry remained committed.

A little Christmas in July


Dashing Through the Snow – Debbie Macomber – 3***
Last minute plans to travel from San Francisco to Seattle nearly thwart Ashley Davison and Dashiell Sutherland. Stranded at the airport they decide to share the last remaining rental car. Their road to HEA includes several detours: an abandoned puppy, a pair of petty thieves, and an FBI agent who has mistakenly identified one of them as an international terrorist. But never fear. It’s a holiday rom com and a lovely distraction, so curl up in a comfy chair, with a warm blanket and the beverage of your choice and enjoy.
LINK to my full review

Much Ado About You – Samantha Young – 3***
Evie Starling, a thirty-three Chicagoan who’s just broken up with her boyfriend and been disappointed one time too many at work, decides to take a Bookshop Holiday in England to re-evaluate and regroup. She doesn’t expect to meet the devastatingly handsome local sheep farmer (and his even cuter dog). A charming rom com with all the usual tropes. Perfect for a light holiday read.
LINK to my full review

Scientific American, What Makes Us Human [2013] 111 pages

I'm not sure whether this was intended as a book or as a single-theme issue of the magazine; on the one hand it says volume 22, number 1, winter 2013, on the other it lacks the usual columns and most importantly, it doesn't have any ads. Perhaps it is an issue of the magazine re-issued as a book. In any case, at only nine years old it is the most recent thing I've read, other than short articles on the Internet, about human evolution, and there was much that was new to me. The contents consists of sixteen articles by eleven authors (five of the articles are by Kate Wong, one of the magazines senior editors.)

(This is a very long review even for me; for the whole review see my thread. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind [1962, tr. 1966] 290 pages

Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Savage Mind, a translation of his La Pensée Sauvage, is a difficult book to summarize; for a structuralist, he seems to be somewhat lacking in structure in his writings. It is a very discursive book, and full of analogies and metaphors which to me at least obscure rather than clarify what he is trying to say (although sometimes interesting in themselves). To do my best: "Savage" or pre-literate peoples are experts at classification, at producing taxonomies of natural and social phenomena at every level; their classifications are based on structures of differences rather than resemblances; they postulate homologies between systems of differences at different levels, including behavior (marriage rules, food or verbal prohibitions and so forth) which have been mistakenly linked by ethnologists in the concept of "totemism" (the book by him which I read last, Totemism, published the same year, he describes as a kind of preface to the current book); these homologies combine to form coherent "totalizing" conceptions of the world; the very different systems of different pre-literate cultures are formed from similar structures of classification by "transformations" which give different contents to the same structural forms. He illustrates these theses in the first eight chapters by examples taken from many cultures in Africa, Asia, and especially the Americas and Australia.

The ninth and last chapter is a polemic against Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique (of which I have read only the preface, published separately as Questions de Méthode) over the nature of dialectical reason, its relationship to analytical reason, the nature of history, and the relations of history and dialectic. While this was very interesting, I'm not sure I would agree with either of their views on dialectic; while both Lévi-Strauss and the later Sartre consider themselves within the Marxist tradition, they each combine Marx differently with other viewpoints, e.g. de Saussure and structural linguistics, Freudian psychology, and the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. Obviously, an understanding of both Lévi-Strauss and Sartre is necessary to understand many of the trends in contemporary social thought, but it is also more fundamentally necessary to understand the concepts of Marx, which most American academics (to say nothing of the general populace) are far from possessing.

Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice by Ellen McGarrahan

Ellen McGarrahan was a young reporter in 1990 when she witnessed the execution of Jesse Tafero. She became obsessed with the case when she heard that Jesse may not have been the one to kill the two police officers that morning. This book follows her quest for the truth.

