kidzdoc explores the African diaspora in 2017

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kidzdoc explores the African diaspora in 2017

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1kidzdoc
Modifié : Juil 4, 2017, 3:12 am



A new year is nearly upon us, which gives me another opportunity to reflect on the past year in reading, and, in the spirit of Don Quixote, make grandiose proclamations about my plans for the year to come. Despite my repeated failures to reduce my massive pile of unread books or restrict my book purchases, I once again vow that this year will be different, and that I will slay the TBR giant in 2017!

2016 was the worst reading year I've had in over a decade, and it was a terrible one politically for many liberals and moderates in the US and the UK. So far I've only read five novels by authors from the African diaspora this year, and only a handful of the nonfiction books in this category. I've also read very few of the meatier and more meaningful books that I've purchased over the past few years, as I was more focused on meeting an artificial goal of reading a set number of books. The result of the Brexit vote and the US election came as a shock to many of us on the left, and several LTers have expressed a wish to learn more about the rise of populism, the resentment of the white working and middle classes that is fueling it, and the minority populations in the US and abroad whose liberties are under greater threat from far right wing governments and emboldened xenophobic individuals.

With this in mind, I looked through my library and chose books that I was most interested in reading, which I've listed in different categories below. Obviously there is no way that I'll get to all of these books this year or next, but I want to keep these books on my radar screen, and hopefully finish the majority of them in the next two or three years.

I'll participate in at least one group read, which will be led by Rachel (The_Hibernator) and is based on the article 6 Books to Help Understand Trump’s Win, which appeared in The New York Times shortly after Election Day. As usual I'll follow my favorite literary prizes, namely the Wellcome Book Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Man Booker International Prize, and read as many books about medicine, illness and public health as I can. I'll use a red check mark {} to indicate which books I've finished reading.

Currently reading:

    

Autopsy of a Father by Pascale Kramer
The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Completed books: (TBR = book acquired prior to 1/1/16)

January:
1. Nutshell by Ian McEwan
2. A Question of Power by Bessie Head TBR
3. The Assault by Harry Mulisch
4. Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verlhurst

February:

March:
5. The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas
6. I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

April:
7. The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
8. A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman
9. The Plague (after La Peste) by Albert Camus, adapted by Neil Bartlett
10. Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors
11. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
12. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
13. Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg

May:
14. Lonely Planet Pocket Bilbao & San Sebastian (Travel Guide)
15. Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre
16. A Basque Diary: Living in Hondarribia by Alex Hallatt
17. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
18. The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky

June:
19. Colchester Castle by Colchester Borough Council
20. From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
21. Human Acts by Han Kang
22. The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse by Iván Rapila
23. The Basque Hotel by Robert Laxalt
24. The Plimsoll Line by Juan Gracia Armendáriz
25. An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
26. The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault
27. Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, in a new version by Jack Thorne
28. Rick Steves Snapshot Basque Country: France & Spain by Rick Steves
29. Rain Over Madrid by Andrés Barba

July:
30. Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa

2kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 8, 2017, 10:18 pm



Classic 20th Century Novels from the African Diaspora

Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes
The Emigrants by George Lamming
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (re-read)
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt
Maps by Nuruddin Farah
Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
Native Son by Richard Wright
Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A Question of Power by Bessie Head
Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau

Notable 21st Century Literature from the African Diaspora

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
The Drift Latitudes by Jamal Mahjoub
Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Juice! by Ishmael Reed
Ladivine by Marie NDiaye
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Pym by Mat Johnson
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction from the African Diaspora

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Beyond Black and White: From Civil Rights to Barack Obama by Manning Marable
Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
If They Come in the Morning … : Voices of Resistance, edited by Angela Y. Davis
In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture by K. Anthony Appiah
Known and Strange Things: Essays by Teju Cole
Letter to Jimmy by Alain Mabanckou
The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Alain Mabanckou
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City by William Julius Wilson
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Autobiographies, Biographies and Memoirs from the African Diaspora

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Frantz Fanon: A Biography by David Macey
I Never Had it Made by Jackie Robinson
The Last Holiday: A Memoir by Gil Scott-Heron
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Mingus Speaks by John F. Goodman
Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford
Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

3kidzdoc
Modifié : Mar 27, 2017, 9:32 am

2017 Booker Prize longlist: TBD

2017 Man Booker International Prize longlist:



Mathias Énard (France), Charlotte Mandell, Compass
Wioletta Greg (Poland), Eliza Marciniak, Swallowing Mercury
David Grossman (Israel), Jessica Cohen, A Horse Walks Into a Bar
Stefan Hertmans (Belgium), David McKay, War and Turpentine
Roy Jacobsen (Norway), Don Bartlett, Don Shaw, The Unseen
Ismail Kadare (Albania), John Hodgson, The Traitor's Niche
Jon Kalman Stefansson (Iceland), Phil Roughton, Fish Have No Feet
Yan Lianke (China), Carlos Rojas, The Explosion Chronicles
Alain Mabanckou (France), Helen Stevenson, Black Moses
Clemens Meyer (Germany), Katy Derbyshire, Bricks and Mortar
Dorthe Nors (Denmark), Misha Hoekstra, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
Amos Oz (Israel), Nicholas de Lange, Judas
Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), Megan McDowell, Fever Dream

4kidzdoc
Modifié : Mar 27, 2017, 9:36 am



Iberian Literature and Nonfiction

A Bad End by Fernando Royuela
The Calligraphy of Dreams by Juan Marsé
Catalonia: A Cultural History by Michael Eaude
The Dolls' Room by Llorenç Villalonga
Fado Alexandrino by António Lobo Antunes
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
The History of Catalonia by F. Xavier Hernàndez
The Inquisitors' Manual by António Lobo Antunes
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Monastery by Eduardo Halfon
Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga
Paris by Marcos Giralt Torrente
Private Life by Josep Maria de Sagarra
The Selected Stories of Mercé Rodoreda
The New Spaniards by John Hooper
Things Look Different in the Light by Medardo Fraile
The Yellow Rain by Julio Llamazares

6kidzdoc
Modifié : Déc 19, 2016, 5:22 am

7kidzdoc
Modifié : Déc 19, 2016, 7:44 am

Reading Globally

Quarter 1: Works by writers from the Benelux countries



The Assault by Harry Mulisch
The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon

Quarter 2: Travel writing by non-European and non-North American authors



The European Tribe by Caryl Phillips
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina

Quarter 3: Works by writers who write in what are considered minority languages within their own country

Quarter 4: Writers from the Scandinavian countries and associated territories

8kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 5, 2017, 11:42 am



Voices of Color/Social Justice

Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots by Jonathan Curiel
Breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones
A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner
Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America by Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War by John Gibler
Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid by Joseph Nevins
The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, edited by Rubén G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
For the Muslims: Islamophobia in France by Edwy Plenel
The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla
A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America by Óscar Martínez
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen by Kwame Anthony Appiah
How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
Howard Zinn on Race by Howard Zinn
Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation by Ray Suarez
Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South by Mary E. Odem
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solni
The Mosaic of Islam: A Conversation with Perry Anderson by Suleiman Mourad
The Muslims Are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundnani
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties by Karen L. Ishizuka
Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture by Hisham D. Aidi
Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones
We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness by Alice Walker
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam by John L. Esposito
Who Are We: And Should It Matter in the Twenty-First Century? by Gary Younge

9kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 30, 2017, 9:42 am

2017 Wellcome Book Prize longlist:



How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (alternate title: The Heart: A Novel)
The Golden Age by Joan London
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

2016 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist:



Playthings by Alex Pheby
It's All in Your Head by Suzanne O'Sullivan
The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

2015 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist:



The Iceberg by Marion Coutts
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being by Alice Roberts
My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

10kidzdoc
Modifié : Déc 28, 2016, 6:00 am

Planned books to read in January:

The Assault by Harry Mulisch
Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion by Linda Stratmann
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio (LT Early Reviewers book)
A Question of Power by Bessie Head
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Why Niebuhr Matters by Charles Lemert

11FAMeulstee
Déc 19, 2016, 6:58 am

>7 kidzdoc: I will try to join you with the Dutch reads, Darryl.

12kidzdoc
Déc 19, 2016, 7:15 am

>11 FAMeulstee: Souns good, Anita. I look forward to seeing which books you'll read, and learning more about contemporary Dutch authors.

13jessibud2
Déc 19, 2016, 7:41 am

Good morning, Darryl. May I also suggest that you add Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates to your list. It's a very short read, but if there is any way you can get your hands on the audiobook, I highly recommend it as it is read superbly by the author and I think that provided a dimension of authenticity that I hadn't expected. I think it is only 2 or 3 discs and you could probably have it done on one or two commutes to work.

14kidzdoc
Déc 19, 2016, 7:46 am

>13 jessibud2: Good morning, Shelley! Thanks for reminding me about Between the World and Me; I'm surprised that I didn't think to include it.

15Caroline_McElwee
Déc 19, 2016, 8:11 am

Happy new year thread Darryl. There are a few books on your list already on my tbr soonish list, and many others of interest (unsurprisingly). Are all the books on these lists already on your shelves? Just checking :-)

16The_Hibernator
Déc 19, 2016, 8:19 am

I've been meaning to read Between the World and Me for a while too. But it didn't make it on my definitely reading this year list. Might still get to it, though. Another I heard was good is Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching.

17jessibud2
Déc 19, 2016, 9:19 am

>14 kidzdoc: - I was just coming back to edit another suggestion into my last note to you. If listening while commuting doesn't work, I thought you could accommodate it during a Sunday morning cooking session, but on second thought, it will be riveting, I'm sure, so if you need to focus on following recipes, maybe that isn't such a good idea.... But still, I am really plugging for the audio....

18kidzdoc
Modifié : Déc 19, 2016, 10:22 am

>15 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. I own all but five of the books I listed above, four of which are for Rachel's populism group read. I'll look for them during my next visit to the new bookshop that opened in Ponce City Market in Midtown Atlanta last month, probably when I meet up with Zoë and Mark during the first week of January. I already own The Unwinding, so I don't need to buy any books I plan to read until March or April.

ETA: My first major book purchases of the year will follow the announcement of the Wellcome Book Prize longlist next month, as I anticipate that I'll need to buy most if not all of those books. I plan to return to London in March, so I may wait to get the titles that aren't available in the US at that time.

>16 The_Hibernator: I bought Between the World and Me last year, if not the year before, but I still haven't read it. I hadn't heard of Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching or its author. However, I own plenty of unread books in that category already, so I won't plan to buy it anytime soon.

>17 jessibud2: I already have a hardback copy of Between the World and Me, Shelley. My workday commutes are, thankfully, short ones, and I rarely have time to do more than read the daily print edition of The New York Times unless the trains are delayed.

19ELiz_M
Déc 19, 2016, 10:33 am

>8 kidzdoc: What an excellent, fascinating topic! Are there particular lists you pulled these titles from?

20kidzdoc
Modifié : Déc 19, 2016, 12:25 pm

>19 ELiz_M: Thanks, Liz! No, all of those books in >8 kidzdoc: are ones I've acquired over the past few years and wanted to read but didn't. A week or two ago I thought of the categories that I wanted to focus on in 2017, and I spent part of the weekend combing through my shelves to choose the books that were the most interesting to me.

21charl08
Modifié : Déc 19, 2016, 3:34 pm

Sounds like you will have some great reading this year. I have Transwonderland and one day I will write... on the TBR list.

22kidzdoc
Déc 19, 2016, 1:34 pm

Thanks, Charlotte. I hope that you'll also read those books next year.

23avaland
Déc 20, 2016, 9:15 am

Who knows, Darryl, you might inspire me to get to that shelf of TBR African novels (the leftovers from previous years binge-reading African fiction). How strange the ebb and flow of my reading is.

24kidzdoc
Déc 20, 2016, 5:45 pm

>23 avaland: I hope so, Lois! I noticed that A Question of Power by Bessie Head is in your LT library; have you read it?

25avaland
Déc 21, 2016, 9:34 am

>24 kidzdoc: I did! I still have a shelf of 20+ books by African authors I haven't read. Tough to get to them when I still try to keep up with new books by Gurnah, Couto and Jelloun (falling behind....) and have moved into other areas of fiction.

26Caroline_McElwee
Déc 21, 2016, 9:39 am

Seeing the Pamuk book in your current reading reminded me I had a few on the shelf unread, so I have pulled The Silent House off the shelf to start reading today.

I read both of Obama's books before he became President, I think the second came out on the cusp, and liked them and him a lot. I'm looking forward to future writing, both his perspective of his experience as President, and other work.

27kidzdoc
Déc 21, 2016, 9:59 am

>25 avaland: I may have 20 or more unread novels by African authors as well; the list I posted above is far from comprehensive. I also have at least a dozen novels by authors from the Caribbean, including ones who reside in the UK, that I have yet to read.

I hope that my decision to post the books I would like to read at the beginning of the year will make it more likely that I do get to them preferentially, instead of buying new books and pushing the old ones even further back down the TBR list.

