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| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | ------ | | | checkbox | position | cover Women in Love | title Women in Love | author Lawrence, D.H. | isbn 0486424588 | isbn13 9780486424583 | asin 0486424588 | num pages 416pp | avg rating 3.66 | num ratings 32,581 | date pub 1920 | date pub edition Jan 15, 2003 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Intellectualizing Love Which Turns to Hate Which Turns to Love which….oh, forget it.When I was 26 years old, I wandered for a day in the Louvre, in Pa Intellectualizing Love Which Turns to Hate Which Turns to Love which….oh, forget it.When I was 26 years old, I wandered for a day in the Louvre, in Paris, looking at the vast numbers of paintings and works of art. I liked and was held by only a few. I knew, at least subconsciously, that other people considered all the works worthy of being hung in this most famous museum, but I could not relate to large numbers of them. They left me blank, they left me cold. Similarly, in the world of literature there are so many books that are considered brilliantly great by experts and non-experts, reviewers and simple borrowers from libraries. I sometimes agree, sometimes not. I have read several books by D.H. Lawrence over the years, admiring his skill and vision, but this one turned me off completely. I didn’t like the story and I didn’t like any of the characters either. Most of all I didn’t like the style—the author’s propensity for extreme prolixity, wordiness, and verbosity---in other words---he talks too much!! There’s an excess of imagery. Though not much in love with Hemingway’s topics, his style impressed me a great deal, not so Lawrence’s. I am someone who admires haiku, I admit. Oh, the floods of words about every little thing! It’s interminably lush and boring. Maybe for some people, writing three pages about throwing stones at the moon in a lake is impressive. Not for me. Just too over the top. And then on page 323; “His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering her into himself, her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, drinking in the suffusion of her physical being, avidly. He lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like wine into a cup.”………. “….melting into his limbs and bones, as if he were soft iron becoming surcharged with her electric life.” Two more pages of this! There are four main characters with only a few minor ones. Two Englishmen of different styles and character fall in love with two sisters, but very slowly. In a novel of 473 pages, the first sexual encounter comes on page 312. I didn’t mind that, but what I did find quite off-putting is that Lawrence has trouble separating love from hate, friendship from enmity, happiness from sadness, satisfaction from dissatisfaction. I felt sure that this owed a lot to his own character. Some people say that the character Birkin, a rather mysterious type, reflected Lawrence himself. That would have been a person who could not be happy, who was probably bi-sexual in a time when that was not accepted in society, and who constantly involved himself in philosophical meanderings that led nowhere. I felt that, in the immortal phrase of a certain well-known country, “he was up himself”. The other main male character, Gerald Crich, is so macho as to be almost a caricature. Two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, become involved with these two men. Neither one is very appealing, continually changing mood and direction, often reflecting snobby English opinions of the time, classifying people by their jobs and social status. Do they know how to love at all? They find it normal to be disdainful of others and nearly everything around them. All characters revel in disliking each other, suddenly passionately loving the same people, and then just as quickly hating them again. It tired me out. The novel is set in a mill town in the English midlands and then the Austrian Alps. The scenes and natural setting are exquisitely written, but I tired of how Lawrence seized on a person or topic and wrung it out, did it to death, pouring more and more sauce on, only to go on to the next intellectual “essay” leaving the reader exhausted. Serious novels do dwell on serious topics, but perhaps a gentler touch is more persuasive, at least in my case. Is it true that all people are so individualistic that no one can co-exist? Does hate always accompany love? Is intellectual thought and sentiment about the world just an attempt to break out of loneliness? At one point (p.242) Ursula accuses Rupert Birkin of wanting to use her, of being very one-sided. But he wanted the surrender of her spirit, not necessarily her body. He says, “It’s different. The two kinds of service are so different. I serve you in another way—not through yourself—somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves.—to be really together because we ARE together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.” This is either youthful b.s. or a kind of Zen Buddhist koan. Lawrence was 31 years old when he wrote it. To sum up, if you like lush writing and lots of intellectualizing in your novels, this could be a good book for you. I’ve given it five stars to say that I recognize it as a major literary work, but if pressed to provide solely my own opinion, I would award only two. As my review is #1,454 on the list, I reckon you’ll find a more positive review elsewhere. Give it a shot. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 3 | votes 14 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 28, 2024 | date added Sep 28, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Cowards | title The Cowards | author Škvorecký, Josef | isbn 091294675X | isbn13 9780912946757 | asin 091294675X | num pages 416pp | avg rating 3.93 | num ratings 1,357 | date pub 1958 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1980 | Bob's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review One week in 1945 in a small Czech townBack around the early 1990s I went through a whole stage of reading Škvorecky’s novels and stories, but I missed One week in 1945 in a small Czech townBack around the early 1990s I went through a whole stage of reading Škvorecky’s novels and stories, but I missed this one. It was sitting on my shelf for years until I finally read it. I enjoyed it, just like I enjoyed several of his others. I can’t say it’s Nobel Prize material, but then, very few are. I’m not sure why the author called the book “The Cowards”. The story takes place during the last week of WW II in a small Czech town. The main protagonists are a group of young men from bourgeois families, most of them members of a jazz band. One of them, Danny Smiricky, tells most of the story—he appears in other Škvorecky novels too. The Nazis are still in town, but on the verge of leaving. The Russians are coming, their artillery can be heard some miles off. The seven year German occupation is crumbling fast and vast numbers of prisoners have broken out of the Nazi camps, but are unsure where to go. These prisoners are of many nationalities, even a group of British soldiers captured at Dunkirk five years before, now billeted with the families of town notables.“The Cowards” is basically a coming-of-age story. The young guys are still in the hacking around stage at the beginning, defying authority, thinking only about jazz and girls. Parents are “so square”. If they are good at music, they are mostly hopeless at love, very immature, still without purpose or direction. Škvorecky captures expertly that indecision of youth, the defiance of authority, that whirlwind of imagination and confusion that characterized so many of us in our day. But as the week goes by, the situation in town gets worse. The regular German troops are pulling out, the Russians have begun to appear, but a retreating SS division comes to town and fighting breaks out. The town officials respect the Nazi flags, emblems, and signs, then switch to Russian ones, and back again to the Germans’ when the SS appear with tanks. The Czechs have no army of their own; they go whichever way the wind blows. Perhaps they are the cowards, but until the young men steal a lot of German weapons they have no way to fight. Fighting breaks out, some heroes appear and all the young men grow up fast. Their youthful dreams of impressing the girls evaporate. The Russians are “good guys” here, but we, the readers, know that in the not-distant future they would trample Czech wishes for another 45 years. Perhaps the same people who cooperated with the Germans would then cooperate with the Russians. Are they the cowards? Maybe it’s better to be a live coward when faced with overwhelming force, than a dead hero. Škvorecky has written a kind of satire, as well as a clear portrayal of the Czech dilemma back then. Who can be a hero? Who shall we call “coward”? Written in 1949 when he was 24 years old, this was the author’s first novel and was banned for 15 years. It may not be the most mature novel you’ll ever read, but it’s clear and still enjoyable. