Baghdad Without a Map - Tony Horwitz An entertaining and informative account of the author's experiences living and traveling in the Middle East as a journalist.
Just finished: Ian Caldwell's The Fifth Gospel came out earlier this year and sold a bunch but frustrated many readers. It is a Vatican-set murder mystery with complex theology (about the titular fifth gospel, the Shroud of Turin, and an attempt to reunify Western and Eastern branches of the Church) and Vatican politics. I liked it. And now, this: I've wanted to read one of her books for awhile now and this is the one at the local library: Sarah Vowell with Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. Ironic history maybe? She writes with an appreciation for irony in history at least, and there's some interesting stuff in here. I will probably read it alongside something else at the same time as it seems best in ten page nibbles.
Dear Committee Members - Julie Schumacher The story of a beleaguered college professor, told through the many letters of recommendation he is asked to write for his students and colleagues. This is a clever, funny, and quick read. I really enjoyed it.
But Where Is The Lamb: Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac by James Goodman. Interesting meditation not just on the biblical text, but on the immense library of commentary on the text from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, as well as philosophers from the Enlightenment and after, like Spinoza, Kant, and Kierkegaard. Naz1m Hikmet: the Life and Times of Turkey's World Poet by Mutlu Konuk Blasing. Man, this guy did a lot if time in jail. Talk about O.G. The part on Turkey's adopting a Western alphabet, and making the transition to a previously non-existant Turkish alphabet from Arabic in just three months, is amazing. Basically, for a few weeks, EVERYONE in the country was functionally illiterate.
Somehow this remarkable novel about the horror of the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia remains hopeful and even beautiful even amidst horror and bleakness and . . . it's a complicated book to write about. The protagonist is 7 as the book opens and her family starts a terrifying period in their lives. It is based loosely on author Vaddey Ratner's life, and I recommend it (and maybe I should share the title: In the Shadow of the Banyan).
My god sister and her family survived the Khmer Rouge and were part of the boatlifts in the late 70s that wafted huge numbers of refugees on California's shores. In 1985 or so, whenever The Killing Fields came out, I think my mother finally worked up the courage to ask them if they'd seen the movie and what they thought. They replied, rather cheerily, "Oh it was much worse than the movie". And that's all we got out of them in 30 years...
It's that time of year... A Christmas Carol -- Charles Dickens Ismitje had mentioned finding the right editions of the books we're reading for this thread, and it took some doing, but this is the 60 year old copy that I've read maybe 30 times. I also have this version: This is very nice. It is the abridged version that Dickens would read publicly. It takes about two hours and proves that even a short story like Carol can be edited severely and still stand up to scrutiny.
M Train by Patti Smith. Read about 90 pages at the friendly neighborhood coffeeshop fthis morning. Fantastic so far. The jacket photo is Smith sitting at her preferred table at her friendly neighborhood coffeeshop. Interesting that my wife and I had our favorite table this morning, not always a given on a Sunday.
During this holiday time, I would like to say to all my friends on this thread - Dostoevsky sucks, and we should burn his books in a giant bonfire. Because that is the meaning of Christmas.
The 39 Steps by John Buchan. The Mrs. and I have some Hitchcock movies lined up. Thought I'd check this to see what kind of liberties he took with his source material.
I finished this - borrowed it from the library solely because the title is so similar to one of our family favorite movies (The Snapper about an Irish family and an unexpected pregnancy). It's a book about a bird counter (not a birder but a guy who counts song birds for various entities) and about Indiana. I liked it enough to finish; it was more a series of vignettes than a cohesive novel but it was plenty interesting throughout. Lots of failures, and successes that are more or less "quiet" and normal life.
Also finished this, Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, a debut novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011 (a fact of which I was completely unaware when I borrowed it based on the name only). It's a pretty scary world eleven year-old Ghanaian immigrant Harri Okuponu inhabits. And the entire book is narrated - every conversation recalled by, every scene described by - this young boy, which is both fascinatingly interesting and a bit tiring to read. Except, that is, for the smattering of paragraphs from the point of view of the titular pigeon, who Harri believes is watching over him. Indeed, the final page and a half where the two of them share dialogue are heartbreaking. I liked it a good deal.
Abandoned mid-read, Alix Christie's Gutenberg's Apprentice because I just wasn't feeling it. Finished, John Scalzi's Redshirts which was a nice change of pace after the heavy stuff I read earlier. The novel - about the well-known trope of the characters in Star Trek who get killed in random ways - is fun. But it's the codas I liked the best.
History of the United States of America During the Second Administration of Thomas Jefferson – Henry Adams More of a slog to read than the First Administration. Interesting to see how Jefferson lost popularity and influence in Congress as his lame duck term went on. Adams: "Josiah Quincy belonged to a class of Americans who cared so intensely for their own convictions that they could not care for a nation which did not represent them; and in his eyes Jefferson was a transparent fraud, his followers were dupes or ruffians, and the nation was hastening to a fatal crisis." Jefferson writing to his grandson in 1808: "In the fevered state of our country no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal."
My last entry for 2015 is a DNF from last year, a book of local history and "narrative literary criticism" by a guy who teaches at my wife's college: Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania's Working Landscapes by Bill Conlogue (2013). "Working landscapes" is a pretty useful concept, since there are a lot more of those than there are unspoiled wilderness landscapes. Though my landscape on most days consists of old and shrinking mountains to the east and west, and two growing garbage dumps to the south and north,.. Thanks to this book, I know how that came to be, and why "Bald Mountain" got it's name... even though the trees have grown back thick enough you can't tell how it was being strip-mined 100 years ago.