>26 Caroline_McElwee: Four of us in the 75 Books group are reading A Strangeness in My Mind this month, Caroline. It's a good fit for me, as it is one of the four books that were chosen for this year's Man Booker International Prize longlist that I haven't read yet. However, I've decided to shoot for 75 again this year, as I've made that mark every year since I joined that group in 2009, and I plan to read the three books I need to hit the mark before I get to the Pamuk. I'm off from work today and tomorrow before I start my Christmas and New Year's 10 day out of 12 work stretch, and I might be able to get to 75 as early as tomorrow. Today I'll read Breach, a recently published collection of short stories by Peirene Press about refugees in Calais, along with Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, a poetry collection by Wole Soyinka that I've owned for nearly a decade, and tomorrow I'll start, and hopefully finish, Nutshell by Ian McEwan. Once I'm finished I'll spend the rest of the year on A Strangeness in My Mind, and finish it in early January if I can't do so by NYE.

I look forward to your thoughts on Silent House. I have four other unread books by Pamuk, but not that one.

I'm glad that you enjoyed Obama's books. I would be very surprised, and disappointed, if he didn't at least start writing a book of his memoirs in the two years that he, Michelle and Sasha will remain in Washington.

28kidzdoc
Déc 22, 2016, 10:29 am

In looking through my planned reads for 2017 I noticed one glaring and regrettable absence; in the list of books in Voices of Color/Social Justice there isn't a single book about the LGBTQ community, which is a sizable blind spot of mine. I definitely want to read pertinent books next year, but I don't yet own any, so I look to all of you, and my non-LT friends, for recommendations. I would prefer recent books, centered primarily in the US, which speak to the risks that the community may face under a Trump presidency.

After doing a bit of research earlier this morning I found a good article from Flavorwire, titled 25 Essential Works of LGBT Non-Fiction by Tyler Coates, which was published in 2013. I've read two of the books on the list, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts, and Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D'Emiliol, and these are some of the other books I'm considering for next year:

The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America by Charles Kaiser
The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up in a Straight Man’s World by Alan Downs
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua

Have any you read these books? Would you recommend them? Are there others that you would recommend instead?

TYIA.

29This-n-That
Déc 22, 2016, 11:41 am

>5 kidzdoc: A nicely thought out and strategic plan. I will especially look forward to your thoughts on the topics concerning Medicine, Illness & Public Health and The Rise of Populism & Related Current Affairs. I may choose to read few of those books myself.

30kidzdoc
Déc 22, 2016, 12:29 pm

>29 This-n-That: Thanks, Lisa. Many of the books in those two categories have resided in my library for years, and I'm eager to finally get to them. I hope that you do read some of them, and I'll follow your thread closely to see which ones you do.

31VivienneR
Déc 22, 2016, 4:50 pm

Looking forward to reading your reviews this coming year, Darryl. You certainly have some excellent choices lined up.

32EBT1002
Déc 22, 2016, 7:12 pm

>28 kidzdoc: I posted some recommendations on your other thread, Darryl.

33kidzdoc
Déc 22, 2016, 11:48 pm

>31 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne. I'll do my best to write book reviews more promptly and often than I usually do, although that seems to be an annual New Year's resolution of mine.

>32 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen; I just saw those recommendations.

34PaulCranswick
Déc 27, 2016, 11:35 pm

Another Don Quixote will be joining you here for 2017, Darryl with similar grand ambitions but, more likely to fail trying.

35kidzdoc
Déc 28, 2016, 6:01 am

>34 PaulCranswick: It's great to see you here, Paul!

36rebeccanyc
Déc 29, 2016, 2:10 pm

Fascinating lists!

37kidzdoc
Déc 29, 2016, 8:12 pm

Thanks, Rebecca!

38AnnieMod
Déc 29, 2016, 8:18 pm

Interesting plans - I'd be hanging in the background to see what you think about a lot of these books.

39kidzdoc
Déc 29, 2016, 8:25 pm

>38 AnnieMod: Thanks, Annie. I'll try my best to write prompt reviews of the books I read in 2017.

40dchaikin
Déc 29, 2016, 10:08 pm

Wow, Darryl, just reading through your list was a kind of motivation. And I like your opening. All this stuff we learned about ourselves last year and what's coming this year is on my mind too, although I haven't been able to respond to it in the way you have in that opening post. I'm trying very hard not to hide from it, but I haven't yet thought to put it into my reading. Your opening is a pick-me-up.

41edwinbcn
Déc 30, 2016, 6:57 am

Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom is one of my favourite Dutch travelogues. I hope you will enjoy reading it.

42Simone2
Jan 1, 2017, 11:05 am

Happy New year, Darryl. What a great line-up of books you have. I'll follow close what you think of them. I am especially interested in your category on the rise of populism. I share your view on current developments in the US and the UK. In the Netherlands we're having elections in March this year and I am pretty sure populism will win here as well. What happened to tolerance? I am looking forward to your reviews of these books.

Regarding your Dutch challenge, I loved The Dark Room of Damocles, although I read it a long time ago. Personally I am not too fond of Cees Nooteboom but I know he is internationally renown.

Last but not least I am looking forward to the Booker Prize, but that is a long time away for now.

Happy reading!

43NanaCC
Jan 1, 2017, 11:40 am

I look forward to your reviews. as always, Darryl. I think that the divisiveness of the election year really put me in a funk towards the end of the year. For now, I plan on keeping most of my reading in the "lighter" lane, and forget that I hated half of my cousins for the latter half of last year. :)

44janeajones
Jan 1, 2017, 11:49 am

As always, looking forward to your reviews -- though I can't always keep up ;-)

45Oandthegang
Jan 2, 2017, 3:34 am

Wow, very impressive lists.

46rachbxl
Jan 2, 2017, 3:39 am

45 posts and it's only Jan 2nd? I see your thread is going to be as hard to keep up with as ever ;-) I will do my best...

47AlisonY
Jan 2, 2017, 6:35 am

Happy New Year! Will be trying to keep up again this year with interest.

48kidzdoc
Jan 2, 2017, 5:52 pm

Book #1: Nutshell by Ian McEwan



My rating:

This short novel is a modern retelling of Hamlet, narrated by an unnamed late third trimester fetus who is the witness to a murder plot concocted by his mother Trudy and her lover Claude to murder his father John, who happens to be Claude's brother. Trudy is separated from John, a failed poet and publisher riddled with debt and afflicted with psoriasis, and she lives in the crumbling, filthy North London house that her husband inherited, which Claude, a property developer of little charm and fewer morals, claims is worth millions of pounds. Once the fetus learns that he will likely be put up for adoption after his birth if the couple's plan succeeds he vows to do whatever he can to foil their nefarious scheme.

Nutshell is an entertaining work and a quick read, although I found the fetus's witty comments to be a bit too clever at times, which kept me from giving it 4 or more stars.

49kidzdoc
Jan 2, 2017, 6:10 pm

>40 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I thought a lot about what books I wanted to focus on in 2017 over the space of a week in early December, and spent a couple of hours going through my shelves and choosing the books from my library that I wanted to read the most in the next two to three years. I thought it made more sense to list the books in my Club Read and 75 Books threads, so that I could easily and conveniently refer to them.

>41 edwinbcn: That's good to hear, Edwin. I'll probably read Roads to Santiago in March.

>42 Simone2: Thanks, Barbara. Reading the books about populism was Rachel's idea, and several of us in the Club Read and 75 Books groups will be reading those books this year. I bought The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America a year or two ago, and I'll read it later this month or in February after I finish Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City this month.

I'll pay attention to the upcoming elections in the Netherlands with interest, now that I've made two trips to your lovely country and met at least half a dozen Dutch LTers the past two years. I fear that you're right, but I hold out hope that the populist candidate doesn't win.

I'm glad to know that you liked The Darkroom of Damocles. It's on my Kindle, so I'll probably read it in March. I haven't finished any books by Cees Nooteboom, although I did read two or three chapters of Roads to Santiago last year.

50kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 3, 2017, 5:10 am

>43 NanaCC: Thanks, Colleen. I was deeply upset about the election, although I had a very bad feeling about it going into Election Day and feared that the pundits and journalists had gotten it wrong, similar to what happened in the 2015 general election in the UK, when nearly everyone predicted a hung Parliament instead of an easy win for David Cameron and the Tories, and this past June's Brexit vote. The disastrous presidential election result here inspired me to look inward this year, instead of my usual preferred view outside of the United States.

>44 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. I always vow to do a better job in writing prompt reviews, but I think the books I plan to read this year will inspire me to do so.

>45 Oandthegang: Thank you, O!

>46 rachbxl: Hi, Rachel! You may have a hard time keeping up with this thread, but I'll have to remember to wear chain mail when I visit yours, to avoid getting slain by the book bullets that you'll undoubtedly spray at us (and that also goes for several other members of this group)!

>47 AlisonY: Happy New Year, Alison! I'll of course follow your thread closely as well.

51arubabookwoman
Jan 2, 2017, 7:55 pm

Hi Daryl--Thought I'd comment over here too.
The Unwinding was one of my favorite books of 2015, so I hope you like it. I also have The Darkroom of Damocles on my TBR shelf, so perhaps I can get to it this year as well.

52kidzdoc
Jan 2, 2017, 9:02 pm

>51 arubabookwoman: Hi, Deborah. I'm glad to know that you were fond of The Unwinding. I'm eager to get started on it, and The Darkroom of Damocles.

53mabith
Jan 2, 2017, 10:24 pm

52 posts on January 2nd! Looking forward to following your reading again.

54kidzdoc
Jan 3, 2017, 4:45 am

Thanks, Meredith! I'll try my best to keep up with your impressive output as well.

55rachbxl
Jan 3, 2017, 5:08 am

>50 kidzdoc: Ha! You do your fair share of spraying book bullets too!

56kidzdoc
Jan 3, 2017, 5:09 am

>55 rachbxl: *bats eyes innocently*

57AlisonY
Jan 3, 2017, 4:02 pm

>48 kidzdoc: shame on you McEwan for lulling us into the world of lukewarm at the start of 2017.

We need more like The Cement Garden!

58kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 3:31 am

>57 AlisonY: Agreed!

59baswood
Jan 4, 2017, 10:18 am

No one plans to read as much as you do Darryl.

60kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 4, 2017, 2:03 pm

>59 baswood: Thanks, Barry. One might also say that no one fails as spectacularly as I do, either.

61kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 2:05 pm

Today is January 4th, which means that it's time for The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great 2017 Book Preview! As usual, there are several enticing titles in this biannual list, which has become a menace to my plans to restrict my book purchases in the new year. These books appeal to me the most:

January:

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay: Gay has had an enormously successful few years. In 2014, her novel, An Untamed State, and an essay collection, Bad Feminist, met with wide acclaim, and in the wake of unrest over anti-black police violence, hers was one of the clearest voices in the national conversation. While much of Gay’s writing since then has dealt in political thought and cultural criticism, she returns in 2017 with this short story collection exploring the various textures of American women’s experience.

Human Acts by Han Kang: Korean novelist Kang says all her books are variations on the theme of human violence. The Vegetarian, her first novel translated into English, arrested readers with the contempt showered upon an “unremarkable” wife who became a vegetarian after waking from a nightmare. Kang’s forthcoming Human Acts focuses on the 1980 Korean Gwangju Uprising, when Gwangju locals took up arms in retaliation for the massacre of university students who were protesting. Within Kang tries to unknot “two unsolvable riddles” — the intermingling of two innately human yet disparate tendencies, the capacity for cruelty alongside that for selflessness and dignity.

(I loved The Vegetarian, so I'll definitely pick up this book.)

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran: Set in Berkeley, Sekaran’s novel follows two women: Soli, an undocumented woman from Mexico raising a baby alone while cleaning houses, and an Indian-American woman struggling with infertility who becomes a foster parent to Soli’s son. Kirkus called it “superbly crafted and engrossing.”

The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen: Winner of Mexico’s Mauricio Achar Prize for Fiction, Xilonen’s novel (written when she was only 19, and here translated by Andrea Rosenberg) tells the story of a young boy who crosses the Rio Grande. Mixing Spanish and English, El Sur Mexico lauded the novel’s “vulgar idiom brilliantly transformed into art.”

Selection Day by Aravind Adiga: If Selection Day goes on to hit it big, we may remember it as our era’s definitive cricket novel. Adiga — a Man Booker laureate who won the prize in 2008 for his epic The White Tiger — follows the lives of Radha and Manju, two brothers whose father raised them to be master batsmen. In the way of The White Tiger, all the characters are deeply affected by changes in Indian society, most of which are transposed into changes in the country’s huge cricket scene.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa called Schweblin “one of the most promising voices in modern literature in Spanish.” The Argentinian novelist’s fifth book, about “obsession, identity and motherhood,” is her first to be translated into English (by Megan McDowell). It’s been described “deeply unsettling and disorientating” by the publisher and “a wonderful nightmare of a book” by novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke: Clarke’s award-winning short story collection Foreign Soil is now being published in the U.S. and includes a new story “Aviation,” specifically written for this edition. These character-driven stories take place worldwide — Australia, Africa, the West Indies, and the U.S. — and explore loss, inequity, and otherness. Clarke is hailed as an essential writer whose collection challenges and transforms the reader.