This is an extremely intense and riveting story. Ellen’s research and determination to find out the truth takes her to other countries and has her speaking with just about everyone involved in the case. She even hunts done the 9 year old boy who was in the back seat of the Camaro that morning. The incident happened in 1976, but Ellen continued her search for the truth, even when many involved where already deceased or now grown. She did way more research than any of the detectives did at the time of the murders. The best piece of evidence she got was the dummies they used to reconstruct the officer’s wounds and outlined the trajectory of the bullets. With this information I’m really surprised that the case did not end differently.
Throughout the book more and more information is discovered and more and more lies pop up. It was difficult to determine who was telling the truth. The reader finds out so much about the three people in the Camaro the morning officers were killed: Jesse Tafero, Sunny Jacobs and Walter Rhodes. None of them were truly innocent in the incident. None of them where law abiding citizens either. They all had extensive criminal backgrounds. The author did an excellent job painting a picture of what happened that morning at the rest stop and I felt like she solved the case. The only question left unanswered was why they did what they did. Neither Sunny nor Walter would explain that to the author.

The Mummy Case – Elizabeth Peters – 3***
Book three in the popular Amelia Peabody cozy mystery series. Amelia and her handsome husband, Radcliffe Emerson, want permission to dig in a specific area for a long-lost pharaoh’s tomb. But the authorities were not pleased with Emerson’s past behavior and give him a site far from the desired pyramids of Dahshoor. They bring along their incredibly precocious son, Ramses, who wants a dig of his own. Peters writes these books as if they were Amelia’s memoirs and uses a formal style of writing that helps transport the reader to the late 19th century.
LINK to my full review

American Gods – Neil Gaiman – 2.5**
Gaiman is a hit-or-miss author for me. I’ve loved some of his works, others, not so much. This one clearly falls into that last category. In fact near the beginning I was tempted to DNF it entirely. Am I glad I persevered? Not exactly.
LINK to my full review

John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos [1957] 189 pages

While waiting for the next two books on my reading list, one checked out and on hold at the library and one on order at Amazon (which turned out to have been left two days before it was supposed to arrive on the front step in the pouring rain and was totally ruined) I decided to read another classic science-fiction novel by John Wyndham.

The Midwich Cuckoos is similar in theme to The Chrysalids, but reversed. After a mysterious flying object lands in the village of Midwich, England (poor England was already the preferred site of alien invasions well before Doctor Who arrived on the scene), all the women of childbearing age simultaneously become pregnant, and have children who are a bit different . . . The conflict ends up being the same, between the old and new, but here the story is told from the viewpoint of the normal villagers and the Children (capitalized) are the aggressors, consciously deciding to use their psychic powers to replace our species, while the normals try to bring them up and educate them as their own children, as other birds do to the newly hatched cuckoos introduced into their nests.

This book was not nearly as good as the earlier novel, even leaving aside the too similar plot. Even without a knowledge of DNA which would make some of the plot impossible later, there are too many improbabilities in the details (apparently the biological minimum age for having babies is seventeen in England), and the narrator is not a really well-developed character -- in fact none of the characters are particularly well-rounded.

Balzac And the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie – 5*****
During China's Cultural Revolution, three young men are sent to a mountain villages for re-education. One of them has a secret horde of books. The other two are captivated by the books and also by the little seamstress, daughter of the district’s tailor. Sijie gives us descriptions of the harshness of the terrain and of their forced labor. The scenes in the coal mine were particularly harrowing. But there are many humorous scenes, as well. I have read this little gem of a novel several times. It is luminously written. For me, it answers the question, "Why do you read so much?"
LINK to my full review

The Children’s Train – Viola Ardone – 3.5***
This is a story based on true events, set in post-WW2 Italy, when children from impoverished families in the south were sent north to wealthier communities / families who could care for them. How can the mother reconcile her decision to send her child to safety with the result of a child who is returned so different from the one she sent away? How can a child forgive his mother for her inability to provide more? I’m sure my book club with have much to discuss.
LINK to my full review

Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of the World [1926, tr. 1928] 397 pages

