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?

Share your thoughts with us.

Happy reading!

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The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo – 5*****
In her debut novel, Acevedo tells the story of a teen from Harlem, who finds her voice in writing poetry, but who struggles against her mother’s expectations. I love poetry. I am in awe with how much a poet can convey in so few words. And Acevedo does a truly marvelous job in this novel-in-verse.
LINK to my full review

Javier Marías Franco, Corazón tan blanco [1992] 308 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]

Corazón tan blanco (available in English as Heart So White) is a postmodernist novel about memory, about the power of language, about speech versus silence (asking questions versus remaining silent), about secrets, about wanting to know and not wanting to know, and their roles in creating, negating or deforming reality. To a certain extent, the book could be considered as a long commentary on a few passages from Macbeth, from which the title is taken; the "heart so white" denotes both innocence and the guilt of cowardice, of refusing to know. The opening sentence of the novel begins, "No he querido saber, y he sabido . . . (I didn't want to know, and I knew . . .)"

The book begins with the suicide of a young woman, Teresa, who has just returned from her honeymoon voyage. The ostensible plot of the novel is the discovery of the reason for her suicide, which no one seems to understand. People refer to his "misfortune" in having been widowed for a second time. However the book then immediately jumps forward about forty years, and the main narrative begins with Juan, the son of Teresa's husband Ranz and his third wife, Teresa's sister Juana. Juan, who is the first-person narrator of the novel, is an interpreter/translator (which is symbolic in the context of the novel) who works for various UN and other international organizations. He is about thirty-five at this point, and knows very little about his Aunt Teresa except that she died shortly after marrying his father; he has always been told vaguely that she was ill, and has never been interested in pursuing the question. He knows nothing about any previous wife.

Juan and his wife Luisa, also a translator, are recently married and we now learn about their first meeting and their own honeymoon voyage in non-consecutive chronology. This chapter introduces a second major theme of critical discussion about the institution of marriage, which runs throughout the novel.

There are also two important subplots, one concerning Miriam and Guillermo, whom Juan and Luisa overhear in the next room on their honeymoon, and one about Juan's friend and one-time lover Berta and her prospective relationship with Bill, a mysterious man who has contacted her from a personal ad she has put in a newspaper or magazine. As in Marias' previous novel Todas las almas, the various episodes seem to be unconnected and to depend for their order in the novel on mere association or chance rather than any sort of logical plan, but in fact there are many parallels between the four stories of Ranz and Teresa, Juan and Luisa, Miriam and Guillermo and Berta and Bill (and in the background, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth). Many phrases and even entire paragraphs are repeated as leitmotives which knit together the various episodes.

Corazón tan blanco was one of the major novels of post-Franco Spain, although it was most popular in Germany (in the first twenty-five years after its publication, about half the copies sold were in German translation); Marías is obviously less well-known in the English-speaking countries, and I had never heard of him before a group I am in on Goodreads chose this for our reading for this month. The edition I read (the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, in the original Spanish)followed the three hundred pages of the novel with about a hundred and fifty pages of additional material, including reviews from Spain and Germany, interviews with Marías, and comments he made about his writing. These were very uneven and most were not useful.

A Hundred Flowers – Gail Tsukiyama – 4****
In this novel, Tsukiyama turns her attention to the mid-to-late 1950s and Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. The story focuses on the Lee family, who do their best in difficult times to continue moving forward. The uncertainty is palpable. Yet, they face their circumstances with grace, dignity and courage.
LINK to my full review

Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Origin and Development [1922] 428 pages

I have found several more classic linguistics books in my garage, written before the last one that I read (Chomsky's Syntactic Structures) so once again I am pushed backwards before going forwards.

Jespersen's Language is a popularly written book which, after a long first part (about 100 pages) giving a history of nineteenth-century linguistics, goes on to treat of a number of previously underemphasized and some very speculative topics. The second part is on the child's acquisition of language and its probable influences on the history of language; the third part is on the effects of foreigners or second-language speakers and their influences, and contains chapters on pidgin languages and on what are now called genderlects (the differences in usages between male and female speakers of a given language) — some of his attitudes and assumptions are almost comic from a contemporary perspective; the last part deals with the development of languages and the origin of language, and is totally speculative. Among other things, he argues that the development of language has been progressive rather than a deterioration from a more perfect origin as most linguists at the time assumed, going in general from very complex but also very irregular earlier languages (think of Sanskrit, classical Greek and Latin) to more efficient and flexible analytic languages. Not surprising given that Jespersen was Danish and wrote mainly in (and about) English, he sees English and Danish as the most perfect languages. He then extrapolates this argument backwards to claim that language began in a state in which very long, musical or poetic words represented vague and largely emotional total meanings which later had to be analyzed to convey more rational thought.

All of this was fascinating to read, but I am not sure how much of it would still be accepted after a hundred years; I suspect that what has held up best, apart from his emphasis on language acquisition as fundamental to understanding language change, is his common-sense demolition of other writer's speculations, rather than his own equally speculative theories with which he tries to replace them. The book is probably most important for those who are interested in the history of linguistics as a discipline; I am following it up with the same author's Philosophy of Grammar published a couple years later.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects v.1 [2nd ed. 1568, Eng. tr. 1851] 511 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

Vasari's Lives is considered to be the first book of art history. It consists of brief biographies of various artists in (very roughly) chronological order with descriptions of their major works and occasionally remarks as to their role in the development of the arts.

This book is the first of five volumes, each a bit over five hundred pages in the 1851 translation by Mrs. Jonathan Foster which is in Open Library. After a first rather schematic chapter on ancient art from Mesopotamia (the "Chaldeans") and Egypt through early imperial Rome, its decline in Christian times, and the Middle Ages (which Vasari holds in complete contempt), it begins with the rediscovery of "nature" by Cimabue and especially Giotto. Vasari's view of art, which is the viewpoint of his time, is that art is imitation of nature, and the closer it comes to nature the better it is. This volume continues through the late thirteenth, fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, ending more or less with Brunelleschi and Donatello.

The descriptions tend to be a bit repetitious — every artist seems to have sculpted or painted a few Madonnas and several John the Baptists, usually on church doors, but they are invaluable given that so many of the works he discusses have ceased to exist (some no longer existed when he wrote about them.) The chapter on Brunelleschi and the famous dome is the most interesting. Apparently (judging by the footnotes to the translation) Vasari is often inaccurate with regard to dates, and genealogies, especially in these earlier lives. The e-book edition I read omits the woodcut portraits of the artists, which were the only illustrations.

I wondered why I had not read this before, but then I realized: five volumes. It may take me a while to get through.

