en-US Fri, 02 May 2025 02:25:26 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 2364930 208 Andrew O'Hagan 1565843355 john 5 lit-scottish (review will follow) 3.90 1995
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: john
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: lit-scottish
review:
(review will follow)
]]> 761935
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.]]> 166 Barbara O'Brien 0498016641 john 0 to-read 4.22 1958
author: Barbara O'Brien
name: john
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1846109 Be Near Me.

Finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Whitbread Award.

Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a visionary urban planner, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland’s residential development after the Second World War. But times have changed. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own failed buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. The old man’s final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past that haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him.

It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search of Utopia. A poignant and powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is a deeply felt, beautifully crafted, utterly unforgettable novel.]]> 304 Andrew O'Hagan 0771068352 john 5 lit-scottish
An excellent novel that I would recommend to all.]]> 3.58 1999
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: john
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: lit-scottish
review:
A novel about the man driven to rid Glasgow of its slums by building tower blocks. The project does not end well.

An excellent novel that I would recommend to all.
]]> 214152304 Discover the wonders of intuitive cooking with this magnificently designed cookbook from Omid Roustaei—the Caspian Chef—featuring 75 mouthwatering recipes that fuse Persian flavors with global cuisines, accompanied by moving stories of Omid’s culinary journey from Iran to the US.��

Iranian-American is a magnificently designed cookbook featuring 75 mouthwatering recipes from Omid Roustaei, the Caspian Chef. Infused with moving stories, useful cooking tips, and gorgeous photographs, Iranian-American teaches readers not only how to cook Persian cuisine, but how to cook intuitively. Omid’s welcoming prose and down-to-earth methods are sure to engage both practiced hands and total newcomers to the kitchen.

Recipes include Persian classics like khoresh-e fesenjoon (chicken in pomegranate and walnut sauce), albaloo polo ba ghel gheli, (sour cherry rice with petite meatballs), and tahdig (crispy rice) alongside international dishes such as Emerald City kale salad, Scottish smoked fish soup, and Palestinian potato and bulgur kibbeh.

Written in a conversational format that makes this complex and delicious cuisine easy to cook for anyone, regardless of experience.

Each recipe includes simple tips for modification based on what you have on hand, with deeper instruction on how to become a more mindful and intuitive cook.

Each chapter features a moving story from Omid’s life and the impact it had on his culinary journey from Iran to the US.

PLAYFUL Iranian-American is a love letter to food’s ability to cross cultures, emphasizing cooking and sharing international cuisines as a gentle form of activism and advocacy.]]> 240 Omid Roustaei john 0 to-read 3.86
author: Omid Roustaei
name: john
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217247924 Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history

Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

Organized into 4 parts paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity (kids, activists, workers, and athletes), Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion

Mark and David Ferrow,��two of the first trans teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment following overwhelming support from their friends, family, and neighbors.Gerda von Zobeltitz, a trans countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot 40 years before Stonewall.Frank Williams,��a young trans man who was fired from over a dozen jobs for his gender.Frances Anderson, the world’s greatest female billiards player of the 1910s.
Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.]]> 272 Eli Erlick 0807017353 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Eli Erlick
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216524175 200 Meghan Daum 1912559684 john 0 to-read 4.18
author: Meghan Daum
name: john
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218569821 From the acclaimed biographer of Buckminster Fuller, a riveting biography of the Nobel Prize–winning experimental physicist hailed as “the greatest scientific detective of the twentieth century.��


Nobel Prize–winning experimental physicist Luis W. Alvarez (1911��1988) began his storied career developing the atomic bomb and went on to conduct groundbreaking work on the building of the ancient Egyptian pyramids, the assassination of JFK, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. One of the preeminent scientists of the twentieth century, Alvarez was as obstinate as he was brilliant. He testified in 1954 against J. Robert Oppenheimer at the infamous security hearing that destroyed the latter’s reputation, and fifteen years later, he attempted to support the lone gunman theory of the Kennedy assassination by shooting melons at a rifle range. In the first comprehensive biography of this pivotal figure, acclaimed biographer and novelist Alec Nevala-Lee captures Alvarez’s achievements and ideas in vivid detail, focusing on the way collisions—in his combative personal life and his epochal work on accelerator physics, bubble chambers, the asteroid extinction hypothesis, and more—yielded his greatest insights.]]> 352 Alec Nevala-Lee 1324075104 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Alec Nevala-Lee
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223736238 The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe—Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.


In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler’s son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry—a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.


With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus—dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world—involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.]]> 336 Stephen Greenblatt 0393882276 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213395511 Great writing begins with obsession. Two novelists offer an inspiring guide to transforming that obsession, using whichever genre fits best.

Writers don’t need formulas; they need encouragement to take risks. The Lab offers a bold, hands-on approach, urging writers to embrace uncertainty, experiment with form, and investigate what haunts them. It features ten chapters and ninety exercises challenging writers to play with fiction, memoir, and poetry―or push toward hybrid or entirely new forms. This is a book for those ready to dig deep and write fearlessly.]]> 480 Matthew Clark Davison 0393866688 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Matthew Clark Davison
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218569800 A thrilling new history of the late Roman Republic, told through one woman’s quest for justice.


A pioneering political voice, with charisma and power that rivaled many of her male contemporaries, Clodia of Rome was a pivotal figure in the late Roman Republic until a murder trial, rife with corruption, catalyzed her fall from grace. Taking readers inside the courtroom to follow the trial and Clodia’s family’s tumultuous political history, Douglas Boin brings a modern perspective to a long-buried story, full of juicy details and fascinating anecdotes. With countless examples of the surprising roles that Roman women played, followed by the attempts of powerful men to erase their stories, Boin challenges the male-dominated narrative of classical antiquity. Clodia of Rome offers a new understanding of the radical modernity of first-century Rome—one that mirrors our own in its volatile conflicts between forces of change and those of reaction.]]> 272 Douglas Boin 1324035676 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Douglas Boin
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13356706 THE LORD OF THE RINGS
��
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

--back cover]]> 407 J.R.R. Tolkien 0547928211 john 4 fantasy 4.44 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: john
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 1975/12/01
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> 12346742 Time

Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,�� a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all.

“More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”—Roberto Bolaño]]> 227 Philip K. Dick 0547572298 john 5 lit-american, science-fiction
It starts in a world like our own . . . The novel was published in 1969, but it is set in the distant future of 1992.

The world of 1992 has some characteristics that make it different from our own. Most important for the plot are these 2 differences:

1) People who can read minds or predict the future are paid to use their powers to gain information about businesses' plans, and others, who have the ability to block psychic spying, are paid by others to prevent that spying; and

2) When one dies, one's mind can be made to survive for an extended (but limited) period. The body is placed in a freezer, and technicians install technical means for the living to use to converse with the dead. These dead are said to be in "half-life" and their minds survive for an indefinite period before the minds are reborn in a new, living person's body.

Dick created 2 opposing organizations that fight bitterly over psychic access to company leaders: Hollis, which supplies psychics to companies that want to spy on their competitors, and Runciter, who provides anti-psychics to businesses that want to thwart spies.

The story is told from the point of view of Glen Runciter's anti-psychic network, and primarily from the point of view of his agent Joe Chip.

Th trouble starts when Runciter and his team of 11 anti-psychics experience a bombing -- probably the work of Hollis (!) -- which leaves the surviving anti-psychics in a curious situation: time begins to flow backwards, it seems.

And then it gets complicated.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys the work of Philip K. Dick (it's said to be one of the best of his novels), who enjoys mind-bending fiction in general, who can appreciate Dick's satire and occasional comic twists, or who just likes a crazy story told very well. ]]> 4.10 1969
author: Philip K. Dick
name: john
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: lit-american, science-fiction
review:
I read this novel because I wanted a brief change of pace from the gloomy books I'd been reading. I have read several of his novels over the years and found them intriguing and fun.

It starts in a world like our own . . . The novel was published in 1969, but it is set in the distant future of 1992.

The world of 1992 has some characteristics that make it different from our own. Most important for the plot are these 2 differences:

1) People who can read minds or predict the future are paid to use their powers to gain information about businesses' plans, and others, who have the ability to block psychic spying, are paid by others to prevent that spying; and

2) When one dies, one's mind can be made to survive for an extended (but limited) period. The body is placed in a freezer, and technicians install technical means for the living to use to converse with the dead. These dead are said to be in "half-life" and their minds survive for an indefinite period before the minds are reborn in a new, living person's body.

Dick created 2 opposing organizations that fight bitterly over psychic access to company leaders: Hollis, which supplies psychics to companies that want to spy on their competitors, and Runciter, who provides anti-psychics to businesses that want to thwart spies.

The story is told from the point of view of Glen Runciter's anti-psychic network, and primarily from the point of view of his agent Joe Chip.

Th trouble starts when Runciter and his team of 11 anti-psychics experience a bombing -- probably the work of Hollis (!) -- which leaves the surviving anti-psychics in a curious situation: time begins to flow backwards, it seems.

And then it gets complicated.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys the work of Philip K. Dick (it's said to be one of the best of his novels), who enjoys mind-bending fiction in general, who can appreciate Dick's satire and occasional comic twists, or who just likes a crazy story told very well.
]]> 28813661 544 Serge A. Zenkovsky john 0 to-read Russia's Old-Believers: Spiritual Movements of the 17th Century.]]> 4.33
author: Serge A. Zenkovsky
name: john
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:
The English translation of the title is Russia's Old-Believers: Spiritual Movements of the 17th Century.
]]> 2021231 304 Robert O. Crummey 0582491533 john 5 history-russia The Longman History of Russia, which together forms an advanced introduction to Russian history from 750 CE to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. All of the volumes are in their first or second edition, and all were published between 1983 and 2007. The only edition of this book was published in 1987

My formal study of Russian history (i.e., coursework in a university setting) ended the same year that this book was published.

I had long wanted to read this book in order to understand what I could not have explained very well when I went into my oral admission to PhD candidacy exam in 1987: What factors explain why Moscow became the capital and center of the Russian state in the medieval and early modern period.*

Having read this book, I can answer that question much better than before, though I would need to do some additional work to master all of the details involved.

The book is a very detailed history of the rise of Moscow as the capital of a Russian state. There are also chapters devoted to art and culture of the period and the development of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is an advanced introduction, and one can return to it to review particular issues.

Particularly welcome to me are the occasions when Crummey addresses controversies among scholars on the history of this period (e.g., an introduction to the debate started by John Fennell about whether or not the surviving correspondence between Ivan IV [“the Terrible”] and Prince Kurbskii is genuine.) He addresses both sides of these issues. These discussions allow the advanced beginner to gain a better grasp of the state of the field early in her study of it.

Crummey was well known as a leading scholar of this period in Russian history. He edited a book of narratives of travelers to medieval and early modern Russia called A Rude and Barbarous Kingdom and wrote an important book on the boyar elite of the early modern period called Aristocrats and Servitors. He also studied the Russian Old Believers schism, a major interest of mine, and his work on the raskol (the schism) includes the book The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in an advanced introduction to this subject.

*NB: Russian history was a minor subject; my major subject was Russian literature. My unsuccessful attempt at an academic career in this area has left me one of those people whom Matt Groening has called "the most bitter person in the world."
______________________________________________________________________
Musical accompaniment to my reading of this book: Early recordings of Martin Carthy.]]> 3.58 1987
author: Robert O. Crummey
name: john
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: history-russia
review:
This book is a volume in the series The Longman History of Russia, which together forms an advanced introduction to Russian history from 750 CE to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. All of the volumes are in their first or second edition, and all were published between 1983 and 2007. The only edition of this book was published in 1987

My formal study of Russian history (i.e., coursework in a university setting) ended the same year that this book was published.

I had long wanted to read this book in order to understand what I could not have explained very well when I went into my oral admission to PhD candidacy exam in 1987: What factors explain why Moscow became the capital and center of the Russian state in the medieval and early modern period.*

Having read this book, I can answer that question much better than before, though I would need to do some additional work to master all of the details involved.

The book is a very detailed history of the rise of Moscow as the capital of a Russian state. There are also chapters devoted to art and culture of the period and the development of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is an advanced introduction, and one can return to it to review particular issues.

Particularly welcome to me are the occasions when Crummey addresses controversies among scholars on the history of this period (e.g., an introduction to the debate started by John Fennell about whether or not the surviving correspondence between Ivan IV [“the Terrible”] and Prince Kurbskii is genuine.) He addresses both sides of these issues. These discussions allow the advanced beginner to gain a better grasp of the state of the field early in her study of it.

Crummey was well known as a leading scholar of this period in Russian history. He edited a book of narratives of travelers to medieval and early modern Russia called A Rude and Barbarous Kingdom and wrote an important book on the boyar elite of the early modern period called Aristocrats and Servitors. He also studied the Russian Old Believers schism, a major interest of mine, and his work on the raskol (the schism) includes the book The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in an advanced introduction to this subject.

*NB: Russian history was a minor subject; my major subject was Russian literature. My unsuccessful attempt at an academic career in this area has left me one of those people whom Matt Groening has called "the most bitter person in the world."
______________________________________________________________________
Musical accompaniment to my reading of this book: Early recordings of Martin Carthy.
]]> 414
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700��titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the��series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date��translations by award-winning translators.]]> 385 Thomas Pynchon 0141180633 john 5 lit-american 3.79 1990
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: john
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american
review:

]]> 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith john 5 lit-american, autobio-bio 4.19 2010
author: Patti Smith
name: john
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, autobio-bio
review:

]]> 613359 233 William Browning Spencer 1565049152 john 5 lit-american, horror 3.95 1998
author: William Browning Spencer
name: john
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 613358 What was that? Rock thinks. Or maybe, Huh?

That's how Zod Wallop starts. Harry Gainesborough wrote and drew the story three years ago, before his daughter drowned. Now he writes nothing. Raymond Story read Zod Wallop while he was a patient at Harwood Psychiatric. Now the book means everything to him - so much so that he'd like to meet its author and live out its events. In fact, Zod Wallop means so much to Raymond that he has taken great pains to escape the institution and is now journeying to Harry Gainesborough's house with his young wife, Emily, in tow.

These odd doings alone would be enough to unsettle Harry, but they're compounded by other coincidences. Bizarre coincidences. Occurrences that lead Harry to believe that Zod Wallop is actually happening.]]> 360 William Browning Spencer 1565048709 john 5 horror, lit-american 4.12 1995
author: William Browning Spencer
name: john
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: horror, lit-american
review:

]]> 179780 385 William Peter Blatty john 3 lit-american, horror 4.20 1971
author: William Peter Blatty
name: john
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 13079982 Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.�� But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.]]> 194 Ray Bradbury john 3 science-fiction, lit-american Fahrenheit 451.

The ending of this book, however, was unsatisfying to me. Perhaps that is because I had seen Francois Truffaut's 1966 film of the story before I read it. The film ends differently from the novel, and I felt the film ending was better.

No, I won't tell you how they are different; that would ruin the story for someone.
]]> 3.97 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: john
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: science-fiction, lit-american
review:
Ray Bradbury was a great writer, there's no doubt about that. He could tell a mind-bendingly imaginative story with characters who behave convincingly, and the stories always made me think. I'm glad I read Fahrenheit 451.

The ending of this book, however, was unsatisfying to me. Perhaps that is because I had seen Francois Truffaut's 1966 film of the story before I read it. The film ends differently from the novel, and I felt the film ending was better.

No, I won't tell you how they are different; that would ruin the story for someone.

