Category Archives: Book reviews

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

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"Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana", 19...

“Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana”, 1908, the first color photo portrait in Russia Français : « Léon Tolstoï à Iasnaïa Poliana », 1908, le premier portrait photographique en couleur en Russie. Suomi: “Leo Tolstoi Jasnaja Poljanassa”, 1908. Ensimmäinen Venäjällä otettu värimuotokuva. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. She lost her older sister to a fast-growing cancer that struck unexpectedly in middle age. She and her sister were very close and shared a love of reading. Nina had difficulty accepting that she was alive while her sister was dead. After two to three years of difficulty accepting the loss, she decided to devote one year to reading a book a day and writing a review of it to be posted online. She selected books of approximately 300 pages that she could complete reading in four hours and she allotted two hours for the writing of the review. I love to read, but I am a slower reader than she and now I lack the stamina and discipline to read one book per day. I read many books at the same time, and I enjoy jumping from one to another as the mood takes me.

After one year, she returned to a slower pace of reading, but with a greater acceptance of the loss of her sister. The purple chair of the title was her reading chair.

Please see 3 quotations

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Race relations

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Cover of "No Future Without Forgiveness"

Cover of No Future Without Forgiveness

No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Mpilo Tutu. He won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 and later chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa that helped ensure a peaceful death for apartheid and the birth of a democratic South Africa. If forgiving can work in as unlikely a place as South Africa, he contends that it can work anywhere. He suggests that it might be used in the US to improve race relations , and I think that we should try it.

His words, “It may be, for instance, that race relations in the United States will not improve significantly until Native Americans and African Americans get the opportunity to tell their stories and reveal the pain that sits in the pit of their stomachs as a baneful legacy of dispossession and slavery. We saw in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how the act of telling one’s story has a cathartic, healing effect.”

He may be right. I remember clearly the impact the mini-series Roots had on black and white America.

P. S. If you read this important book, you will be reminded about how tyranny is maintained by means of torture. It also happens to a lesser extent in the US. Please see this article on truthout.org.

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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

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Cover of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

Cover of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday is an excellent novel made into a movie which my wife and I saw last evening. The movie version is very funny and I recommend it highly. It is a bit changed from the book. Unfortunately, the movie is not getting the attention it deserves. There were only four of us in the audience.

Most of the action in the movie takes place in London and Scotland. Only a small portion of the movie is in Yemen, which is too bad. Americans need to know more about the country that produced the bin Laden family and is the home of 20 million warring tribesmen, each having an average 4 guns apiece. Think of Afghanistan as the birthplace of the Taliban and Pakistan as the incubator for producing more Taliban. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of al-Qaeda and Yemen is the current incubator for producing more members of al-Qaeda.

Yemen is rugged, desert country with much life and natural beauty in certain valleys. For about a year now, it has lacked an effective central government to maintain peace and order within the country. The Yemenis are a hospitable people with a custom, shown briefly in the movie, that I especially respect. Travellers are greeted with a chilled drink of water whenever they appear and however far the bearer of the water must go to offer the drink. Just think of the effort required to carry a heavy jug of water over a distance in the often blazing heat of midday in a Yemeni summer.

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Railsea

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China Mieville

China Mieville (Photo credit: ceridwenn)

Railsea by China Miéville. My favorite Miéville books are Scar and Iron Council, and I was hoping that Railsea might be a continuation of either or both. It is not. It is a young adults version of Moby Dick closer to Un Lun Dun than any other book that China has written and illustrated himself too. The story is much better than Un Lun Dun.

The story is related to nothing that he has written before, takes place on a different planet, and soon grabbed me after the initial disappointment. The railsea of the title is a sea of tangled railroad tracks on which trains sail in the manner of ships at sea. Mocker-Jack is the great white, ivory, yellow? monster mole that is Captain Abacat Naphi’s obsession. However, the hunt for Mocker-Jack soon takes a backseat to the search for treasure located in heaven. That is as far as I intend to reveal the plot. I have just finished a first reading today to find out what happens. I intend to re-read the book at a more leisurely pace to more fully enjoy Miéville’s prose.

China will be at a book signing and reading today in London at Forbidden Planet from 6 to 7pm. Wish I could attend. If you go to their website www.forbiddenplanet.com , you can order a signed copy of the book.

Please see China Miéville | Semantics

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How I find books to read

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Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

I use these two internet services together, www.amazon.com and www.ebay.com , to find authors and books I might want to read. It is a great way to find books and authors I might never find in any other way.

First I go to eBay and search for signed books and I sort for auctions ending soon. If I see an intriguing title at a price I can afford, I will look it up on Amazon and read the reviews. I will make a mental note of the new and used prices on Amazon and then I will decide if I want to bid on the book on eBay or buy it at a lesser price on Amazon. I collect signed copies of books and I sometimes find that signed copies are also available on Amazon. Shop and compare is my motto. This system works well for me.