February:

The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee: This sequel to the Nobel Prize-winning South African author’s 2013 novel The Childhood of Jesus picks up shortly after Simón and Inés flee from authorities with their adopted son, David. Childhood was a sometimes thin-feeling allegory of immigration that found Coetzee meditating with some of his perennial concerns — cultural memory, language, naming, and state violence — at the expense of his characters. In Schooldays, the allegorical element recedes somewhat into the background as Coetzee tells the story of David’s enrollment in a dance school, his discovery of his passion for dancing, and his disturbing encounters with adult authority. This one was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.

(I enjoyed The Childhood of Jesus, and I purchased The Schooldays of Jesus when I was in London in September. I'll probably read it in the spring.)

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Pulitzer Prize Winner Nguyen’s short story collection The Refugees has already received starred pre-publication reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, among others. Nguyen’s brilliant new work of fiction offers vivid and intimate portrayals of characters and explores identity, war, and loss in stories collected over a period of two decades.

Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay: A significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay is best-known for his novel Home to Harlem — which was criticized by W.E.B. Dubois for portraying black people (i.e. Harlem nightlife) as prurient — “after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” The novel went on to win the prestigious (if short-lived) Harmon Gold Medal and is widely praised for its sensual and brutal accuracy. In 2009, UPenn English professor Jean-Christophe Cloutier discovered the unpublished Amiable with Big Teeth in the papers of notorious, groundbreaking publisher Samuel Roth. A collaboration between Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, a long-awaited, edited, scholarly edition of the novel will be released by Penguin in February.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li: The Oakland-based Li delivers this memoir of chronic depression and a life lived with books. Weaving sharp literary criticism with a perceptive narrative about her life as an immigrant in America, Your Life isn’t as interested in exploring how literature helps us make sense of ourselves as it is in how literature situates us amongst others.

Autumn by Ali Smith: Her 2015 Baileys prize-winning How to Be Both was an experiment in how a reader experiences time. It has two parts, which can be read in any order. Now, Smith brings us Autumn, the first novel in what will be a Seasonal quartet — four stand-alone books, each one named after one of the four seasons. Known for writing with experimental elegance, she turns to time in the post Brexit world, specifically Autumn 2016, “exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take.”

The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso: Set in South Africa, Omotoso’s novel describes the bitter feud between two neighbors, both well-to-do, both widows, both elderly, one black, one white. Described by the TLS as one of the “Best Books by Women Every Man Should Read.”

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: A sweeping look at four generations of a Korean family who immigrates to Japan after Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea, from the author of Free Food for Millionaires. Junot Díaz says “Pachinko confirms Lee’s place among our finest novelists.”

(I liked Free Food for Millionaires, so I'll almost certainly buy this book.)

62kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 2:06 pm

Continued:

March:

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: In an unnamed city, two young people fall in love as a civil war breaks out. As the violence escalates, they begin to hear rumors of a curious new kind of door: at some risk, and for a price, it’s possible to step through a portal into an entirely different place — Mykonos, for instance, or London. In a recent interview, Hamid said that the portals allowed him “to compress the next century or two of human migration on our planet into the space of a single year, and to explore what might happen after.”

The Idiot by Elif Batuman: Between The Possessed — her 2010 lit-crit/travelogue on a life in Russian letters and her snort-inducing Twitter feed, I am a confirmed Batuman superfan. This March, her debut novel samples Fyodor Dostoevsky in a Bildungsroman featuring the New Jersey-bred daughter of Turkish immigrants who discovers that Harvard is absurd, Europe disturbed, and love positively barking. Yet prose this fluid and humor this endearing are oddly unsettling, because behind the pleasant façade hides a thoughtful examination of the frenzy and confusion of finding your way in the world.

May:

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami: The seven stories in Murakami’s new collection concern the lives of men who, for one reason or another, find themselves alone. In “Scheherazade,” a man living in isolation receives regular visits from a woman who claims to remember a past life as a lamprey; in “Yesterday,” a university student finds himself drawn into the life of a strange coworker who insists that the student go on a date with his girlfriend.

(Murakami. 'Nuff said.)

The Leavers by Lisa Ko. Ko’s debut novel has already won the 2016 Pen/Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction, a prize created and selected by Barbara Kingsolver. The contest awards a novel “that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships,” and Ko’s book certainly fits that laudable description. The novel is the story of Deming Gao, the son of a Chinese-American immigrant mother who, one day, never returns home from work. Adopted by white college professors, Deming is renamed and remade in their image — but his past haunts him.

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal: Satyal’s novel takes place in a suburb near Cleveland and tells the story of Harit and Ranjana, who are both Indian immigrants that are experiencing loss. Harit’s sister has passed away and he’s caring for his mother; Ranjana’s daughter has left to college and she’s worrying her husband is having an affair. These two characters form a friendship amidst grief and self-discovery in a novel that is both heartfelt and funny.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul. Ah, the current frontrunner for Most Relatable Title of the Coming Year. The Canadian writer’s debut essay collection is “about growing up the daughter of Indian immigrants in Western culture, addressing sexism, stereotypes, and the universal miseries of life.” Fans of her work online will be eager to see her on the printed page. Canadian journalist (and Koul’s former journalism professor) Kamal Al-Solaylee said of her writing, “To me, she possesses that rarest of gifts: a powerful, identifiable voice that can be heard and appreciated across platforms and word counts.”

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan: In her debut novel, Alyan tells the story of a Palestinian family that is uprooted by the Six-Day War of 1967 and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This heartbreaking and important story examines displacement, belonging, and family in a lyrical style.

June:

So Much Blue by Percival Everett: In Everett’s 30th book, an artist toils away in solitude, painting what may be his masterpiece. Alone in his workspace, secluded from his children, best friend, and wife, the artist recalls memories of past affairs, past adventures, and all he’s sacrificed for his craft.

Hunger by Roxane Gay: A few years ago, Gay wrote Tumblr posts on cooking and her complex relationship with food that were honest yet meditative. It was on the cusp of her breakthrough essay collection Bad Feminist. Now she may be a household name, but her second nonfiction book delves into the long-running topic of the role food plays in her family, societal, and personal outlook with the same candor and empathy.

The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton: A debut novel about the Egyptian revolution from filmmaker and activist Hamilton, who has written about the events of Tahrir square for The Guardian and elsewhere

63kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 2:07 pm

Continued:

And beyond:

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward: The Odyssey has been repeatedly invoked by early reviewers of Sing, Unburied, Sing, which follows its protagonist on the journey from rural Mississippi to the state penitentiary and beyond. In the hands of a less talented writer, that parallel might seem over-the-top, but in the hands of one of America’s most talented, generous, and perceptive writers, it’s anything but.

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet: A madcap critical theory mystery by the author of HHhH. In the new novel, a police detective comes up against the likes of Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva. It sounds bonkers.

Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang: Zhang’s got range: the poet/Rookie writer/essayist/ and now fiction writer has a voice that’s at once incisive and playful and emboldened. “If I fart next to a hulking white male and then walk away, have I done anything important?” she asks in her chapbook Hags, when wondering about ways to fight imperialism; she has written of encounters with white privilege as a Chinese American, of messiness and feelings and depression, of errata and text messages and Tracey Emin, and of resisting Donald Trump. Zhang’s sure to bring this force to her first collection of short stories, Sour Heart, which will be the first book published by Lena Dunham’s Lenny imprint.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons: A debut novel from Apogee Journal cofounder and contributing editor at LitHub. Thandi loses her South African mother and navigates the process of grieving and growing up in Pennsylvania.

This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins: Jerkins is way too accomplished for her age, but her range of skills and interests – 19th-century Russian lit, postwar Japanese lit, speaker of six languages, editor, assistant literary agent — is so awesome I just can’t begrudge her. Jerkins writes reportage, personal essays, fiction, profiles, interviews, literary criticism, and sports and pop culture pieces. Now she has an essay collection coming out: This Will Be My Undoing. Some of her previously published essays include “The Psychic Toll of Reading the News While Black”, “Why I Got a Labiaplasty in My 20s”, and “How Therapy Doesn’t Make Me a Bad Christian” — all of which may or may not be collected in the new book; but you get a feel for the great stuff we can expect.

64kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 2:08 pm

I took advantage of Verso Books fabulous end of the year sale last week. Their ebooks were either free or $1 USD, so I ordered 20 books on NYE and two more on NYD, for a total of $19:

The Mosaic of Islam: A Conversation with Perry Anderson by Suleiman Mourad: Today, 23 percent of the global population is Muslim, but ignorance and misinformation about Islam persist. In this fascinating and useful book, Perry Anderson interviews the noted scholar of Islam Suleiman Mourad about the Qurʾan and the history of the faith.

Corbyn and the Future of Labour: A Verso Report: The leadership election has come to an end with a huge victory for Jeremy Corbyn. He is given the mandate (again) to demand support from the Westminster rump that still resists his authority. Corbyn and the Future of Labour looks back on an extraordinary year – in which the Labour Party and its membership changed almost beyond recognition – and offers a variety of prescriptions for what needs to be done.

Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois: The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in The Atlanticb, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Part essay, part autobiography, Darkwater explicitly addresses significant issues, such as the oppression of women and Eurocentric standards of beauty, the historical rise of the idea of whiteness, and the abridgement of democracy along race, class, and gender lines. Reflecting the author’s ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.

The Brexit Crisis: A Verso Report: The Brexit Crisis gathers together some of the most insightful and provocative reactions to this moment, from the UK and abroad, examining what happened on the 23 June and what this might mean for the UK and the EU as a whole. It looks at the ruptures, false promises and ingrained racism revealed during the campaign and afterwards. As the UK heads towards the exit, what is to be done?

Corbyn: Against All Odds by Richard Seymour: Corbyn: Against All Odds presents a new essay from Richard Seymour, in which he examines the bizarre, and thus-far unsuccessful, coup attempt against the Labour Party leader, and attempts to outline Corbyn’s prospects in such unpredictable and turbulent times, alongside an extract from his new book Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics.

Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones: Forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders in the past decade, with the high-profile deaths along the shores of Europe only accounting for half of the grisly total. Reece Jones argues that these deaths are not exceptional, but rather the result of state attempts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.”

Beyond Black and White: From Civil Rights to Barack Obama by Manning Marable: Many in the United States, including Barack Obama, have called for a “post-racial” politics; yet race still divides the country politically, economically, and socially. In this highly acclaimed work, Manning Marable rejects both liberal inclusionist strategies and the separatist politics of the likes of Louis Farrakhan. Looking back at African-American politics and the fight against racism of the recent past, he argues powerfully for a “transformationist” strategy that retains a distinctive black cultural identity but draws together all the poor and exploited in a united struggle against oppression.

If They Come in the Morning … : Voices of Resistance, edited by Angela Y. Davis: One of America’s most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis’s incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States.

The City: London and the Global Power of Finance by Tony Norfield: The City, as London’s financial centre is known, is the world’s biggest international banking and foreign exchange market, shaping the development of global capital. It is also, as this groundbreaking book reveals, a crucial part of the mechanism of power in the world economy. Based on the author’s twenty years’ experience of City dealing rooms, The City is an in-depth look at world markets and revenues that exposes how this mechanism works. All big international companies—not just the banks—utilise this system, and The City shows how the operations of the City of London are critical both for British capitalism and for world finance.

The EU: An Obituary by John R. Gillingham: The European Union is a besieged institution. It is struggling in vain to overcome the eurozone crisis and faces an influx of refugees not seen since World War II. The Schengen Agreement is a dead letter, and Britain stands on the brink of leaving altogether. The EU is unfit for the challenges of the coming age of increased global competition and high tech. In sum, the drive for an “ever-closer union” has set Europe on the wrong course: plunged it into depression, fuelled national antagonisms, debilitated democracy, and accelerated decline. In this pithy, rigorously argued book, leading historian John Gillingham examines a once great notion that soured long ago.

For the Muslims: Islamophobia in France by Edwy Plenel, translated by David Fernbach: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, leading intellectuals are claiming “There is a problem with Islam in France,” thus legitimising the discourse of the racist National Front. Such claims have been strengthened by the backlash since the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015, coming to represent a new ‘common sense’ in the political landscape, and we have seen a similar logic play out in the United States and Europe. Edwy Plenel, former editorial director of Le Monde, essayist and founder of the investigative journalism website Mediapart tackles these claims head-on, taking the side of his compatriots of Muslim origin, culture or belief, against those who make them into scapegoats. He demonstrates how a form of “Republican and secularist fundamentalism” has become a mask to hide a new form of virulent Islamophobia. At stake for Plenel is not just solidarity but fidelity to the memory and heritage of emancipatory struggles and he writes in defence of the Muslims, just as Zola wrote in defence of the Jews and Sartre wrote in defence of the blacks. For if we are to be for the oppressed then we must be for the Muslims.