]]> 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X john 3 lit-american, science-fiction 4.33 1965
author: Frank Herbert
name: john
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, science-fiction
review:

]]> 89717 182 Shirley Jackson 0143039989 john 5 horror, lit-american 3.85 1959
author: Shirley Jackson
name: john
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: horror, lit-american
review:

]]> 830502
It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.]]> 1184 Stephen King 0450411435 john 5 lit-american, horror 4.28 1986
author: Stephen King
name: john
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 9917996
A stranger had also come to the Lot, a stranger with a secret as old as evil, a secret that would wreak irreparable harm on those he touched and in turn on those they loved.

All would be changed forever—Susan, whose love for Ben could not protect her; Father Callahan, the bad priest who put his eroded faith to one last test; and Mark, a young boy who sees his fantasy world become reality and ironically proves the best equipped to handle the relentless nightmare of 'Salem's Lot.]]> 653 Stephen King john 4 lit-american, horror 4.07 1975
author: Stephen King
name: john
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 10160130
To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie �� the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues. Until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of terror and destruction that no one will ever forget.]]> 290 Stephen King 0307743667 john 5 horror, lit-american 3.92 1974
author: Stephen King
name: john
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: horror, lit-american
review:

]]> 6488057
Ricky Rice was as good as invisible: a middling hustler, recovering dope fiend, and traumatized suicide cult survivor running out the string of his life as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter appears, summoning him to the frozen woods of Vermont. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard The Voice: a mysterious murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, or a whisper in an empty room that may or may not be from God.

Evoking the disorienting wonder of writers like Haruki Murakami and Kevin Brockmeier, but driven by Victor LaValle’s perfectly pitched comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling literary adventure about sex, race, and the eternal struggle between faith and doubt.]]> 370 Victor LaValle 0385527985 john 5 lit-american, horror Give it 10 stars.<br /> 3.39 2010
author: Victor LaValle
name: john
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:
Give it 10 stars.

]]> 13030260
Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He’s not mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down.

Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who’s been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group’s enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?

The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle’s radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it’s a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons.]]> 412 Victor LaValle 1400069866 john 4 lit-american, horror 3.51 2012
author: Victor LaValle
name: john
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 1091193
Philip's first confrontation with the monsters set in motion a bizarre chain of events that finally sent his girlfriend Amelia packing. Now the battle rages from the dank, cramped sweatshop of Philip's former place of employment, Ralph's One Day Résumés, to the gleaming, deadly corridors of corporate giant Pelidyne. Can he save Amelia this time, or will the monsters triumph and consign all humanity to an existence of grim servitude?]]> 469 William Browning Spencer 1565049136 john 5 lit-american, horror
It's really much better than that simple description. ]]> 3.91 1995
author: William Browning Spencer
name: john
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:
A parody of H. P. Lovecraft set in a modern corporation.

It's really much better than that simple description.
]]> 31147267
Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood, to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His quest, which begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts, takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

This captivating retelling of a classic fairy tale imaginatively explores parental obsession, spousal love, and the secrets that make strangers out of the people we love the most. It’s a thrilling and emotionally devastating journey through the gruesome legacies that threaten to devour us and the homely, messy magic that saves us, if we’re lucky.]]> 431 Victor LaValle 0812995945 john 5 lit-american, horror 3.75 2017
author: Victor LaValle
name: john
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:

]]> 26883558
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?]]> 149 Victor LaValle 0765387867 john 5 lit-american, horror 3.81 2016
author: Victor LaValle
name: john
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/11
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:
Really, really g00d, like all 0f Vict0r Lavalle's n0vels.
]]> 27828 Vladimir Nabokov's famous and brilliant commentary on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin



When Vladimir Nabokov first published his controversial translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin in 1964, the great majority of the edition was taken up by Nabokov's witty and exhaustive commentary. Presented here in its own volume, the commentary is a unique scholarly masterwork by one of the twentieth century's greatest writers--a work that Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd calls "the most detailed commentary ever made on" Onegin and "indispensable to all serious students of Pushkin's masterpiece."

In his commentary, Nabokov seeks to illuminate every possible nuance of this nineteenth-century classic. He explains obscurities, traces literary influences, relates Onegin to Pushkin's other work, and in a characteristically entertaining manner dwells on a host of interesting details relevant to the poem and the Russia it depicts. Nabokov also provides translations of lines and stanzas deleted by the censor or by Pushkin himself, variants from Pushkin's notebooks, fragments of a continuation called "Onegin's Journey," the unfinished and unpublished "Chapter Ten," other continuations, and an index.

A work of astonishing erudition and passion, Nabokov's commentary is a landmark in the history of literary scholarship and in the understanding and appreciation of the greatest work of Russia's national poet.]]> 383 Alexander Pushkin 0691019045 john 5 lit-russian 4.32 1833
author: Alexander Pushkin
name: john
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1833
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: lit-russian
review:
A remarkable commentary on the novel in verse, this work of scholarship has sometimes been considered more than just a commentary, because the information it provides goes far beyond information about the novel. It may be an artistic work in itself of a type unknown to me.
]]> 27827
Nabokov notes how translating rhymed poetry into unrhymed prose robs a poem of its 'bloom'. A huge work of scholarship, this enormous book illuminates Pushkin's great verse novel in obsessive detail & describes early 19th century Russia.
Nabokov's commentary consists of line-by-line notes on Pushkin's poem.]]> 309 Alexander Pushkin 0691019053 john 5 lit-russian In my opinion, it is useful to English-speakers who have no Russian, but also to English-speakers who do. It shows how one brilliant reader and scholar of the Russian text understands it.]]> 4.25 1833
author: Alexander Pushkin
name: john
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1833
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: lit-russian
review:
This is Nabokov's translation of the novel in verse. He did not translate it into English verse; his purpose was to bring the English-language reader as accurately and completely as possible the poem's meaning.
In my opinion, it is useful to English-speakers who have no Russian, but also to English-speakers who do. It shows how one brilliant reader and scholar of the Russian text understands it.
]]> 1672380 230 Marjorie Wallace 0138102767 john 4
The "silent twins" of the title are Jennifer and June Gibbons, identical twins of Barbadian parents born in 1963. Their father Aubrey served in the UK's Royal Air Force, and they grew up in a housing development for air force personnel in Haverfordwest in Wales (West Wales, Pembrokeshire). As young children they gradually stopped speaking with anyone, including their family, except their younger sister Rosie. Eventually they stopped speaking with her and spoke only to each other. They spoke English with some admixture of Carribean English dialect, speech made less clear by their having speech impediments. In their teens it was demonstrated with a tape recorder that their language was difficult to understand because they spoke very rapidly, but that they had not created their own language.

Marjorie Wallace, a journalist with The Times of London wrote about them when they were in their late teens, after they had been put on trial for some burglaries and arson, and after they were committed to Broadmoor, a hospital for the criminally insane in England. They would spend 11 years in Broadmoor.

They received special education services and some psychological assistance but left school with one O level each. They then continued to live elaborate fantasy lives at home with dolls, to write extensively in diaries, to compose poems, and to write novels. June wrote a novel, The Pepsi Cola Addict as a teenager; it was printed by a vanity publisher and re-issued by Strange Attractor Press in 2023. She wrote a few other novels, and Jennifer wrote at least 3, which are in the process of being re-issued by Strange Attractor.

They ended up at Broadmoor after deciding that they wanted boyfriends, and they chose children of an American serviceman as their favorites. Unfortunately, they were hooligans, and introduced the young women to sniffing glue, drugs, alcohol, and sexual abuse. When the boys' family was deployed elsewhere, the twins continued their delinquent activity with local Welsh hooligans. After a series of burglaries, petty thefts, and two goes at arson (one which allegedly caused 100,000 pounds in damage), they were arrested and committed to Broadmoor.

it is interesting to note that they became communicative while intoxicated. And although deeply troubled, they were both extremely intelligent, if the books they read and the diaries they wrote are any indication. They were very literate, and able to analyze and write about their situation subtly and often very eloquently.

The book's narrative ends in the mid-1980s, when they'd been at Broadmoor about 4 years. The film, which follows the book's narrative very closely, tells their story to a point shortly after they were released from Broadmoor. I will say that enormous changes came about for them, but leave it to the reader and film viewer to discover them. The Wikipedia entry "Jennifer and June Gibbons" also tells more of their story, and links to articles and podcasts about them, including a podcast with interviews with June recorded in 2023, when she was about 60.

Their story is, of course, an unusual one, but the book focuses deeply on their relationship, using Ms. Wallace's interviews with them and their diaries for evidence. She met them regularly at Broadmoor, and they slowly began to talk to her.

Their difficulty was compounded by the fact that although they loved each other and could not function without each other, they also hated each other deeply and wanted to be separate, individual people. During various periods of enforced separation at Broadmoor, one would sometimes become comatose or catatonic, while the other suffered deep depression, anxiety, and despair.

Throughout the period covered by the book the women were prone to grave misunderstandings approaching, perhaps, delusions, about the world, how it worked, and their place in it; Hence, their fascination with all things stereotypically American, epitomized by semi-criminal American boys.

One can suppose that they adopted their way of communicating only with each other out of fear or mistrust of everything outside of them. This insularity allowed them comfort, but as human beings growing up they felt intensely the opposite urge to be free and independent.

The book does not offer a story that is the least bit cheerful. It also can become difficult to follow the complexity of the women's ever-changing intense feelings about each other. When I decided to read it, I was hoping to learn more about research into the psychology behind cases of twins who interact only with each other. Such cases are not common, but there are a number of other examples). The book does not address any deeper psychology, if indeed anything is known about it.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the varieties of human behavior possible. Learning about those varieties can only make a person more understanding of his or her fellow human beings.

I might have given the book a rating of 5 stars if my own mood had been more positive while I was reading it.

A common musical accompaniment to my reading: Alabama 3 (aka A3), "The Night We Nearly Got Busted."]]> 3.19 1986
author: Marjorie Wallace
name: john
average rating: 3.19
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: biography, psychology-psychiatry
review:
I decided to read this book after I saw director Agnieszka Smoczyńska's film adaptation of it in her 2022 film of the same name.

The "silent twins" of the title are Jennifer and June Gibbons, identical twins of Barbadian parents born in 1963. Their father Aubrey served in the UK's Royal Air Force, and they grew up in a housing development for air force personnel in Haverfordwest in Wales (West Wales, Pembrokeshire). As young children they gradually stopped speaking with anyone, including their family, except their younger sister Rosie. Eventually they stopped speaking with her and spoke only to each other. They spoke English with some admixture of Carribean English dialect, speech made less clear by their having speech impediments. In their teens it was demonstrated with a tape recorder that their language was difficult to understand because they spoke very rapidly, but that they had not created their own language.

Marjorie Wallace, a journalist with The Times of London wrote about them when they were in their late teens, after they had been put on trial for some burglaries and arson, and after they were committed to Broadmoor, a hospital for the criminally insane in England. They would spend 11 years in Broadmoor.

They received special education services and some psychological assistance but left school with one O level each. They then continued to live elaborate fantasy lives at home with dolls, to write extensively in diaries, to compose poems, and to write novels. June wrote a novel, The Pepsi Cola Addict as a teenager; it was printed by a vanity publisher and re-issued by Strange Attractor Press in 2023. She wrote a few other novels, and Jennifer wrote at least 3, which are in the process of being re-issued by Strange Attractor.

They ended up at Broadmoor after deciding that they wanted boyfriends, and they chose children of an American serviceman as their favorites. Unfortunately, they were hooligans, and introduced the young women to sniffing glue, drugs, alcohol, and sexual abuse. When the boys' family was deployed elsewhere, the twins continued their delinquent activity with local Welsh hooligans. After a series of burglaries, petty thefts, and two goes at arson (one which allegedly caused 100,000 pounds in damage), they were arrested and committed to Broadmoor.

it is interesting to note that they became communicative while intoxicated. And although deeply troubled, they were both extremely intelligent, if the books they read and the diaries they wrote are any indication. They were very literate, and able to analyze and write about their situation subtly and often very eloquently.

The book's narrative ends in the mid-1980s, when they'd been at Broadmoor about 4 years. The film, which follows the book's narrative very closely, tells their story to a point shortly after they were released from Broadmoor. I will say that enormous changes came about for them, but leave it to the reader and film viewer to discover them. The Wikipedia entry "Jennifer and June Gibbons" also tells more of their story, and links to articles and podcasts about them, including a podcast with interviews with June recorded in 2023, when she was about 60.

Their story is, of course, an unusual one, but the book focuses deeply on their relationship, using Ms. Wallace's interviews with them and their diaries for evidence. She met them regularly at Broadmoor, and they slowly began to talk to her.

Their difficulty was compounded by the fact that although they loved each other and could not function without each other, they also hated each other deeply and wanted to be separate, individual people. During various periods of enforced separation at Broadmoor, one would sometimes become comatose or catatonic, while the other suffered deep depression, anxiety, and despair.

Throughout the period covered by the book the women were prone to grave misunderstandings approaching, perhaps, delusions, about the world, how it worked, and their place in it; Hence, their fascination with all things stereotypically American, epitomized by semi-criminal American boys.

One can suppose that they adopted their way of communicating only with each other out of fear or mistrust of everything outside of them. This insularity allowed them comfort, but as human beings growing up they felt intensely the opposite urge to be free and independent.

The book does not offer a story that is the least bit cheerful. It also can become difficult to follow the complexity of the women's ever-changing intense feelings about each other. When I decided to read it, I was hoping to learn more about research into the psychology behind cases of twins who interact only with each other. Such cases are not common, but there are a number of other examples). The book does not address any deeper psychology, if indeed anything is known about it.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the varieties of human behavior possible. Learning about those varieties can only make a person more understanding of his or her fellow human beings.

I might have given the book a rating of 5 stars if my own mood had been more positive while I was reading it.

A common musical accompaniment to my reading: Alabama 3 (aka A3), "The Night We Nearly Got Busted."
]]> 222376493 An astonishing masterwork of memoir from one of our most renowned and acclaimed writers, telling pieces of her own story in nonfiction for the first time.

“Why do you write?�� the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews—all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.
Marking the first time Toews has written her own story in nonfiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly inventive yet masterfully controlled; slyly casual yet momentous; wrenching and joyful; hilarious and humane—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her world and inventing a brilliant literary form to contain it.]]> 192 Miriam Toews 1639734740 john 0 to-read 0.0
author: Miriam Toews
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 147720741 Nikolai Gogol john 5 lit-russian
The title is a bit daunting: it is an oxymoron (souls don't die), and it suggests the novel is very, very depressing (the band Joy Division was interested in the depressing potential of the title when they recorded their song "Dead Souls," which is not about the novel). But Russians used to refer to the peasants they owned as "souls"; the sentence "I own 1,000 souls" was very possible and comprehensible to Russians before the peasants were "liberated" (sort of) in 1862.

Nobles could buy and sell peasants back then, but this novel adds proposes an ingenious plan to take advantage of a possible loophole in Russian law. The state taxed owners annually for each soul that they owned However, the state only revised its records of how many souls each landowner owned after infrequent censuses, so a noble would be taxed on the souls that had died between censuses.

In the novel, the main character, Chichikov visits noble landholders and asks for the title to their souls who had died, sometimes by feigning benevolence towards the landowner, but sometimes negotiating a price he'll pay for each one. His goal is to gather sufficient souls to appear to be a very wealthy landowner, or to be able to mortgage the souls in order to raise a lot of cash, which he would not pay back.

(Whether or not such a plan was possible under Russian law of the time is not clear: some researchers argue that it was, others that it was not.)