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 18 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 18, 2024 | date added Sep 18, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Memórias do Subterrâneo | title Memórias do Subterrâneo | author Dostoevsky, Fyodor | isbn 9896417423 | isbn13 9789896417420 | asin 9896417423 | num pages 136pp | avg rating 4.17 | num ratings 176,244 | date pub 1864 | date pub edition May 2017 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 1 | votes 8 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 14, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian | title Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian | author Williamson, Ray A. | isbn 0806120347 | isbn13 9780806120348 | asin 0806120347 | num pages 366pp | avg rating 4.11 | num ratings 37 | date pub Aug 1984 | date pub edition May 15, 1987 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Archaeoastronomy 101I have this strong feeling that most of you punters have not read a book on archaeoastronomy. Neither had I till I picked up this Archaeoastronomy 101I have this strong feeling that most of you punters have not read a book on archaeoastronomy. Neither had I till I picked up this book. Well, I suppose such books are not exactly a dime a dozen. Somehow, I managed to get through high school, university and graduate school without ever hearing of the field. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t yet regarded as a “field”. But that’s in the past. If you were ever curious about what Native Americans knew about the stars, the planets, the moon and sun, this is your book, very well written and clearly explained. Williamson concentrates solely on the knowledge of the peoples of the continental USA, starting with the Southwestern peoples, devoting nearly eight out of the thirteen chapters to them. It turns out that not only did these people have considerable knowledge linking the sky phenomena to practical actions during the year, but they also built certain structures observing moon or sun positions at particular times of the year—like other peoples in Europe and Asia. The author also writes about the astronomical knowledge of the peoples of the Plains, the East and Southeast, and those of California. Despite lack of written language, metal, and thus, telescopes, they had amassed quite a stock of information. Nearly all the American peoples had a celestial calendar. Their myths and traditions often included the astronomical knowledge they had. You will find a number of illustrative photos, drawings and charts. Great. A second problem covered in the book is “how do we know what that knowledge was?” In some cases, it was handed down till today, but in many other cases, because it was lost, it took painstaking research by archaeologists to realize what the ancients knew. The early European arrivals and later pioneers and land-seekers had a strong tendency to debunk any knowledge held by the Native Americans. It was only recently that scientists—of whom Prof. Williamson seems to be among the foremost—paid attention to that body of knowledge. That’s probably why I had never heard of the entire field. But if I may use an unlikely analogy, this book reminded me of fried clams and beer. They go together so well. However, if you dislike one or the other, or at least have some grave doubts as to whether you can swallow the combination, you understand what I am talking about. Maybe Native Americans are a favorite topic of yours. Or, maybe it’s astronomy. If it’s not both, some sections of the book are going to be tough going. As for me, the history and culture of Native Americans are some of my favorite reading material. Astronomy—hmm, not really. I give this book five stars because it’s written as well as possible for someone like me, but I confess that some of the “astronomy” pages left me gaping. For anyone who likes both the fried clams and the beer, be sure not to miss “Living the Sky”. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 1 | votes 20 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 10, 2024 | date added Sep 10, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Turkey 1908-1938: The End of the Ottoman Empire (A History in Documentary Photographs) | title Turkey 1908-1938: The End of the Ottoman Empire | author Benoist-Méchin, Jacques | isbn 3894340088 | isbn13 9783894340087 | asin 3894340088 | num pages 239pp | avg rating 2.00 | num ratings 1 | date pub Jan 01, 1989 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1989 | Bob's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review History as Kings, Wars, and “Great Men”Damn! This book has as much photographic evidence as possible of the Ottoman Empire and then Turkey from the 13 History as Kings, Wars, and “Great Men”Damn! This book has as much photographic evidence as possible of the Ottoman Empire and then Turkey from the 1300s to 1938, but they are all in poorly-rendered black and white. Only a few have come out decently even if it is a good collection. And then there’s the English text with a myriad misspellings and numerous grammatical mistakes as if it had been written in French and translated by someone who dropped out of English 202 in sophomore year. I was perplexed as to how somebody got away with this. If you are interested to view these photos, some of which are no doubt interesting and hard to see anywhere else, you can try to find this thin volume. But I’ll warn you, the text is of that old fashioned history school which prizes the Sultans, their battles and conquests or their losses. There is only a little else until we get to the early 20th century and a bit of the complex politics of the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of modern Turkey, thanks to the efforts of Ataturk. It’s a slight effort definitely not worth reading. In any case it is so sparse that it would only take you a couple of hours at most. But being curious as to why the author’s names or initials did not appear before his last name and the question of why there is no date of publication, I took the trouble of looking up this dude on Google. There I was not pleased to find that he was a Nazi-supporter, a minister in the Vichy government condemned to death at the end of the war, but instead pardoned after 6 years in jail. He was considered a brilliant fellow, a top French intellectual, but wtf? They can have him. I’m out of here. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 2 | votes 7 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 03, 2024 | date added Sep 03, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Tragedy of Madagascar: An Island Nation Confronts the 21st Century | title The Tragedy of Madagascar: An Island Nation Confronts the 21st Century | author Adams, Nathaniel * | isbn 1789048745 | isbn13 9781789048742 | asin 1789048745 | num pages 416pp | avg rating 4.33 | num ratings 9 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Dec 01, 2022 | Bob's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review One, Two, Many TragediesTragedy #1. Madagascar is among those countries that have not, as yet, controlled their birth rate. I spent some time there in One, Two, Many TragediesTragedy #1. Madagascar is among those countries that have not, as yet, controlled their birth rate. I spent some time there in 1987 and the Malagasy numbered around 11 million. Today, the count is almost 30 million and is projected (if things don’t change) to be almost 100 million by 2100. While of course the country is big and so far agricultural production is far below what it could be, that number will be unsustainable. No matter what the government does, if the population growth rate is not curbed, there will not be enough jobs to support anywhere near that number. Tragedy #2. Climate change has already hit Madagascar harder than many other parts of the world. The south of the country, always dry, has suffered extensive droughts over the last decades. Famine lurks around the corner. Sudden storms wreak havoc where seasonal rainfall used to be predictable. Combined with Tragedy #1, this does not bode well at all for the country’s future. International aid has prevented the direst situation so far. Tragedy #3. Though Madagascar is more fortunate than most African countries in that all its people speak a single language (with a few dialects), history and politics have created a division between the formerly dominant highland peoples and the coastal groups. Since Independence in 1960 (after a colonial rule of only 65 years), Madagascar has never had a very effective government—first semi-French control behind the scenes, then a dictatorship with links to North Korea and East Germany, then a changing kaleidoscope of elected presidents with varied policies that are not often carried out. Several of those presidents made attempts to acquire more personal control. The economy, rock-bottom in the late 1980s, recovered to some extent, then fell back, then began to flourish a bit. In 2010, 82% of the population still lived on less than US$1.25 a day. (p.194) The country needs industry and agricultural improvement, but it doesn’t look likely. To me, it looks like a case of the government “fiddling while Rome burns”. Tragedy #4. An elite dominates power in Madagascar. Corruption is at a very high level too. [Madagascar is ranked 152 out of 180 countries in terms of corruption. Number 1 being the least corrupt.] Money that could be used to bring about better conditions is being siphoned off by the political “heavies”. The rivalry between two perennial candidates is written up in great detail. The author supplies a standard history in the first chapter, discusses more contemporary politics in the next and then gets into the topics that I’ve just discussed. I liked his interviews and inclusion of the views of common Malagasy around the island. This is a journalistic book, readable, but rather hastily prepared it seems. There are way more typos than average and while he presents a great number of statistics, sometimes I wondered how useful they might be if government effectiveness is anything to go by. Large sections cover background to things like poverty, corruption, population growth, climate change, etc.