Take My Hand – Dolen Perkins-Valdez – 4****
In 2016, Dr Civil Townsend, reflects on her time three decades previously when she worked with Montgomery (Alabama) Family Planning. Perkins-Valdez took inspiration from a shameful episode in America’s history, when poor, Black people were used as subjects for medical studies without their informed consent. Additionally, Perkins-Valdez looks at the class distinctions between poor, rural Blacks and the wealthier professional Blacks. Kudos to Perkins-Valdez for shining a light on these policies in our history.
LINK to my full review

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder – Valerie Burns – 3***
Book one in a new cozy mystery series. Maddy Montgomery’s great aunt Octavia has left her a lakefront house, a bakery, and an English mastiff named Baby. Maddy’s barely in town for a day when there’s a murder IN the bakery. Who would want to frame her? The residents rally round, especially Sheriff April Johnson and veterinarian Michael Portman. Fast, entertaining read.
LINK to my full review

Otto Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar [1924] 363 pages

This may be the best book I have ever read on language; probably Jespersen's most important work, it is definitely different from and better than the same author's earlier Language which I reviewed two weeks ago. That one was in parts very speculative, while as he says himself, "in this volume I generally keep aloof from speculations about primitive grammar and the origin of grammatical elements." The book is titled accurately a "philosophy" of grammar, in that he discusses all the concepts that have been used for talking about grammar and shows that most of them have been poorly defined, or are in some cases not useful at all. He proposes new explanations and a largely new terminology, some of which have been widely accepted and some not. Although he occasionally refers to other languages, the book is largely based on the Indo-European (or as he calls it, Aryan) family; apart from Danish, most of his examples are taken from languages I can read. I understand better now many things I never really understood, or in some cases had never even thought about. While not all his comments about English usage seem right to me, this may be because he naturally (as a professor of English in Denmark) bases himself on British rather than American English, and because he wrote this a hundred years ago and the language has of course changed much in a century. In fact he mentions many tendencies which have since gone further. The book was very influential and is a must-read for anyone who is interested in language.

A Hope Divided – Alyssa Cole – 3***
Book number two in the Loyal League series of Civil-War-era romances. Healer and free woman Marlie Lynch meets Union soldier and prisoner-of-war Ewan McCall when she goes to tend to the men at the nearby prison. Before long they are fleeing together from the Home Guard. It’s a pretty typical romance.
LINK to my full review

Sex and Vanity – Kevin Kwan – 2**
There were a few over-the-top scenes that tickled my funny bone, and I gave it two stars for those. I realize that Kwan means these works to be satires of “crazy rich Asians” but I just find them tedious. The characters were uniformly vain and shallow, and I grew tired of their obsession with appearances.
LINK to my full review

Jon Fosse, Plays Four [1994-2001, Eng. tr. 2005] 292 pages

This collection contained four more plays by Nobel prize-winner Jon Fosse.

The first play, And We'll Never Be Parted (Og aldri skal vi skiljast, 1994) I didn't like; while I enjoyed the ambiguity of some of his earlier plays, in this one he takes it too far; rather than being susceptible to multiple interpretations, this one seems to have no possible consistent interpretation. It has an old woman and a man, and (the same?) man and a young girl (their younger selves?) and the man is sometimes visible but not seen and at other times seen but not there, and the two couples seem to interact, unlike the earlier plays where the there are earlier and younger versions of the same characters who however do not interact.

The other three were better, though not as good as some of the earlier plays:

The second play, The Son (Sonen, 1997) is about a couple who live in an increasingly abandoned rural area, their last neighbor, and their son. It has an actual plot, but it seems rather absurdist.

The third play, Visits (Besok, 2000), is about a disturbed young girl, and what may or may not have been responsible for her problems.

The last, very short play, Meanwhile the lights go down and everything becomes black (Medan lyset går ned og alt blir svart, 2001) is about the breakup of a family.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects v.2 [2nd ed. 1568, Eng. tr. 1851] 508 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

The second volume in the edition I read (of five volumes; other editions divide them differently), this contains the rest of part two (42 biographies, from Antonio Filarete to Vasari's uncle, Luca Signorelli — one of the longest) and the first 10 of part three (beginning with Leonardo da Vinci and ending with the architects Giuliano and Antonio da San Gallo). Highlights were Leon Batista Alberti, Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and Leonardo. I can't remember all the lives, let alone their works, but the cumulative impression is interesting. I may be more interested in reading later books which actually have photographs of the paintings and sculptures, but this was important as the first and relatively a primary source.

One Of Us Is Lying – Karen M McManus – 3.5***
Five students are together in detention when one of them died. Who did it? This was a twisty mystery and the students surprised me with their insight and tenacity in trying to clear their names. Of course, there is the usual teenage drama as well as issues of dysfunctional families, and racism. Surprisingly I didn’t think all this teen drama distracted from the central plot. I certainly was kept guessing and didn’t figure out the culprit until the author chose to reveal the truth.
LINK to my full review

William Inge, Four Plays [1950-1959] 304 pages

Although American playwright William Inge wrote plays right up to his suicide in 1973, he is best known for these four plays from the 1950's. They are very typical of that decade, dealing with bored housewives, their bored children, respectability, dysfunctional families, and in short all the things which caused a reaction to the other extreme in the sixties. All four are set in the rural Midwest.

Come Back, Little Sheba (1950) is about a bored wife and her alcoholic husband, who take in a young woman boarder; the two lovers of the young woman are a rather crude athlete and a rich college student, a pairing which returns in the second play, Picnic (1953). In that play, we have two widows living next door to one another, one with her aged mother and one with two daughters, who also takes in a spinster schoolteacher as a boarder; an athletic "vagabond" shows up to do some yardwork for one of the widows, and we have a triangle involving him, the older daughter, and her rich college student boyfriend.

Bus Stop (1955), best known because of the Marilyn Monroe movie, takes place at a bus stop in Kansas during a blizzard, where the stranded passengers (two cowboys, a nightclub singer, the waitresses, the bus driver and an alcoholic ex-professor) interact; Inge is trying to portray various forms of "love" here, but again one cannot really imagine things happening quite this way after the fifties (or at all, but that's another question.)

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) is set in the 1920's rather than the 1950's, but apart from the transition from horses to automobiles, the feeling is still 50-ish, although perhaps the two periods were pretty similar outside the major cities. It is about a traveling salesman and his wife and two children, a dysfunctional family. There is a "happy ending" but it is not really credible and is too late in any case.

I enjoyed all four; Inge is a good playwright, but no Arthur Miller.