65kidzdoc
Jan 4, 2017, 2:10 pm

Continued:

Drought: A Novel by Ronald Fraser: A brilliant novel about memory, love, and the clash between the old world and the new, set in 1950s Spain.

Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques: In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics.

A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America by Óscar Martínez, translated by Daniela Maria Ugaz and John Washington: El Salvador and Honduras have had the highest homicide rates in the world over the past ten years, with Guatemala close behind. Every day more than 1,000 people—men, women, and children—flee these three countries for North America. Óscar Martínez, author of The Beast, named one of the best books of the year by the Economist, Mother Jones, and the Financial Times, fleshes out these stark figures with true stories, producing a jarringly beautiful and immersive account of life in deadly locations.

Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society by Gareth Stedman Jones: At the time the largest city in the world, Victorian London intrigued and appalled politicians, clergymen, novelists and social investigators. Dickens, Mayhew, Booth, Gissing and George Bernard Shaw, to name but a few, developed a morbid fascination with its sullied streets and the sensational gulf between London classes. Outcast London explores the London economy, in particular its vast numbers of casual and irregular day labourers and the artisans and seamstresses engaged in seasonal and workshop trades.

Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties by Karen L. Ishizuka: Until the political ferment of the Long Sixties, there were no Asian Americans. There were only isolated communities of mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos lumped together as “Orientals.” Serve the People tells the story of the social and cultural movement that knit these disparate communities into a political identity, the history of how—and why—the double consciousness of Asian America came to be.

The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care by John Foot: In 1961, when Franco Basaglia arrived outside the grim walls of the Gorizia asylum, on the Italian border with Yugoslavia, it was a place of horror, a Bedlam for the mentally sick and excluded, redolent of Basaglia’s own wartime experience inside a fascist gaol. Patients were frequently restrained for long periods, and therapy was largely a matter of electric and insulin shocks. The corridors stank, and for many of the interned the doors were locked for life. This was a concentration camp, not a hospital. Basaglia, the new Director, was expected to practise all the skills of oppression in which he had been schooled, but he would have none of this. The place had to be closed down by opening it up from the inside, bringing freedom and democracy to the patients, the nurses and the psychiatrists working in that ‘total institution’. The first comprehensive study of this revolutionary approach to mental health care, The Man Who Closed the Asylums is a gripping account of one of the most influential movements in twentiethcentury psychiatry, which helped to transform the way we see mental illness. Basaglia’s work saved countless people from a miserable existence, and his legacy persists, as an object lesson in the struggle against the brutality and ignorance that the establishment peddles to the public as common sense.

A People's History of London by Lindsey German and John Rees: In the eyes of Britain’s heritage industry, London is the traditional home of empire, monarchy and power, an urban wonderland for the privileged, where the vast majority of Londoners feature only to applaud in the background. Yet, for nearly 2000 years, the city has been a breeding ground for radical ideas, home to thinkers, heretics and rebels from John Wycliffe to Karl Marx. It has been the site of sometimes violent clashes that changed the course of history: the Levellers’ doomed struggle for liberty in the aftermath of the Civil War; the silk weavers, match girls and dockers who crusaded for workers’ rights; and the Battle of Cable Street, where East Enders took on Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirts. A People’s History of London journeys to a city of pamphleteers, agitators, exiles and revolutionaries, where millions of people have struggled in obscurity to secure a better future.

The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps by Eric Hazan: The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan. Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur’s ear for a story with a historian’s command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists—Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, and Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval and Rousseau. It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted and vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. The Invention of Paris opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital’s vibrant and bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors.

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones: In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs. In this acclaimed investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, he portrays a far more complex reality. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient fig leaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems and to justify widening inequality.

The Lives of Things by José Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero: Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody and uncanny hallucinations, this collection of José Saramago’s earliest stories from the beginning of his writing career attests to the novelist’s imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Each tale is a wicked, surreal take on life under dictatorship: in ‘Embargo’ a man drives around a city that is slowly running out of petrol; ‘The Chair’ recounts what happens when dictator Salazar falls off his chair and dies; in the Kafkaesque ‘Things’ the life of a civil servant is threatened as objects start to go missing.

Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe by Charles Glass: Since the upsurge of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian civil war has claimed in excess of 200,000 lives, with an estimated 8 million Syrians, more than a third of the country’s population, forced to flee their homes. Militant Sunni groups, such as ISIS, have taken control of large swathes of the nation. The impact of this catastrophe is now being felt on the streets of Europe and the United States. Veteran Middle East expert Charles Glass combines reportage, analysis, and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict. He also gives a powerful argument for why the West has failed to get to grips with the consequences of the crisis.

The Verso sale is over, but these e-books are still available for $5.99, and the three Verso Reports e-books are free.

66RidgewayGirl
Modifié : Jan 5, 2017, 10:26 am

I haven't read much on the topic, but The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson made me think quite a bit.

And I was doing quite well at ignoring the Millions until you decided to put it all out there like that!

67dchaikin
Jan 4, 2017, 10:15 pm

The Millions - that's just too much information, with too many associated contexts. My brain all wonky now, can't process...

Awesome 20 ebooks for almost free.

68kidzdoc
Jan 5, 2017, 7:24 am

>66 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for recommending The Argonauts to me, Kay. I've added it to my Amazon wish list. I'll definitely read Trans: A Memoir, one of the Verso e-books I purchased last week.

Sorry about the Millions' Most Anticipated Books posts! Those were mainly for my benefit, to be honest, as I wanted to be able to refer to those enticing books during the first half of the year.

>67 dchaikin: Ha! Sorry, Dan. My hidden agenda was to encourage everyone else to buy books, so that I wouldn't receive any criticism here when I started to do the same.

Verso Books had a similar sale at the end of 2015, and I bought a number of e-books then. I'll undoubtedly read some of the ones I bought last week in 2017, as several are applicable to the themes I plan to focus on.

69kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 5, 2017, 9:15 am

My Year of Reading:



Number of books read: 73 (the fewest I've read since 2002!)

Male: 44 (62%)
Female: 27 (38%)
Both: 2

Fiction: 38
Nonfiction: 25
Poetry: 6
Plays: 4

US: 24
UK: 16
Canada: 4
Mexico: 2
Nigeria: 2
Norway: 2
Russia: 2
Spain: 2
Angola: 1
Austria: 1
Brazil: 1
China: 1
Colombia: 1
Democratic Republic of the Congo: 1
El Salvador: 1
Finland: 1
France: 1
Ghana: 1
Indonesia: 1
Israel: 1
Kenya: 1
Pakistan: 1
Somalia: 1
South Africa: 1
South Korea: 1
Zimbabwe: 1

Top 5 Fiction (in chronological order):
My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss
A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves
Judas by Amos Oz

Top 5 Nonfiction (in chronological order):
Walking Prey: How America's Youth Are Vulnerable to Sex Slavery by Holly Austin Smith
Stokely: A Life by Peniel E. Joseph
It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness by Suzanne O'Sullivan
One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne
What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear by Danielle Ofri, MD

Novel of the Year: My Struggle: Book One

Nonfiction Book of the Year: It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness

70Simone2
Jan 5, 2017, 9:36 am

I didn't know about this Most Anticipated Books, but I love lists like this. Thanks!

71kidzdoc
Jan 5, 2017, 9:39 am

>70 Simone2: You're welcome, Barbara! That list is the most enticing (and dangerous) one for me.

72southernbooklady
Jan 5, 2017, 10:13 am

>28 kidzdoc: Responding very late to this, but I can vouch for Sister Outsider and Borderlands. You might also consider Audre Lorde's beautiful memoir, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and Trash by Dorothy Allison, which is fiction, and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, which is not. I also highly, highly recommend Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts which is a deeply considered memoir and philosophical rumination about the author's relationship with a trans man.

And finally, The Hairdresser of Harare from Tendai Huchu, if you haven't read it, is a lovely if grim look at LGBT existence in Zimbabwe. It is fiction, but unflinching.

73kidzdoc
Jan 5, 2017, 11:27 am

>72 southernbooklady: Thanks for those recommendation, Nicki! I'll look at them more closely as the year progresses, but I'll almost certainly pick up Sister Outsider and The Argonauts.

74ELiz_M
Jan 12, 2017, 8:21 pm

In case you hadn't seen this already:

Noir Reads: The subscription service that delivers curated boxes filled with diverse Black literature to your doorsteps
http://www.noir-reads.com/

75kidzdoc
Jan 13, 2017, 6:52 am

>74 ELiz_M: Thanks, Liz; I hadn't heard of this service before. It sounds interesting, although pricey at $34.99/mo and $100/3 mo, and I can't find out which books would be shipped to you. I think I'll give it a try for one month, though.

76The_Hibernator
Jan 13, 2017, 7:53 am

>74 ELiz_M: That is an interesting box delivery. I don't have the time or the money, though I love the idea. I will share the link with my social justice book club.

77ELiz_M
Jan 13, 2017, 11:48 am

>75 kidzdoc: Well, you do buy a lot of brand new books ;) and I think might be comparable to purchasing them at a bookstore (especially if they send hardcovers), as they send either 2 or 3 books a month :

2 for $17.50
3 for $11.66

6 for $16.67
9 for $11.11

78AnnieMod
Jan 13, 2017, 6:24 pm

>77 ELiz_M:
Their shipping is outrageous - I looked at them at some point and they are asking for $20.19 in shipping in addition to the $34.99 for the box itself...

79kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 14, 2017, 3:34 am

>78 AnnieMod: Yikes! That, in combination with not knowing what books you'll receive, is a deal breaker for me, at least until I learn more about this shadowy organization. I wouldn't be happy if I placed a $55 order and received books that I already own.

Thanks, Annie.

80AnnieMod
Jan 15, 2017, 8:44 pm

>79 kidzdoc:

I am usually up for boxes like that so I did take a look awhile back. But they have zero information on topics and genres, publishers (I really do not care to receive 3 self-published books) and on what had been in previous boxes or how many books you are getting. No name attached to that which I would trust either - there is a lot of editors and authors that I would trust to make a selection like that but who is curating this one? Add the shipping and it gets bad - I really do not want to get 2-3 paperback books published in 2006 for example which I would have picked up most likely if I was interested in. Diversity is one thing but just because it is written by a non-white person does not mean that the book is good. Or readable. Or even if I discover an author, it is still expensive... That's why I did remember them when I saw the post - they really struck me as weird when I saw them.

Oh well. I guess they found their niche somehow.

81kidzdoc
Jan 16, 2017, 12:34 pm

Book #2: A Question of Power by Bessie Head

  

My rating:

"We have a full docket on you. You must be very careful. Your mother was insane. If you're not careful you'll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy, who was a native."

Bessie Head (1937-1986) was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the product of a relationship between a wealthy white woman and an unknown black man, who was believed to be a farm hand on the family ranch where her mother, Bessie Amelia ("Toby") Emery, lived. Toby was committed to a local mental hospital after her parents learned of her pregnancy, which was taboo in that segregated country. She gave birth to Bessie in this hospital, and as she was deemed to be too mentally ill to raise the child Bessie was sent to live with a white family, who subsequently disowned her after they discovered that she was a "Coloured" (mixed race) girl. Her mother committed suicide after Bessie was taken away from her, so she was placed in a foster care with a black family until she was 13, and then sent to live in a mission orphanage in Durban.

After she earned a teaching certificate she left the orphanage and taught briefly in Durban before she moved to Johannesburg to become a journalist. Her career was marred by racism and sexism, as she was the only female journalist for the publication she worked for. However, her career allowed her to meet members of the Pan Africanist Congress in the early 1960s, who sought the removal of the apartheid system in South Africa and a return to self government by black Africans. She was introduced to her future husband, Harold Head, an anti-apartheid activist, who she married in 1961 and subsequently divorced three years later. She joined the Pan Africanist Congress, and her activities led to her arrest and imprisonment. She sought asylum and left South Africa for neighboring Botswana with her son in 1964. She was accepted as an alien refugee there, on the condition that she would never attempt to return to her home country.

Bessie Head taught and became an agricultural worker in Botswana, but was very lonely and was ostracized in her new surroundings, which led to a nervous breakdown and hospitalization in a mental health facility. She began to write after her release from hospital and slowly gained recognition for her short stories and novels, which allowed her to escape crushing poverty that resulted from her loss of work. Just as she was becoming an acclaimed writer she contracted hepatitis, which led to her premature death at the age of 48.

A Question of Power, which was published in 1973, is a semi-autobiographical novel whose protagonist, Elizabeth, is a mixed race South African who fled to the Botswanan village of Motabeng, where she became a schoolteacher. Elizabeth, like her creator, struggled to fit into Botswanan society, and slowly descended into madness. The narrative features her unusual relationship with two mysterious men, who may or may not be real, and her hallucinatory fantasies are interspersed with her brief lucid periods. The novel can also be viewed as a metaphor for the disturbed state of apartheid South Africa, as well as the effects that this system had on its Black and Coloured residents.

A Question of Power was a disturbing and difficult book to read, as I had a hard time following Elizabeth's schizophrenic thoughts. It is a powerful and inspired work of literature, though, and I do intend to read more of Bessie Head's books, particularly her autobiography A Woman Alone, in the near future.