Like Piaget's first two books, which I read earlier this year, The Child's Conception of the World is the first part of a two-volume work, of which the second part is The Child's Conception of Physical Causality, which I will hopefully get to next month. The first two books dealt with the development of language and logic in children, while according to the introduction these two deal with the evolution of their beliefs concerning reality and causation, but the distinction is not really all that sharp and the basic ideas are the same: egocentrism, syncretism, animism, pre-causality and so forth. The method in these two books is less based on recording spontaneous behaviors and statements by the children than in the previous books and more on questioning them, which leads to more uncertainty as to the validity of the results; there is also a certain amount of reliance on anecdotal memories of adults about their childhood beliefs, which I would almost entirely disregard. As in the previous books he divides the process into "stages" which are sequential and roughly (on average) correlated with various ages.

He admits that the method used does not justify placing particular individuals in particular stages, but argues that the existence of the stages can be discovered by statistical averages, and confirmed by the fact that what is not understood at one stage is in fact understood at later stages. I think that he is strongest in the negative aspects, that children in a lower stage are not able to make distinctions which are obvious at a later stage; I think he is weakest in his claims as to how "we", that is educated European adults, think -- there is in my opinion a strong bias toward idealist and perhaps even Christian conceptions, which is probably to be expected given the date at which he was writing.

[Another very long review; for the whole review see my thread https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Reading Up a Storm – Eva Gates – 3***
Book number three in the Lighhouse Library Mystery series. Cozy mysteries are my go-to comfort reads and this doesn’t disappoint. They’re fast and fun and I love Lucy’s cat, Charles Dickens!
LINK to my full review

The Secret, Book & Scone Society – Ellery Adams – 2.5**
I really like Adams’ “Books By the Bay” mystery series and thought I’d give this series a try, though I was skeptical about the “comfort scones” and Nora’s ability to cure someone’s ills by recommending the right book. I didn’t understand why Nora and her friends decided to investigate the death of a total stranger. By the end of the book, we’ve learned each of the women’s terrible secret, and there are a couple of promising romantic relationships. But I just got the feeling that Adams was trying too hard. Still, I did really love all the book references!
LINK to my full review

Naguib Mahfouz, The Seventh Heaven: Stories of the Supernatural [1999, tr. 2005] 151 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

This is a fantastic (in both senses of the word) collection of thirteen stories written between 1973 and 1999 by one of my favorite fiction writers, Naguib Mahfouz. All involve strange events, and several involve death or the afterlife.

The title story, which accounts for about a third of the book and is undoubtedly the best, begins with one of the two main characters, named Raouf, coming out of a strange "cloud" to realize that he has been killed by his friend Anous as a result of a love rivalry. He arrives in the afterlife, and we are treated to brief statements about the after-death fates of a number of historical figures, from Gandhi and Lenin to Hitler and Stalin, although most of those named were from recent Egyptian history and I did not know who some of them were. This part is similar in a way to Dante, although the afterlife described is certainly not Christian (nor is it Islamic or ancient Egyptian); it is the product of Mahfouz' own imagination. Later, Anous is also killed, and the two return to Earth as spiritual guides, in the process changing names and roles. The theme is that what matters is not "virtue" or even belief in God but truth and resistance to evil in the form of oppression of the weak by the powerful.

The other stories are much shorter (the last few being only a couple pages each) and are ambiguous both as to the endings and what has actually happened, and as to their symbolic meanings. One, "Room No. 12" was made into a movie which was popular in Egypt. The book was fun to read and as with all of Mahfouz' work provokes thought.