The suggestion that Chichikov's gathering dead souls is analogous to Satan's collecting the souls of the wicked is possible, but in the novel Chichikov's intentions are not the same as Old Scratch's intentions. Satan does not appear in the novel, except in the noticeably frequent use of phrases like "the devil take him" or "the devil knows" by the characters; Gogol seems to be pointing to the literal meaning of these cliches to show a lack of understanding by those characters.

Chichikov is a master of dealing with people; he could charm the pants off a unicorn. He travels through rural Russia with two living souls he owns (his servants), conning a series of spendthrift noble landowners to break a law (perhaps). The transactions, insists Chichikov, must of course be kept secret. The landowners he visits represent a variety of landowner types, each with his or her own flaws, which suggests how poorly this class of noble landowners was building a better Russia by wise management of resources. It also suggests their cavalier attitude towards the actual bodies and souls of their peasants.

Gogol's work in this novel is obviously satirical, but it is also remarkably funny. I laughed out loud frequently while reading the novel.

The translation is eminently lively and readable, though without access to the Russian text I can't make any other comments on it.

The interesting thing about this edition, of course, is that Rayfield has included a translation of Part II of the novel. The text of Part II was previously dubious, and getting to read it now in an organized text is very interesting. It has always been said that Part II showed the reform of Chichikov and his moral growth. While it certainly does, and while there is some great writing in it, I was on the whole a little disappointed with Part II. The fault is Gogol's, not the translator. Gogol provides a lot of information that would have made the novel better if it has been excluded. For example, at length he tells the reader about Chichikov's origins and career history, but really the novel would have been better if Chichikov had remained a mysterious man with a mysterious and unknown past.

I would recommend this edition to anyone who wants to try a comic and not difficult Russian classic, and to anyone who loves cock and bull stories and satire.

(music that accompanied my reading: Belle and Sebastian, "If you're felling sinister.")]]> 5.00
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: john
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: lit-russian
review:
The translator of the novel, Donald Rayfield, notes that this novel had been translated into English 13 times before he began his translation. He notes that with each succeeding translation, the translators had corrected a few errors of their predecessors. Rayfield is confident that his translation into English is better than the others (of course), that he has corrected all the errors of previous translators, and that he has included something excluded from earlier translations: a translation of Part II of the novel. Under the influence of a religious advisor (perhaps fanatic), Gogol had burned the manuscript of Part II. Russian scholars had edited a version of Part II based on surviving manuscripts in 1994; Rayfield translates this text (more on this later).

The title is a bit daunting: it is an oxymoron (souls don't die), and it suggests the novel is very, very depressing (the band Joy Division was interested in the depressing potential of the title when they recorded their song "Dead Souls," which is not about the novel). But Russians used to refer to the peasants they owned as "souls"; the sentence "I own 1,000 souls" was very possible and comprehensible to Russians before the peasants were "liberated" (sort of) in 1862.

Nobles could buy and sell peasants back then, but this novel adds proposes an ingenious plan to take advantage of a possible loophole in Russian law. The state taxed owners annually for each soul that they owned However, the state only revised its records of how many souls each landowner owned after infrequent censuses, so a noble would be taxed on the souls that had died between censuses.

In the novel, the main character, Chichikov visits noble landholders and asks for the title to their souls who had died, sometimes by feigning benevolence towards the landowner, but sometimes negotiating a price he'll pay for each one. His goal is to gather sufficient souls to appear to be a very wealthy landowner, or to be able to mortgage the souls in order to raise a lot of cash, which he would not pay back.

(Whether or not such a plan was possible under Russian law of the time is not clear: some researchers argue that it was, others that it was not.)

The suggestion that Chichikov's gathering dead souls is analogous to Satan's collecting the souls of the wicked is possible, but in the novel Chichikov's intentions are not the same as Old Scratch's intentions. Satan does not appear in the novel, except in the noticeably frequent use of phrases like "the devil take him" or "the devil knows" by the characters; Gogol seems to be pointing to the literal meaning of these cliches to show a lack of understanding by those characters.

Chichikov is a master of dealing with people; he could charm the pants off a unicorn. He travels through rural Russia with two living souls he owns (his servants), conning a series of spendthrift noble landowners to break a law (perhaps). The transactions, insists Chichikov, must of course be kept secret. The landowners he visits represent a variety of landowner types, each with his or her own flaws, which suggests how poorly this class of noble landowners was building a better Russia by wise management of resources. It also suggests their cavalier attitude towards the actual bodies and souls of their peasants.

Gogol's work in this novel is obviously satirical, but it is also remarkably funny. I laughed out loud frequently while reading the novel.

The translation is eminently lively and readable, though without access to the Russian text I can't make any other comments on it.

The interesting thing about this edition, of course, is that Rayfield has included a translation of Part II of the novel. The text of Part II was previously dubious, and getting to read it now in an organized text is very interesting. It has always been said that Part II showed the reform of Chichikov and his moral growth. While it certainly does, and while there is some great writing in it, I was on the whole a little disappointed with Part II. The fault is Gogol's, not the translator. Gogol provides a lot of information that would have made the novel better if it has been excluded. For example, at length he tells the reader about Chichikov's origins and career history, but really the novel would have been better if Chichikov had remained a mysterious man with a mysterious and unknown past.

I would recommend this edition to anyone who wants to try a comic and not difficult Russian classic, and to anyone who loves cock and bull stories and satire.

(music that accompanied my reading: Belle and Sebastian, "If you're felling sinister.")
]]> 430788 "Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy...

Experience the temptation, pleasure, punishment, and redemption of Christina Rossetti's brilliant poetic masterpiece. First published in 1862, the work is the phantasmagoric tale of two maidens seduced by lewd goblin men, and it provides a startling glimpse into the depths of the Victorian psyche. For children, the story offers a captivating adventure into a land of fantasy. For adults, it's a lyrical and sensual allegory of temptation, sacrifice, and salvation.

Christina Rossetti (1830��1894) was one of the most important women poets writing in nineteenth-century England. She was born in London December 5, 1830, within a family of poets, artists, and critics. Today she is best remembered by her infamous poem 'Goblin Market' (1862), but also by 'Complete Poems' and 'Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti' (1970).]]> 70 Christina Rossetti 0811816494 john 0 to-read 4.11 1862
author: Christina Rossetti
name: john
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1862
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 535856 176 George Grossmith 0192833278 john 0 to-read 3.70 1892
author: George Grossmith
name: john
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62912755
Yet it's Revere—and not Boston—that remains one of the underlying attractions in Visions of Johanna. This north shore backdrop brings Matt into full focus - a child in a city of recent immigrants, life by the ocean, the bilious flavor of the Mob are just some of the elements rendered in skillful detail. Johanna, a renegade from Wisconsin—freewheeling and hyper-energized—draws Matt out of his comfort zone and into her world.

A meditation on art and unrest, Visions of Johanna celebrates life, love, memory and the undying power of the deep connections that sustain us. The novel follows Johanna and Matt as they pursue their dreams to paint and to write. But burdening problems collide with these artistic desires and other forces conspire against them. Ultimately, the two are done in by their inability to share aspects of their past they believe they must hide from.

The novel travels through time and social unrest to the final moment hinted at in the prologue. Within this book's pages, tragedies haunt, acts of moral goodness manifest themselves, and benevolence reigns with a finality that absolves all.]]> 340 Peter Sarno john 0 to-read 3.78
author: Peter Sarno
name: john
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 228018834
The Resistance Playbook is a strategic guide for those who refuse to let authoritarianism take root. Protest alone is not enough—history shows that successful movements require organization, discipline, and a clear plan. This book lays out the essential framework for building a resistance that can outlast and outmaneuver Trumpism at every level.

Inside, you’ll find a cohesive strategy for action—how to build movement infrastructure, develop leadership, coordinate efforts across local and national levels, and apply pressure where it matters most. It explains how resistance movements succeed, why organization is essential, and what it will take to force Trumpism into retreat.

This isn’t about fleeting outrage. It’s about sustained resistance.

If you’re ready to stop reacting and start building power, this book will show you how.

📢 The fight isn’t over. Get your copy today. 📢�ձ�> 84 Martin Bellwether john 0 to-read 4.08
author: Martin Bellwether
name: john
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210864316 560 Homer 022660442X john 0 to-read 4.28 -800
author: Homer
name: john
average rating: 4.28
book published: -800
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223420465
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.]]> 896 Joe Hill 0062200607 john 0 to-read 4.52 2025
author: Joe Hill
name: john
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler�� (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 john 0 to-read 4.35 2025
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: john
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216522761 New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He’s scaled Mt. Everest. But in 2022, he realized there was a dream he’d never realized—to sail the Northwest Passage in his own boat, a feat only four hundred or so sailors had ever accomplished—and in doing so, try to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin and his ships, HMS Erebus and Terror.

Only a few hundred vessels have ever transited the Northwest Passage, stretching through Canada’s north from Maine to Alaska—and substantially fewer have completed the treacherous journey in a fiberglass-hulled boat like Polar Sun. But Mark Synnott was determined to add his name to the list, and in doing so, also investigate a 175-year-old mystery, that of what happened to the legendary captain Sir John Franklin and his crew aboard the legendary HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

In this pulse-pounding travelogue, Mark Synnott paints a vivid portrait of the modern-day Arctic like you’ve never seen before. With human-caused climate change warming the region twice as fast as any other part of our planet, Synnott offers a fresh and exciting look at the journey itself, but also of the history of the land and the people who live there today. At the same time, he searches for the tomb of Franklin, who, along with his entire 128-man crew, perished after their ships became trapped in the ice near King William Island.

In Into the Ice, Mark and his crew must race against time and horrific storms to investigate legends, and in the end, try to find the answer to why any of us would risk it all in the name of exploration.]]> 432 Mark Synnott 0593471520 john 0 to-read 4.10 2025
author: Mark Synnott
name: john
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 175094 352 John Lydon 031211883X john 5 music 3.95 1994
author: John Lydon
name: john
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: music
review:

]]> 217446823 From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity.

Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC-Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans.

The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary What does the outsider mean to literary writing? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through lenses that are, by turns, literary, historical, political, and familial.

Each piece moves between writers who influenced Nguyen’s craft and weaves in the haunting story of his late mother’s mental illness. Nguyen unfolds the novels and nonfiction of Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, and Maxine Hong Kingston, until aesthetic theories give way to pressing concerns raised by war and politics. What is a writer’s responsibility in a time of violence? Should we celebrate fiction that gives voice to the voiceless—or do we confront the forces that render millions voiceless in the first place? What are the burdens and pleasures of the “minor�� writer in any society? Unsatisfied with the modest inclusion accorded to “model minorities�� such as Asian Americans, Nguyen sets the agenda for a more radical and disquieting solidarity with those whose lives have been devastated by imperialism and forever wars.]]> 144 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0674298179 john 0 to-read 4.22
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: john
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25489213 ��
Mezz Mezzrow was a boy from Chicago who learned to play��the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He��moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and��bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and��playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and��Fats Waller.��
��
Really the Blues —the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the��insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe—is the story of an��unusual and unusually American life, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, “the odyssey of an individualist . . .��the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too��busy making money.”]]> 464 Mezz Mezzrow 1590179455 john 0 to-read, music 3.87 1946
author: Mezz Mezzrow
name: john
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read, music
review:

]]> 214537819 Lawrence Wright at the height of his powers. Centering around the newfound—and forced—relationship between an American/Palestinian FBI agent and a hardline Israeli cop, working together uneasily to solve the murder of the Israeli police chief in Gaza. Moving, thrilling, with extraordinary scope, it does for Palestine and Israel what Gorky Park did years ago for Russia. In the vein of LeCarré and Graham Greene, this is the rare novel that manages to entertain, educate, and deeply move the reader.

Tony Malik is a half-Irish, half-Arab New York based FBI agent, specializing in money flowing from drug and arms deals. The novel opens in shocking fashion, with Malik seriously injured by a terrorist-planted bomb. During his lengthy recuperative process, his life changes radically. A long-term relationship ends, and his job is on the verge of being taken away from him. During this period he learns more about his roots and becomes interested in his father's past and family - his father came to America years ago from Palestine. He decides to make a trip to his father's homeland to attend the wedding of his niece, whom he has never met. As a result of his plans, he is given a simple assignment by his boss at the FBI, partly to see how well he can still do his job. That simple assignment becomes extremely complicated.

As soon as he arrives in Gaza, the Israeli police chief overseeing the area is murdered. Malik is at first a suspect. Then, due to his superior investigative skills, he is invited into the Israeli investigation, seeking the murderer. At the center of this novel is Malik's relationship with Yossi, the hardline anti-Arab Israeli police officer leading the investigation. They must learn to trust each other because, as they move closer to solving the case, they realize there is no one else they can trust on either side.

Extraordinary three dimensional characters populate this Yossi's daughter, studying in Paris, trying to escape the violence that surrounds her in Israel; Malik's niece, whose wedding and life are shattered by the murder; her fiancé, a peacenik whose existence is complicated by the fact that his cousin is high up in the Hamas command; religious leaders on both sides; corrupt Israeli cops; Palestinians thirsting for violence against Israel; Israelis determined to crush the Palestinians. Lawrence Wright brings a��wide and complicated tapestry to life, one that culminates��on October 7��with the deadly Hamas attack on Israel. But he has written more than just a thriller, or even just an examination of all these complicated lives. He has written a novel that manages to explore and explain much of the devastating history that encompasses the relationship between Israel and Palestine—and shows it to us in a way that poignantly reveals the tragic human scale that is involved.]]> 448 Lawrence Wright 0593537831 john 0 to-read 4.14 2025
author: Lawrence Wright
name: john
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217388304 The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.

Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly―experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.��

In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost―until now.

Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA’s victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice.

The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history.]]> 304 John Lisle 1250338743 john 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: John Lisle
name: john
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 330244
The novel that became an award-winning play and a major motion picture and that has charmed generations of readers, Carson McCullers's classic The Member of the Wedding is now available in small-format trade paperback for the first time.

"A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence" (Detroit Free Press), The Member of the Wedding showcases Carson McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and lasting best.

An alternate-cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 163 Carson McCullers 0618492399 john 4 lit-american 3.82 1946
author: Carson McCullers
name: john
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: lit-american
review:

]]> 142262 The Inspector General skewers the stupidity, greed, and venality of Russian provincial officials. When it is announced that the Inspector General is coming to visit incognito, Anton, the chief of police, hastens to clean up the town before his arrival. Local officials scurry to hide evidence of bribe-taking and other misdeeds, setting the stage for the arrival from St. Petersburg of Ivan, a penurious gambler and rake who is promptly taken by the townspeople to be the dreaded Inspector General. Ivan, and his servant, Osip, soon take advantage of the situation with hilarious results. First performed in 1836, the play transcends regional and national boundaries to offer a biting, highly entertaining glimpse of universal human foibles and failings.
]]> 80 Nikolai Gogol 0486285006 john 5 lit-russian, theater 4.03 1835
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: john
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1835
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: lit-russian, theater
review:
I read this play a number of years ago. I would recommend it to anyone because it is very funny, but it is also a serious bit of satire. The human weaknesses Gogol satirizes are certainly present among us today.
]]> 3980369 258 Robert O. Crummey 0299055604 john 0 4.00
author: Robert O. Crummey
name: john
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read, history-russia, religion
review:
I read this book many years ago. I want to read it again for a new project.
]]> 12604584 281 Robert O. Crummey 0875806503 john 0 3.33 2011
author: Robert O. Crummey
name: john
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read, religion, history-russia
review:

]]> 29153595
Originally published in 1983.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.]]> 340 Robert O. Crummey 0691641048 john 4 history-russia 4.00 1983
author: Robert O. Crummey
name: john
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 1985/05/10
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: history-russia
review:

]]> 123979630 An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet�� with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.