82kidzdoc
Jan 16, 2017, 1:21 pm

Book #3: The Assault by Harry Mulisch



My rating:

This brilliant novel opens in the Dutch city of Haarlem in early 1945, during the Hongerwinter, the famine that afflicted millions of residents of the German-occupied western portion of the Netherlands due to a blockage of food and fuel by the Nazis. Anton Steenwijk, a 12 year old boy, and his parents and older brother were spending a quiet evening at home, huddled around a lantern to keep warm and trying to keep hunger out of their minds. Their peace was broken by the sound of nearby gunshots, and when they looked outside they noticed the body of a man lying in front of their next door neighbors' house. Those neighbors then moved the body to the front of the Steenwijk's house, and they saw that the dead man was the local Inspector of Police, a notorious collaborator who was reviled and feared for his cruelty towards his fellow citizens. The family panicked, and after German soldiers arrive the Steenwijks are falsely accused of the murder. Anton is separated from the rest of his family, taken briefly to a local prison for the night, and later he learns of their fate.

Anton is sent to live with his well to do uncle and aunt in Amsterdam, where he studies and establishes himself in a notable profession. He is haunted by the events of that fateful evening, and although his future is a bright one with a beautiful young wife and child his view is to the past, as he desires to learn what happened to his parents and brother, and to find out more about the events that led up to the Inspector's shooting. He eventually meets key people who were involved with or were observers of the episode, and those encounters, along with fragments of his memory that he is able to uncover, permit him to piece together the full story of that night in Haarlem.

The Assault is a powerful and unforgettable novel about memory, responsibiiity, and one's past history and how it affects, and sometimes mars, the future, which is relevant not only to survivors of war and personal strife, but to anyone who has experienced a difficult or eventful past life. The book was the source of a movie of the same name, which won won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film that same year. Harry Mulisch is considered to be one of the Great Three Dutch postwar writers, along with Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, and this outstanding novel makes it easy to see why this is the case.

83RidgewayGirl
Jan 16, 2017, 4:50 pm

Interesting comments on the Mulisch book. I'll look for a copy. I've got two going for the Reading Globally theme, but if I manage to finish both before March, I'll want to read a third.

84baswood
Jan 18, 2017, 6:20 am

Two excellent reviews Darryl, but what's going on? You are reading books from the 1970's and 1980's.

85dchaikin
Jan 18, 2017, 8:02 am

Both these reviews are fascinating and all new information to me.

86Simone2
Jan 18, 2017, 4:35 pm

>82 kidzdoc: Great review Daryll. I forgot a lot about it but your words made me remember the story again Thank you!

87kidzdoc
Jan 18, 2017, 5:06 pm

>83 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay. Although I bought my copy of The Assault in Maastricht, NL it was published by Pantheon Books in the US. A new edition with a different cover was published by Pantheon in 2011, and Amazon sells it in paperback and electronic editions.

>84 baswood: Ha! Thanks, Barry. I'll revert to reading hot of the press books in short order, particularly when the Wellcome Book Prize longlist is announced at the end of this month.

>85 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. Monkey's husband recommended The Assault to me when we met in Maastricht in June, and I read it for this quarter's Reading Globally challenge. I bought A Question of Power years ago, and I thought it would be a good book to start my African diaspora reading.

>86 Simone2: Thanks, Barbara! I look forward to reading more books by Harry Mulisch.

88kidzdoc
Modifié : Jan 30, 2017, 9:58 am



The longlist for this year's Wellcome Book Prize, the British literary award that honors the best books about medicine, illness and health regardless of genre, was announced earlier today:

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (alternate title: The Heart: A Novel)
The Golden Age by Joan London
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

I've already read two of the longlisted books, When Breath Becomes Air and Mend the Living, and I had intended to read The Tidal Zone (which I already own), The Gene and Miss Jane. At first glance this longlist looks outstanding, and I'll try to read all 10 remaining books by the end of the year, starting with Miss Jane, which I just purchased as an Amazon Kindle e-book.

The Guardian: Wellcome book prize reveals longlist for 2017 award

89kidzdoc
Jan 30, 2017, 10:14 am

Planned reads for February:

1984 by George Orwell
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Human Acts by Han Kang
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid

90auntmarge64
Jan 30, 2017, 10:20 am

>89 kidzdoc: Hah! You're succumbing to 1984, eh? I've never read it, thank god, and now I just have to turn on the news to see how it would play out here.

I'm going to take a look at We Are All Moors. Unfortunately, the people who read books like that (us), trying to understand other people, already have that inclination.

91southernbooklady
Jan 30, 2017, 10:34 am

1984 is a great book. Not a comfortable one, but a great one.

92Caroline_McElwee
Jan 30, 2017, 10:45 am

>91 southernbooklady: nodding. I reread it last year.

93jessibud2
Jan 30, 2017, 1:57 pm

>91 southernbooklady: - My 1984 story: It was November, maybe December, 1983. I decided that this was a book I needed to read *before we actually got there*. So, there I was, riding the subway train, my nose in the book. I looked up to check for my stop and, directly opposite me, was a guy with his nose in a book. He happened to look up, at the same moment. Our eyes met, and, as readers do, we instinctively looked at what the other was reading. We chuckled and he asked, "What page are you on?". He was reading 1984.

Never saw the guy again but that moment has remained in my head whenever I think of that book. I think I may be due for a reread....

94Simone2
Jan 31, 2017, 1:56 am

>93 jessibud2: Great story! Indeed I always want to know what other people are reading in the train, on the beach etc

>89 kidzdoc: I am looking forward to your review of Human Acts. That one is on my wishlist as well.

95kidzdoc
Jan 31, 2017, 7:04 am

>90 auntmarge64: I saw 1984 on stage at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2015, which was brilliant and chilling, but I haven't read the book yet. I bought a copy of it in London that same year, which features the award winning Penguin cover with the words nearly completely blacked out; this photo of shows the words more than the actual cover does:



I've owned We Are All Moors for several years and it was one of the books I had intended to read in 2017, but this past weekend's events pushed it to the top of my list. I mentioned on my Facebook timeline that one of the second year pediatric residents who is working with us in the hospital this month cancelled her trip to visit her family in February, as Sudan is one of the seven countries whose citizens the trump administration has decided need to be temporarily barred from entering the country until they can be vetted with greater scrutiny. As it turns out, there is a Sudanese second year internal medicine resident in Brooklyn who visited his family and was prohibited from boarding a flight back to the US, even though he was here legally as a green card holder, similar to the resident I know.

trump’s Executive Order Strands Brooklyn Doctor in Sudan

I've barely started We Are All Moors, but its central thesis is "since the defeat of Islam in medieval Spain, minorities in the West have become, in some ways, reincarnations of the Moor, an enduring threat to Western civilization." These "new Moors" include Muslims in Europe and North America, and the Latino community in the US. Two of my physician partners are hijab wearing Muslims, and I fear for their safety, along with other Muslim friends of mine who live outside of Atlanta, particularly after this weekend's burning of a mosque in Texas and the massacre at a mosque in Québec by a far right wing trump supporter. I also fear that Latinos in the United States will experience considerably more harrassment and violence at the hands of white racists emboldened by the ascension of trump to the presidency, and that we in the US are under much greater risk of being the target of radical Islamic militants, thanks to trump's and bannon's apparent war on Islam.

I'm scared and very worried about the future of this country.

96kidzdoc
Jan 31, 2017, 7:18 am

>91 southernbooklady: The stage version of 1984 was anything but comfortable, and I won't forget leaving the Almeida Theatre in stunned silence, along with most of the rest of the audience.

>92 Caroline_McElwee: Did you see that production of 1984, Caroline? Ah...it looks as though it was performed at the Almeida Theatre in 2014, not 2015, and it moved to the Playhouse Theatre the following summer for 12 weeks.

>93 jessibud2: Nice story, Shelley! I also have a 1984 story: I saw the play the night before I flew from London to Atlanta, and the performance was so chilling that I was still a bit freaked out the next day. Just before I boarded the plane I encountered a Delta Air Lines agent who held a clipboard, and I noticed my seat number listed in fairly large type on the paper on it. Even though I had done nothing wrong I was still shaken by seeing it, and I was very nervous when I landed in Atlanta and was interviewed by a US Border Control agent at the airport. I breathed a huge sigh of relief after he stamped my papers and I exited the area!

>94 Simone2: I'll definitely write a timely review of Human Acts, Barbara, as I won a copy of it from the December batch of LT Early Reviewers books.

97jessibud2
Jan 31, 2017, 7:31 am

>95 kidzdoc: - We all share your fear, worry and concern, Darryl, even here in Canada, a place we Canadians usually feel is a safe haven, more or less. Less, in recent days. What is so obvious to me (and has been for awhile) is that trump is either too ignorant to realize that his very actions are what are emboldening terrorists, or (maybe more likely?), he is just evil and is very aware of that fact, and is in fact, carving out a deliberate path to destruction, inviting the very backlash he is creating in order to justify his fury at everything and everyone.

We live in dangerous times, and as the philosopher Santayana once said, (paraphrasing): those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

:-(

98southernbooklady
Jan 31, 2017, 8:34 am

>93 jessibud2:, >95 kidzdoc:, >96 kidzdoc:, et al.

I read 1984 in high school, and it is forever burned in my mind ("Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!") because it was part of a dystopian literature section in my classes that went across all the subjects -- including social studies, and even science, where we discussed the ethics of experimenting on people. One day, without announcing it, the school held what afterwards they called a "1984 Day." We were all called into assembly, groups were broken out arbitrarily, some free to roam the halls, and take others "into custody." Some were put into the school gym and told to stay there. And in the classes, the teachers taught weird things, like how to manipulate language, or how to skew statistics. The history class was all about propaganda. The day became exceedingly more absurd as it went on, rules changed arbitrarily, kids yanked from class by hall patrols, etc. etc. until almost everyone ended up as one of the incarcerated in the gym.

Most of my class thought it was all great fun, but I was freaked for weeks.

99qebo
Jan 31, 2017, 9:34 am

>97 jessibud2: deliberate path to destruction
This. Steve Bannon is orchestrating.

100auntmarge64
Jan 31, 2017, 2:29 pm

>95 kidzdoc: I'm scared for our country too, Darryl. I too think we're going to see a lot more violence towards Muslims by the Trump/Bannon people, and it breaks my heart. To see mob mentality encouraged by the President is so shocking I think people don't know how to deal with it, or even quite believe it. Didn't we all grow up with the lessons of WWII? This thing with Bannon on the NSA is more shocking to me than many of the other things that have happened in the 11 days he's been in office. (Seems like a lifetime already.) The Muslim ban, the wall, etc., etc., are things he promised, and while it's shocking to see it take place, he did say he'd do them. (Isn't that what people said about Hitler? Helloooo, didn't you listen to what he said?)

But having a white nationalist on the NSA rather than generals and intelligence experts shows just how mindless Trump's operating mode is. He doesn't have a thought in his head for how his actions affects anyone, and he doesn't care. He's going to follow his agenda, written by who knows whom, and not worry about consequences, because I don't think he's smart enough to worry about them. I go back and forth on the "why", but the bottom line is I think he's just stupid and dazzled by his own celebrity. And a sociopath. (Sociopaths don't have to be smart.) Some of the people around him who DO have brains, though, have seen a great opportunity to move their agendas.

I do wonder if what's happening with Muslims getting caught up in Trump's megalomania will change the way non-Muslims here relate to them. In a positive way.

>97 jessibud2: Yay, Canada! (I'm very proud of my half-Canadian heritage).

101jessibud2
Jan 31, 2017, 3:45 pm

>99 qebo:, >100 auntmarge64: - I also read somewhere this morning that trump is using the massacre in Quebec City the other day as justification for his own agenda. I almost want to say that I don't understand his logic - but I stop myself because there really is no logic. Unless it's some *alternate* logic. Exactly what does he mean by this? His agenda is to target and ban Muslims. Does that mean he approves of the attack on the mosque? Or is he saying that he wants to end terrorism (which he very clearly equates with Muslims)? Maybe he missed the part of the part of the report that revealed that the terrorist is NOT Muslim; he is a lone, young deranged French-Canadian, who also happens to be a trump supporter. I am just not understanding at all what as meant by that statement. If I can find the link to where I read it, I will edit it in here.

I just hope Trudeau does NOT allow trump to cross OUR border......

>100 auntmarge64: - I am also half American. My dad was American, though I was born and lived most of my life here in Canada. I still have a lot of American family in the States..

102qebo
Jan 31, 2017, 4:09 pm

>101 jessibud2: I am just not understanding
Apparently early reports/rumors labeled one shooter as Muslim, and this got amplified in circles that I'd rather not enter to verify. Actually the Muslim was a witness and had called the police.

103jessibud2
Jan 31, 2017, 4:17 pm

>102 qebo: - Ah, I see. I guess trump has fired the *fact-checker*, too.....