The Silence Between Us – Alison Gervais – 4****
This is a lovely young-adult romance with the added inclusion of one partner with a significant disability. Maya is smart and tenacious, but she just can’t believe that a hearing person and a deaf person can form a true relationship. In many ways the relationship between Beau and Maya is a typical teen romance, with missteps followed by genuine gestures that show caring, alongside all the usual teen drama of a senior year in high school.
LINK to my full review

The Color Purple – Alice Walker - 5***** and a ❤
Walker’s choice to write the book as a series of letters (or diary entries) really gives the reader the chance to hear Celie. There are moments of despair, of sorrow, and a very few of joy. Celie is an extraordinary woman and watching her grow from a scared girl to a confident, in-charge woman is fascinating and uplifting.
LINK to my full review

The Oracle of Stamboul – Michael David Lukas – 4****
This work of historical fiction takes us to 19th-century Stamboul, seat of the Ottoman Empire (now, Istanbul, Turkey). Eleanora Cohen, a child prodigy, becomes a trusted advisor to the Sultan. She’s intelligent and an astute observer, but she is only a child. Still, she will have to rely on her own gifts to make her way. On the whole, I found this novel atmospheric and enchanting.
LINK to my full review

Heinrich Böll, Die Verwundung und anderer frühe Erzählungen [1947-1952, coll. 1983] 302 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in German]

Heinrich Böll, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972, was among the foremost German writers of the post-World-War-II period. While he wrote several novels, he is perhaps best known for his short stories. He is essentially a realist writer. This collection contains twenty-two of his earliest stories, nearly all from 1947 and 1948, with two each from "about" 1951 and 1952. The stories are in chronological order by the times they are set in, rather than when they were written. The first eight stories take place during the war; they are about the meaninglessness of the war (he is in the tradition of Im Weste nichts Neues), the class conflict between the working-class soldiers and their upper-class officers (in one a soldier shoots his lieutenant, another is ambiguous). Only one deals with the Holocaust. The next ten are about the economic and psychological consequences in the first years of the peace (the Germans have a name for this, Trümmerliteratur, meaning approximately "literature of ruins".) The last four are more diverse: satires about corruption, a crime story, and one that is difficult to classify. He is a good writer and I am looking forward to reading much of his work over the next few months (he is the chosen author for a group I am in on Goodreads for some time in the fall).

One Hundred Saturdays – Michael Frank – 4****
Subtitle: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World. This is a memoir as related by Stella to Michael Frank, of her childhood and youth in Rhodes, her interment at various concentration camps (including Auschwitz), her survival and triumph after moving to the United States. I’m so glad she told her story and that I read it.
LINK to my full review

A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle – 3***
This novella introduced the reading public to Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr Watson. The case hinges on a dead body found in a locked room; although the corpse shows no signs of having been attacked, Holmes is convinced it was murder. I found it a slower read than today’s mystery novels. But I was interested in getting to know Holmes and Watson. We learn how Holmes came to his method of deduction and begin to see the fast friendship that will develop between these two men.
LINK to my full review

Henrik Ibsen, The Works of Henrik Ibsen [1867-1892] 595 pages [Eng. tr.]

The edition I read was the one volume edition published in 1928 by Black's Reader Service; it contains ten of the major plays: Peer Gynt (1867), The League of Youth (1869), Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmerhalm (1886), Hedda Gabler (1890), and The Master Builder (1892). There is no introduction or preface, and no translator is listed; but I am fairly certain these are the Archer translations, which were the only ones available so far as I know for some of these plays at the time. (As an aside, when to try to confirm this I asked Microsoft's AI Copilot who the translator was, it just looked at the listings on Amazon and said it was impossible to ascertain; which is why I have yet to discover anything new from those programs that I hadn't already found myself.)

In fact, I rather prefer these older translations, as despite the Victorian English, they are the most faithful to Ibsen's actual language, while the more "modernized" translations take too many liberties. It also helps to be reminded that these are in fact plays written in the nineteenth century and not contemporary plays; it is important to read them in the knowledge that the heroines for instance are transgressive and the conservative figures represent the normal opinion of the overwhelming majority, whereas if one subconsciously thinks of them in a "presentist" way, as a modernized translation tempts one to, they become plays about normal heroines and unusually reactionary communities, which changes the meaning entirely.

It would be presumptuous of me to give detailed reviews of such classic plays about which thousands of books and articles have been written by scholars, but I will venture a few short remarks. Peer Gynt, perhaps the first of his "famous" plays, is based on a somewhat picaresque figure of recent folklore; it is in a Romantic style, more old-fashioned than his later plays and yet, paradoxically, the fragmentary plot gives it a more "modern" feeling. The League of Youth is more realistic, and satirizes the opportunistic liberals and the press of his time; I couldn't help but think of our own Democratic Party. However, the large number of characters and the intricate intrigue make it hard to follow and I am not sure how really successful he is in putting across his points. Pillars of Society is the next of his realistic "problem plays"; a wealthy shipbuilder is engaged in a project to build a railroad, when his brother and sister show up from America and secrets are revealed about the "pillars of society".

A Doll's House and Ghosts are two of his best plays. At one level, they are about marriage and the condition of women; in A Doll's House, a wife is treated as a "doll" who is not capable of understanding "male" business, but we learn that she has been the one to take the initiative in managing finances; at the end she insists on being treated as a person rather than a doll. In Ghosts, we see a widow who on the contrary accepted the subordinate role assigned to her, and is haunted by the "ghosts" of the past. To limit them to the questions of marriage and women would be to treat them as of only historical interest; what makes them and most of Ibsen's plays still effective today are the more general themes of truth to oneself and freedom of choice or "agency". (He was apparently very influenced by the early "existentialism" of Kierkegaard.)

An Enemy of the People concerns a doctor, Thomas Stockmann, who discovers that the town's baths are polluted, and tries in vain to get the local authorities, headed by the Mayor, his brother Peter, to take action. The situation seems quite modern, and I could cite many similar examples from the recent past (including from my own family), but again the real question is about the individual versus the conformist community. Unfortunately, Ibsen is a bit too direct and the play is too full of speeches, which I think makes it less successful as a work of literature.

The Wild Duck was perhaps my favorite, but I read it in another edition and will review it separately. Rosmersholm, about a former clergyman, deals with a failed marriage which has ended in suicide before the beginning of the play, enlightened opinions versus a fanatical conservatism, and revealed secrets, but the psychology didn't seem as well-done as in the earlier plays and I didn't appreciate it as much. Hedda Gabbler and The Master Builder are also psychological (and symbolic) studies.