The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.�� In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.]]> 288 Anne Enright 1324005688 john 5 lit-irish
I very much enjoyed reading this novel. It presents the lives of an Irish family in the late-20th century and early-21st century. The story(ies) is(are) told from the points of view of Carmel, the daughter of a somewhat notable Irish poet of (it seems) the 1950s-1980s; Nell, the daughter of an the never-married Carmel and a "social-media creator"; and Phil McDaragh, the somewhat notable poet himself.

Enright intersperses throughout the novel poems that are presented as the poems of Phil McDaragh.

Phil comes from the old rural, thatch-roofed agricultural Ireland and makes a name for himself as a poet who wrote about that world and his great love, Terry. They have two daughters, Carmel and the rather boring Imelda, before Phil leaves behind the children and Terry, who by then is dying from cancer. He has a succession of partners in Europe and North America, while his act of abandonment adds to the damage that he leaves as a legacy to the family.

Carmel had been Phil's favorite, and she appears in one of his notable poems as "the wren." After some unsuccessful relationships she swears off men, becomes the owner and director of a school that teaches English as a second language, and becomes the mother of Nell after a fling with a man who never becomes part of her or Nell's lives, which is how Carmel prefers things.

We meet Nell at the beginning of the novel as a somewhat arrogant young woman with, however, a predilection for masochistic relationships. Eventually she graduates with a master's degree in "Social Media and Communications" and becomes a "content creator." She works intensively for several months creating content or teaching English in order to spend the next several months travelling around the world, before returning to another period of work.

These are the characters who develop as people while working out their relationships with the world, love (and lovers), and, in the cases of Carmel and Nell, with each other and their flawed predecessor.

Enright's prose is a joy to read. It is everywhere very focused on the materiality of things in the world, and her language addresses this materiality with striking -- and strikingly original --constructions. That, and her ability to present the complexity of relationships within families mkae the novel entirely worth reading.

One aspect of the novel that Enright addresses is how different contemporary Ireland (and the Ireland of Carmel and Nell) is from the Ireland of just a few years before (perhaps the Ireland of Phil). In a review of this and several of Enright's other novels, the reviewer refers to an Enright character who laments that her father had never tasted mango; in this novel we find Carmel shopping for "fresh turmeric, ripe mango, feta salad, big, frozen prawns," and considering the purchase of some Southeast Asian fish sauce. It is not so long ago that most wealthy North Americans wouldn't have known what some of those things are, and it marks a genuine change from Ireland before, say, 1995.

The novel shows its characters communicating by email and text, creating blogs (in the case of Nell), and sharing YouTube videos. That the adoption of electronic communications affects the behavior of the characters goes without saying.

And yes, the title does refer to the folk song about "The wren, the wren, the king of all birds" and the killing of a wren on St. Stephen's Day (26 December) by 'Wren Boys" who, in the Ireland of a couple (a few? several?) generations ago, would go from house to house asking for pennies to pay for the wren's funeral. Read the book; you'll see.

A good companion volume to this novel -- and a noteworthy book in itself -- is Fintan O'Toole's recent We Do Not Know Ourselves, in which O'Toole recounts important historical and cultural events in Ireland for each year from his birth in 1958 to the 2010s.]]> 3.53 2023
author: Anne Enright
name: john
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: lit-irish
review:
MAYBE NOT A WELL-WRITTEN REVIEW, BUT THE NOVEL IS EXCELLENT

I very much enjoyed reading this novel. It presents the lives of an Irish family in the late-20th century and early-21st century. The story(ies) is(are) told from the points of view of Carmel, the daughter of a somewhat notable Irish poet of (it seems) the 1950s-1980s; Nell, the daughter of an the never-married Carmel and a "social-media creator"; and Phil McDaragh, the somewhat notable poet himself.

Enright intersperses throughout the novel poems that are presented as the poems of Phil McDaragh.

Phil comes from the old rural, thatch-roofed agricultural Ireland and makes a name for himself as a poet who wrote about that world and his great love, Terry. They have two daughters, Carmel and the rather boring Imelda, before Phil leaves behind the children and Terry, who by then is dying from cancer. He has a succession of partners in Europe and North America, while his act of abandonment adds to the damage that he leaves as a legacy to the family.

Carmel had been Phil's favorite, and she appears in one of his notable poems as "the wren." After some unsuccessful relationships she swears off men, becomes the owner and director of a school that teaches English as a second language, and becomes the mother of Nell after a fling with a man who never becomes part of her or Nell's lives, which is how Carmel prefers things.

We meet Nell at the beginning of the novel as a somewhat arrogant young woman with, however, a predilection for masochistic relationships. Eventually she graduates with a master's degree in "Social Media and Communications" and becomes a "content creator." She works intensively for several months creating content or teaching English in order to spend the next several months travelling around the world, before returning to another period of work.

These are the characters who develop as people while working out their relationships with the world, love (and lovers), and, in the cases of Carmel and Nell, with each other and their flawed predecessor.

Enright's prose is a joy to read. It is everywhere very focused on the materiality of things in the world, and her language addresses this materiality with striking -- and strikingly original --constructions. That, and her ability to present the complexity of relationships within families mkae the novel entirely worth reading.

One aspect of the novel that Enright addresses is how different contemporary Ireland (and the Ireland of Carmel and Nell) is from the Ireland of just a few years before (perhaps the Ireland of Phil). In a review of this and several of Enright's other novels, the reviewer refers to an Enright character who laments that her father had never tasted mango; in this novel we find Carmel shopping for "fresh turmeric, ripe mango, feta salad, big, frozen prawns," and considering the purchase of some Southeast Asian fish sauce. It is not so long ago that most wealthy North Americans wouldn't have known what some of those things are, and it marks a genuine change from Ireland before, say, 1995.

The novel shows its characters communicating by email and text, creating blogs (in the case of Nell), and sharing YouTube videos. That the adoption of electronic communications affects the behavior of the characters goes without saying.

And yes, the title does refer to the folk song about "The wren, the wren, the king of all birds" and the killing of a wren on St. Stephen's Day (26 December) by 'Wren Boys" who, in the Ireland of a couple (a few? several?) generations ago, would go from house to house asking for pennies to pay for the wren's funeral. Read the book; you'll see.

A good companion volume to this novel -- and a noteworthy book in itself -- is Fintan O'Toole's recent We Do Not Know Ourselves, in which O'Toole recounts important historical and cultural events in Ireland for each year from his birth in 1958 to the 2010s.
]]> 58961939 272 Phil Klay 0593299256 john 5 politics
Phil Klay is the author of Redeployment, which is a collection of short stories about US military personnel during the war in Iraq, and I have not read it. I have read his next fictional work, the novel, Missionaries, which brings together several plots about US soldiers in Iraq, Colombian drug traffickers, Colombian campesinos trying to live through the years of drug cartel and guerrilla activity, and a Colombian military officer and his daughter, a leftish student. That novel moves between these regions and characters, illustrating the sort of endless low-level war fought with high technology operated by US military personnel and contractors throughout the world. It illustrates the kind of endless military activity the US pursues in about 150 countries around the world, activity which very few North Americans know about or even care about.

Uncertain Ground is a collection of essays that Klaw wrote between 2010 and 2021 about the US war in Iraq. A graduate of Dartmouth, Klay joined the US Marine Corps in 2005, and he was deployed to Iraq, where he served as a newsman for the Marines, and, as an officer, served as the commander of a small group of other Marine newspeople. He is the first to admit that he did not experience the combat that Marine infantry units experienced. Since his post had a field hospital, he witnessed the results of the war on the bodies of Iraqi civilians (and children), Iraqi soldiers and insurrectionaries, and US soldiers.

That material reinforces how horrible modern warfare can be, but it also illustrates the honor of doctors who fought to save the wounded, including Americans, their allies. civilians, and the Iraqi enemy. (Why the enemy? Because treating them also and equally is US policy.) He also writes of the Marines who would form long lines to donate blood for the wounded, and of a chaplain who rocked wounded children in his arms, sometimes for hours, to comfort them as they were dying.

Those passages made a deep impression on me, but are not the only focus of the book. Klay returns many times to certain themes, but especially of the failures that are inevitable during seemingly endless wars, when the leadership of the country is unable to formulate specific goals for the military, or goals that do not apply to the actual situation on the ground. The Marine Corps he describes is able to accomplish extremely difficult missions, but the lives of the soldiers are put in danger for no good reason when the aim of the war is unclear.

Klay also discusses the failure of Americans at home to do their civic duty to participate at an informed level as citizens to influence the government to do its job. He is certain that as citizens we should not forget the very few who actually fight the wars (as it seems Americans did during the Afghan and Iraqi wars). He calls for concern and activity from citizens in the public square to help formulate policy.

Klay has some very interesting and well thought out points of view on discussions that take place during wartime. He objects to the position of some generals and other soldiers that only people who've been in a particular war can understand it, and that civilians should therefore not venture to express their opinions on the war; he finds this attitude unproductive and contrary to ideas of citizenship in a democracy.

Klay also discusses the misconceptions that some civilians have about returned soldiers. They do not all suffer from PTSD, and they do not always need civilians to go on about how they can never understand what the soldier experienced. He brings up a few times the image of a war veteran and a civilian encountering each other, and says that they can not understand each other at first, but that they can reach a higher level of mutual understanding is they make a serious effort. And he writes that they should.

I wasn't aware until I reached the last section of this book that Klay is a very religious person and well-educated as a Roman Catholic. He discusses how the war led to internal struggles with his beliefs, and on a very sophisticated level how he has contended with them. (The level of sophistication is perhaps a bit high for me.)

in this book and in Missionaries, Klay leaves us aware that in the future the US will be involved in conflicts seemingly everywhere -- which is not a good thing -- and that we will not always even know what is happening in what he refers to as these "invisible wars." I took away from these books, however, the idea that we must strive to know what the US is doing everywhere, as much as we can, so that we will be able to fulfill our duties as civilians.]]> 4.24 2022
author: Phil Klay
name: john
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: politics
review:
WARNING: SOME UNIDIOMATIC ENGLISH FOLLOWS.

Phil Klay is the author of Redeployment, which is a collection of short stories about US military personnel during the war in Iraq, and I have not read it. I have read his next fictional work, the novel, Missionaries, which brings together several plots about US soldiers in Iraq, Colombian drug traffickers, Colombian campesinos trying to live through the years of drug cartel and guerrilla activity, and a Colombian military officer and his daughter, a leftish student. That novel moves between these regions and characters, illustrating the sort of endless low-level war fought with high technology operated by US military personnel and contractors throughout the world. It illustrates the kind of endless military activity the US pursues in about 150 countries around the world, activity which very few North Americans know about or even care about.

Uncertain Ground is a collection of essays that Klaw wrote between 2010 and 2021 about the US war in Iraq. A graduate of Dartmouth, Klay joined the US Marine Corps in 2005, and he was deployed to Iraq, where he served as a newsman for the Marines, and, as an officer, served as the commander of a small group of other Marine newspeople. He is the first to admit that he did not experience the combat that Marine infantry units experienced. Since his post had a field hospital, he witnessed the results of the war on the bodies of Iraqi civilians (and children), Iraqi soldiers and insurrectionaries, and US soldiers.

That material reinforces how horrible modern warfare can be, but it also illustrates the honor of doctors who fought to save the wounded, including Americans, their allies. civilians, and the Iraqi enemy. (Why the enemy? Because treating them also and equally is US policy.) He also writes of the Marines who would form long lines to donate blood for the wounded, and of a chaplain who rocked wounded children in his arms, sometimes for hours, to comfort them as they were dying.

Those passages made a deep impression on me, but are not the only focus of the book. Klay returns many times to certain themes, but especially of the failures that are inevitable during seemingly endless wars, when the leadership of the country is unable to formulate specific goals for the military, or goals that do not apply to the actual situation on the ground. The Marine Corps he describes is able to accomplish extremely difficult missions, but the lives of the soldiers are put in danger for no good reason when the aim of the war is unclear.

Klay also discusses the failure of Americans at home to do their civic duty to participate at an informed level as citizens to influence the government to do its job. He is certain that as citizens we should not forget the very few who actually fight the wars (as it seems Americans did during the Afghan and Iraqi wars). He calls for concern and activity from citizens in the public square to help formulate policy.

Klay has some very interesting and well thought out points of view on discussions that take place during wartime. He objects to the position of some generals and other soldiers that only people who've been in a particular war can understand it, and that civilians should therefore not venture to express their opinions on the war; he finds this attitude unproductive and contrary to ideas of citizenship in a democracy.

Klay also discusses the misconceptions that some civilians have about returned soldiers. They do not all suffer from PTSD, and they do not always need civilians to go on about how they can never understand what the soldier experienced. He brings up a few times the image of a war veteran and a civilian encountering each other, and says that they can not understand each other at first, but that they can reach a higher level of mutual understanding is they make a serious effort. And he writes that they should.

I wasn't aware until I reached the last section of this book that Klay is a very religious person and well-educated as a Roman Catholic. He discusses how the war led to internal struggles with his beliefs, and on a very sophisticated level how he has contended with them. (The level of sophistication is perhaps a bit high for me.)

in this book and in Missionaries, Klay leaves us aware that in the future the US will be involved in conflicts seemingly everywhere -- which is not a good thing -- and that we will not always even know what is happening in what he refers to as these "invisible wars." I took away from these books, however, the idea that we must strive to know what the US is doing everywhere, as much as we can, so that we will be able to fulfill our duties as civilians.
]]> 209087709 In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields. On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were trying to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake. A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.]]> 352 Stacy Horn 1638931224 john 0 to-read 3.87 2025
author: Stacy Horn
name: john
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61121126 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang john 0 to-read 4.02 2021
author: Han Kang
name: john
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217812221
What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritize material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change?

To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle.]]> 128 Thomas Piketty 1509565507 john 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: Thomas Piketty
name: john
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214175247 An unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary life—one forged through a poverty-stricken childhood in “slummy, one-horse towns��; obsessive desire; bursts of comedy; and indispensable friendships, reflecting on the way art, music, and a deep connection to nature helped her on a singular journey��to become a beloved, Grammy-nominated artist.

Neko Case has long been revered as one of music’s most influential artists, whose authenticity, lyrical storytelling, and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians, and lifelong fans.��In��The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You,��Case��brings her trademark��candor and��precision��to a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisible��girl “raised by two dogs and a space heater�� in rural Washington state to��her improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent. In luminous, sharp-edged prose, Case��shows readers what it’s like to be left alone for hours and hours as a child, to take refuge in the woods around her home, and to channel the��monotony and loneliness and joy that comes from music, camaraderie, and shared experience into art.

The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You��is a rebellious meditation on identity and corruption, and a manifesto on how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face.


��]]> 271 Neko Case 1538710501 john 0 to-read 4.07 2025
author: Neko Case
name: john
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 john 0 to-read 3.62 2007
author: Han Kang
name: john
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 john 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Han Kang
name: john
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40338442
In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book offers a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and of our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.]]> 157 Han Kang 0525573062 john 0 to-read 3.86 2016
author: Han Kang
name: john
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 596557 The author of the brilliant novel Hadrian the Seventh, Corvo was by turns a gifted painter, teacher, student of the priesthood, historian, and inventor of a process of "deep sea photography." He also had a veritable genius for making enemies and lived out his last years as a penniless exile. With letters (many of them masterpieces of invective), excerpts from his novels, and accounts of unusual interviews with Corvo's friends, fans, and enemies, Symons chronicles a passionate investigation into Corvo's secret life - and produces an uproariously comic, ultimately tragic, and stunningly rendered work of art.]]> 293 A.J.A. Symons 0880014830 john 4 autobio-bio, lit-english Hadrian the Seventh.