—rather repetitive pages that can be found in many other books. Madagascar is a fascinating place, but the main reason you would read this book is simple—there are very few others that cover the same topic! Until more are written on Madagascar’s trials and tribulations, I think this one is your best choice. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 12 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 02, 2024 | date added Sep 02, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies) (Volume 9) | title Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies)(Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies) (Volume 9) | author Eickelman, Dale F. | isbn 0520072529 | isbn13 9780520072527 | asin 0520072529 | num pages 281pp | avg rating 3.82 | num ratings 11 | date pub Sep 06, 1990 | date pub edition Oct 08, 1990 | Bob's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Patterns of Pilgrimage, Modes of MigrationSome people in the West may have heard of Ibn Battuta, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Ahmad ibn Majid, or al-Masudi, earl Patterns of Pilgrimage, Modes of MigrationSome people in the West may have heard of Ibn Battuta, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Ahmad ibn Majid, or al-Masudi, early Muslim travellers whose written accounts have provided much knowledge of societies otherwise unobserved by literate people. I bought this book almost 30 years ago because I thought it would tell me more about such men. I was wrong. It is a collection of articles based on “movement” among Islamic peoples, whatever that may mean. The idea of Islam as flexible comes through strongly—it being far from the monolithic entity so often portrayed in the Western media. Readers will realize that there is a far more complex sacred geography in the Muslim world than just Mecca/Medina. Muslims traveled for many different reasons and contact with Muslims of various kinds resonated in the Islamic world just as much as contact with European or Indian “Others”. Perhaps the major reason for travel (always for men) was to acquire religious learning or experience, of course to accomplish the pilgrimage to Mecca, but not only that. Travel, in any case, helped form a cosmopolitan Muslim identity. The writers in “Muslim Travellers” perceive “travel” in a very wide sense, including being refugees, being “guest workers” in Europe, and even the influence of Islamic practice on Moroccan Jews in Israel. In an introductory chapter the editors discuss motives and interest in travel in Islam plus the push and pull in stimulating travel: a certain tension between center and periphery, the causes of social action such as pilgrimage. Are local shrines as attractive to travelers as the faraway major shrines in Saudi Arabia? On page 18 they say that “…Muslims assert that Islamic directions are universal and clear and yet their manifestation in thought and practice are so varied and indeterminate.” The following chapters, each by a different author, illustrate what the editors mean. M.K. Masud’s chapter on the doctrine of hijra is almost unreadable for the uninitiated. I will not comment because I didn’t really understand. S.I. Gellens writes on the search for knowledge in medieval Islamic societies and the dialogue among Muslims over centuries on the relative merits of local attachments vs. perceived universal sentiments and obligations. A. El Moudden talks of the consequences of travel for developing a sense of locality—travellers acquire a wider sense of Islam, but a sharper sense of what is specific to their own location. This chapter is more readable than the previous ones. B. Metcalf’s chapter deals with South Asian accounts of the Hajj—travelogues, letters, journals, and guidebooks. M.B. McDonnell describes patterns of pilgrimage from Malaysia, both motivations and benefits on return. The hajj created a more uniform Malay identity. The chapter by K. Karpat struck me as the most interesting. It concerns the migration of Muslims from Russia and Balkan lands to the Ottoman Empire in its last days—1860 to 1914. This was a movement of some five to seven million people into Turkey proper from the outer ex-provinces. The Ottomans granted asylum to anyone asking for it—not only Muslims but Jews as well. Karpat discusses the creation of post-migration identities along with the new idea of a Muslim territorial state. R. Mandel continues the theme of “traveler as migrant worker”, talking about Turkish migrants to Germany and how their identity changed in a new country. She speaks specifically about migrants from the Alevi branch of Islam and their changing identity in Germany. R. Launay focuses on scholarly credentials among the Dyula of the Ivory Coast—a certain debate between Wahhabi and non-Wahhabi religious scholars who had gone to study in Egypt or other parts of the Arab world. J.A. Clancy writes a very interesting chapter on an Algerian brotherhood in the 18th century that stemmed from travel to Egypt. She says that it showed a kind of “cosmopolitan neo-Sufism”. Cool term. I already mentioned A. Weingrod’s chapter “Saints and Shrines: A Morocco-Israel Comparison” which concerns the way North African patterns of visiting the tombs of local saints was continued by the Moroccan Jewish immigrants to Israel and is linked to rightwing politics there. The last chapter, by N. Tapper, is about visits to local shrines in a Turkish community even though strict Islam frowns on them. It is mostly women who participate. All in all, there are many interesting chapters and I learned a lot, even if the book turned out to be something other than what I originally expected. A few of the selections would be far above any reader’s level except for specialists, others are readily accessible. Those chapters would be excellent choices for courses on Islam as they provide ample evidence of the enormous variety to be found in the Islamic world. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 11 | votes 25 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 27, 2024 | date added Aug 27, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans | title The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans | author Pettifer, James | isbn 1860649742 | isbn13 9781860649745 | asin 1860649742 | num pages 256pp | avg rating 3.69 | num ratings 29 | date pub Jan 01, 2006 | date pub edition Dec 26, 2006 | Bob's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Four years of Albanian politics through a microscope I’ve been interested in Albania since I was a kid and read two books about children in that count Four years of Albanian politics through a microscope I’ve been interested in Albania since I was a kid and read two books about children in that country, books by Elizabeth Cleveland Miller that I later sought out, acquired online and reviewed here on Goodreads. I built up a substantial library of books on Albania, thinking I would never be able to go there. But, as soon as Albania opened, having shed its diehard Communist shell, I went there and found a very good country, though somewhat worse for the wear in 1996. I traveled all around with my wife having a positive experience everywhere. We were lucky. By the end of that year, clouds were gathering and by 1997 the country had descended into crisis. Unused to capitalist chicanery, large numbers of Albanians had fallen for pyramid schemes which, of course, collapsed. Angry people looted army weapons storehouses and made off with thousands of guns. You could buy top rifles for less than ten bucks. This did not bode well. At the same time, a wanna-be autocrat masquerading as a “President” was trying to maintain power, despite an election that he seemed to have lost. This, melded with the loss of citizens’ funds, combined to form a very volatile situation. Albania teetered on the brink of civil war. The towns were racked every night by the sounds of gunfire, several thousand people lost their lives over the next months. Italy and Greece (as historical interferers) tried to pull strings behind the scenes, international media produced reports which displayed