Ibsen of course is one of the major dramatists of all times and influenced much of the drama of the next century, although contemporary drama for better or worse has gone in other directions.


Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck [1884, Eng. tr. (Norton crit. ed.)] 236 pages

This Norton critical edition contains the text of the play in a new English translation by Dounia Christiani, as well as much critical material. The play is about a young man who returns to the city (presumably Christiania, now Oslo) from his father's "works" in the north of the country and reveals "secrets" to his childhood friend Hjalmar, with tragic results. The translation was in contemporary English; the biggest problem I had with it was the decision to use the anachronistic term "neurotic" for the original which Archer translates as "overstrained"; this imposes one possible meaning on the text and excludes others which are equally possible. The meaning is in fact ambiguous in many respects, as is obvious from the various ways in which the critical articles interpret it: is the protagonist, Gregers, intended as a portrait of an "idealist" (as he thinks of himself), and the play as a "correction" of a too extreme position about truth in the previous An Enemy of the People, or is he intended to be motivated (consciously or unconsciously) by his hatred for his father? Is the friend Hjalmar really unaware of the true situation, or has he simply "repressed" his knowledge to maintain his self-esteem, until Gregers makes this impossible? What is the real character of the wife, Gina, and for that matter of Greger's father? Does the daughter, Hedwig, really believe in her father's illusions, or simply go along with them out of her love for him? Who or what is symbolized by the "Wild Duck"; Hedwig as victim, the old man Ekdal, or Hjalmar, or Greger himself as unable to "release" themselves from past wounds, or perhaps all of them? This is a play which requires much thought on the part of the reader.

Henrik Ibsen, Four Major Plays [1881-1896] [Eng. tr.] 315 pages

This is the second volume of the Signet Classic edition of Ibsen, with the modernized translations of Rolf Fjelde. It contains a very good introduction and afterword by Terry Otten, which put Ibsen in the political and economic context of his time, following the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe and the rapid rise of the industrial bourgeoisie to power both in the French Second Empire and elsewhere including Norway, and how that influenced Ibsen's plays. There are four plays; two I skipped, having just read them in another translation (Ghosts and An Enemy of the People). The two I read in this version were The Lady from the Sea (1888) and John Gabriel Borkman (1896).

The Lady from the Sea is about a married woman who has previously been in love with a sailor and made a commitment to him, which haunts her until he finally shows up. For nearly the whole play, it seemed like a Norwegian version of Wuthering Heights, but at the end it becomes another play about freedom of choice.

John Gabriel Borkman is one of Ibsen's last plays. It is about a disgraced former bank president, and about his wife and her twin sister who compete for the affections of his son. In the end it is also a play about gaining independence and freedom from the past.

Four Seasons In Rome – Anthony Doerr – 4****
Subtitle: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World. This is Doerr’s memoir of a year he spent as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award came with a studio in which to write, an apartment, and a stipend. And, of course, the experience of a year in Rome. I was completely delighted by his recollections.
LINK to my full review

Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon – 3.5***
This YA romance had some significant serious issues to discuss. I really liked Maddy, who’s intelligent and mostly serene. Olly is more complex and guarded, which is understandable given his family situation. Can love (even teenage love) conquer all? Yoon certainly makes a good case.
LINK to my full review

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects v.3 [2nd ed. 1568, Eng. tr. 1851] 525 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

The third volume in the edition I am reading, this contained thirty-three lives, most with more than one subject (actually all, if you count the brief lives of their disciples). The first life was that of Raphael Sanzio, which was the longest for a single person (sixty-five pages in this edition), as well as the most interesting. Andrea del Sarto had fifty-four. A collective life of various gemstone engravers and workers in intaglio had sixty-seven, and the last life, of engravers of prints, had forty. Unlike any of the other lives in the first three volumes, this included non-Italians, especially Albrecht Dürer, although the most space was given to Marcantonio. The other twenty-nine lives were all between five and twenty pages, and tended toward repeating the same or similar information. Madonna Properzia de' Rossi was the only woman in this volume; there were none in the first two.

China Dolls – Lisa See – 4****
This work of historical fiction begins in 1938, following three young women – Helen Fong, Grace Lee and Ruby Tom – through World War II and the period shortly thereafter. I really enjoyed this book. I was in vested in these young women and their aspirations, and really enjoyed the detail See included from costumes to scenery to social issues – these elements really took me back to this era and culture
LINK to my full review

Nerve – Dick Francis – 3***
This mystery/thriller opens with a bang, as a jockey shoots “himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring…” Is someone sabotaging jockeys? Who? And Why? Francis crafts a compelling psychological mystery. Jockey Rob Finn is tenacious, determined and smart in the way he goes about ferreting out information to build the case against an unlikely perpetrator. I came late to the Dick Francis fan club, but I’m glad I finally arrived.
LINK to my full review

Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems [1869-1874, OWC ed. 2001] 337 pages [in French]

An example of my usual regress; I began reading Ananda Dévi's Ève de ses décombres, because it is the most famous novel by this year's Neustadt Prize winner, and realized about thirty pages in that it was heavily based on the poetry of Rimbaut, which embarrassingly I had never read (I mentioned in a previous review that the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were largely a gap in my reading of French literature.) So I decided to read this collection of his complete poetry, French text with English translation and notes by Martin Sorrell (Oxford World Classics), followed by a popular biography of Rimbaud and a critical work on him, all three of which were in my garage. (I managed to keep myself from reading Baudelaire first, but it was a struggle — he's on my TBR, but a couple years from now, if and when I get to the nineteenth century again.)

Rimbaud is of course not only an important French poet but a major influence on later poetry in all the European languages, including English, either directly or through his influence on the surrealists. His poetry divides into three parts, the earlier verse poetry written in his teens, including bitter political satire inspired by the Commune; Une saison en enfer; and Illuminations, a series of prose-poems. As far as is known, he wrote no poetry after the age of twenty-one; he died of cancer at thirty-seven.

This poetry is a must-read for anyone interested in modern literature. I would not recommend this edition to anyone needing a translation; the "translation" is a fairly loose paraphrase (although he claims it is more literal than previous translations) which often seems to be totally made up, with little relation to the facing text (and lines are omitted, probably to keep the two sides in synch, as French tends to be longer than the corresponding English.)