104Caroline_McElwee
Modifié : Fév 1, 2017, 7:04 am

>96 kidzdoc: no I missed that production Darryl.

We are all Moors sounds interesting Darryl, I'll look forward to your review.

London is such a diverse city as you know. Where I live the Muslim women are as diverse in the garb they wear as can be imagined. From full hijab, to full western style. What people forget it that what these women wear, even if full hijab, is not always (? Often, maybe) about religion. Especially with young women it is about their own self exploration, self identity. Their Islamic style dress may be because it makes them feel exotic, in a world of tee shirt and jeans. It might be a form of activism which incorporates feminism, individuality, religious freedom (the freedom to believe what you do). It scares me that what people choose to wear, more than ever at the moment (post-BREXIT there have been some islamaphobic attacks) makes women especially, but not exclusively, a target.

105VivienneR
Fév 11, 2017, 11:19 am

Interesting conversation but heartbreaking that it has to take place. Do you get the feeling that there is worse to come?

106Caroline_McElwee
Fév 11, 2017, 4:40 pm

I don't know Vivienne. At the moment the negative behaviours towards Muslims have quieted down, to my knowledge, in the UK at the moment. As with the US the problem areas are often in places that have few Muslim or immigrant families (from a news bulletin yesterday I hear that Montana has fewer than 20 Muslim families). Fear is the issue, fear of what might happen.

We are also experiencing a rise in ante-semitism here at the moment too.

Until we can eradicate the concept of 'them and us' and acknowledge 'we various, diverse, human beings', we have a problem Captain.

107EBT1002
Fév 14, 2017, 12:42 pm

"Until we can eradicate the concept of 'them and us' and acknowledge 'we various, diverse, human beings', we have a problem Captain."
Spot on.

108VivienneR
Fév 14, 2017, 3:39 pm

Until we can eradicate the concept of 'them and us' and acknowledge 'we various, diverse, human beings', we have a problem Captain. Exactly.

In Canada we are now having people making the trip across the border from the US on foot rather than the possibility of facing deportation. Dangerous at this time of year, as one family who lost fingers to frostbite can attest, but happening more and more.

109RidgewayGirl
Fév 14, 2017, 8:23 pm

>108 VivienneR: I was just listening to a news account of US citizens who were detained for over six hours returning from a wedding in Toronto. They were questioned and asked if they were Muslims and when they said yes, their phones were confiscated and they were put in separate rooms and questioned. US citizens.

110VivienneR
Fév 14, 2017, 9:32 pm

>109 RidgewayGirl: It is hard to believe it is happening. Especially in the US, known for welcoming people from all over the world. The only reason I can see it promotes fear-mongering, and in turn, support for the guy in charge, who is seen as "protecting" the country. Our last Prime Minister tried that in the last election campaign. Fortunately his party lost. It must be hell to be living a normal life only to have your future, your life, threatened by a new leader.

111kidzdoc
Mar 27, 2017, 9:39 am

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly two months since my last visit here! I'm finally finished with a hideous winter work schedule, an I'm pleased to report that, for the first time since then I have finished a book — actually two — and I wrote brief reviews of them yesterday.
Book #5: The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas



My rating:

This brilliant novel by the Spanish author Javier Cercas concerns a budding young writer who decides to leave Barcelona and travel to a university town in the US Midwest to take up a teaching position. He is befriended by an older man in the same department at the university, who is deeply scarred by his experiences in Vietnam. The two men maintain a strange and distant friendship, and as the narrator becomes a best selling novelist after his return to Spain his life begins to unravel. Once he has reached rock bottom he seeks to meet his old friend again, to help him on the road to recovery, and in doing so he finds out more about what happened to his friend during the war, and the similarities the two men shared in their disparate lives.

The Speed of Light is another fabulous work by one of my favorite living authors, and I eagerly await the translation of his latest two latest novels into English.

Book #6: I Am Not Your Negro: A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck by James Baldwin



My rating:

The companion book to the documentary of the same name is based largely on notes from James Baldwin's non-fiction work Remember This House, which he began writing in 1979 but did not finish before his death in 1987. Baldwin's aim in writing this book was to tell the story of the United States through the lives of three seminal figures in the Civil Rights Movement, all of whom were close friends of his: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were assassinated in 1963, 1965 and 1968, respectively. In this book, Baldwin's excerpted words from Remember This House are converted into poetic form, which lends them greater power. Interspersed between these "poems" are portions of past speeches and interviews, photographs that accompany the text, and a limited number of current references, most notably the sequence that consists of apologies by Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Anthony Weiner, the former US congressman who was forced to step down after sexual misconduct and was further disgraced by additional misbehaviors, Thomas Jackson, the former chief of police of Ferguson, Missouri, and others.

Raoul Peck's compilation does a superb service in bringing James Baldwin's unflinching words to light for those of us who revere him, and to newer audiences who are unfamiliar with him and the searing power of his words. I look forward to seeing the documentary, and to returning to this excellent compilation.

112thorold
Mar 27, 2017, 4:17 pm

>111 kidzdoc: Good to see you back here! Nice reviews, although I'm not sure you've convinced me on the Peck book - "converted into poetic form" sounds a bit too sinister. What was wrong with the form Baldwin wrote in? (I always think of him as one of those writers whose work is really designed for the voice, not the page, like Dickens, J.B. Priestley or Mark Twain)

I was put off The speed of light by the idea that it would be too similar to Soldados de Salamina. But I do want to read some more Cercas. He seems to be a very interesting writer.

(BTW: why are you waiting for a translation? I'm sure your Spanish is far better than mine, and I had no trouble reading two of his books...)

113SassyLassy
Mar 27, 2017, 7:44 pm

>111 kidzdoc: Good to see you back and still reading such good books.

114kidzdoc
Mar 28, 2017, 1:35 pm

>112 thorold: Thanks, Mark. Now that my intense winter work schedule is finally over I'll be a much more regular presence here. I'll spend two weeks in the middle of April in London, so I'll post theatre and other cultural arts reviews as well.

Regarding I Am Not Your Negro, the material that Raoul Peck had to work with, which was provided to him by Baldwin's family, was not a single unpublished manuscript or a portion of one, but a series of fragmented and largely unconnected pages, from what I understand. He extracted what he thought were the most important points that Baldwin was making, and combined them with excerpts of his other writing, speeches and interviews in the creation of the documentary. I don't see my copy of the book at the moment, as I'm in the midst of a spring cleanup, but once I find it I'll post some examples of what I mean.

The Speed of Light is somewhat similar to Soldiers of Salamis, and much of Cercas's work, in that it is largely historical, if not at least partially autobiographical; like the narrator, Cercas spent a significant amount of time at the main campus of the University of Illinois. However, the novel is set in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, where Soldiers of Salamis took place during and after the Spanish Civil War, as you know. Cercas has become one of my favorite living authors, as I've enjoyed all five of his books that I've read, which are also the only books of his to be translated into English so far. I just saw that his 2014 novel El impostor will be released in English translation in November, and his latest novel, El monarca de las sombras (The Monarch of the Shadows) was released in a Spanish edition last month.

I'm conversant in spoken Spanish, as I can communicate with Latino patients and families in the hospital and Spaniards I've encountered in Catalunya and Andalucía with little difficulty. I can read newspapers (El País, La Vanguardia), but reading anything more sophisticated than that is beyond my ability at the moment. I plan to start an intensive study of the language this year, and I would like to be able to read novels in Spanish by 2020-2022. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that most literature published in Spain is not translated into English, including four of Cercas's earlier novels that he wrote between 1994-2000, and I would like to purchase and be able to read them in the near future.

>113 SassyLassy: Thanks, Sassy. I've now started what should be another excellent book, The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, which was shortlisted for this year's Wellcome Book Prize. Claire, an LTer who is one of my closest friends from London, is also reading it now, and Rachael (FlossieT), a formerly active LTer who I see whenever I visit the UK, raved about it when we met last September. I posted this brief summary of the novel on my Facebook timeline yesterday:

"This book is centered on a contemporary family in the English Midlands, in particular a teenage girl who goes into cardiorespiratory arrest at her school. This novel is narrated by her father, a stay-at-home academic who is married to an overworked National Health Service physician, and the two parents must deal with the challenge of negotiating with the NHS to get the best care for their stricken daughter, while they deal with their own guilt, deep love for their two children, and their own stressful lives. I suspect that this story will resonate with those of us who care for hospitalized children and their families, and those whose children have required inpatient care."

I'm less than 30 pages into it, but it's excellent so far.

115kidzdoc
Avr 8, 2017, 4:02 pm

Book #5: The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss



My rating:

The latest novel by the brilliant English writer Sarah Moss is set in a contemporary Midlands town and is narrated by Adam, a non-tenured academician who teaches entry level courses at the local university and spends the majority of his time working on a book about the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral and tending to the home and his family, his 15 and 8 year old daughters Miriam and Rose, and his wife Emma, an overworked general practitioner for the National Health Service. The family is an ordinary one, until one day tragedy strikes: Miriam goes into sudden cardiorespiratory arrest at school, is successfully resuscitated, and is admitted to hospital for further evaluation. Her mysterious condition places a great strain on every member of the family: Adam's passive-aggressive tendencies, anxieties and insecurities are expressed as verbal darts thrown at his wife; Emma wrestles with her dual roles as a even-keeled clinician and a terrified mother who fears every parent's worst nightmare, that they will outlive their child; Rose feels both unimportant and anxious over her sister's uncertain condition, and displays apparent indifference toward Miriam's plight and makes repeated unreasonable, selfish demands on her parents; and Miriam, a very intelligent, independent minded and defiant teen, who seethes at being admitted to hospital, not having medical decision making capability, and, underneath it all, fears her own mortality.

The family must recover from the lightning bolt from the sky that has altered all of their lives, and adjust to the "new normal", similar to many of the families I see in my role as a pediatric hospitalist whose children are given life altering or life threatening medical diagnoses during their stay in hospital, and to other individuals, families and groups who are stricken by tragedy and must pick themselves up and recover from a sudden shock.

Moss does a fabulous job in portraying these four as very believable, imperfect and sympathetic individuals, and, despite the difference between the British and American health care systems, the experiences Adam, Emma and Miriam had with the NHS rang true as well.

The Tidal Zone is another outstanding effort by one of England's most talented writers, which I liked only slightly less than her brilliant earlier novel Bodies of Light. It was chosen for this year's fabulous Wellcome Book Prize shortlist, and despite the strength of the field, this novel would be a worthy winner of this superb literary award.

116RidgewayGirl
Modifié : Avr 8, 2017, 9:06 pm

It's good to see you back here, Darryl. I hope that you'll have plenty of time to relax and read now that the weather is so pleasant.

117auntmarge64
Modifié : Avr 8, 2017, 10:49 pm

So glad to see you back, Darryl. It was so strange to have you absent. I've ordered The Speed of Light on your recommendation and will see about the Moss book at my library. You make these books seem irresistible.

118kidzdoc
Modifié : Avr 10, 2017, 12:23 pm

>116 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay. I'm now officially finished with my hideous winter stretch, and I'll have a lot more time to travel, and to read. I leave for a two week trip to London tomorrow, and while I'm there I'll plan my usual month long vacation in June.

>117 auntmarge64: Thanks, Marge. Unfortunately The Tidal Zone hasn't been published in the US, although you can purchase it from The Book Depistory for $13.02 with free shipping from the UK.

ETA: I'm way behind on everyone's threads, but I should be able to catch up later this week.

119japaul22
Avr 10, 2017, 12:26 pm

Sarah Moss sounds like an intriguing author, but her books seem hard to come by through my normal U.S. channels. My library (a very large system) only has her first book. And amazon sells most through third party sellers. Thanks for the Book Depository tip!

120mabith
Avr 11, 2017, 12:02 am

I think I put Bodies of Light on my to-read list based on your review and I'm glad for a reminder about Moss. The US needs to catch up though--there are UK audiobooks for a number of her novels but none published in the US.

121VivienneR
Avr 20, 2017, 1:03 am

I'll look forward to reading about your London trip and the theatre visits soon. Sarah Moss is unknown to me, but I will certainly be on the lookout, and especially for The Tidal Zone. Great review!

122Caroline_McElwee
Avr 20, 2017, 6:01 am

Vivienne, Darryl is recording his London trip here

https://www.librarything.com/topic/254464#6012740

123VivienneR
Avr 21, 2017, 1:47 pm

Thanks Caroline!

124kidzdoc
Mai 12, 2017, 7:25 am

I've really fallen behind here! I'll do some catching up over the next week. I'm currently visiting my parents in the Philadelphia area for the week of Mother's Day, and I'm preparing for my month long holiday in Europe. I'll leave Atlanta on June 1st, arrive in London on the 2nd, fly to Bilbao ES on the 17th, take a short bus ride to San Sebastián on the 22nd, travel by train to Madrid on the 25th, and fly back to Atlanta on the 28th.

I'm in the process of reading about the Basque Country, and in searching Amazon I found a lovely little book that was just published a few days ago, which I read and reviewed yesterday.