Rolfe is known as a classic English eccentric, although there isn't much amusing about his eccentricity. He converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 26 and tried to be ordained as a priest. He was, however, expelled from 2 seminaries because he was judged not to have a genuine vocation. He remained a Catholic, or claimed to, but he insisted the Church and its members were failing miserably in their roles.

Symons notes that Rolfe had the mistaken belief that a person of his talents was owed a living. He borrowed money from friends and rarely paid it back; he rented hotel rooms and apartments many times only to be evicted for not paying rent. Rolfe became close friends with many men during his life, but regularly looked at them as saviors of sort who would support him. This habit included being long-term guests in their homes, and many of these friends and their families found him to be an entertaining and fascinating raconteur. However, he fell out with almost all of the friends he made as soon as they offended him in the smallest (or imagined) way; he would then write them extremely creative but angry and insulting letters over and over again to ask for satisfaction from them.

Rolfe spent his last few years in Venice, where he sometimes managed to keep himself fed and under a roof, because of new patrons, but he also spent a lot of those years eating only rarely and sleeping in a gondola.

Rolfe certainly felt that he was different from other people because of his talents, but also because he was gay. Other sources might discuss his association with other gay writers of his time, but Symons only discusses Rolfe's homosexuality as something that marked him as different.

Some of his books listed his name as author as "Fr. Rolfe," which could mean Frederick Rolfe but suggested that he was the priest "Father Rolfe." After being expelled from a seminary in Rome, he lived with a noble Italian family for a time, and began to call himself Frederick Baron Corvo, claiming that the family had given him an estate that came with the title "baron."��

Many of his works have characters based on his perceived persecutors and on himself. Among these works is his most famous novel, Hadrian the Seventh, in which the main character is based on himself. It concerns an English "spoiled priest" (a term used in Ireland and apparently in Britain for an aspiring priest who leaves the seminary or is denied ordination) during a time when a Vatican conclave can not succeed in agreeing on a new pope. Some English prelates suggest that this unhappy Englishman who wanted nothing more than to become a priest be nominated for pope. He wins the balloting and proceeds to turn the Church upside down --for a time. I have never read all of the novel -- the sarcasm and decadence exhaust me -- but the following lines are truly wonderful:

They brought Him [our English pope] before the altar and set Him in a crimson-velvet chair, asking Him what pontifical name he would choose.

"Hadrian the Seventh," the response came unhesitatingly, undemonstratively.

"Your Holiness would perhaps prefer to be called Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner," the Cardinal-Dean inquired with imperious suavity.

"The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth; the present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us, and so, by Our Own impulse, We command."

Perhaps it was that passage, or the image of Hadrian standing on the roof of St. Peter's, smoking cigarettes and flicking the butts at the lizards basking in the sun up there, that moved Symons to consider the novel a great one. But probably not.

In any case, the biography is called "an experiment in biography.:

The author of this "experiment in biography," published in 1934, was A.J.A. Symons, who was very impressed with Hadrian when he came across it in 1925, and proceeded to investigate the life of Rolfe, who by then was largely forgotten. The book describes Symons' quest to learn about Rolfe by contacting people who knew him when he was alive and reading any notes they'd written or letters they'd exchanged with Rolfe. It is thus not a chronological record of Rolfe's life, but the story of Symon's quest to learn about him. The quest ends in the last chapter, when a rather dodgy English businessman (who claims to be a spy), Arthur Maundy George, gives Symons copies of 2 of Rolfe's books that had not been distributed to the public.

I found the book to be compulsively readable, though I am not sure that everyone would enjoy it. Rolfe was a frustrating person, and the description of his outrageous behavior sometimes is less amusing than troubling. Symons uses some basic psychoanalytic principles to describe Rolfe's personality. That may not be entirely necessary, for Symons provides us with a vivid portrait of an extremely original, but in the end very sad, life.

]]> 4.27 1934
author: A.J.A. Symons
name: john
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: autobio-bio, lit-english
review:
The "Corvo" of the title is one Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913), a painter, photographer, and writer. What limited success he had in the arts was as a writer, though those of his books that were published in his lifetime sold poorly and most soon went out of print. His most well-known work is the novel Hadrian the Seventh.

Rolfe is known as a classic English eccentric, although there isn't much amusing about his eccentricity. He converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 26 and tried to be ordained as a priest. He was, however, expelled from 2 seminaries because he was judged not to have a genuine vocation. He remained a Catholic, or claimed to, but he insisted the Church and its members were failing miserably in their roles.

Symons notes that Rolfe had the mistaken belief that a person of his talents was owed a living. He borrowed money from friends and rarely paid it back; he rented hotel rooms and apartments many times only to be evicted for not paying rent. Rolfe became close friends with many men during his life, but regularly looked at them as saviors of sort who would support him. This habit included being long-term guests in their homes, and many of these friends and their families found him to be an entertaining and fascinating raconteur. However, he fell out with almost all of the friends he made as soon as they offended him in the smallest (or imagined) way; he would then write them extremely creative but angry and insulting letters over and over again to ask for satisfaction from them.

Rolfe spent his last few years in Venice, where he sometimes managed to keep himself fed and under a roof, because of new patrons, but he also spent a lot of those years eating only rarely and sleeping in a gondola.

Rolfe certainly felt that he was different from other people because of his talents, but also because he was gay. Other sources might discuss his association with other gay writers of his time, but Symons only discusses Rolfe's homosexuality as something that marked him as different.

Some of his books listed his name as author as "Fr. Rolfe," which could mean Frederick Rolfe but suggested that he was the priest "Father Rolfe." After being expelled from a seminary in Rome, he lived with a noble Italian family for a time, and began to call himself Frederick Baron Corvo, claiming that the family had given him an estate that came with the title "baron."��

Many of his works have characters based on his perceived persecutors and on himself. Among these works is his most famous novel, Hadrian the Seventh, in which the main character is based on himself. It concerns an English "spoiled priest" (a term used in Ireland and apparently in Britain for an aspiring priest who leaves the seminary or is denied ordination) during a time when a Vatican conclave can not succeed in agreeing on a new pope. Some English prelates suggest that this unhappy Englishman who wanted nothing more than to become a priest be nominated for pope. He wins the balloting and proceeds to turn the Church upside down --for a time. I have never read all of the novel -- the sarcasm and decadence exhaust me -- but the following lines are truly wonderful:

They brought Him [our English pope] before the altar and set Him in a crimson-velvet chair, asking Him what pontifical name he would choose.

"Hadrian the Seventh," the response came unhesitatingly, undemonstratively.

"Your Holiness would perhaps prefer to be called Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner," the Cardinal-Dean inquired with imperious suavity.

"The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth; the present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us, and so, by Our Own impulse, We command."

Perhaps it was that passage, or the image of Hadrian standing on the roof of St. Peter's, smoking cigarettes and flicking the butts at the lizards basking in the sun up there, that moved Symons to consider the novel a great one. But probably not.

In any case, the biography is called "an experiment in biography.:

The author of this "experiment in biography," published in 1934, was A.J.A. Symons, who was very impressed with Hadrian when he came across it in 1925, and proceeded to investigate the life of Rolfe, who by then was largely forgotten. The book describes Symons' quest to learn about Rolfe by contacting people who knew him when he was alive and reading any notes they'd written or letters they'd exchanged with Rolfe. It is thus not a chronological record of Rolfe's life, but the story of Symon's quest to learn about him. The quest ends in the last chapter, when a rather dodgy English businessman (who claims to be a spy), Arthur Maundy George, gives Symons copies of 2 of Rolfe's books that had not been distributed to the public.

I found the book to be compulsively readable, though I am not sure that everyone would enjoy it. Rolfe was a frustrating person, and the description of his outrageous behavior sometimes is less amusing than troubling. Symons uses some basic psychoanalytic principles to describe Rolfe's personality. That may not be entirely necessary, for Symons provides us with a vivid portrait of an extremely original, but in the end very sad, life.


]]> 52260627
Both literary thriller and brilliant novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen’s position in the firmament of American letters]]> 345 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802157068 john 0 to-read 3.94 2021
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: john
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 john 5 lit-american The Sympathizer is an excellent novel about the experiences of the Vietnamese people both in Vietnam and in exile in the United States. The story is told through the experiences of --, who is a captain in the secret police of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), but who is also an undercover agent of the Communist forces of the north.

THIS REVIEW IS NOT FINISHED YET

The novel begins in the last days of Republic of Vietnam in April 1975, as everyone with connections to anyone in power jockeys to get a place on an aircraft to be evacuated. Our main character is assigned by the General that he works for to select people under the General's command to get spaces on the one plane they have. The evacuation of this group succeeds, but only after extraordinary setbacks and in the midst of chaos.

By this point the reader will have learned something about what our main character is like: a sarcastic and cynical person, with a dark sense of humor. A major, upon being told by our main character that there is no room for him on the evacuation flight, says that he will commit suicide. Our main character offers him the use of his revolver.

Besides the sarcasm of the narrator, the text is full of strikingly inventive language. For example, the narrator says of a man who is going bald that "the lawn mower of middle age had run over his head." Other characters are always described with their own epithets: "the crapulent major," "the rational medic," "the dark marine," and "the darker marine"; I have never seen this technique used before in modern literature.

Our main character ends up in a neighborhood of exile Vietnamese in California, and he continues to serve as the General's assistant. In the meantime, he is reporting to North Vietnamese intelligence through coded letters sent to his "aunt" in Paris.

Things get very complicated, but I don't want to give away the plot. I would, however, note that our main character does see Vietnam again.

The novel treats the events of the war in Vietnam from a Vietnamese perspective; that the Vietnamese perspective is very different from the American one is quite clear when we remember that today the war is called "the American War" in Vietnam. When the author describes the attitudes of the Vietnamese in exile in the USA, we find that they do not feel unalloyed gratitude to the Americans. It's repeated many times that the USA had promised the South Vietnamese that if they followed the USA's lead, they would one day enjoy a peaceful, non-Communist future at home; the characters in the novel are not just disappointed; they also feel betrayed..

The sections that discuss the Vietnamese diaspora in California reveal the difficulties exiles face. Besides a longing for their homeland, they interact with Americans who do not understand them at all, and lack even the simplest things to which they are accustomed. An example is fish sauce, a basic ingredient in Vietnamese cooking that was completely unavailable in the United States in the late 1970s.

Our main character ends up spending some months in the Philippines as a cultural advisor on a movie being shot about the war. He does manage to get the Filipino actors playing Vietnamese characters to have roles that involve more than just being shot by Americans, but the movie becomes a terrible disappointment to him in its distortion of the Vietnamese experience of the war. Besides, it seems that someone tries to blow up our main character; you'll need to read the book to learn about that.

Some characters begin to find ways to earn a living, even though the jobs available to them are rarely well-paying and not at all the kind of work they may have been trained for in Vietnam. The General eventually opens a liquor store, and his wife opens a small restaurant; neither of them did this kind of work at home.

The political concerns of the diaspora figure as the novel continues. The fact that Vietnam had been lost to them motivates much of the plot in the later parts of the novel. Differences within the community lead to less than desirable outcomes. About the last quarter of the novel is essential for the thematic development of the novel. That thematic development becomes extremely complex. I would like to know how other readers received it.

I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in Vietnamese perspectives on the end of the war and the creation of a Vietnamese diaspora. It is a very serious novel, despite the sarcastic humor our main character employs, and events can be horrifying and -- or, I suppose -- depressing. But give it a read.

While reading it, I thought of a few Vietnamese refugees who entered our high school in the later 1970s, after the North Vietnamese victory. I wonder what their experience, and the experience of there parents, was really like. ]]> 4.00 2015
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: john
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: lit-american
review:
The Sympathizer is an excellent novel about the experiences of the Vietnamese people both in Vietnam and in exile in the United States. The story is told through the experiences of --, who is a captain in the secret police of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), but who is also an undercover agent of the Communist forces of the north.

THIS REVIEW IS NOT FINISHED YET

The novel begins in the last days of Republic of Vietnam in April 1975, as everyone with connections to anyone in power jockeys to get a place on an aircraft to be evacuated. Our main character is assigned by the General that he works for to select people under the General's command to get spaces on the one plane they have. The evacuation of this group succeeds, but only after extraordinary setbacks and in the midst of chaos.

By this point the reader will have learned something about what our main character is like: a sarcastic and cynical person, with a dark sense of humor. A major, upon being told by our main character that there is no room for him on the evacuation flight, says that he will commit suicide. Our main character offers him the use of his revolver.

Besides the sarcasm of the narrator, the text is full of strikingly inventive language. For example, the narrator says of a man who is going bald that "the lawn mower of middle age had run over his head." Other characters are always described with their own epithets: "the crapulent major," "the rational medic," "the dark marine," and "the darker marine"; I have never seen this technique used before in modern literature.

Our main character ends up in a neighborhood of exile Vietnamese in California, and he continues to serve as the General's assistant. In the meantime, he is reporting to North Vietnamese intelligence through coded letters sent to his "aunt" in Paris.

Things get very complicated, but I don't want to give away the plot. I would, however, note that our main character does see Vietnam again.

The novel treats the events of the war in Vietnam from a Vietnamese perspective; that the Vietnamese perspective is very different from the American one is quite clear when we remember that today the war is called "the American War" in Vietnam. When the author describes the attitudes of the Vietnamese in exile in the USA, we find that they do not feel unalloyed gratitude to the Americans. It's repeated many times that the USA had promised the South Vietnamese that if they followed the USA's lead, they would one day enjoy a peaceful, non-Communist future at home; the characters in the novel are not just disappointed; they also feel betrayed..

The sections that discuss the Vietnamese diaspora in California reveal the difficulties exiles face. Besides a longing for their homeland, they interact with Americans who do not understand them at all, and lack even the simplest things to which they are accustomed. An example is fish sauce, a basic ingredient in Vietnamese cooking that was completely unavailable in the United States in the late 1970s.

Our main character ends up spending some months in the Philippines as a cultural advisor on a movie being shot about the war. He does manage to get the Filipino actors playing Vietnamese characters to have roles that involve more than just being shot by Americans, but the movie becomes a terrible disappointment to him in its distortion of the Vietnamese experience of the war. Besides, it seems that someone tries to blow up our main character; you'll need to read the book to learn about that.

Some characters begin to find ways to earn a living, even though the jobs available to them are rarely well-paying and not at all the kind of work they may have been trained for in Vietnam. The General eventually opens a liquor store, and his wife opens a small restaurant; neither of them did this kind of work at home.

The political concerns of the diaspora figure as the novel continues. The fact that Vietnam had been lost to them motivates much of the plot in the later parts of the novel. Differences within the community lead to less than desirable outcomes. About the last quarter of the novel is essential for the thematic development of the novel. That thematic development becomes extremely complex. I would like to know how other readers received it.

I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in Vietnamese perspectives on the end of the war and the creation of a Vietnamese diaspora. It is a very serious novel, despite the sarcastic humor our main character employs, and events can be horrifying and -- or, I suppose -- depressing. But give it a read.

While reading it, I thought of a few Vietnamese refugees who entered our high school in the later 1970s, after the North Vietnamese victory. I wonder what their experience, and the experience of there parents, was really like.
]]> 15729539 NOS4A2 is a spine-tingling novel of supernatural suspense from master of horror Joe Hill, the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns.