Out Of the Dust – Karen Hesse – 5***** and a ❤
Hesse can say so much in so few words. This is an extraordinary work of fiction, written entirely in verse. It's an emotionally evocative story of growing up in the harshness of poverty and tragedy, set during the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the Great Depression.
LINK to my full review

Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel [2008] 192 pages

White's book is a popular biography of Rimbaud based on secondary works and the poetry itself. The author is gay and was influenced by Rimbaud as a teenager; the book emphasizes the relationship with Verlaine. It seems fairly accurate, although perhaps not fully up-to-date with the latest scholarship. I wish I had read this first, as the poetry makes more sense in the context of Rimbaud's life, more than is the case with many authors.

Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato: or Orlando in Love [1494, Eng. tr. (A.S. Kline) 2022] 1735 pages

Another example of my regress: I was preparing to read Greene's sixteenth-century play Orlando Furioso, so I decided to read the romance by Ariosto that it was based on first; but then I realized that was a sequel to this romance by Boiardo, so here I am back to the fifteenth century (in my original eighteenth-century project). Fortunately, I had already read the Chanson de Roland, or I would be back to the twelfth century. Boiardo's premise is that he is recounting a suppressed epic by Bishop Turpin, the alleged author of the Chanson de Roland, about the history of Roland (Orlando) before the events of that epic. In fact, although Boiardo's romance uses the characters of the Chanson de Roland, and there are many battles, the style and content are completely different. Where the early chansons de geste are military epics, the Orlando romances are concerned with courtly love and full of enchantment, based more on the Arthurian romances than on the French epics.

To start with the most obvious point: the book is very long. The new translation I read by A.S. Kline (the only one available in e-book format) runs to over seventeen hundred pages in the print edition, and at that the work was left unfinished, probably due to the French invasion of Italy and Boiardo's subsequent death; it breaks off in the middle of a battle, and in the middle of several other episodes (Boiardo's technique is to interweave at least four or five stories at a time.) It was so popular that there were many continuations, of which Ariosto's is the most famous; there was also a revised version in a more standard Italian (Boiardo wrote in a dialect which later became unfashionable) by Berni, which for several centuries was the version most people read. This translation is of Boiardo's original version.

The poem has some evident flaws; many of the episodes are variants on the same ideas (was every bridge in the Middle Ages guarded by a giant? How many enchanted gardens could there have been?) and he is careless of details (in every duel the armor is cut to shreds, and the winning combatants reappear immediately with full armor to fight again with the next knight or giant or monster.) However, the story is always exciting. This is a classic of Renaissance literature and was an influence on such later works as Spencer's The Fairy Queen.

Good Night, Irene – Luis Alberto Urrea – 5*****
This book of historical fiction is based on the life experiences of Urrea’s mother, who served as a Red Cross “Donut Dolly” during World War II. I have read many books by Urrea, so I knew he could write, but I was almost speechless at the end of this book. Whatever you do, do NOT skip the author’s note at the end where he relates how it took him some twenty years to come to grips with and write this novel as a testament to his mother’s experiences. This is truly a love letter to his mother.
LINK to my full review

Heinrich Böll, Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa. . .: Erzählungen [1950] 174 pages [in German]

Another twenty-two short stories (none more than thirteen pages) by Heinrich Böll, written during the same period, 1947-1950, as the collection I read previously. This book contains two of his most famous stories, the title story about a wounded man who dies in a makeshift hospital in the school where he spent his nine years of schooling before becoming a soldier, and "Auch Kinder sind Zivilisten", a very short story about a wounded man who buys pastries from a young Russian girl outside the hospital he is in. All the stories involve wounded men, if not physically then mentally or spiritually. Some are a bit stranger than in the other collection. Unlike that book, which brought together older stories much later, this one was published as a collection about the time the stories were written and played a part in establishing Böll's reputation as an author.

Joseph Bédier, Le roman de Tristan et Iseult [1900] 183 pages [in French]

This is the September (2024) reading for the World Literature Group I am in on Goodreads. I had seen this many times in used bookstores and so forth, but I never picked it up because I assumed it was just a translation of the poems of Béroul, Thomas, or Gottfried, all of which I read a quarter of a century ago. In fact, although it does incorporate a translation of the extant fragments of Béroul, it is much more than that. It is an attempt to reconstruct the content of Béroul's entire poem, or even the text which presumably lies behind both Béroul and Thomas, based on Thomas, Eilhardt, Gottfried, and various anonymous translations and allusions in other works, as well as a good deal of imagination.

After so many years, I can't really say how well Bédier imitates the style of Béroul, but I can say this was a good retelling of the story of Tristan and Iseult.

The Jasmine Project – Meredith Ireland – 3***
This was a cute rom-com with the family engineering a sort of “Bachelorette” competition for Jasmine Yap’s affections. They identify three likely candidates and watch carefully to see which one she will pick. But the road to HEA is full of obstacles. I liked that Ireland showed real growth in Jasmine’s character.
LINK to my full review

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Give Me a Sign – Anna Sortino – 4****
Lilah and the other counselors at Camp Grey Wolf are in many ways typical teenagers. But, they must also navigate a hearing world as Deaf or hearing-impaired individuals. I really enjoyed this book. Sortino is Deaf and passionate about seeing diverse characters portrayed in the media. This is her debut novel.
LINK to my full review

Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune [1988] 170 pages

The back cover calls this "a thrilling ride through the literature of Rimbaud". It's not. It's a dense, jargon-filled academic book. The author is a left-wing academic, somewhat vacillating between Marx and anarchism, with frequent mentions of "Situationism", a tendency which apparently originated in the French May 68 movement and which I know nothing about. Even her fellow academic, the somewhat more definitely Marxist-leaning Terry Eagleton, in his introduction to the book has to criticize her use of the common academic cliché of contrasting the good "young" Marx with the bad "mature" scientific Marx, who allegedly reduces everything to economics. Marx was first and foremost a revolutionary, and his economic works were all determined by the need to understand and abolish capitalist oppression not only to liberate the working class economically but to create a totally different and more human form of society, which is a continuation and deepening of his earliest ideas. His politico-historical writings, including his work on the Commune, belong to his "mature" period. Eagleton also points out that many of the problems she attributes to Marxism should actually be attributed to Stalinism. Leaving these questions aside, the book was interesting if not "thrilling".

The main idea of the book is to identify Rimbaud's poetry with the culture of the Paris Commune of 1871. She does say many things which were interesting about the Commune, and about Rimbaud's poetry, but I wasn't totally convinced by her parallels, especially her ideas about "social space". Of course, Rimbaud was obviously influenced by the Commune — he may or may not have actually been in Paris at the time, and he certainly supported it and wrote several poems about it; and certainly the Commune and his poetry share a common background in the experience of the Second Empire. Perhaps her best points are in the chapter which compares Rimbaud's poetry to Lafargue's The Right to Be Lazy. The book was worth reading, but except for readers with a specialized interest in the Commune or Rimbaud it will probably not be one of my top 500 books to recommend.