Book #16: A Basque Diary: Living in Hondarribia by Alex Hallatt



My rating:



Alex Hallatt is a British cartoonist who moved to the Basque town of Hondarribia, just east of San Sebastián, with her partner Duncan and their dog Billie, where they lived for two years. This book is a description of Hondarribia, their experiences living there, a month by month guide to activities, local customs, and recommended restaurants, shops and nearby towns. Included are her own drawings, links to useful websites, and information on how to best experience the Basque region like a local. Ms Hallatt's love of Hondarribia shines through this small gem of a book, and I will refer to it when I make my first visit to the Basque Country next month.

125kidzdoc
Mai 12, 2017, 7:38 am

>119 japaul22: Right, Jennifer. I saw Sarah Moss speak last month at the Wellcome Book Prize Brunch in London, which featured three of the prize's shortlisted authors, Moss, Maylis de Kerangal, whose novel Mend the Living (published as The Heart: A Novel in the US) won the prize, and Siddhartha Mukherjee, along with the brother of the late Paul Kalanithi, each of whom spoke for 15 minutes (more on this brunch later). Of her last three novels, Bodies of Light, its sequel Signs for Lost Children, and the unrelated The Tidal Zone, only the middle one has been or will soon be published in the US. I have no idea why Bodies of Light wouldn't have been published first, or at least alongside Signs for Lost Children. I had intended to ask Sarah Moss about this after the brunch, but she was surrounded by a gaggle of well wishers.

>120 mabith: I intend to read more of Sarah Moss's work, as I loved Bodies of Light and The Tidal Zone. I have a copy of Signs for Lost Children, so I'll read it next.

>121 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne. I've posted two or three theatre reviews from last month in my 75 Books thread, so I'll post them here as well. I saw five plays last month, and hopefully I'll see at least that many in London next month.

>122 Caroline_McElwee:, >123 VivienneR: Ah. Thanks, Caroline!

126RidgewayGirl
Mai 12, 2017, 7:39 am

Have a wonderful month in Europe! I miss it, especially as the weather is now perfect for sitting at a table outside of a cafe and just watching the world walk by.

127kidzdoc
Mai 12, 2017, 7:49 am

>126 RidgewayGirl: Thanks! I'll spend the first half of the trip mainly in the company of friends in and outside of London, with two day trips planned so far (Colchester and Aldeburgh), but unlike last year I'll likely travel solo in Spain. I'll make day trips to Guernica, Hondarribia and possibly Irún while I'm there, but I'll spend a good amount of time sitting and reading in cafés and dining in pintxo bars.

I have at least one more trip to Europe planned this year. At least two other LTers and I will attend the Edinburgh International Festival; I'll be there from August 18-25. I'm in the process of figuring out what to do either before or after that week. I thought about going to the Marciac Jazz Festival beforehand, but there aren't any spare hotel rooms in town, so I may put that off until 2018 or 2019. At the moment I'm thinking of spending a week in Amsterdam, probably after Edinburgh, but a visit to Berlin is also a consideration.

128thorold
Mai 12, 2017, 8:08 am

>126 RidgewayGirl: Hmmm. I was wearing five layers of clothing last weekend on the boat, six would have been better. And Aldeburgh should be even colder than the IJsselmeer...
But it is starting to get warmer (and wetter) again. By the time Darryl gets to Spain it will definitely be café weather.

>127 kidzdoc: If you do decide on Amsterdam or Berlin, let me know - it would be good to meet you again, and I'll have plenty of time in August.

129Simone2
Mai 12, 2017, 8:15 am

>124 kidzdoc: What a wonderful trip again. Spain is so nice and it must be great to have so much time and be able to relax on a terrace with a book, pinchos and a glass of cava.
Enjoy and please keep us posted!

130kidzdoc
Mai 12, 2017, 9:04 am

It was cold in London two weeks ago, as I don't think it exceeded 16 C in the two weeks that I was there, and I'm sure that Aldeburgh would have been even colder. We're planning to go there so that a certain American can experience the best British fish & chips.

Will do, Mark. I would like to return to Amsterdam this year and see you and other Dutch LTers I've met the past two years. I'll touch base with Anita, Connie, Monkey and Sanne as well to see if they will be around in August or early September.

>129 Simone2: Thanks, Barbara. I love Spain, and this will be my fourth visit there in the past four years. I've been to Barcelona three times and Andalucía (Sevilla, Ronda and Granada) last year. I'm comfortably conversant, though not yet completely fluent, in Spanish, and I'm seriously thinking of retiring to Spain or another Spanish speaking country (Costa Rica or Ecuador in particular) when it comes time to hang up my stethoscope in 10-15 years.

131Sakerfalcon
Mai 12, 2017, 9:15 am

>130 kidzdoc: London got even colder after you left, Darryl! Please bring sunshine and warmth back with you in June!

132kidzdoc
Mai 12, 2017, 10:38 am

>131 Sakerfalcon: I'll do my best, Claire!

BTW I'm about to go to Center City to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I'll report back later.

133Simone2
Mai 14, 2017, 2:05 am

>130 kidzdoc: I share your dream. I also would love to spend my (retired) days in a Spanish speaking country. I just visited Valencia, which is a very very nice city (has it all: history, culture, food and sea!). This summer I'll travel to Colombia, one of the few Latin American countries I haven't visited yet but have wanted for years.

134kidzdoc
Mai 14, 2017, 9:51 am

>133 Simone2: Excellent, Barbara! It would be cheaper for me to spend my retirement in Spain, Costa Rica or Ecuador than it would be in the US or UK. A short term goal of mine is to become fully fluent in Spanish by 2020-2022, and my yearly trips to Spain and frequent use of Spanish with Latina families in the hospital are helpful to me in achieving that goal.

Valencia is high on my list of Spanish cities to visit in the near future, and a return trip to Spain this autumn is a good possibility.

I look forward to your thoughts about Colombia.

135kidzdoc
Mai 14, 2017, 9:51 am

Book #17: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie



My rating:

This outstanding work, which was based on a 2012 TedxEuston talk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, provides a redefinition of what feminism should be in the 21st century in Africa and the rest of the world, when most women in developing and developed societies continue to experience external gender discrimination and internal self doubt and feelings of diminished worth based on cultural expectations and limitations placed on them. It's a short work that can be easily read in 1-2 hours, but its observations and ideas deserve to be frequently re-examined, particularly when the rights of women are being threatened and curtailed in the United States and elsewhere by men in elected and appointed positions of power.

136kidzdoc
Mai 28, 2017, 11:55 am

Book #18: The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky



My rating:



The Basque Country, also known as Euskal Herria, consists of the four provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community (Euskadi) in northern Spain (Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Alava and Navarra) and three adjacent ones (Labourd, Basse Navarre and Soule) in southwestern France (Pays Basque). The Basque people are believed to be one of the oldest European cultures that are still in existence, and Euskera, the language spoken by the Basques, is the oldest surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe and has very little in common with Castilian Spanish or French. The Basque people, especially those in the Spanish portion of the region, have longed and fought fiercely for independence and, more importantly, self governance for centuries, using the Fueros, or regional civil laws, that were agreed upon nearly 500 years ago. The region is known for its cultural traditions including the sport of jai alai, the stunning beach resorts in San Sebastián and Biarritz that are popular tourist destinations, and its outstanding cuisine, particularly pintxos, chorizo and salt cod, which all originated there.

The American journalist Mark Kurlansky's fondness and knowledge of the Basque Region shines in this excellent book, which traces the history and traditions of Euskal Herria from its earliest known days to the end of the 20th century, including its major figures such as Ignacio de Loyola, the priest and theologian who founded the Jesuit religious order; Sabino Arana, the founder of Basque nationalism; and Bernardo Atxaga (Joseba Irazu Garmendia), the first Basque author to receive worldwide acclaim for his work, most notably Obabakoak, a collection of short stories set in the fictional Basque village of Obaba. Kurlansky also describes the region's rich whaling and shipbuilding traditions, the 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica (Gernika) by German planes, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist and terrorist group that has maintained its cease fire agreement with the Spanish government since 2010, and the foods that are unique to the region, including at least half a dozen recipes. The focus of the book is on the Spanish Basques, although he does dedicate one chapter to the Pays Basco, who are much more integrated into French government and society.

The Basque History of the World is a readable and entertaining look into this fascinating culture, which was a reasonable length at 400 pages. This was a perfect introduction to my upcoming first visit to the Basque Region, and I highly recommend it to anyone who plans to travel there or is interested in learning more about its people.

137janeajones
Mai 28, 2017, 12:40 pm

Interesting review, Darryl. Enjoy your journey.

138kidzdoc
Mai 28, 2017, 2:11 pm

>137 janeajones: Thanks, Jane!

139SassyLassy
Mai 28, 2017, 7:56 pm

>136 kidzdoc: Sounds like a good one. I do like Kurlansky's writing. Does he get into Basque settlements in Iceland or in Newfoundland and Labrador?

140kidzdoc
Mai 28, 2017, 10:26 pm

>139 SassyLassy: No, Sassy. He briefly mentions that Basques migrated elsewhere in times of crisis, particularly in North America, but he doesn't go into any detail about their settlements outside of Euskari or Pays Basque.

141kidzdoc
Juin 3, 2017, 10:25 pm

A quick post: I'm in London, safely in my hotel room near Waterloo station.

142Simone2
Juin 4, 2017, 3:17 pm

>141 kidzdoc: Take care, it is such a crazy world right now.

143kidzdoc
Juin 6, 2017, 8:05 am

>142 Simone2: Thanks, Barbara.



Juan Goytisolo, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest Spanish authors of the 20th century, died on Monday in Marrakesh, Morocco at the age of 86. He was born to an aristocratic family, but he fled the country in 1956 due to deep opposition to the fascist government led by Francisco Franco after his father was imprisoned and his mother was killed in a Nationalist air raid of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. His decision to live abroad, mainly in France and Morocco, permitted him the freedom to openly criticize the Francoist government in his novels, poems and essays, particularly in his Álvaro Mendiola trilogy, consisting of the novels Marks of Identity (1966), Count Julian (1970), and Juan the Landless (1975). He was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the Nobel Prize for the Spanish speaking world, in 2014 for his body of work over more than six decades.

Goytisolo continued to write novels and articles for the Madrid daily El País until he was felled by a stroke earlier this year. Unfortunately he received little recognition in the English speaking world, as few of his works were translated from the Castilian into English.

144Simone2
Juin 6, 2017, 9:51 am

>143 kidzdoc: Marks of Identity is on my shelves, being one of the 1001 books to read before you die. So one day I'll get to Goytisolo. Did you read any of his books?

145kidzdoc
Juin 6, 2017, 2:34 pm

>144 Simone2: I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read anything by Juan Goytisolo yet, although I own several of his books. I don own Juan the Landless, and hopefully I can find English language copies of Marks of Identity and Count Julian in the UK or Spain this month.

146thorold
Modifié : Juin 9, 2017, 12:37 pm

>143 kidzdoc: >144 Simone2:
People keep telling me to read Goytisolo, but each time I tried I found that none of my usual suppliers stocked any of his books. I should obviously try a bit harder.

ETA: looked again, found a copy of Señas de identidad from a Dutch bookseller, albeit a rather battered paperback full of some student's annotations. It's on the TBR. Looks interesting, the first sentence in the book seems to be three pages long...

147kidzdoc
Juin 30, 2017, 12:45 pm

Sorry for another long absence. I came back from my four week holiday in London and Spain (Bilbao, San Sebastián and Madrid) on Wednesday, and had a great time. I did get a moderate amount of reading done, although most of the books I read were short ones. My 11th Thingaversary was on June 8th, and despite my desire to not lug a bunch of books from one place to the next I did manage to acquire my quota of 12 books, along with a few more:

1. Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, with a new version by Jack Thorne (purchased at The Old Vic on 7 June prior to that evening's performance)
2. New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families by Colm Tóibín (purchased at the Oxfam Colchester shop on 9 June)
3. Guernica by Dave Boling (purchased at the St Helena Hospice Book Shop in Colchester UK on 9 June)
4. Colchester Castle: 2000 Years of History (purchased at the Colchester Castle gift shop on 9 June)
5. The Basque Hotel by Robert Laxalt (15 June, Daunt Books)
6. The Plimsoll Line by Juan Gracia Armendáriz (15 June, Daunt Books)
7. The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse by Iván Repila (15 June, Daunt Books)
8. Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon by Gijs van Hensbergen (15 June, Daunt Books)
9. Pocket Rough Guide Madrid by Simon Baskett (15 June, Daunt Books)
10. Wallpaper City Guide Bilbao (15 June, Daunt Books)
11. The Moor's Last Stand: How Seven Centuries of Muslim Rule in Spain Came to an End by Elizabeth Drayson (15 June, Daunt Books)
12. Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht (16 June, Southbank Centre Book Market)
13. An Octoroon by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins (16 June, Orange Tree Theatre)
14. Pity and Terror: Picasso's Path to Guernica by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (26 June, La Central Museo del Reina Sofía)
15. The Collection: Keys to a Reading (Part II) by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (26 June, La Central Museo del Reina Sofía)

148kidzdoc
Juin 30, 2017, 12:51 pm

I and two LT friends, Margaret (wandering_star) and Fliss (flissp), will attend the Edinburgh International Festival "together" next month; our stays will overlap to at least some degree, and we've made plans to meet up, although most of the time we'll each be on our own (I'll be there from August 18-25). Tickets for the Edinburgh International Book Festival went on sale on August 20th, and I was able to get tickets for all of the author events that I wanted to see while I was there:

>123 VivienneR: Thanks, Charlotte. I'm looking forward to the festival as a whole, but the Book Festival events are particularly enticing. Here are blurbs about the talks that I'll be attending:

19 Aug - Zadie Smith: DANCING WITH DREAMS

It’s been five years since Zadie Smith was last among us, and that’s far too long. She’s back with Swing Time, a novel about friendship between two girls who dream of being dancers and the gaps that open up as their paths in life diverge. Come along and hear one of the most insightful novelists of her generation. Chaired by Stuart Kelly.