nearly zero understanding of actual events. To top it off, a crisis in neighboring Kosovo boiled over. Kosovo was a part of Yugoslavia whose inhabitants were 90% Albanian, it having been occupied by Serbia in the early 20th century shifts in borders when the Ottoman Empire broke up. Perhaps as part of Yugoslavia they had been better off than in Enver Hoxha’s suffocating Communist “paradise”. Now, though, as Yugoslavia broke into its component parts, they had definite reservations about remaining under Serb control. A rebellion, smoldering for a while, broke into open war. The Serbs began massacres as they had in Bosnia and Croatia too. NATO objected—the EU and the USA got involved. Thousands of Kosovar Albanians fled across into Albania as NATO eventually began bombing Serb targets. So, as Albania reeled under its own political problems, it had to face a war next door in which one side was intimately related to them. OK, that’s the general story. (We will omit discussion of the Albanian minority’s struggle in neighboring Macedonia, though I myself witnessed the situation between Slav and Albanian citizens there which reminded me exceedingly of Mississippi in the 1960s.) The two authors of the book are journalists, not academics. They remained light on background and analysis but heavy on blow by blow, almost day by day reporting. Are you interested in Albanian life, history, or culture? Forget about this book—it deals with the political picture of 1996-2000. I’m sure that this is a study that will not be replicated; there will never be a more complete picture, but I’m afraid it is a look through the microscope at a small series of events. I would say that “The Albanian Question” depicts a fairly minor crisis in world affairs as if it were major. I found it interesting because, as I said, I’ve been interested in things Albanian for many years, but the sometimes breathless announcements of “what happened next” left me bemused. Final words: without previous knowledge this book will remain opaque to the majority of readers. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 17 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 20, 2024 | date added Aug 20, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good | title The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good | author Easterly, William | isbn 0143038826 | isbn13 9780143038825 | asin 0143038826 | num pages 448pp | avg rating 3.84 | num ratings 5,579 | date pub Mar 14, 2006 | date pub edition Feb 27, 2007 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review There’s no single road to national developmentDespite all the strictures and stern advice from big time organizations like the World Bank, the USAID, There’s no single road to national developmentDespite all the strictures and stern advice from big time organizations like the World Bank, the USAID, the UN groups, the Asian Development Bank and countless others, a lot of the world has not moved from the problems of poverty to a set of better living conditions. There have been multiple strategies to vanquish poverty but still, as the author points out on page 4, the West has spent $2.3 trillion on development aid with very mediocre results. Why is that? Well, if you’d like an answer from a voice of experience, you could do a lot worse than reading this book. The author divides creators of international aid programs into two major categories: Planners and Searchers. In summary, I would say that he argues that planning aid programs of whatever type by bureaucrats with little on-the-ground experience, in a Western capital, produces a lot of disastrous programs that don’t achieve much. They consistently have gone in for the Big Plan to solve the Big Goal, but out of the public eye in the West, their plans have fallen apart. He defines “searchers” as those people who look for the best way to solve a certain problem. Perhaps they will usually be people on the ground, familiar with the society and its needs. I may note that “The Ugly American”, published back in 1958 came to a similar conclusion if from a different angle. Easterly argues that no rich society achieved prosperity through a plan; things are naturally more piecemeal. I can interrupt this review to tell you that I saw the situation close-up and personally back in 1964-66 when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India. I was sent with 40 others to help develop poultry-raising. A Chicken-Man par excellence! We were sent to various sites in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The thing was that the Peace Corps had scored a surprising success with chicken work in the area around New Delhi. The city provided a good market. Learning of this, the geniuses in Washington decided to send a lot more such volunteers. They were typical Planners. Over there in Washington, all the statistics looked great, but exactly as Easterly shows again and again, it turned into a snafu. Why? Because the Planners did not take into account the simple fact that the vast majority of people in our area were vegetarians. Most of the farmers in the same area had no spare cash to invest in poultry farms, even if they wanted to. Which they mostly didn’t. The Indian Government’s major efforts in agricultural development eventually succeeded in bringing unimagined prosperity to many rural areas, even if the social cost was considerable. Foreign planners could not transform India. In a country like India where corruption has not impeded economic change completely and elections were held regularly, that is what happened. In many countries, the aid has been siphoned off for decades by bad governments and bloodsucking rulers. The West, more often than not, still sent aid money because of “Cold War” commitments. It achieved nothing. The book asks two questions. 1) What can Western aid do? And 2) How can long-term prosperity be achieved? “This book is about question one except to say that Western aid is not the answer to question 2.” (p.28) Easterly provides a huge number of examples to illustrate the many points he makes throughout the book. And I might add, an author of a serious book on a serious subject who quotes Alfred E. Neuman can’t be all bad! In addition, when discussing whom to blame for bad results or serious mistakes, he uses the analogy of a person farting in an elevator. If there’s only one other person there, the blame is harsh and direct, but if there are many passengers nobody knows exactly whom to accuse. This is certainly correct, if down to earth. There’s a section about the “poverty trap”. He says it’s a mythical concept. The reason that some countries remain poor lies somewhere else. Bad government is more likely to be part of the reason along with colonial experience and ethnic rivalries. He also holds that the opinion that foreign aid gives a big push to countries for an economic takeoff is equally mythical. Foreign aid has often come in at the government level, but (p.66) “The attempted changes at the top are out of touch with the complexity at the bottom.” Several sections follow in which Easterly discusses trust, protection of citizens, property rights, and a bottom-up approach to law and development. How to attain a workable democracy?—probably a pipedream in many countries where ethnic politics inhibit economic justice and lead to elite manipulation of the political game. Basically, the book discusses in great detail the need to deliver results, not plans, but considers the difficulty of determining who is worthy of aid and who not. Also, governments tend to judge the success of their programs by how much money they put in, not by what results they got because those usually remain remote from the Western capitals. His words are many, but the message is clear—abandon Utopian planning! Sending money to dictatorships is usually useless! Forget about Western tutelage of developing countries! Military interventions are disastrous! There is no one answer! Easterly makes many suggestions on how to eliminate disease and poverty at the end, but admits that they are only ideas—but all previous ideas have failed. If foreign aid programs interest you, you should definitely read this well-written and hard-hitting book. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 11 | votes 30 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 11, 2024 | date added Aug 11, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Tripoli The Mysterious | title Tripoli The Mysterious | author Todd, Mabel Loomis | isbn 144609023X | isbn13 9781446090237 | asin 144609023X | num pages 350pp | avg rating 3.79 | num ratings 24 | date pub Aug 12, 2015 | date pub edition Sep 29, 2011 | Bob's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review A glimpse from long ago To an alien arriving from “a galaxy far far away”, even a McDonald’s could seem very mysterious. “Mysterious” is obviously in A glimpse from long ago To an alien arriving from “a galaxy far far away”, even a McDonald’s could seem very mysterious. “Mysterious” is obviously in the eye of the beholder, so we can just chalk up the term to Mabel Loomis Todd’s unfamiliarity with the local culture in what is now known as Libya. When she was there, back in 1901 and 1905, Tripoli was a very sleepy backwater of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. This rather daring and atypical astronomy professor’s wife from Massachusetts accompanied her husband on expeditions. An active and interesting woman, she was perhaps out of her depth writing a book on this North African world in which she spoke only French in addition to her native tongue. Nevertheless, though she wrote a book full of the Orientalist glance and the common tropes of the late 19th century, her interest and pleasure in all new things comes shining through. Unlike many writers of her time (1856-1932), she warmed to everything she saw, and though sometimes using words like “primitive” or “barbaric”, and certainly finding everything “exotic”, she wrote at the end of her book, “Whatever it may have been, Tripoli was a city of enchantment, white as dreams of Paradise, fringed by palms and olives, and steeped in memories of the centuries.” (p.203) I agree that she tended to the super-romantic, but she liked everyone she met, she didn’t look down on anyone, and if poetic rather than practical, that fits in with her role as editor of Emily Dickinson’s work after the latter’s death. This is a travel book from the past, published in 1912 after the Italian conquest and occupation of Libya changed forever the sleepy outpost she described. Their later wars with the Arab inhabitants, the violent battles of WW II between Axis and Allies, the birth of a new nation in 1951, the discovery of oil, the rise and fall of Gadhafi, and the ongoing civil wars have obscured a gentler, more peaceful period that she witnessed. She was sensitive to Muslim custom and never criticized Islam, befriended the local Jews and small foreign community, and wrote constantly of the beauties of a land which she could easily have disliked as did so many Western travelers of those years (and now as well). “The iridescent Mediterranean, breaking in gentlest ripples against a shining beach, white walls and domes and castle in the distance, and close at hand camels and horses, baskets and rugs, coral and silver, and surging life of thousands—shrouded Arabs, uncovered blacks, and befezzed Turks—all this was Tripoli in essence, under the burning blue of an African sky.” (p.132) If you manage to find this book you may also be intrigued by a large number of her black and white photographs, which, though they don’t establish her as a great photographer, are precious mementoes of a lost time. She even wrote down the notation of some chants or cries she heard. She was neither an anthropologist nor historian, just writing visual impressions of the streets, the markets, some weddings, visits to caves, wells and gardens, the people she saw, the Turkish rulers, music, funerals and more. If it was a light look, with emphasis on the exotic to her, it is one of the few from that time that you’ll ever find today. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 20 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 07, 2024 | date added Aug 07, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover God's Bits of Wood | title God's Bits of Wood | author Sembène, Ousmane | isbn 0435909592 | isbn13 9780435909598 | asin 0435909592 | num pages 248pp | avg rating 3.98 | num ratings 2,918 | date pub 1960 | date pub edition Jul 29, 1995 | Bob's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Story of a StrikeMaybe some of the folks here on Goodreads have run across “Barometer Rising” by Hugh Maclennan, written in 1941. The main character i Story of a StrikeMaybe some of the folks here on Goodreads have run across “Barometer Rising” by Hugh Maclennan, written in 1941. The main character in that novel is an explosion—the one that occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s harbor in 1917 during WW I when a ship loaded with ammunition blew up killing over 1,700 people. I’m mentioning that event because this Senegalese novel, written in 1962, two years after independence from France, has a railway strike as the main character. Of course, there are a large number of humans involved, but they each play a smaller role than the strike as a whole. Without being a scholar of West African history, I believe the characters are set in a real event, the railway strike in what are now Senegal and Mali, called French West Africa then, back in 1947-48. Africa was changing, people were learning new behavior, getting new ideas and being exposed to new technology. The Europeans had imposed their rule, had forced their inventions and organizations onto the local culture, but as everywhere else, human beings are fast learners. Soon, the Africans had understood how they were being exploited and manipulated, and naturally wished to resume control of their own lives. They probably could never go back to the old ways. If the Africans were still not “modern” in the sense of being aware of all the complexity of Western life, the impact of colonialism was to change tradition. In the words of Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, people were “no longer at ease”. The railway workers resented their conditions and the exploitation of the French rulers, who at first ignore the strike and refuse to grant any of the demands of the workers. Hunger and thirst set in, some people avoid distress or look for advantage by cooperating with the French, some are jailed and tortured. The strikers are determined, but develop organizational skills gradually. Their only power is to deny their labor. Things progress step by step. There’s a long march. Because everyone is affected, the African women awaken, take their first steps out of the home and become involved too. Things after such a dramatic change could never go back to tradition. We follow all the men and women with different roles—the organizers, the stalwarts, the general supporters, traitors to the cause, lovers whose passion, found within the strike, usually fails to come to fruition, old and young, and the racist French colonial bosses and managers. We see or can imagine how this strike formed the beginning of the organized independence movement which 13 years later succeeded in throwing off French rule, at least directly. It’s a very human story from the 20th century when such movements took place throughout the colonized nations of Africa and Asia. That’s because we are all God’s Bits of Wood—that is—Human Beings. This is one of the first African novels ever available to Western readers and it’s a good one. The author was better known as a film maker. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 7 | votes 24 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 02, 2024 | date added Aug 02, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Little Family | title Little Family | author Beah, Ishmael | isbn 0735211779 | isbn13 9780735211773 | asin 0735211779 | num pages 262pp | avg rating 3.84 | num ratings 1,464 | date pub Apr 28, 2020 | date pub edition Apr 28, 2020 | Bob's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review African Cinderella Fails to Catch PrinceEnglish-speaking West Africans have produced some great novels, but I’m afraid this one is not among them. It African Cinderella Fails to Catch PrinceEnglish-speaking West Africans have produced some great novels, but I’m afraid this one is not among them. It is very close to fantasy, or else maybe to the old story of Cinderella. A dirt poor girl, surviving with four other kids in an abandoned plane that had crashed some time before outside a city (probably Freetown, Sierra Leone), steals and cons people to get by. They are vigilant, wild, and skillful in “corrupting” i.e. stealing from those who have more. We don’t learn any of their back stories. Khoudiemata (a strong female character who resembles the fairy tale figure more than a little) meets up with rich girls and some boys, winds up spending time in their world of luxury and privilege—they like her but strangely fail to ask her any questions—but must return (after the ball) to her other, poverty-stricken life. The prince does not come to find her. Number one: the way things go severely stretched my ability to accept the story as at all realistic. Corruption and luxury are present, but many threads in the story seemed to me to be extremely unlikely. Number two: this novel reminded me strongly of another novel “Welcome to Lagos” by Chibundu Onuzo. That book, published four years prior to this one, also features a gang of homeless people living in an abandoned but luxurious underground den in the city, interacting by chance with some of the wealthier members of society. I will not cast any aspersions here, but the idea was extremely similar. You can check my review. The ending seemed to me to be thought up one night when the author asked himself, “How can I end this story?” Perhaps a sequel is planned because it is a very inconclusive conclusion. All in all, I think Ishmael Beah should keep on writing, because he’s got some talent, but I also think that he should stick closer to reality. This seems to me a Young Adult novel because it stretches credibility if you are over 21. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 12 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 29, 2024 | date added Jul 29, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States | title The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States | author Smith, Graham * | isbn 0582218098 | isbn13 9780582218093 | asin 0582218098 | num pages 389pp | avg rating 3.45 | num ratings 11 | date pub 1990 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1996 | Bob's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Last days before the big bangIn early 1990, when it came to press, 20 writers contributed to this book on many of the nationalities found within the b Last days before the big bangIn early 1990, when it came to press, 20 writers contributed to this book on many of the nationalities found within the borders of the USSR. They wrote a bit about the various histories, how they fared in Tsarist times as well as in the Bolshevik days, and each wound up by talking about how everything was going under Gorbachev. There were 15 major republics that made up the Union and then numerous other ethnic groups existed too, not endowed with so much political prominence. Among them were the Tatars, the Yakut, the Buryat, the Crimean Tatars, and the Jews. Multiple others, in the North Caucasus, in Tuva, in the far north and east, and along the Volga, hardly rated a mention. The three Baltic nations had been independent for twenty years, from 1920 to 1940, while Ukraine and the three Transcaucasian nations had “enjoyed” a very few years of chaotic independence before being swallowed or “re-swallowed” by Russia. The five Central Asian republics were artificial creations that had had local rulers, big or small, up to the mid-19th century, but had never been ethnic entities. Under the Soviets, they suddenly emerged as “nations” with distinct ethnic identities, a most dubious claim. Moldova was just that part of Romania that Russia had managed to grab, and as “Moldavia” labored under the pretense that it was somehow different from the rest of Romania. Within a year and a half, the Soviet Union was no more and the 15 republics were launched on the seas of “independence” with flags, airlines, seats in the UN, and all the paraphernalia of nationhood in the late 20th century. The amazing thing is that not a single one of the 20 writers could foresee this outcome! Maybe nobody could, it’s true, but still, no prediction came close in this book. This lack of foresight is one of the interesting things about this book which otherwise gives the reader a basic background to each of the nationalities it covers. In general, the blunders of the Soviets and their utter conviction that Russian culture was superior and that they knew the answers, are made all too plain, even if industry, education, and health did get transformed in many parts of the USSR. How many dead intellectuals and potential leaders were “rehabilitated” posthumously? For me, that in itself is a judgment. Putting this book together was no doubt an excellent idea at the time, but that time, due to history, was exceedingly short. That’s why I’m only giving three stars—not because of quality, but because everything has changed so much as to make this a very outdated book unless you want to zero in on the USSR on its last legs. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 6 | votes 28 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 26, 2024 | date added Jul 26, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Homage to Catalonia | title Homage to Catalonia | author Orwell, George | isbn 0156421178 | isbn13 9780156421171 | asin 0156421178 | num pages 232pp | avg rating 4.09 | num ratings 63,565 | date pub Apr 25, 1938 | date pub edition Oct 22, 1980 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Superlative Sketch of Spanish Civil Strife To cover the ongoing Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell left England and came to Spain, but he joine Superlative Sketch of Spanish Civil Strife To cover the ongoing Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell left England and came to Spain, but he joined the Republican side in 1936, due to his leftwing beliefs. The war pitted Franco, the top general in the Spanish Army and leader of the Nationalist group against the legal government, called the Popular Front or “the Republicans”. Nazi Germany and Italy supported Franco while the Republicans received support from Russia, but also from thousands of leftwing volunteers from Europe and America, like Ernest Hemingway. The war, like most others, had its hot and cold moments as it proceeded all over Spain. At times there would be fierce fighting, at others, very little happened while the men of both sides hunkered down in fortified lines, took potshots at each other, but suffered through hardships of cold, lice, and lack of supplies during a waiting game. Orwell felt sympathetic to the Anarchists, who were part of the Popular Front, but wound up in the POUM, (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) a Trotskyite group which contributed many, largely untrained fighters to the front lines, often only motivated teenagers. Though he spent considerable time on those front lines, most of it was in misery and boredom, not in action. He writes of the terrible conditions and common lack of organization, the front lines being nearly a kilometer apart with neither side keen to attack. Orwell was eventually wounded in action and sent back to recuperate in Barcelona. The evacuation of wounded men was not easy. Many died on the way out. After he recovered, he became involved in confused street battles in the city, then, because POUM was suppressed by the Republican side, made his escape to France with his wife, who had arrived in Spain as well. The book is a classic account of war, and of the Spanish Civil War in particular. Heroism and “glory” play little or no part in the story, yet you can see that sacrifices are made, that efforts are sometimes stretched to the ultimate. But there is another side to the book as well. The Republican side was a coalition of an amazing number of parties and groups with a giant constellation of initials. Some of the groups would fight each other—one of the reasons that they finally lost. Orwell makes some effort to describe the positions and participation of these groups, while also debunking average European and American journalists who wrote a great deal of uninformed tripe, hewing to the various political stances of their newspapers at home. Not too one-sided, he also criticizes the Communist party line and the propaganda their writers put out. If you are interested in the history of those years and that place, you can’t do better than to read this book for an insider’s view as well as brilliant description of how it was to be there. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 4 | votes 29 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 19, 2024 | date added Jul 19, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Morgesons | title The Morgesons | author Stoddard, Elizabeth | isbn 0140436510 | isbn13 9780140436518 | asin 0140436510 | num pages 304pp | avg rating 3.56 | num ratings 520 | date pub 1862 | date pub edition Sep 01, 1997 | Bob's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Too much mustard and not enough hotdogIn the introduction to my copy of this book, Elizabeth Stoddard is compared to Balzac, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Ha Too much mustard and not enough hotdogIn the introduction to my copy of this book, Elizabeth Stoddard is compared to Balzac, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Hawthorne, and the Bronte sisters. After reading “The Morgesons”, I, like MAD magazine in its time, would say, “Yes, she was compared to them, but it was concluded that they had nothing in common!” I think that she wasn’t a bad writer, fair enough, but not to march in the same parade with the previously-named group. This is a very low-key family novel of 19th century Massachusetts that borders on chick-lit but is not that exactly. Everything is subdued, violent emotions extremely suppressed, with vague hints at passion and sexual attraction. One positive point---men are not idolized or glorified vis a vis women. pp.109-110 (Cass –Cassandra--is the main character). He offered me his arm, which I was glad to take. “Where is Charles?” Alice asked, when we went in. “He has just left us,” Ben answered, “looking after his horses, probably.” “Of course,” she replied. “You look blue, Cass. Here, take my chair by the fire; we are going to dance a Virginia reel.” I accepted her offer and was thankful that the dance would take them away. I wanted to be alone forever. Helen glided behind my chair and laid her hand on my shoulder; I shook it off.” If that’s Balzac or Tolstoy I’ll eat my hat. But various romances do occur. There are descriptions of New England houses and daily life among the upper class, you do learn the steep differences between upper and lower classes back then. Cassandra wishes to be autonomous, a rare enough dream for women in those days. She doesn’t succeed entirely, but does escape the fates of most other female characters. I think you have to think about what life was like for the average American woman of that time. If that’s enough and you like slow-moving novels, this one might be for you. I think what I’m doing here is distinguishing between a landmark kind of woman’s novel and general fiction. If you are after the first, then look at some other reviews for a more positive write-up. If you are just looking for readable stories set in whatever time and place, then this one may prove a mite turgid. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 2 | votes 15 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 12, 2024 | date added Jul 12, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Left Handed, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography | title Left Handed, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography | author Dyk, Walter | isbn 0803279582 | isbn13 9780803279582 | asin 0803279582 | num pages 378pp | avg rating 3.74 | num ratings 89 | date pub Mar 01, 1967 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1995 | Bob's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Navaho Life in the Late 19th CenturyLeft Handed was born in 1868 at the time when the Navahos had just been released from enforced exile at the hands Navaho Life in the Late 19th CenturyLeft Handed was born in 1868 at the time when the Navahos had just been released from enforced exile at the hands of the US Army. They returned to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico where they resumed their usual life. I’m not going to say “traditional life” because over the centuries since the Spaniards first met them, they had become semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats, they owned horses, they had peach orchards, and engaged in some agriculture which they had learned before from the Pueblo Indians who preceded them in the area. They dressed in their own way, spoke their language, and held various religious ceremonies according to their beliefs. Left Handed, the son of Old Man Hat, tells his life story here. He was in his 60s and spoke only Navaho in the early 1930s, when Dyk, an anthropologist, wrote down what the translator told him. It is an interesting story of a rather monotonous life. That might be a non-sequitur but it is true. This was a kid who began herding sheep and goats at a very early age and he kept it up till he got married at about the age of twenty. The book ends at that time. A lot of what you read are childhood memories—he has an impressive memory, even if the memories are of small things like the first time he saw matches or how he went to look for lost horses. He remembers that when the Navaho were first released from captivity, they had nothing. His father did have a Paiute slave girl who they traded off for seven sheep. That’s how the family began again. Over the years they moved around the Navaho area and the book describes their migrations in detail. Healing ceremonies played an important part in their lives—for example, as a small boy he finds an old pot in a pasture and brings it home. Suddenly he wakes up covered in special medicine and surrounded by relatives. The pot had been lost at the scene of a massacre of Navahos by Utes years before. He learns then not to touch things belonging to the dead. We read much more of how he grew up, what he learned and how, of his sexual awakening, of the quarrels of his parents and their siblings, and the Navahos close relationship with the land, the weather, animals, and the grass. The old Navaho ways of thinking and acting are on every page. That’s why it’s such an interesting book. Nobody in the USA today and few people in the world are so isolated from the rest of humanity anymore. But, as Dyk says (more revealing in the 1930s than now, but still not unworthy of repeating) that this book should put to rest the idea of the “primitive mind”. It’s a very human story at the same time as it belongs to the Navaho past. Today there are nearly 400,000 Navaho, the biggest Native American nation in the USA. They are found in nearly every field—scientists, artists, teachers and golfers. This is a book about their not-so-distant ancestors. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 5 | votes 24 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 03, 2024 | date added Jul 03, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Sting of Peppercorns | title The Sting of Peppercorns | author Gomes, Antonio | isbn 8190568299 | isbn13 9788190568296 | asin 8190568299 | num pages 266pp | avg rating 3.69 | num ratings 16 | date pub Jan 30, 2010 | date pub edition Jan 30, 2010 | Bob's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Saudades I’ve spent a lot of time in Goa over many decades and a lot of energy studying and writing articles and books, giving lectures and thinking a Saudades I’ve spent a lot of time in Goa over many decades and a lot of energy studying and writing articles and books, giving lectures and thinking about that small formerly-Portuguese territory, now a state in India, the smallest one. I’ve grown older and I don’t think there’s any more “fuel” in the “research tank”, but I’m full of Goan memories and saudades for my friends who are gone, for the life I lived there, for those days gone by. This novel was such a pleasure to read because it brought back the scenes that I remember so well, and also the events that I knew had occurred, but I did not see myself. The atmosphere and events of the Indian takeover of the Portuguese colony in December, 1961 are described in excellent fashion. The contrasting emotions of people in the same family at that time are very realistic. Goa became a top destination on the hippie trail back in the late 1960s, whether those flower-children involved with drugs were all American as portrayed here is dubious, but maybe I saw them at a later stage. In 1965, I didn't see a single hippie of any nationality. From 1978 on, most were Europeans. The novel is a family saga told in two timeframes: one in 1988 and one that stretches from 1961 to 1967. There are ups and downs, various skeletons in certain closets are revealed, things in an upper class Goan Catholic family are not what they seem at first. The main character is the son of that family who became a doctor in America. A couple other reviews on Goodreads give the outline of the story so I won't repeat it. I went many times to the Jesuit Retreat House at Baga, to various beaches, villages, churches, and other places that feature in the story—the church of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Panjim, the village of Loutolim, the towns of Panjim, Margao and Mapuça—the delicious Goan food, the music and more. I even spent time in Coimbra and Lisboa in Portugal where one brother studies and takes some fatal actions. The author himself admits that he changed a few things around, but overall, within the story, he paints a picture of life for a certain class, for those who owned land and beautiful houses. Antonio Gomes—may not be Balzac, Tolstoy or Eça de Queiroz—OK but if you love Goa, you’ll like this novel. If you’ve never been there, but would like to know what it was like before Maha-Tourism hit (over 7 million Indian tourists in 2022, 430,000 foreigners the next year—when I first saw Goa in 1965, the foreign tourists perhaps amounted to a couple hundred a year and Indian tourists were zero) and waves of outsiders decided to settle there, this will give you a picture. If it’s not the only possible picture—tell me what book ever offers the total picture? I’m not giving this book any stars because some years ago I met the author and he signed my copy. Looking gift horses in the mouth is not my favorite game. Just read it. June 27, 2024 ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 12 | votes 31 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Jun 27, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History | title Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History | author Ypi, Lea | isbn 0393867730 | isbn13 9780393867732 | asin 0393867730 | num pages 288pp | avg rating 4.29 | num ratings 15,188 | date pub Oct 28, 2021 | date pub edition Jan 18, 2022 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Telling it like it is Once upon a time in a small New England town, an elementary school kid found two books about Albanian children and their lives i Telling it like it is Once upon a time in a small New England town, an elementary school kid found two books about Albanian children and their lives in the mountains of a faraway country. He became forever interested in that land so different from his home by a rocky shore. That kid was me. Over the years I read everything I could find about Albania. That didn’t amount to much. I slowly built up a collection of books on the country, finally surpassing most libraries’. I listened to Albanian music, I met some Albanians, and read at last most of the works of Ismail Kadare that were translated into English. In 1996 my wife and I traveled to