The Creation of Eve – Lynn Cullen – 4****
Based on the true, but little known, story of Sofonisba Anguisola, the first renowned female artist during the Renaissance period, this is a captivating work of historical fiction. I knew nothing about this extraordinary woman, and only a little about the court of King Felipe II. Cullen crafts a compelling story that includes intrigue, romance, mystery, politics and the frustration felt by a woman shackled by society’s conventions.
LINK to my full review

Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character [1963] 355 pages

A somewhat older book from the Library, this was one of the best books about the Sumerians when it was written and is still worth reading; although some of the details have been superseded according to the more recent books on Mesopotamia which I have read this year, none of them is as full in describing the Sumerians, since they all covered the much longer period of Semitic rule from Hammurabi on as well. Kramer begins with an account of our sources and the history of the archaeology of Sumer, then has a chapter on the history largely based on documents from Lagash, followed by chapters on the socio-economic and political organization of the cities, the religion and mythology, the literature, the educational system, the "character" of the Sumerians, and finally the legacy of Sumerian culture throughout the Near East, and especially the influence of Sumerian ideas on the Bible. Throughout the book he quotes extensively from the original texts in his own translations, and there are more texts given in the appendices which make up more than a tenth of the book.

Unfriended – Rachel Vail – 2.5***
I found this in the YA section but it’s more middle-school than young adult, in my opinion. Vail gives each of the central kids a voice, changing narrators from chapter to chapter. Some are told as a series of text messages. All are told in first person, and I occasionally lost track of which kid was narrating. Being a middle-school drama there’s the expected “mean girl” behavior and cyber bullying, but I thought it took far too long for Vail to get to a positive message. Not my cup of tea, though I can see why some tweens might like it.
LINK to my full review

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell – 3.5***
Subtitle: The Story of Success. Gladwell looks at hugely successful people who are “outliers” … far out of the norm. Examples include Bill Gates and The Beatles. He tries to explain how luck, opportunity, and the right birth year or month help these people succeed. Of course, ten thousand hours of practice is also a key element. I was interested in what Gladwell had to say and found the various essays easy to absorb and understand.
LINK to my full review

The Case of the Missing Books – Ian Sansom – 3***
This is the first in a new series starring Israel Armstrong, the librarian in charge of the mobile library van in the small Irish village of Tundrum. It was mildly entertaining and I did like all the book references, but I prefer more actual mystery in my cozy mysteries. I doubt I’ll read any more of the series.
LINK to my full review

Artemis – Andy Wier – 4.5****
I wondered if Weir could possibly top The Martian , or at least equal it. Well, now I know. And I love that this time he features a feisty, intelligent woman as the lead character. I love a good crime caper, and this is one. Lots of twists and turns that kept the action moving and my interest high.
LINK to my full review

Thread of Fear (The Glass Sisters #1) by Laura Griffin
4 ★

Forensic artist Fiona Glass is the best in her field, but the job has gotten the best of her and she is ready to quit. When police chief Jack Bowman comes to her asking for help tracking down a killer who is targeting teen girls, his persistence makes her change her mind and work one more case.

I found this story to be very interesting and intense. Fiona is a great character with an interesting background story and a very interesting sister. I actually can't wait to read book 2 because Courtney Glass is the main character in it.
The murders in this story are brutal and make no sense (not that murder ever does), but seeing how Fiona talks with scared witnesses to get the information she needs is enlightening. She is very good at her job.
Jack Bowman is a very intense man who wants to get the job down. I saw a romance with him and Fiona right from the start. The chemistry was obvious here.

Cold as Ice (Lucy Kincaid #17) by Allison Brennan
4 ★


When Sean Rogan is arrested for a murder he didn't commit, his wife, FBI agent Lucy Kincaid, buckles down to find out the truth. As more friends and co-workers find themselves in trouble, Kane Roagn goes missing in Mexico, Nate Dunning has been arrested for possession of cocaine, and Brad Donnelly has been kidnapped outside DEA headquarters, Lucy believes there is more to it. Lucy soon learns that Elise Hansen Hunt has been released from juvenile detention and she just knows she is behind it all, but how?