Maurice Choury, ed., Les Poètes de la Commune [1970] 270 pages [in French]

This book is a collection of poems by twenty-three poets associated with the Paris Commune. It begins with an introduction about the events of the Commune and an essay on Rimbaud. These are followed by twenty-two more poets in alphabetical order from Anonymous to Vermersch, each preceded by a short biographical introduction. Apart from Rimbaud, the two longest sections are on Eugène Pottier, the author of L'Internationale (included here) with 32 pages and Victor Hugo (the one poet included who was not a participant in the Commune and had a somewhat ambiguous attitude towards it) with 24 pages). The other poets are represented by one to four or five poems each.

Many of these poets were killed in the defense of the Commune or executed in the days that followed; some were deported to New Caledonia or escaped into exile in Belgium or England, from whence they mostly returned after the amnesty ten years later. With one exception (Henri Rochefort) they remained committed to the ideals of the Commune for the rest of their lives, and most were politically active. The poetry is somewhat uneven but all very inspiring.

Ananda Devi, Ève de ses décombres
[2005] 155 pages [in French]

The fourth novel I have read by Mauritien Neustadt prize winner Ananda Devi, I began this at the beginning of the month but then put it aside when I realized that it was largely influenced by the poetry of Rimbaud, which I hadn't yet read. I then read Rimbaud's complete poetry, a biography of Rimbaud, a critical book on Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, and a collection of poems about the Commune before returning to this novel yesterday. (It is a short book and a very fast read.) Not only is one of the major characters influenced by Rimbaud, whose poetry he quotes throughout the book, but the entire writing style of the novel is reminiscent of Rimbaud as well, and there are verbal echoes throughout.

The novel is set in Troumaron, an impoverished quarter of the Mauritien city of Port Louis, inhabited mainly by unemployed factory workers since the closing of the major factory. Written in a post-modernist style, the novel is divided into short segments in the first person representing the thoughts of the four major characters, all in their mid-to-late teens: Ève, the main protagonist, who engages in prostitution, Sad (Sadiq) who is in love with her, and is the character who identifies himself with Rimbaud, Savita, Ève's best friend and lesbian lover, and Clélio, who is a friend of Sad and is given to violence, and has spent time in prison for various juvenile offenses. Sad and Clélio belong to a "band" or gang which dominates the area. There are also short passages in the second person addressing Ève which give information about her which would not be part of her own thoughts. A fifth important character, who is not given his own segments, is an unnamed professor who has an affair with Ève.

The first half of the book is basically background; the second half begins with the discovery of a crime and describes its aftermath for all the characters in the latently explosive situation of Troumaron.

This is the best of the four novels I have read by Devi, and probably her most famous book. (It is also available in English translation.)

Robert Steven Bianchi, Daily Life of the Nubians [2004] 284 pages

The title of this book is explained by its being a volume in the Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History series, designed for "college and university undergraduates". In fact there is very little that could be called "daily life" (and very little is known, since almost no settlements have survived or been excavated); essentially the book is a summary of what is currently known about the history of Nubia, its relationship, diplomatic, military, and commercial, with Egypt, its art, and its temples and funerary customs. The book is very comprehensive for a book aimed at non-specialists. After a short description of the few known Paleolithic and early Neolithic remains, it deals with the A-Culture, the C-Culture, the Kingdom of Kerma, the Nubian Dynasty XXV in Egypt, the Kingdom of Napata and the Kingdom of Meroe. Throughout, it emphasizes the role of Nubia as a trade route between Egypt and the wealth of Africa in the south, although it does not specify what regions in the south it was trading with. (The next book I am reading deals with the lands to the south of Nubia during the same time period, but has no mention of Meroe or Napata, and the few mentions of Nubia are just statements that most Americans' knowledge of ancient Africa is limited to Egypt and Nubia. I wish that one or the other book had dealt with the connections.) To sum up, this was a very informative book from which I learned much that I had not previously read about.

Unfortunately, the book is not well-written. This is a book which could have used a good copy-editor. Apart from frequent errors in grammar, the author uses many words in an idiosyncratic way. For example, one of his favorite words is "moot", which he uses continually as if it were a synonym for "unknown". There are many cases where he repeats the same thought in almost the same words two or three times in the same paragraph, like someone with Alzheimer's who doesn't remember what he has just said. There are obvious careless mistakes such as reversing north and south, and in one place saying "Lower Egypt" when he clearly means "Lower Nubia"; in most cases I could figure out what he intended to say, although some paragraphs I could not decipher at all. The most serious problem was when he says that Nubia was invaded by Psametik II during the reign of King Aspelta in 593 BCE. He adds that while some scholars question whether Aspelta was actually the ruler at this time, all consider Aspelta and Psametik II to be contemporaries. On the next page he says that Aspelta' successor was Irike-Amanote (about 425-400 BCE), apparently not noticing that this would imply that Aspelta ruled for over 150 years. Granted that Nubian chronology is not well-understood, there should have been at least some mention of the problem. Is he using "successor" to mean "next known king" rather than "immediate successor"? I don't know, and his chronology at the beginning of the book skips the Napata period entirely, jumping a couple centuries from Dynasty XXV to Meroe. So all in all, this is not a book that I would recommend — if I knew of any other book on the same subject at the same level I could recommend instead.

Instructions For Dancing – Nicola Yoon – 3***
Evie doesn’t believe in love anymore. Not after her dad left and her parents divorced. But then she finds her way to a dance studio and the next thing she knows, Evie is paired with a boy named X, learning to waltz, fox-trot and tango. This is a charming YA romance with a young couple who have multiple family issues they have to navigate.
LINK to my full review

Fatal Thaw – Dana Stabenow – 3***
Book number two in the mystery series featuring Aleut private investigator Kate Shugak. Stabenow writes a great thriller/mystery. I love the setting in a very rural part of Alaska, and the way she incorporates some Aleut culture into the mix. Kate is a very strong woman and a marvelous lead character. She’s intelligent, resourceful, determined, observant, and kind, but she does not hold back when toughness is required.
LINK to my full review

Sept. 8

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects v.4 [2nd ed. 1568, Eng. tr. 1851] 548 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

This fourth volume is mainly devoted to artists who were recently deceased at the time Vasari was writing. It contains eighteen lives from Antonio da San Gallo and Giulio Romano to Razzi and Aristotile and a nineteenth chapter with many painters from Lombardy. The lives in this volume tend to be somewhat longer than in the previous volumes, and there are many more interesting anecdotes about these artists, many of whom were friends, coworkers or rivals of Vasari himself and about whom he has more information. There also seems to be a much greater diversity in the subjects of the paintings and sculptures in this volume; although there are still many Madonnas and saints, crucifixions and resurrections, there are also many works depicting Greek and Roman mythology, ancient and modern history, and allegorical representations, and even in the religious art there seem to be more diverse subjects from the Old Testament. In the final chapter, which contains many artists still living when it was written, the section on Cremona is particularly notable for a number of women artists.