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing �� and terrifying �� playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.��

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.]]> 692 Joe Hill 0062200577 john 0 to-read, horror 4.06 2013
author: Joe Hill
name: john
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read, horror
review:

]]> 112975131
For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that��trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.

Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?]]> 506 Tim Alberta 006322688X john 5 religion 4.42 2023
author: Tim Alberta
name: john
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: religion
review:

]]> 44148905 Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider’s look at the making of the modern Republican Party—how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.

The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in��American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him��not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.

American Carnage��is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party’s base. Yet Obama’s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation’s rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party’s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged—one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell—engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP’s internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.

Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP—and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and��technological��disruption��during that period—can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?

Loaded with explosive��original reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviews—including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many others��American Carnage��takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we’ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.]]> 688 Tim Alberta 006289644X john 0 to-read 4.15 2019
author: Tim Alberta
name: john
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197307 224 Andrei Sinyavsky 0520046773 john 5
The book consists of two works: On Socialist Realism, an essay, and The Trial Begins, a short novel. The essay criticizes the official Soviet literary aesthetic, socialist realism, as really a form of socialist classicism, and recommends that writers cultivate the exaggerated and the grotesque to more adequately capture the reality of Soviet life. The novel is an example of that recommendation put into practice; it presents many characters' experiences around the time of the death of Iosif Stalin (March 1953).

Sinyavsky and fellow writer Iulii Daniil were arrested for writing such works and for publishing them abroad (which actually was not against Soviet law at the time). Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years in a Soviet labor camp.]]> 3.78 1960
author: Andrei Sinyavsky
name: john
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1960
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: lit-russian, literature-theory-history-criticism
review:
This book and some other short literary works got the author imprisoned for seven years in a Soviet labor camp. The author, a literary scholar in Moscow, arranged to have them published in 1959 and 1960 outside of the Soviet Union, under the pseudonym Abram Tertz.

The book consists of two works: On Socialist Realism, an essay, and The Trial Begins, a short novel. The essay criticizes the official Soviet literary aesthetic, socialist realism, as really a form of socialist classicism, and recommends that writers cultivate the exaggerated and the grotesque to more adequately capture the reality of Soviet life. The novel is an example of that recommendation put into practice; it presents many characters' experiences around the time of the death of Iosif Stalin (March 1953).

Sinyavsky and fellow writer Iulii Daniil were arrested for writing such works and for publishing them abroad (which actually was not against Soviet law at the time). Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years in a Soviet labor camp.
]]> 816085
For Ned and his family, Cornwall Coombe was to become a place of ultimate horror.]]> 401 Thomas Tryon 0394485289 john 3 lit-american, horror The Other, and at least one horror and/or science fiction novel with a measure of satire (The Stepford Wives).

Harvest Home was his second novel, and it might be described as folk horror. A family (husband, wife, daughter) leaves the chaos of the big city (in this case, New York) for a simpler life in the country. Soon they discover that the residents of their adopted small town follow many curious and old-fashioned customs: They spurn tractors, for example, and an old widow -- a wise woman with an amazing knowledge of medicinal herbs -- serves as their healer. Their lives are intertwined with the growing of corn, and they celebrate a complex calendar of festivals tied to the agricultural year. The climactic event of the festival year is Harvest Home . . .

Our transplants from the city become increasingly integrated into the town's life, and, consistent the basic folk horror plot, they begin to sense something not quite right beneath the surface of what had seemed like a quaint little country town . . .

The story is absorbing and quite well written. The author is particularly good at describing the unspoken interactions and complicated spoken communication between a husband and wife who've been married for many years.

Some readers may be alarmed at one incident in the plot. The man in the family of newcomers is aggressively pursued by one of the influential women in the town; she strongly desires conjugal relations with him. He preserves his honor and faithfulness to his wife by escaping several times from her advances, but in the end she gets overcomes his hesitation. Their coupling becomes a contest of their sexual power which, in the end, he wins. She tells some of the townspeople that he had raped her. That seems to this reader to be the right word for it. It's only a page or two of the novel, but this reader found it rather unpleasant to read this page or two. If the man had been the villain from the beginning, a reader might consider it another of his crimes. But he is the protagonist . . .

Except for this brief passage, the novel is enjoyable and is much more sophisticated than many horror novels. This reader would recommend it to adults who have some experience with horror novels and who'd like something more literary, and to adults interested in fiction about communities that today still worship the old gods -- that is, to adults who might enjoy folk horror.

The novel requires some serious suspension of disbelief in one detail: The novel is set in New England, but instead of being set in remote portions of Maine or New Hampshire, it is set in Connecticut!!]]> 3.82 1973
author: Thomas Tryon
name: john
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: lit-american, horror
review:
Thomas Tryon wrote some well-known horror novels, such as The Other, and at least one horror and/or science fiction novel with a measure of satire (The Stepford Wives).

Harvest Home was his second novel, and it might be described as folk horror. A family (husband, wife, daughter) leaves the chaos of the big city (in this case, New York) for a simpler life in the country. Soon they discover that the residents of their adopted small town follow many curious and old-fashioned customs: They spurn tractors, for example, and an old widow -- a wise woman with an amazing knowledge of medicinal herbs -- serves as their healer. Their lives are intertwined with the growing of corn, and they celebrate a complex calendar of festivals tied to the agricultural year. The climactic event of the festival year is Harvest Home . . .

Our transplants from the city become increasingly integrated into the town's life, and, consistent the basic folk horror plot, they begin to sense something not quite right beneath the surface of what had seemed like a quaint little country town . . .

The story is absorbing and quite well written. The author is particularly good at describing the unspoken interactions and complicated spoken communication between a husband and wife who've been married for many years.

Some readers may be alarmed at one incident in the plot. The man in the family of newcomers is aggressively pursued by one of the influential women in the town; she strongly desires conjugal relations with him. He preserves his honor and faithfulness to his wife by escaping several times from her advances, but in the end she gets overcomes his hesitation. Their coupling becomes a contest of their sexual power which, in the end, he wins. She tells some of the townspeople that he had raped her. That seems to this reader to be the right word for it. It's only a page or two of the novel, but this reader found it rather unpleasant to read this page or two. If the man had been the villain from the beginning, a reader might consider it another of his crimes. But he is the protagonist . . .

Except for this brief passage, the novel is enjoyable and is much more sophisticated than many horror novels. This reader would recommend it to adults who have some experience with horror novels and who'd like something more literary, and to adults interested in fiction about communities that today still worship the old gods -- that is, to adults who might enjoy folk horror.

The novel requires some serious suspension of disbelief in one detail: The novel is set in New England, but instead of being set in remote portions of Maine or New Hampshire, it is set in Connecticut!!
]]> 60581354 963 James Joyce 131651594X john 0 to-read, lit-irish 4.70 1922
author: James Joyce
name: john
average rating: 4.70
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read, lit-irish
review:

]]> 47971 The true history of a legendary American folk hero

In the 1820s, a fellow named Sam Patch grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, working there (when he wasn't drinking) as a mill hand for one of America's new textile companies. Sam made a name for himself one day by jumping seventy feet into the tumultuous waters below Pawtucket Falls. When in 1827 he repeated the stunt in Paterson, New Jersey, another mill town, an even larger audience gathered to cheer on the daredevil they would call the "Jersey Jumper." Inevitably, he went to Niagara Falls, where in 1829 he jumped not once but twice in front of thousands who had paid for a good view.

The distinguished social historian Paul E. Johnson gives this deceptively simple story all its deserved richness, revealing in its characters and social settings a virtual microcosm of Jacksonian America. He also relates the real jumper to the mythic Sam Patch who turned up as a daring moral hero in the works of Hawthorne and Melville, in London plays and pantomimes, and in the spotlight with Davy Crockett-a Sam Patch who became the namesake of Andrew Jackson's favorite horse.

In his shrewd and powerful analysis, Johnson casts new light on aspects of American society that we may have overlooked or underestimated. This is innovative American history at its best.]]> 256 Paul E. Johnson 0809083884 john 5 history-american
In his career Patch jumped from the top of the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey, Niagara Falls, and the High Falls on the Genesee River in Rochester, New York.

He had a fairly short life but enjoyed a few years of nationwide acclaim.

I would recommend the book to anyone looking for a book that combines historical analysis with a strange but enjoyable story.]]> 3.40 2003
author: Paul E. Johnson
name: john
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: history-american
review:
I read this one several years ago. It did not change my life, but it was interesting and very enjoyable. The author takes the story of Sam Patch (1799-1829), who made some money in the northeastern USA jumping from the top of waterfalls into the pools below them, and places the story in its context in Jacksonian America.

In his career Patch jumped from the top of the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey, Niagara Falls, and the High Falls on the Genesee River in Rochester, New York.

He had a fairly short life but enjoyed a few years of nationwide acclaim.

I would recommend the book to anyone looking for a book that combines historical analysis with a strange but enjoyable story.
]]> 124668574 Excellent Book 0 unknown author john 0 0.0
author: unknown author
name: john
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 28463 Home of the Gentry is a novel by Ivan Turgenev published in the January 1859 issue of "Sovremennik". I t was enthusiastically received by the Russian society and remained his least controversial and most widely-read novel until the end of the 19th century. It was turned into a movie by Andrey Konchalovsky in 1969.

The novel's protagonist is Fyodor Ivanych Lavretsky, a nobleman who shares many traits with Turgenev. The child of a distant, Anglophile father and a serf mother who dies when he is very young, Lavretsky is brought up at his family's country estate home by a severe maiden aunt, often thought to be based on Turgenev's own mother who was known for her cruelty.]]> 208 Ivan Turgenev 0140442243 john 5 lit-russian A Nest of Gentry, which is actually closer to the original Russian title (Dvorianskoe gnezdo). In any case, the novel is about a young nobleman who returns to his estate in the country after living for some time in Moscow. The plot concerns his interactions with peasants on his estate and other nobles. Since this is Turgenev, there is a love plot.

I find it very easy to like Turgenev's novels, and I think this one is very enjoyable.

Turgenev Trivia: Russian author Alexander Goncharov was furious when the novel was published because he felt that it copied much of his novel Oblomov. I don't recall if he sued or not.

In my opinion, Goncharov's novel is very different from Turgenev's. But Goncharov may have had a point. If I were on the jury, I would say that there was no plagiarism.]]> 3.96 1859
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: john
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1859
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-russian
review:
I read the Penguin edition some years ago when the title was given as A Nest of Gentry, which is actually closer to the original Russian title (Dvorianskoe gnezdo). In any case, the novel is about a young nobleman who returns to his estate in the country after living for some time in Moscow. The plot concerns his interactions with peasants on his estate and other nobles. Since this is Turgenev, there is a love plot.

I find it very easy to like Turgenev's novels, and I think this one is very enjoyable.

Turgenev Trivia: Russian author Alexander Goncharov was furious when the novel was published because he felt that it copied much of his novel Oblomov. I don't recall if he sued or not.

In my opinion, Goncharov's novel is very different from Turgenev's. But Goncharov may have had a point. If I were on the jury, I would say that there was no plagiarism.
]]> 28458 Sketches: the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia satisfying his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he acquaints with, peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev's great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons. His depiction of the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes was considered subversive and led to his arrest and confinement to his estate, but these sketches opened the minds of contemporary readers to the plight of the peasantry and were even said to have led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom.]]> 403 Ivan Turgenev 0140445226 john 5 lit-russian 3.94 1852
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: john
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1852
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-russian
review:

]]> 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 john 4 lit-german 3.90 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: john
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-german
review:

]]> 7632329
Filled with spies, double agents, rogues, heroes & a corpse, the story of Operation Mincemeat reads like an international thriller. Unveiling never-before-released material, Macintyre goes into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles & spies, & the German Abwehr agents who suffered the “twin frailties of wishfulness & yesmanship.�� He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley & Montagu & their improbable feats into an adventure that saved thousands & paved the way for the conquest of Sicily.

]]> 416 Ben Macintyre 0747598681 john 4 history-world-war-ii 3.99 2010
author: Ben Macintyre
name: john
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: history-world-war-ii
review:

]]> 655627
In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service who at one time volunteered to assassinate Hitler for his countrymen. Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Both countries provided for the mother of his child and his mistress. Sixty years after the end of the war, and ten years after Chapman’s death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapman’s files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.

A gripping story of loyalty, love, and treachery, Agent Zigzag offers a unique glimpse into the psychology of espionage, with its thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal.]]> 364 Ben Macintyre 0307353400 john 4 history-world-war-ii 4.10 2007
author: Ben Macintyre
name: john
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: history-world-war-ii
review:

]]> 229579
With each new book, Steven Millhauser radically stretches not only the limits of fiction but also of his seemingly limitless abilities. Enchanted Night is a remarkable piece of fiction, a compact tale of loneliness and desire that is as hypnotic and rich as the language Millhauser uses to weave it.]]> 144 Steven Millhauser 0375706968 john 5 lit-american
The book is made up of many 1-3 page "chapterlets" that describe the activities of several people and other animate objects over the course of one summer night. It is a night when the moon is almost full, and it is the moon goddess that inspires the enchantment of this night. Many uncanny things occur: dolls in an attic come to life, a faun's panpipe is heard throughout the town, and some humans do things they would not ever do otherwise. For example, a young woman is enchanted by the moon, undresses and lies down in a grove of trees in order to bathe herself in the light of the moon.

Every so often a chapterlet is devoted to a "Chorus of Night Voices."

The events described in the book (described by the author as a novella, are strange enough to be delightfully surprising, And I was delighted to follow the actions of the characters, all of whom receive a respite from their loneliness..

The prose is beautiful, and I wanted to read some passages aloud to myself because of their rhythm. But the prose is not difficult to read or understand.

The author has written two full-length novels and several collections of short stories. I have read a few of the story collections, and would recommend them and especially this novella to all readers.

]]> 3.65 1999
author: Steven Millhauser
name: john
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-american
review:
I read this book probably 20 or more years ago. While talking with a friend last week I was reminded of it and told her about it. I bought a copy to mail to her and decided to get one for myself.

The book is made up of many 1-3 page "chapterlets" that describe the activities of several people and other animate objects over the course of one summer night. It is a night when the moon is almost full, and it is the moon goddess that inspires the enchantment of this night. Many uncanny things occur: dolls in an attic come to life, a faun's panpipe is heard throughout the town, and some humans do things they would not ever do otherwise. For example, a young woman is enchanted by the moon, undresses and lies down in a grove of trees in order to bathe herself in the light of the moon.

Every so often a chapterlet is devoted to a "Chorus of Night Voices."

The events described in the book (described by the author as a novella, are strange enough to be delightfully surprising, And I was delighted to follow the actions of the characters, all of whom receive a respite from their loneliness..

The prose is beautiful, and I wanted to read some passages aloud to myself because of their rhythm. But the prose is not difficult to read or understand.

The author has written two full-length novels and several collections of short stories. I have read a few of the story collections, and would recommend them and especially this novella to all readers.


]]> 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 john 5 lit-english 3.78 1861
author: Charles Dickens
name: john
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-english
review:

]]> 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky john 3 lit-russian 4.16 1848
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: john
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: lit-russian
review:

]]> 75293514
In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations.

In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert.

Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.]]> 800 Karl Ove Knausgård 0593490835 john 0 to-read 4.12 2021
author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: john
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57799745
Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence.

Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.]]> 666 Karl Ove Knausgård 0399563423 john 0 to-read 3.89 2020
author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: john
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51770358
Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.]]> 364 Ben Macintyre 1101904216 john 0 to-read 4.48 2018
author: Ben Macintyre
name: john
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 151604328 0 Paul E. Johnson john 5 religion
The people of the city of Rochester, New York, USA experienced a revival of Protestant religion (Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist) beginning in 1831 and extending to the later 1830s. This book, which the author describes as a work of social history, explains why. Reasons included the fairly rapid withering away of the authority of the wealthier groups (partially through the end of the custom of workers living in their employers' homes with the owners' families, and subject to the authority of the employer). A working class independent of the employers was created in what was then a very new but rapidly growing city.

The desire of the "betters," so to speak, to regulate the working-class districts and working-class leisure led to a failed temperance movement aimed at stopping the workers from drinking. Through a complex of economic, social, and political conditions, certain groups in Rochester were ready to convert to evangelical Protestantism when the evangelical heavyweight champion Charles Grandison Finney arrived to spend several months exhorting the population to convert.

The author aims to explain why Rochester's people -- and which groups of Rochester's people -- were ready to adopt religion, to the extent that people were literally expecting the millennium to begin (i.e., the period of 1,000 years of Christiana harm0ny throughout the world, prior to the return of Jesus).

The author included a new preface to the 25th anniversary edition of the book (2003) which addresses criticism of it and other approaches that he could have taken to make its conclusions more valid.

It's full of statistics (!) but it is well written and easy to read, so long if you turn off the TV! It was actually quite fun for me to read.

Upstate New York (above 42nd parallel, more or less) before, say, 1850, was subject to an intensity of religious enthusiasm rarely seen anywhere and was the location for the founding of some new religions (Mormonism, Spiritualism, Protestant sectarianism). It has since those days frequently been called "the Burned Over District," because religious enthusiasm had passed through like a wildfire. People have been writing about it since the earlier 20th century. This book shows an improvement in the discussions because of its attention to verifiable evidence.

I'm also very interested in the topic because I lived up there for the final 30 years of the 20th century and it was part of the local history. ]]> 2.80
author: Paul E. Johnson
name: john
average rating: 2.80
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: religion
review:
THIS REVIEW MAY BE REVISED AND IMPROVED IN THE NEAR FUTURE. MAYBE.

The people of the city of Rochester, New York, USA experienced a revival of Protestant religion (Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist) beginning in 1831 and extending to the later 1830s. This book, which the author describes as a work of social history, explains why. Reasons included the fairly rapid withering away of the authority of the wealthier groups (partially through the end of the custom of workers living in their employers' homes with the owners' families, and subject to the authority of the employer). A working class independent of the employers was created in what was then a very new but rapidly growing city.

The desire of the "betters," so to speak, to regulate the working-class districts and working-class leisure led to a failed temperance movement aimed at stopping the workers from drinking. Through a complex of economic, social, and political conditions, certain groups in Rochester were ready to convert to evangelical Protestantism when the evangelical heavyweight champion Charles Grandison Finney arrived to spend several months exhorting the population to convert.

The author aims to explain why Rochester's people -- and which groups of Rochester's people -- were ready to adopt religion, to the extent that people were literally expecting the millennium to begin (i.e., the period of 1,000 years of Christiana harm0ny throughout the world, prior to the return of Jesus).

The author included a new preface to the 25th anniversary edition of the book (2003) which addresses criticism of it and other approaches that he could have taken to make its conclusions more valid.

It's full of statistics (!) but it is well written and easy to read, so long if you turn off the TV! It was actually quite fun for me to read.

Upstate New York (above 42nd parallel, more or less) before, say, 1850, was subject to an intensity of religious enthusiasm rarely seen anywhere and was the location for the founding of some new religions (Mormonism, Spiritualism, Protestant sectarianism). It has since those days frequently been called "the Burned Over District," because religious enthusiasm had passed through like a wildfire. People have been writing about it since the earlier 20th century. This book shows an improvement in the discussions because of its attention to verifiable evidence.

I'm also very interested in the topic because I lived up there for the final 30 years of the 20th century and it was part of the local history.
]]> 57340678 260 Will Sommer 0063114488 john 0 to-read 4.06 2023
author: Will Sommer
name: john
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61271824 “Impressively researched and written with storytelling verve�� (The Wall Street Journal), this is the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown.

For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, Waco raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. The revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies�� mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new and stunning.

Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. His you-are-there narrative continues to the final assault and its momentous consequences. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, revealing “gripping�� (Houston Chronicle) new details about a story that we thought we knew.

Duration: 11 hours, 24 minutes, 30 seconds.]]> 12 Jeff Guinn 1797152610 john 0 religion 4.02 2023
author: Jeff Guinn
name: john
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: religion
review:

]]> 775985
“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.�� �� The New York Times Book Review

The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe.

And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean.

With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.]]> 428 C.L.R. James 0679724672 john 0 4.39 1938
author: C.L.R. James
name: john
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read, african-american-black-histor, history-caribbean
review:

]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin john 0 to-read 4.08 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: john
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 492074 296 Christopher J. Koch 0140065350 john 5 lit-australian
As is well known, a coup took place late in that year that led to the coming to power of Suharto, a right-wing general who headed a dictatorship for years afterwards, and the massacre of 500,000 or more Indonesians suspected of being associated with the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia).

What actually took place during the coup, the motivation of the plotters, and to some extent who they were, have never been entirely clear.

The novel is a very interesting story about one journalist trying to find his way through the extremely complex events of that year.

The novel mentions some of the events of the coup, and some new reports during the coup of events that never took place were fabricated by the military regime that was coming to power. I hope the novel would encourage readers to look at some non-fiction discussions of the period. It is not remembered in the USA, but should be, in my opinion.

There is also a movie adaptation of the novel made in 1983 (1984?). It features a very, very young Mel Gibson and a very, very young Sigourney Weaver. I saw the movie when it came out, but read the novel the first time way back then to try to make sense of what happened. ]]> 3.91 1978
author: Christopher J. Koch
name: john
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: lit-australian
review:
A very good novel about a journalist from Australia covering Indonesia in 1965. That was the year that the leader of that country called "the Year of Living Dangerously," as he tried to balance many opposing forces in the country and abroad.

As is well known, a coup took place late in that year that led to the coming to power of Suharto, a right-wing general who headed a dictatorship for years afterwards, and the massacre of 500,000 or more Indonesians suspected of being associated with the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia).

What actually took place during the coup, the motivation of the plotters, and to some extent who they were, have never been entirely clear.

The novel is a very interesting story about one journalist trying to find his way through the extremely complex events of that year.

The novel mentions some of the events of the coup, and some new reports during the coup of events that never took place were fabricated by the military regime that was coming to power. I hope the novel would encourage readers to look at some non-fiction discussions of the period. It is not remembered in the USA, but should be, in my opinion.

There is also a movie adaptation of the novel made in 1983 (1984?). It features a very, very young Mel Gibson and a very, very young Sigourney Weaver. I saw the movie when it came out, but read the novel the first time way back then to try to make sense of what happened.
]]> 16130503
The most authoritative account ever written of how an ordinary juvenile delinquent named Charles Manson became the notorious murderer whose crimes still shock and horrify us today.

More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that author Jeff Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some members of the Manson Family have provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn has made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person on the property where the murders occurred was spared.

Manson puts the killer in the context of his times, the turbulent late sixties, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege. Guinn shows us how Manson created and refined his message to fit the times, persuading confused young women (and a few men) that he had the solutions to their problems. At the same time he used them to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions, relocating to Los Angeles in search of a recording contract. His frustrated ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal consequences as he convinced his followers to commit heinous murders on successive nights.

In addition to stunning revelations about Charles Manson, the book contains family photographs never before published.]]> 495 Jeff Guinn 1451645163 john 5 history-american
If you want to read a non-sensationalized, well-researched, and detailed discussion of his horrifying career, this is a very good book to read.]]> 3.91 2013
author: Jeff Guinn
name: john
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: history-american
review:
I am not a Charles Manson freak (that is, I am not obsessed with his story, do not want to buy bootleg records of his recordings, etc.).

If you want to read a non-sensationalized, well-researched, and detailed discussion of his horrifying career, this is a very good book to read.
]]> 251898
Millions of Americans-from Lady Astor to Ginger Rogers to Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman-have been touched by the Church of Christ, Scientist. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, Christian Science was based on a belief that intense contemplation of the perfection of God can heal all ills-an extreme expression of the American faith in self-reliance. In this unflinching investigation, Caroline Fraser, herself raised in a Scientist household, shows how the Church transformed itself from a small, eccentric sect into a politically powerful and socially respectable religion, and explores the human cost of Christian Science's remarkable rise.

Fraser examines the strange life and psychology of Mary Baker Eddy, who lived in dread of a kind of witchcraft she called Malicious Animal Magnetism. She takes us into the closed world of Eddy's followers, who refuse to acknowledge the existence of illness and death and reject modern medicine, even at the cost of their children's lives. She reveals just how Christian Science managed to gain extraordinary legal and Congressional sanction for its dubious practices and tracks its enormous influence on new-age beliefs and other modern healing cults.

A passionate exposé of zealotry, God's Perfect Child tells one of the most dramatic and little-known stories in American religious history.]]> 594 Caroline Fraser 0805044310 john 4 religion The book is a history of the Christian Science religion from the time of its beginnings in 19th-century New England to its decline in the late 20th-century. The author was raised as a Christian Scientist but left the religion early in her life.

Christian Science teaches that illness arises when a person is in a state of spiritual imperfection, and that it can be cured through spiritual activity such as prayer. The result is that children grow up experiencing all of the discomforts of the colds and minor illnesses to which they are so frequently
subject. More serious illnesses, left untreated, will kill them and adult Christian Scientists, often unnecessarily and painfully.

Earlier in its existence, the organization secured legislation in many states that provided exceptions for it in laws governing the practice of medicine. The author discusses the unnecessary deaths of some children which led some states to reconsider these laws, and for Christian Science's reputation to suffer.

The organization has always been secretive: the founder, whom our author describes as having a very difficult ]]> 3.97 1999
author: Caroline Fraser
name: john
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: religion
review:
THIS REVIEW IS UNFINISHED.
The book is a history of the Christian Science religion from the time of its beginnings in 19th-century New England to its decline in the late 20th-century. The author was raised as a Christian Scientist but left the religion early in her life.

Christian Science teaches that illness arises when a person is in a state of spiritual imperfection, and that it can be cured through spiritual activity such as prayer. The result is that children grow up experiencing all of the discomforts of the colds and minor illnesses to which they are so frequently
subject. More serious illnesses, left untreated, will kill them and adult Christian Scientists, often unnecessarily and painfully.

Earlier in its existence, the organization secured legislation in many states that provided exceptions for it in laws governing the practice of medicine. The author discusses the unnecessary deaths of some children which led some states to reconsider these laws, and for Christian Science's reputation to suffer.

The organization has always been secretive: the founder, whom our author describes as having a very difficult
]]> 137335234 Excellent Book 0 Andrei Platonov john 3 lit-russian Happy Moscow is a fairly short Russian novel; in this edition it runs to 117 pages. They can be very dense pages, and it is my opinion that it is a fairly difficult work. Platonov wrote it in the mid-1930s, but it could not be published in the USSR. The lost manuscript was discovered in the very late Soviet period or very early post-Soviet period, and it was first published anywhere in 1991

The "Moscow" of the title is not primarily the city; "Moscow" is the name of the main character. She is an orphan named Moscow by the keepers of the orphanage in which she is raised. She was only a couple (or a few?) years old when the Bolshevik Revolution occurs (7 November 1917 in the Gregorian calendar); her earliest memory is of a man running down a Moscow street with a torch, and of gunfire. A generous scientist whom she meets by chance on a park bench encourages the ambitious young Moscow to apply to an avionics institute to complete her education.

After graduation she becomes a parachutist, which at the time in which the novel takes place -- the mid-1930s -- was a glamorous and prestigious activity. She causes an accident on one jump (she decides to smoke a cigarette during the long ride back to Earth, which ignites the parachute), and loses her position. This is the end of her membership in the up-and-coming Soviet elite. The rest of the novel describes her journey through Soviet Moscow, to another prestigious job that ends badly, and to a trio (at least) of men who want to marry her.

At first I thought she was like the "manic pixie dreamgirls" of 1990s-2000s films, but that was not a correct conclusion. She is a "dreamgirl" to several men (a doctor working to find the secret of immortality, an engineer famous throughout the USSR, and a man who hasn't done military service but who volunteers as an unpaid policemen and enjoys imposing fines on citizens). She is not a pixie; she is taller and bigger than most of the male characters. And though she makes unexpected choices and seems a little flighty, she is not "manic." She has good reasons for her decisions. Unlike the manic pixie dreamgirls of recent American movies, she is a serious person.

As you already know, the woman Moscow mirrors, and/or is mirrored by, the city of Moscow. I believe, however, she relates to a popular but unrealistic version of Moscow. I would venture that the Moscow of the mid-1930s was a more comfortable place to live than the Moscow of 1917, or 1922, or at least that is how some people -- and the official Soviet media -- would characterize it. There was in this period a strongly utopian strain in the official language about Moscow. For example, the construction of the Moscow subway starts during the novel; it is treated as a glorious activity, and the workers on it are excited that thir creation will become world famous. One character works on research into immortality, and in fact there were stories in the newspapers of the time about progress on making humans immortal. Throughout the novel one reads comments on "building socialism" and industrious shock-workers. Platonov uses the official discourse about Moscow and about the USSR throughout the novel. And we do read a genuine quotation from Stalin, which he made in this period, "Life has become better! Life has become merrier!"

I suppose that this "merrier" life is what the secondary meaning of the title Happy Moscow refers to. But we know from the novel that it isn't always merry, We see plenty of shabby quarters of the city, and a semi-legal street market where people buy what they can't get legitimately (and, when necessary, counterfeit internal passports to hide previous identities as undesirables, and counterfeit permits to live in Moscow). And we know from history that much of the population lived in communal apartments with other families, and that stores sold cooking pots with built-in locks, to prevent the neighbors in one's communal apartment from stealing them.

We also know that the State imprisoned or executed untold numbers of people in the 1920s, that it had starved millions of Ukrainians to death by seizing all of their grain, that the earlier labor camps such as Solovki had been built, and that countless prisoners died building the White Sea Canal. If the novel was written after 1934, then people were aware of the wave of arrests in the first purge, following the assassination of S. M. Kirov (surely you remember the foul murder of S. M. Kirov?).

The State may have promoted the narrative that they were building an unimaginably wonderful new society, some people may have absorbed that story, but everybody could see the darker story in which they lived.

Platonov focused on the utopian strain of Soviet discourse in this period, at least in the first part of the novel. This, and his use of Soviet phraseology in the novel are, of course, ironic.

The novel is comic in places, and gloomy in many others. It seems to come to an abrupt end, but we should note that Platonov considered it a novel that could continue indefinitely. We see, I suppose, all of the elements of the novel in 100 or so pages that are needed to construct the indefinitely long novel.

This edition includes other works by Platonov related to the novel, including 2 short stories, a screenplay, and an essay.]]> 4.00
author: Andrei Platonov
name: john
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: lit-russian
review:
Happy Moscow is a fairly short Russian novel; in this edition it runs to 117 pages. They can be very dense pages, and it is my opinion that it is a fairly difficult work. Platonov wrote it in the mid-1930s, but it could not be published in the USSR. The lost manuscript was discovered in the very late Soviet period or very early post-Soviet period, and it was first published anywhere in 1991

The "Moscow" of the title is not primarily the city; "Moscow" is the name of the main character. She is an orphan named Moscow by the keepers of the orphanage in which she is raised. She was only a couple (or a few?) years old when the Bolshevik Revolution occurs (7 November 1917 in the Gregorian calendar); her earliest memory is of a man running down a Moscow street with a torch, and of gunfire. A generous scientist whom she meets by chance on a park bench encourages the ambitious young Moscow to apply to an avionics institute to complete her education.