20 Aug - Ali Smith: AUTUMN GLORIES

Read Ali Smith’s Autumn: A Novel, the first of her seasonal quartet of novels, and you begin to wonder if there is anything that she couldn’t write about - and not just formally cover, but write about with inventiveness, intelligence and humanity. For once, it’s a real consolation that Winter is coming - and we might even get a hint of what’s in store. Chaired by Daniel Hahn.

20 Aug - Jason Donald & Jenny Erpenbeck: HELPING HAND

Two novels illuminate how we treat the dispossessed. Jason Donald's Dalila flees a violent past in Kenya, only to discover that what she faces in London may be just as brutal. In Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, winner of the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, a retired academic befriends some African migrants only to discover that his country doesn't really want the people he has connected with to ever find a home.

20 Aug - Margo Jefferson with Jackie Kay: FEMINISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson is the author of a bold, defiant and astonishingly accomplished memoir, Negroland. Powerfully demonstrating that a ‘post-racial’ America is far from being a reality, Jefferson explores the challenge of reconciling feminism (often regarded as a white woman’s terrain) with black power (sometimes seen as a black male issue). Jefferson discusses her compelling life story with Scotland’s Makar, the poet and novelist Jackie Kay.

21 Aug - Henry Marsh: PROBING THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE

He may have retired from full-time NHS work, but one of the nation’s foremost neurosurgeons has found it impossible to completely hang up his scalpel. Henry Marsh has since worked in Nepal, Ukraine and Albania, experiences which have only served to remind him that life is an enormously fragile thing. He talks about his experiences and offers his views on Britain’s healthcare system and of our need to prolong existence. Chaired by Steven Gale.

22 Aug - Petina Gappah & Akhil Sharma: SUPERSTARS OF INTERNATIONAL FICTION

Petina Gappah, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, shares her collection of short stories, Rotten Row, on the causes and effects of crime and justice in Zimbabwe, where ordinary life goes on against all odds. Meanwhile, we are thrilled to launch 2016 International Dublin Literary Award winner Akhil Sharma's stunning new book of stories, A Life of Adventure and Delight. Unmissable.

22 Aug - Visions of the Future: Equality in the USA: HOW CAN RACISM BE WIPED OUT IN THE USA?

Gary Younge is the Guardian’s editor-at-large and his book Another Day in the Death of America chronicles the America that Trump says he wants to ‘make great again’. Joining him is author of Into the Sun, novelist Deni Ellis Béchard, also the son of a bank robber, a man who can be seen as the epitome of the ‘white outlaw hero’ who occupies a powerful place in US mythology. Together they tackle a difficult question: How can we eradicate the discrimination that has plagued the US since the days of slavery?

23 Aug - Gary Younge: AMERICA'S DOMESTIC ARMS RACE

The gun control debate in the US is unlikely to swing towards a liberal solution while an NRA-approved administration is in the White House. All that can be done for now is to hope that brave writers such as award-winning Gary Younge keep the shameful truth alive about the numbers of people slain in America on a regular basis. Here, he discusses why the young are so often victims of firearms. Chaired by Sheena McDonald.

23 Aug - Karl Ove Knausgaard: LEXICON OF LIFE’S LOVELINESS

Following the worldwide success of his My Struggle series of novels, the much lauded Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard returns to Edinburgh to launch his next major project. Autumn is the first of his seasons quartet, a personal encyclopedia about the world that he began as a letter to his then unborn daughter, the youngest of his four children. Chaired by Roland Gulliver.

23 Aug - Christine Otten & The Last Poets: MEET THE POETS WHO CHANGED AMERICA

The Last Poets were formed in the US in the late 1960s, a period full of hope and a time when the Black Panthers were at the height of their power. Their performance poetry has influenced generations of musicians, securing them the title of ‘the founding fathers of hip-hop’. Coming from New York to Scotland for the first time, The Last Poets - Umar Bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole and Baba Donn Babatunde - discuss their incredible lives with their friend and author Christine Otten, whose book is based on their story.

24 Aug - Colm Tóibín: A FAMILY AT WAR

He has imagined his way into the lives of Henry James and the Virgin Mary to great success in previous books, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Now, in House of Names, Colm Tóibín sets his sights on The Oresteia, taking us deep within Agamemnon’s family as danger looms. A classic story of longing and betrayal from one of our finest writers, here in conversation with fellow writer Edmund Gordon.

149kidzdoc
Modifié : Juil 1, 2017, 1:28 am

Planned Reads for July:

The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga
Autumn: A Novel by Ali Smith
Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge
Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddharta Mukherjee
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
My Struggle: Book Three by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Pity and Terror: Picasso's Path to Guernica by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Swing Time by Zadie Smith

150kidzdoc
Juin 30, 2017, 12:54 pm

Earlier this morning I re-posted an article from The Washington Post on my Facebook timeline about discrimination against female physicians by patients, which was originally submitted by a friend of Claire's, who I met in London and Colchester earlier this month and is a fellow physician working in the US. It's generating a lot of discussion, all by my physician friends, but I think it's important enough to post here as well, since nearly all of us will be cared for by a female physician at some point in our lives. As I mentioned in my post, "This excellent article will ring true for many of my partners, colleagues, and medical school and residency classmates. Discrimination against female physicians remains a widespread and chronic problem, even though numerous studies have demonstrated that they provide better care and that their patients have better outcomes than those treated by male doctors. I can only hope that the increased number of women graduating from US medical schools will eventually change the opinion of the general public, although it will likely be a very slow process."

I’m a young, female doctor. Calling me ‘sweetie’ won’t help me save your life.

“Sweetheart, you’re too young to understand,” my patient — a man in his 60s, someone accustomed to commanding a room — barked at me from his hospital bed. Medical problems had recently upended his life, and he was having a hard time adjusting. “I can’t believe I have to talk about this stuff to a young girl.”

I hear it all the time. Though I’m 34 and have been an attending physician for several years, after nearly a decade of medical training, patients routinely ask how old I am, tell me I look like “a baby” and, most infuriating, call me “cute” or “adorable,” as if I were a preschooler playing dress-up. A few have even asked to be seen by a “real” doctor instead of a “girl.” It’s an experience that’s not unique to me but familiar to many other young women in the profession. And while young men may similarly struggle to prove themselves as doctors, they’re never called “sweetie.”

Yes, it’s condescending and annoying. But this is not about being thin-skinned. My job is to provide the best possible care and to do that, I need my patients’ trust. Caring for them depends on their confidence in me.

Every time a doctor walks into a room, they have a professional obligation to overcome potential misgivings. I care for people who’ve been admitted to the hospital because something has just gone very wrong — as an internist specializing in hospital medicine, I deal with everything from heart attacks to potentially life-threatening infections — and they need medical interventions right away. I don’t have the luxury of time during multiple office visits to earn their trust. Any delay can be dangerous. We can’t afford — nor can our patients — for our recommendations to be taken with a grain of salt.

Case in point: Last year on a flight from Detroit to Minneapolis, a passenger became unresponsive, and flight attendants called for medical help. But according to passenger Tamika Cross, a young African American obstetrician, when she offered to assist, she was told: “Oh no sweetie put your hand down,” and “we are looking for actual physicians or nurses.” Eventually, another doctor, an older white man, was allowed to help. Cross said she was waved off because she didn’t fit the flight attendant’s “description of a doctor.”

The problem here — apart from race and gender stereotyping — is that when a physician treats a patient in an emergency, every minute counts. And it raises the question: what did even the presumably short delay cost the sick passenger? If the older white male doctor hadn’t been on board, would Dr. Cross have been permitted to try to save the passenger’s life?

Just last week, a woman at a medical facility in Canada was recorded saying, “Can I see a doctor please that’s white, that doesn’t have brown teeth, that speaks English?” The video went viral and the episode, appropriately, prompted outrage, but women and people of color in the medical profession aren’t shocked.

These patient biases have been well documented, and are unfortunately reinforced by the healthcare system. Even though studies have shown that female providers produce lower mortality rates among older patients and are more patient-centered than men, our effectiveness is not reflected in patient satisfaction scores that wind up influencing doctor compensation: Female doctors earn 74 percent of what male physicians do. Even in the relatively new field of hospital medicine, which skews younger and closer to even on gender, women are still underrepresented in leadership positions and scholarship.

Physicians today are encouraged to navigate these difficult interactions with humility and empathy — sit at the bedside, listen without interrupting and avoid giving orders. At the same time, female doctors are encouraged to exude confidence and assertiveness, to demand the respect we’re not always initially given. This is a tricky balance. If my patient calls me “nurse,” I have to clarify my role, refocus the conversation on the medical situation and yet not undermining our delicate rapport.

I’ve focused my career on trying to foster humanism in medicine. That includes using poetry to teach medical students about diagnosing cancer; podcasting about art and illness; creating resources for caregivers and inviting patients to speak at grand rounds. I’ve come of age influenced by narrative medicine, engaging with patients through their stories. But my belief in embracing patient perspectives sometimes runs up against my sense of social justice. When patients belittle me, even unintentionally, I grapple with respecting their narrative and maintaining respect for myself.

Should I, and other women physicians, continue our patient-centered approach and hope the arc of history bends towards gender equity? Or do we have to train ourselves to project confidence in a way that doesn’t threaten male patients or undermine our inclination to be less authoritative than our medical predecessors? Either way, we need to ask our institutions — medical schools, hospitals and private practice groups — to stand behind us, acknowledge the realities we face and work with us to find solutions. That might mean featuring female doctors in ad campaigns; providing sufficient gender-neutral parental leave so young women are not disadvantaged at the start of their careers; or tailoring the medical school curriculum to include practical strategies for female physicians to respond to demeaning language and to communicate with both confidence and empathy.

What it definitely means is that patients should understand that our ability to effectively direct their treatment is in their interest.

The day after my sexagenarian patient decried having to deal with a “young girl,” he introduced me to his wife as “the young nurse.” I briefly corrected him, introduced myself again as his physician and then sat and listened to his story because, ultimately, that is my job. I tried to understand how this unexpected illness had led to his feeling a loss of control and vulnerability. I saw how that might make him feel defensive. I can’t brush aside demeaning language, but I can understand what motivates it. I can find a way to empathize with patients who are suffering, even when they offend me. And, hopefully, I may eventually change my patients’ ideas about what a “real” doctor is.

Faye Reiff-Pasarew is an assistant professor of hospital medicine, director of the humanism in medicine program and unit medical director at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/06/29/im-a-young-fema...

151kidzdoc
Juil 1, 2017, 1:25 am

>146 thorold: I look forward to your thoughts on Marks of Identity, Mark. I'll probably read something by Juan Goytisolo this coming quarter, although I don't know which book or what month I'll get to it.

Speaking of Spain I am looking forward to the third quarter Reading Globally theme, on non-majority language writers. I'm waiting to comment on the new thread until I'm sure that it's definitely ready for input from others. I do have several translated books by Basque and Catalan authors that I've been meaning to get to for months to years, and I should have plenty of time to make a dent in them in the next three months, due to an unusually light summer work schedule (after an unusually brutal winter and spring at work). I'll probably read two books a month, most likely these six books:

The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Martutene by Ramón Saizarbitoria
Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga
Private Life by Josep Maria de Sagarra

152ELiz_M
Juil 1, 2017, 6:55 am

>147 kidzdoc: You saw a production of Wozzeck! Do tell; it is one of my favorite plays.

153kidzdoc
Modifié : Juil 1, 2017, 1:32 pm

>152 ELiz_M: Yep. I saw it with one LT friend (Claire) and another friend who isn't an LT member but works in London (Lesley) at The Old Vic in London last month, which starred John Boyega as Woyzeck and Nancy Carroll as his partner Maggie. The play was set in West Berlin in the 1980s, and Woyzeck was a member of the British Army patrolling the border between East and West Germany, living with Maggie and their baby in a tiny flat about a halal meat market. It was a powerful piece of theater, and the ending came as a surprise to most of the audience even though we (presumably) all knew that it would end badly. I'm the pediatrician on call in my hospital today, but I'll write a more detailed review of it sometime next week.