Martin MacInnes, In Ascension [2023] 381 pages [Kindle, Overdrive]

This is a recent, very literate post-modern speculative fiction novel which blurs the line between "hard" and social or humanistic science fiction. At one level it is in the tradition of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris and Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, an ambiguous novel with truly alien aliens whom we never meet, let alone understand. At another level, it is one of the best fictional treatments I have seen of the human — biological and psychological — challenges of long-range crewed spaceflight, which more than the technological challenges may be the real problem in direct human exploration of Mars and beyond. It is also throughout a psychological exploration of memory, knowledge, and one particular human experience, the history of a dysfunctional family including Leigh, the first-person narrator throughout the book, her sister Helena, who takes over in the last section and remembers childhood events in a very different way, and their parents Geert and Fenna. In the end there is also a suggestion of the circularity of time which may tie together various strands of the plot. The novel is set in the present or near future, beginning about 2025 and ending in 2031, although the climate crisis seems somewhat more advanced than it is so far, and the space research is carried out in a very different, more secret way than it is now. I tended, as I often do with near-future science fiction, to add twenty or thirty years to all the dates.

[This plot summary contains spoilers.]
The novel begins with Leigh, a young marine biologist at the beginning of her career, on board a ship called the Endeavor, exploring an anomalous deep sea vent off the island of Ascension in the Atlantic Ocean. There are many memory flashbacks to her childhood which ostensibly are just to provide background, but actually introduce one of the major themes of the book. While returning from this expedition, she learns in passing of the discovery of a new, breakthrough propulsion system called "the power". We learn later that this discovery may not be entirely human. Although there is no real description of the power (the "hard" science in this novel is not physics but biology) it appears to be based on quantum superposition, such that any observation of the propulsion system will cause it to cease to function. At first this seems to have no relevance to Leigh, who is pursuing her biological research into algae.

In the next section, Amy, a senior researcher who met Leigh aboard the Endeavor, arranges for her to work in a well-funded but very secretive Institute in California. Eventually, she learns that her research into the agricultural prospects of algae are intended for supplying a long-range space mission to the Oort Cloud, and it is revealed to her that an obviously artificial body called Datura has appeared and disappeared in the asteroid belt, and that simultaneously the Voyager I space probe has come back to life and is broadcasting from the wrong location. The mission directors assume that to make contact with the aliens they need to send a mission to the apparent position of the Voyager.

After a series of events which are very summarily described (this is just a plot device) Leigh ends up as one of the three astronauts about the Nereus. The flight is described in detail in the next section, and is the most traditionally science fiction part of the novel. After a basically successful flight, there is a sudden unexplainable catastrophe as they reach the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space; the ship is totally disabled and seems to have been displaced two billion years into the past. (Is this the work of the mysterious aliens, or is it a natural result of trying to cross the boundary, which prevents any culture from leaving its own solar system?)

The novel then shifts to the perspective of Helena, trying to overcome the bureaucratic secrecy of the Institute to find out the truth about her sister's death and get access to the expedition's last transmissions. There is then a last chapter which suggests the Nereus has in fact returned automatically to Earth and landed in the sea near Ascension as designed — but two billion years early, and that this explains the anomalous deep vent, which would have been caused by the impact of the ship, and the beginning of eukaryotic life on Earth from the algae aboard the ship. Many of the mysteries of the novel remain unexplained, as in the other novels mentioned above.

The Hive and the Honey – Paul Yoon – 3***
I like this kind of literary fiction. This is a collection of short stories, all featuring Koreans. The settings and time frame vary, from Europe to Asia to North America, from the 19th century to contemporary times. What they have in common is the way in which Yoon depicts his characters.
LINK to my full review

Free Fire – C J Box – 3***
Book number seven in the mystery series featuring Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett. Gosh but I love Pickett. He’s an astute observer, keeps his cards close to the chest, doesn’t take unnecessary chances, but doesn’t hesitate to go into dangerous situations when it’s called for. There are some hidden agendas regarding ecoterrorism, deals cut with major bioengineering firms, and possible drug dealing. Can he sort it out and discover the “real” culprit before a natural disaster occurs to wipe out all evidence?
LINK to my full review

Yours Cheerfully – A J Pearce – 4****
This is book two about Emmeline Lake, a young woman who was introduced to readers in Pearce’s DEAR MRS BIRD. I was completely charmed by Emmy in the first book and really like to see her continued growth as a woman and journalist. As Emmy meets the women on the line in a munitions factory, she begins to identify the societal and industrial prejudices that women are suffering, and then to advocate for solutions.
LINK to my full review

Dragon Actually – G A Aiken – 3***
Welcome to the world of handsome warrior dragons and the bloodthirsty females who love them. The plot is thin, but it was a fast read and somewhat entertaining, if repetitive. I have to say I most enjoyed the family interplay between Fearghus, his siblings and parents.
LINK to my full review

The Queen of Sugar Hill – ReShonda Tate – 3.5***
Subtitle: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel. Tate’s novel begins with the Oscar ceremony when McDaniel won for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Mammy in GONE WITH THE WIND. But Hattie McDaniel was so much more than that iconic role, and Tate gives us all of her. Having read this book, I have a new appreciation for the trailblazing that McDaniel and other Black actors of her generation did.
LINK to my full review

Christopher Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern & Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400 [1998] 354 pages

This book is a description of African cultures in eastern and southern Africa in antiquity, a subject of which I knew approximately nothing. The author states that the text is for the general reader, while the extensive appendices of word derivations at the back give the specific evidence it is based on for specialists. It seems to me that like many specialists, Ehret overestimates what the general reader would be likely to know.

After a general introduction explaining the purpose and organization of the book, the first third of the text is about the cultural geography of the Western Rift-Great Lakes region. He first describes the distribution of Central Sudanian, Eastern Sahelian and Southern Cushite cultures based on grain cultivation and/or livestock raising before and about his starting point of 1000 B.C. (He bases this largely on the existence in different modern languages of cognate words referring to various environmental conditions, forest or grassland, words for wild plants or various animals that live in particular kinds of environments and so on; see my next paragraph.) Next he describes the arrival of the Mashariki (Bantu) from the West, with an agriculture based on yam cultivation, into the area west of the Western Rift and their subsequent migrations southward and eastward to the region around Lake Nyanza (which most books in English still call Lake Victoria), coming into contact with the previously mentioned cultures.