After graduation she becomes a parachutist, which at the time in which the novel takes place -- the mid-1930s -- was a glamorous and prestigious activity. She causes an accident on one jump (she decides to smoke a cigarette during the long ride back to Earth, which ignites the parachute), and loses her position. This is the end of her membership in the up-and-coming Soviet elite. The rest of the novel describes her journey through Soviet Moscow, to another prestigious job that ends badly, and to a trio (at least) of men who want to marry her.

At first I thought she was like the "manic pixie dreamgirls" of 1990s-2000s films, but that was not a correct conclusion. She is a "dreamgirl" to several men (a doctor working to find the secret of immortality, an engineer famous throughout the USSR, and a man who hasn't done military service but who volunteers as an unpaid policemen and enjoys imposing fines on citizens). She is not a pixie; she is taller and bigger than most of the male characters. And though she makes unexpected choices and seems a little flighty, she is not "manic." She has good reasons for her decisions. Unlike the manic pixie dreamgirls of recent American movies, she is a serious person.

As you already know, the woman Moscow mirrors, and/or is mirrored by, the city of Moscow. I believe, however, she relates to a popular but unrealistic version of Moscow. I would venture that the Moscow of the mid-1930s was a more comfortable place to live than the Moscow of 1917, or 1922, or at least that is how some people -- and the official Soviet media -- would characterize it. There was in this period a strongly utopian strain in the official language about Moscow. For example, the construction of the Moscow subway starts during the novel; it is treated as a glorious activity, and the workers on it are excited that thir creation will become world famous. One character works on research into immortality, and in fact there were stories in the newspapers of the time about progress on making humans immortal. Throughout the novel one reads comments on "building socialism" and industrious shock-workers. Platonov uses the official discourse about Moscow and about the USSR throughout the novel. And we do read a genuine quotation from Stalin, which he made in this period, "Life has become better! Life has become merrier!"

I suppose that this "merrier" life is what the secondary meaning of the title Happy Moscow refers to. But we know from the novel that it isn't always merry, We see plenty of shabby quarters of the city, and a semi-legal street market where people buy what they can't get legitimately (and, when necessary, counterfeit internal passports to hide previous identities as undesirables, and counterfeit permits to live in Moscow). And we know from history that much of the population lived in communal apartments with other families, and that stores sold cooking pots with built-in locks, to prevent the neighbors in one's communal apartment from stealing them.

We also know that the State imprisoned or executed untold numbers of people in the 1920s, that it had starved millions of Ukrainians to death by seizing all of their grain, that the earlier labor camps such as Solovki had been built, and that countless prisoners died building the White Sea Canal. If the novel was written after 1934, then people were aware of the wave of arrests in the first purge, following the assassination of S. M. Kirov (surely you remember the foul murder of S. M. Kirov?).

The State may have promoted the narrative that they were building an unimaginably wonderful new society, some people may have absorbed that story, but everybody could see the darker story in which they lived.

Platonov focused on the utopian strain of Soviet discourse in this period, at least in the first part of the novel. This, and his use of Soviet phraseology in the novel are, of course, ironic.

The novel is comic in places, and gloomy in many others. It seems to come to an abrupt end, but we should note that Platonov considered it a novel that could continue indefinitely. We see, I suppose, all of the elements of the novel in 100 or so pages that are needed to construct the indefinitely long novel.

This edition includes other works by Platonov related to the novel, including 2 short stories, a screenplay, and an essay.
]]> 168677579 ��
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens�� confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
��
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
��
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
��
None of it went as planned.
��
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality, it involved a��large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
��
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.]]> 416 Rachel Maddow 0593444515 john 4 history-american, hi
There were also groups that prepared for the violent overthrow of the US government by buying and stealing weapons (some stolen by US servicemen for this purpose).

Ms. Maddow also discusses a few American private citizens who kept track of, publicized, or infiltrated pro-Nazi groups in order to expose them. During most of the period only Navy Intelligence was at all interested. The FBI was kept from investigating right-wing subversion by its bizarre boss, J. Edgar Hoover.

Almost all of these subversive acts were forgotten after the war, so the material in the book will be new to most, as it was to me.

A sedition trial took place during the war after a Justice Department attorney indicted 20+ propagandists, militia members, and organizers from pro-Nazi organizations. Read the book to find out what happened!

I would note that anti-Semitism was a unifying belief among these pro-Nazi scum buckets.

The book is well written and well documented, though I think that Ms. Maddow could have written it at a less informal level. She inserts too many "comic" asides to maintain a serious tone. A podcast Ms. Maddow presented on this topic led to the writing of this book. The podcast medium is different from the extended written history medium; it allows for more informal treatment of material. I believe that a little more editing of the podcast material would have improved the book by making it more serious.]]> 4.35 2023
author: Rachel Maddow
name: john
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: history-american, hi
review:
The book discusses some Americans' support for fascism (and, specifically, German/Hitler-style Nazism) in the period before the US entered World War II. I think most people in the USA are aware that the Nazi-supporting German-American Bund existed, but the phenomenon of American Nazis goes beyond it. The book traces the progress of many organizations that spread propaganda prepared by the government in the Third Reich, sometimes with the advantage of free US postage courtesy of a Nazi-loving Congressman's franking privilege.

There were also groups that prepared for the violent overthrow of the US government by buying and stealing weapons (some stolen by US servicemen for this purpose).

Ms. Maddow also discusses a few American private citizens who kept track of, publicized, or infiltrated pro-Nazi groups in order to expose them. During most of the period only Navy Intelligence was at all interested. The FBI was kept from investigating right-wing subversion by its bizarre boss, J. Edgar Hoover.

Almost all of these subversive acts were forgotten after the war, so the material in the book will be new to most, as it was to me.

A sedition trial took place during the war after a Justice Department attorney indicted 20+ propagandists, militia members, and organizers from pro-Nazi organizations. Read the book to find out what happened!

I would note that anti-Semitism was a unifying belief among these pro-Nazi scum buckets.

The book is well written and well documented, though I think that Ms. Maddow could have written it at a less informal level. She inserts too many "comic" asides to maintain a serious tone. A podcast Ms. Maddow presented on this topic led to the writing of this book. The podcast medium is different from the extended written history medium; it allows for more informal treatment of material. I believe that a little more editing of the podcast material would have improved the book by making it more serious.
]]> 420934 93 Epeli Hauʻofa 0824815947 john 5 lit-oceania Tales of the Tikongs, is a short collection of short stories by the great writer Epeli Hau'ofa.

The stories describe life in a small island nation in Oceania. Like some countries in Oceania, the people are exceptionally devout (and in the book somewhat intolerant) Christians. They are very isolated geographically, so acquiring simple things is very difficult. The people in the stories tend to get on each others' nerves, because they frequently know each others' business.

The book is very humorous, but throughout there is a melancholy tone. Some years ago Paul Theroux wrote a book called The Happy Isles of Oceania, about a kayak journey he took throughout Oceania. I haven't read his book, but after reading Tales of the Tikongs I am not so sure that everybody is always happy in Oceania.

One story is about a man who had spent his leisure time in his life collecting folklore from the people of his island. He decides that he would like a typewriter, so that he can organize his notes into a readable collection that others could enjoy. The only way that he finds to get a typewriter is to apply to what Hau'ofa calls "The Great International Organization" (what he always calls the United Nations in his fiction). The man gets his typewriter, but he is soon sucked into representing his nation at UN conferences and workshops around the world, and then . . . (I don't want to spoil the story) . . . other surprising things happen.

As you can tell, the book is very satirical.

I have also read Mr. Hau'ofa's novel Kisses in the Nederends, a remarkably comic and satirical novel. I suppose that the novel is more ambitious a work, but I can not decide which of the two books I like more.

And I like them a lot! I recommend them strongly to anyone who reads fiction.

Thank you to the University of Hawaii Press for keeping them in print in the USA, and at reasonable prices. They are available for sale in the USA from Amazon.com.]]> 3.65 1988
author: Epeli Hauʻofa
name: john
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2000/06/15
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: lit-oceania
review:
Tales of the Tikongs, is a short collection of short stories by the great writer Epeli Hau'ofa.

The stories describe life in a small island nation in Oceania. Like some countries in Oceania, the people are exceptionally devout (and in the book somewhat intolerant) Christians. They are very isolated geographically, so acquiring simple things is very difficult. The people in the stories tend to get on each others' nerves, because they frequently know each others' business.

The book is very humorous, but throughout there is a melancholy tone. Some years ago Paul Theroux wrote a book called The Happy Isles of Oceania, about a kayak journey he took throughout Oceania. I haven't read his book, but after reading Tales of the Tikongs I am not so sure that everybody is always happy in Oceania.

One story is about a man who had spent his leisure time in his life collecting folklore from the people of his island. He decides that he would like a typewriter, so that he can organize his notes into a readable collection that others could enjoy. The only way that he finds to get a typewriter is to apply to what Hau'ofa calls "The Great International Organization" (what he always calls the United Nations in his fiction). The man gets his typewriter, but he is soon sucked into representing his nation at UN conferences and workshops around the world, and then . . . (I don't want to spoil the story) . . . other surprising things happen.

As you can tell, the book is very satirical.

I have also read Mr. Hau'ofa's novel Kisses in the Nederends, a remarkably comic and satirical novel. I suppose that the novel is more ambitious a work, but I can not decide which of the two books I like more.

And I like them a lot! I recommend them strongly to anyone who reads fiction.

Thank you to the University of Hawaii Press for keeping them in print in the USA, and at reasonable prices. They are available for sale in the USA from Amazon.com.
]]> 65213521
In Encounters , author D.W. Pasulka takes readers to the forefront of this revolution, sharing the work of experts across a spectrum of fields who are working to connect humanity with unknown life-forms.

Most of us have visions of nonhuman encounters that are shaped far more by Hollywood than they are informed by the current research. Encounters rewrites our visions of nonhuman species by featuring the work and stories of contemporary innovators who are rethinking our most basic assumptions about life and its manifestations beyond our experience.

The author of American Cosmic, D.W. Pasulka is a professor of religion at UNC, Wilmington; her work as a scholar has given her the tools to systematically examine data that exceeds rational categories―exactly the skillset needed to parse the world of UFOs, angels, AI, dreams, and other dimensions, which exist at the edges of human understanding. Encounters is a riveting exploration of the leading science of nonhuman life and a bold glimpse of the future of humanity in a universe where we are far from alone.]]> 256 D.W. Pasulka 1250879566 john 4 fortean-paranormal 3.82 2023
author: D.W. Pasulka
name: john
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: fortean-paranormal
review:

]]> 214932061 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times�� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 Benjamín Labatut 0593654498 john 0 to-read 4.42 2023
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: john
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34356265 Memoirs, spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygone world of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beaches of Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg, hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried on pikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia, and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to France after eight years of exile in England.

In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer of great wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaning of history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy and memorable gloom.]]> 584 1681371294 john 4 autobio-bio, lit-french
The next part of the memoir is now available from New York Review Books.]]> 4.30 1849
author: François-René de Chateaubriand
name: john
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1849
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: autobio-bio, lit-french
review:
A memoir from Chateaubriand of his early years. He was a French writer, government official, religious thinker, and traveler. "From beyond the grave" does not mean that the book was dictated by a ghost; it means that the author did not want the book printed until after his death. This volume of his memoirs covers his travels in North America. Though it includes some remarkable fabrications, his description of the journey includes a truthful account of his passage through my old neighborhood by the Seneca River in Central New York State USA (near today's city of Syracuse); he camped overnight on the island at the confluence of the Seneca River and the Onondaga Lake outlet while on his way to Niagara Falls. It's an excellent book to read if you have time to take a leisurely stroll with a writer through his life in late 18th century France and through what was then the North American wilderness. (Except for the French Revolution.)

The next part of the memoir is now available from New York Review Books.
]]> 54288955 112 Kevin Jackson 0861662849 john 5 comics, fortean-paranormal Fortean Times in Hunt Emerson's section "Phenomenonix." Kenneth Jackson provided much of the information and Emerson drew the comics. Together they provide short biographies of 40 notable occultists who lived between the Elizabethan era (John Dee) and the very recent past (David Bowie). The intent is to poke fun at them.

They state that the information about these people is true, but the narration and the comic art take them down a peg or 8. Jackson uses the expression "make fun of them" in his introduction.

They quote Gershom Scholem to characterize their attitude in the work: "Nonsense is nonsense, but a history of nonsense is science."

Throughout the book, a caricature of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) recurs and comments on every occultist influenced by Crowley, who called himself "the most evil man in the world." The section recounting his life and activities runs 11 pages and is the longest entry in the book. Crowley is presented as a giant of occultism, an inspiration to many, an arrogant snob, and a somewhat silly man.

Great occultists (or what the authors occasionally refer to as "GOs") discussed in the book include Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Sir Isaac Newton, Madame Blavatsky, W. B. Yeats, Jack Parsons, Maya Deren, Harry Smith, and Austin Osman Spare.

The book is very informative, but even if the reader is not interested in occultism, he or she will be greatly entertained by this very funny book.

It is recommended for a broad circle of readers.]]> 4.25 2021
author: Kevin Jackson
name: john
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves: comics, fortean-paranormal
review:
This book is a collection of comics published occasionally over the years in the magazine Fortean Times in Hunt Emerson's section "Phenomenonix." Kenneth Jackson provided much of the information and Emerson drew the comics. Together they provide short biographies of 40 notable occultists who lived between the Elizabethan era (John Dee) and the very recent past (David Bowie). The intent is to poke fun at them.

They state that the information about these people is true, but the narration and the comic art take them down a peg or 8. Jackson uses the expression "make fun of them" in his introduction.

They quote Gershom Scholem to characterize their attitude in the work: "Nonsense is nonsense, but a history of nonsense is science."

Throughout the book, a caricature of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) recurs and comments on every occultist influenced by Crowley, who called himself "the most evil man in the world." The section recounting his life and activities runs 11 pages and is the longest entry in the book. Crowley is presented as a giant of occultism, an inspiration to many, an arrogant snob, and a somewhat silly man.

Great occultists (or what the authors occasionally refer to as "GOs") discussed in the book include Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Sir Isaac Newton, Madame Blavatsky, W. B. Yeats, Jack Parsons, Maya Deren, Harry Smith, and Austin Osman Spare.

The book is very informative, but even if the reader is not interested in occultism, he or she will be greatly entertained by this very funny book.

It is recommended for a broad circle of readers.
]]> 34474870
Despite intense opposition, Winston Churchill personally gave Stirling permission to recruit the toughest, brightest and most ruthless soldiers he could find. So began the most celebrated and mysterious military organisation in the world: the SAS.

Now, 75 years later, the SAS has finally decided to tell its astonishing story. It has opened its secret archives for the first time, granting historian Ben Macintyre full access to a treasure trove of unseen reports, memos, diaries, letters, maps and photographs, as well as free rein to interview surviving Originals and those who knew them.

The result is an exhilarating tale of fearlessness and heroism, recklessness and tragedy; of extraordinary men who were willing to take monumental risks. It is a story about the meaning of courage.]]> 400 Ben Macintyre 1101904186 john 5 history-world-war-ii 4.30 2016
author: Ben Macintyre
name: john
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: history-world-war-ii
review:

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