Albania, just roaming around by ourselves. I really liked the people there, the land was beautiful too, but the country had been trashed by the long Communist rule that had then collapsed into near-anarchy. A year later, civil war erupted. What was it like to live there? What did people think? Not being able to speak Albanian, I found out only a little. I met a woman with an English-Albanian dictionary in Tirana. Not a big deal, but she explained that a few years previously, if she had it without authorization, it could have led to ten years in prison. I saw the smashed factories all over the country and innumerable pillboxes for defending the country from attacks that never came. They said that the 750,000 or so of those concrete igloos represented the same number of apartments never built. Like anybody else, I saw photos of the packed ships with Albanians heading across to Italy on a desperate run for a better life. And when I was young and not so young, I drove through Virginia and Kentucky and saw with sadness the shacks that served as homes for African-Americans. I saw Mexican immigrants picking vegetables in the sun in California and listened to some bastard bragging how he used to beat them up for fun. A man I hardly knew had to sell his home to pay the bills he got because he had a serious heart attack. My Indian wife and I were refused service at American motels and restaurants back in the day. The police followed our car till we left town. What about African-American lives? I want to shout “is there no end to this crap?” Jumping to the task at hand, let me say that this is just a wonderful book. Not only does it answer my two questions above (at least from one Albanian’s point of view), but it is so clear and simply written that it reminded me of Shaker furniture. (OK, that may not occur to many readers.) It is the memoir of a girl growing up in the 1980s, who was eleven years old when Albania ceased to be a “Communist” country and began to move away from socialist solutions to human problems and towards capitalist or “liberal” ones. “Free” is a wonderfully succinct and down-to-earth treatise on that transition and how people lived through it. The ideals of the two separate systems on the surface seem to have a lot of similarity—I mean, they want to make people free and happy, to organize society in the best way. But, how they propose to do it differs completely. And, as she so perfectly shows, neither system turns out to be very successful in realizing its ideals. Albania under Enver Hoxha was in some ways a nightmare of oppression while claiming to be a paradise. As a kid, she believed in it wholeheartedly. Western countries and the capitalist system that came to Albania after 1990 claimed to live in freedom, but “while all animals were free, some animals were freer than others” to paraphrase a certain well-known author, and the top ignored the fact that they lived off the labor of the rest. She and her family lived years of confusion. What you are going to learn, if you take up this excellent book, is the nature of the two beasts as they operated in Albania. I doubt if there will ever be a finer exposition of life growing up in two opposite, yet strangely similar systems. And by the way, history did not end. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 8 | votes 23 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jun 23, 2024 | date added Jun 23, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Mrs. Dalloway | title Mrs. Dalloway | author Woolf, Virginia | isbn 0151009988 | isbn13 9780151009985 | asin 0151009988 | num pages 194pp | avg rating 3.79 | num ratings 318,218 | date pub May 14, 1925 | date pub edition Oct 28, 2002 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review An orange moon in the pale evening skyNowadays there are many novels which move in and out of streams of consciousness, which mix people and events, a An orange moon in the pale evening skyNowadays there are many novels which move in and out of streams of consciousness, which mix people and events, and the intermingled thoughts of various characters, but before Virginia Woolf, there were few, if any. I think especially of the works of Antonio Lobo Antunes, but there are others. I came to this novel dubiously because I had not liked reading “Orlando” and could not reach the end. It seemed to me that she was writing that book for a little group of friends, the “in-group” of Bloomsbury. I was obviously not included. Woolf wrote “Mrs. Dalloway” about the life she knew, about the circles and places she knew—which is very natural—and I still found that world remote from my Jewish-American life and ways of thinking, somehow still a closed work which reflects someone who cannot question her position in a very rigid society. However, I admired this novel greatly. It is an entirely different work which flows in and out of one woman’s mind, with rich descriptions and almost opaquely beautiful sentences throughout. It is not a normal reading experience with a plot, with much movement from start to finish. At the beginning you wonder where you are going--it's barely comprehensible at times. And yet.... With over 19,000 reviews on GR, I’m certainly not going to add another precis of praise or criticism to such a vast collection. The ten or more characters speak and are spoken of, but mostly fade in and fade out of the inner dialogue of Clarissa Dalloway. We observe them in and out of Clarissa's present, out of and within the London society of the 1920s. I was awed by Virginia Woolf’s writing ability and her daring in publishing such an original work, so different from the work of her generation. Here in 2024, I drove down a busy highway near the Atlantic in the evening and wondered, as I looked at a huge orange moon rising in that pale evening sky, if I would ever find another book so strange and wonderful as “Mrs. Dalloway”. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 8 | votes 25 | # times read 2 | date started not set not set | date read Jun 21, 2024 not set | date added Jun 21, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Down and Out in Paris and London | title Down and Out in Paris and London | author Orwell, George | isbn 015626224X | isbn13 9780156262248 | asin 015626224X | num pages 213pp | avg rating 4.09 | num ratings 91,315 | date pub 1933 | date pub edition Mar 15, 1972 | Bob's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review “Better Him Than Me”Living from hand to mouth, relying on charities to get a mouthful to eat each day or going hungry for several days in a row, sleep “Better Him Than Me”Living from hand to mouth, relying on charities to get a mouthful to eat each day or going hungry for several days in a row, sleeping in the cheapest of flea pits with your fellow desperates whom you can’t trust—this was life for the people on the bottom of French and English society in the 1920s. Though this book is called a “novel”, it seems to be at least based on the experiences of George Orwell who went on to produce “Burmese Days” the year after this was published, and then “Animal Farm” and “1984” in the Forties, a most versatile author. With well over six thousand reviews on here, I don't think I'm going to come up with any new views. In any case, it concerns a down and out Englishman adrift in Paris, trying to eke out a living working in restaurants, living in the dirtiest dives, hanging out with a Russian refugee who dreams of recapturing the glory of being a maître d’hotel somewhere, anywhere. At last, the Englishman gets a job as a dishwasher and we get to see the life of such a worker in a grand hotel. It’s squalid and vastly underpaid, full of abuse and fatigue. If you’re interested in how such places functioned back about 100 years ago, this is the book for you. But Orwell sums up this way: “A (dishwasher in Paris) is a slave, and a wasted slave doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.” (p.121) At last our hero decides that enough is enough and heads back to England. He’s promised a job taking care of a mentally retarded young man, but the fellow and his family go abroad for a month, leaving the hero penniless. He borrows a bit of money, but has to hit the road with a wide variety of tramps, living once more from hand to mouth, writing about his experiences as he goes. He runs into all sorts of chicanery from those who supposedly “help” the vagrants and down and outs in London. It’s a bleak scene. Orwell wrote a most vivid work, if quite depressing. I found it hard to put down, just wondering how things would turn out. I don’t know how much of the book is autobiographical, but it has to be so at least in part. Though such conditions still exist in developed countries, they have much diminished thanks to the much-maligned social welfare system. Read this and think if you would like to go back to those times. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 4 | votes 32 | # times read 2 | date started not set not set | date read Jun 16, 2024 Jun 16, 2024 | date added Jun 16, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |

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