This book will have the avid Lucy Kincaid fan on the edge of their seat. There is so much going on and many old enemies return. The reader never knows what is next or who will survive the whole ordeal.
We see a side of Lucy and Sean that we have not seen before. Sean about gives up throughout everything and Lucy puts her foot down and demands action. She knows what is going on and gets very frustrated that no one believes her. Elise still has everyone fooled. She has always gone over heads to get things down, but this time she pushed it and does not care if she looses her job. She is an amazingly strong female character that one can not help by admire.
I truly hope this is not the end of the series. I have one more short novella to read in the series, but I really hope we get more of the Rogan/Kincaid family.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? – Caitlin Doughty – 3***
Doughty, a funeral home director, answers questions posed by kids about death, dying and funerals. She’s forthright and honest, but also sprinkles her remarks with some lighthearted banter. It’s a pretty fast read, and quite informative.
LINK to my full review

Giaconda Belli, El país dentro de mi piel [2002] 431 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

I am currently reading Giaconda Belli because one of her novels is the reading for a group I am in on Goodreads; after reading a book of (excellent) poetry and an earlier novel, I decided to read her autobiography before starting the novel for the group. As often with someone who was both a writer and a political activist, there was actually very little about her writing; one short chapter on her earliest poetry and a few brief mentions of her other books. Essentially, this is a memoir about the Sandinista Revolution, and about her complicated love-life (three marriages separated by two other major relationships.) I will concentrate my review on what she says about the Revolution.

Belli was from a bourgeois (or more exactly upper petty bourgeois), "aristocratic" milieu, but from an early age became a supporter of the FSLN, eventually carrying out important tasks in foreign relations and publicity at a level somewhat below but in direct contact with the central leadership. While from participating in the solidarity movement with Nicaragua in the 1980's I was very familiar with the "outside" history of the Sandinistas and their struggle against the Somoza dictatorship and later Reagan's terrorist "Contras", and had read books by Sandinista leaders about the guerilla struggles (Tomas Borges' Los Primeros Pasos and Omar Cabeza's La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, among others) I knew nothing about the internal dynamics, which I found very shocking. Apparently the Sandinistas split in 1975 into three mutually hostile factions which functioned as separate organizations for four years until they reunited through the mediation of Fidel Castro a few months before the victory over Somoza. Thus the Directorate which assumed the power in 1979 was composed of former "opponents" -- to use a leftist term I have never liked -- who did not fully trust each other, and was according to Belli dominated by the Ortega brothers, Daniel and Humberto.

First recruited by Camilo Ortega, Belli was initially part of the "Insurrectionist" or "Tercera" faction led by the Ortega brothers, but eventually became disillusioned by what she considered the unscrupulous behavior of the leaders and joined the "Prolonged People's War" faction led by Tomas Borges, Bayardo Arce, and Henry Ruiz (Modesto) -- later one of her lovers. (The other faction was the "Proletarian" faction led by Jaime Wheelock.) Much of what she writes about the period of the Contra war is a polemic against the Ortegas and their suppression of criticism within the movement. Given the later trajectory of Daniel Ortega as basically a reformist politician, what she says seems believable, although I also have to wonder how much of it is based on hindsight. In any case, while I could agree with some of her positions, others were just obviously and totally wrong; she expresses a very naive opinion that if the Sandinistas had been less "incendiary" in their rhetoric, the U.S. intervention could have been avoided -- I think it is obvious there was nothing the Sandinistas could have done, short of totally betraying the Revolution, which would have prevented Reagan and the U.S. government from doing everything possible to overthrow them as they did with much less radical social-democratic and liberal regimes in Latin America from Arbenz to Allende. The fact is, all mistakes aside -- and she does not deal with what I think was one of the most important, the lack of attention to the Indians on the Atlantic coast -- the Sandinista Revolution just came at a time in history when the objective conditions were all against its success.

Since the end of the Revolutionary period in 1990, Belli has lived mainly in the United States with her North American husband Carlos. At the end of the book, she briefly mentions that she is part of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, which was founded in 1994 by Sergio Ramirez and other former Sandinista leaders, which according to its program intends to restore the original Sandinista ideas.

While this is a book that needs to be read critically, it does have interesting information and should be a part, but only a part, of anyone's reading on the Sandinista period in Nicaragua.