There are many maps showing the lakes and rivers with the approximate initial positions of the various groups, which is very welcome, and I could follow the movements when he describes them as toward Lake Nyanza or southwest of Lake Tanganika and so forth, that is relative to the places shown on the maps. Unfortunately, in these chapters and throughout the book, he also describes movements in terms of modern countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, etc., and even particular named regions and districts of these modern countries, not to mention the areas now inhabited by various modern ethnic and linguistic groupings, none of which are included on any of his maps. Now, if you gave me a map with just outlines of the various countries, I could probably label most of the countries correctly — I'm not sure how many general readers, at least in the U.S. could even do that — but if you just gave me a blank map and asked me to draw in the countries I would have no idea where the various boundaries ran, and certainly could not add regions or districts, or locate the ethnic or linguistic groups. So while I got a general vague idea of the movements of peoples in the area, I could not follow the detail at all, even consulting a political map online. He also moves back and forth through time, and there is nothing like a chronological table to help the reader remember which movements and developments in each of the cultures described separately are simultaneous or in what order. These are the biggest shortcomings from the viewpoint of the non-specialist reader like myself.

The next chapters attempt to describe the material and social cultures of the various groups. Since there is very little archaeological material available, mostly limited to burials, whether because of the unfavorable conditions for preservation or to the relative lack of archaeological investigation in these areas, he relies almost exclusively on linguistic evidence. He examines the languages and dialects now spoken in the areas and attempts to date the introduction of various cultural elements based on the distribution of words; for instance, if a word for say, sorghum, (or rather cognate words with the same presumed origin) is found in languages and dialects which have been separated since a particular time, he assumes that sorghum was cultivated by that culture already before the time the subgroups who spoke those languages migrated in different directions and became relatively isolated from each other. If on the other hand, it is found in only a particular grouping of languages he assumes it was first cultivated after that particular group had split from the groups which use different words or have no word for it. He also uses the facts that some words for say, cattle raising are loanwords in Bantu from say some Central Sudanian language, then the Bantu speakers probably derived that cultural trait from the Central Sudanians along with the words at a time when they were in close proximity to each other.

With regard to the positive evidence — words which are found in different languages — I found his arguments rather probable; but with regard to negative evidence — the idea that a culture at a particular time did not yet cultivate some crop or raise cattle, because there is no group of cognate words referring to that trait, I think it is much more speculative. I emphasize again that I have no specialized knowledge of the subject; but it seems to me that if we used the same technique with different dialects of English, we might conclude that many traits first arrived in England with the Norman conquest, when in fact, since we have written evidence in Old English, we know that they were known to the Saxons, but the Old English Germanic words have just all happened to be replaced by words derived from Norman French. In the case of eastern Africa, where writing is very recent, we don't have any written evidence to check the assumptions. Fortunately I have recently read several books on linguistics and language history so I was able to follow his arguments but again I think for the average general reader it would be hard going.

One other problem I had, and this is probably specific to me, is that my last historical reading from earlier in the month was on ancient Nubia and Cush, at the same period Ehret is discussing. Now by comparing the maps in the two books, it seems that at least his Southern Cushite culture overlaps with the region of Cush described in the other book — I assume that's where the word Cushite comes from? — including the urban area of Meroe. But in his discussion of the Southern Cushites he makes no mention of Meroe or of any contacts with Nubia or Egypt. (The previous book emphasized the role of Nubia as a trading route between Egypt and further south in Africa; presumably the trade was with the groups Ehret is discussing, yet there is no mention in this book of any trading relations with the north.)

As an example, he says based on language evidence that the religious conceptions of the Southern Cushites and Central Sudanians, and later by diffusion of the Bantu cultures, replaced the identification of Divinity by the sky and weather with a specific identification with the sun toward the end of the last millennium B.C. Now, this is the same time at which the Napatan and Meroe urban areas were adopting the religion of the Egyptian sun god Amon-Ra. Could there be a connection? He doesn't mention the possibility, even to dismiss it, but just says that the reason is unknown. I wish that this book, which after all has the subtitle, "in World History", had had some discussion of relations with World History as better known.

There is a brief mention of trade on the Indian Ocean coast in the Roman era late in the book; he mentions the port of Rhapta, the only actual town in the region, which has not (at least as of 1998 when the book was written) been found but may have been near modern Dar es Salaam. This chapter also describes the beginnings of the diffusion of East African culture (but not the people) west to the Atlantic coast.

The most interesting thing I learned from the book is that ironworking was apparently discovered independently in the area to the northwest of the Lakes region, near or somewhat before the beginning of the first millenium B.C., or at about the same time it was discovered in Anatolia far to the north. Why two such distant areas should discover iron at about the same time is an interesting question. (And don't tell me it was ancient astronauts or I'll block your posts.) It is perhaps more surprising in Africa, where the previous technological level was still that of stone tools than in Anatolia where it followed on the Bronze Age. While the author refers to an "Iron Age" culture, apart from iron itself it seems as though the book could be summarized as a description of the spread of the Neolithic (food-producing) revolution into areas of eastern and southeastern Africa previously inhabited sparsely by hunter-gatherer populations, similar to what had happened earlier in Europe and Western Asia.

This spread of food-producers into eastern and southeastern Africa, respectively, from the Lakes region in what he calls the late classical period is the subject of the next two chapters. The complicated migrations and the number of different groups involved, as well as the many geographical areas mentioned, made these chapters much more complex and I think here the author has abandoned any attempt to write for a non-specialist audience. The book ends with a very long chapter going over the technological and social changes of the last seven hundred years (what he calls the Late Classical period), and a very short chapter summing up the book as a whole and trying to draw conclusions for the study of world history in general. There are then several appendices of word derivations in various languages, obviously for specialists. I would have to say that this is basically a specialist work, or at any rate for a general reader with some serious previous knowledge of and interest ‌in modern African cultural anthropology and linguistics, although to be fair that is probably the reader who would read a book with this title.

The Tunnels – Michelle Gagnon – 3***
Book One in the mystery series starring FBI agent Kelly Jones. A serial killer is targeting women on a New England college campus. This is a brutal, graphic murder mystery, and Jones is a tough lady who is up to the task. The pace is fast, the lead character is likeable, and the storyline held my attention, but I’m not sure I’d bother to read another in the series.
LINK to my full review