Tag: middle east

Beyond Euphrates

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Stark, Freya. Beyond Euphrates: autobiography 1928 – 1933. London: John Murray, 1951.

Reason read: Stark was born in January. Reading Beyond Euphrates to continue the series.

When we left Freya at the end of Traveller’s Prelude Freya had just gained her independence as an adult and the travel bug had bitten hard. She takes her first journey in 1928 to Damascus. As a woman, traveling without an escort was unheard of in 1928. To make matters worse, because Freya could speak several different languages, she was believed to be a Russian spy when she reached Baghdad. The more Freya travels, the more her independent spirit grows. She scoffs at using escorts and chaperones. At one point she fears being tied to a job because it might keep her rooted in one place and yet she needed to earn a living in order to keep traveling. It was at this point that she started writing articles and her first book, Baghdad Sketches was published. Stark ends Beyond Euphrates in hopes of traveling to Yemen next. Amusingly enough, in her last letter to her mother she rejoices to find a good face cream.

Quotes to quote. An example of bravery: “I don’t mind the chance at being shot at, but did not want to be held up by police and kept all night in one of their solitary little towers for safety…” (p 270). An example of humor: “Darling B, I am busy with prostitutes” (p 267).

Author fact: Stark had a sense of humor. Case in point: “Captain Holt told me I had better go home from North Persia by way of Moscow (where he is to be): and I had to remind him that I am a Bolshevic spy” (p 127).

Book trivia: Beyond Euphrates also has great photographs. Not as many of Freya, though. Second book trivia – I am reading a first edition of Beyond Euphrates.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lady Travellers” (p 142).

O Jerusalem!

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Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre. O Jerusalem! New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

Reason read: Read in honor of Collins’s birth month being in September.

Critics have called O Jerusalem! “massive” and “epic” in regards to its number of pages, but the scope of its topic O Jerusalem is singular: the year 1948. The year in which British rule ceased in Jerusalem and Arabs and Jews picked up their generations-long battle over the region. Written in four parts beginning with November 29th, 1947 to December 20th, 1947, O Jerusalem opens with the General Assembly of the United Nations voting in favor of partitioning Palestine. Joy and dismay alike reverberate through the ancient land. For this is a fate Jewish Jerusalem had prayed for for over two thousand years. That fact alone is staggering. Think of how many generations have lived through this struggle! Their joy reminded me of the Red Sox winning the pennant after 84 years, “Uri Cohen, a biology student at Hebrew University, happily kissed his way from his home to the city center” (p 42).
This reads like a adventure novel. You get to know people (Uri Cohen will come back again, not as happily).  As a reader, you will crawl into their lives and almost get inside their heads. This may be massive and epic but you’ll hang on every word.

Author fact: Larry Collins was born and raised in West Hartford, Connecticut – just down the road from where I work.
Author fact: Dominique Lapierre was friends with Collins before they coauthored Is Paris Burning?

Book trivia: O Jerusalem! includes a section of photographs.

Nancy said: O Jerusalem! is included in a list of books Nancy says are all “certain to broaden your knowledge, increase your understanding of this part of the world, and be enjoyable (if sometimes uncomfortable) reads” (p 143).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 142).

March of the Books

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Here’s the singular thing I love, love, love about March: the St. Patrick’s Day Road Race in Holyoke, MA. I adore running this race. Runner’s World magazine has mentioned it more than once, calling it the mini Boston Marathon for it’s toughness. I PR’ed this year! But what I am more excited about is that this time I was only five seconds away from breaking an hour. Unlike last year (1:07:and something seconds) I was 1 hour and a measly four seconds. But, enough about running! Here are the books finished for March, 2017:

  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (AB +EB)*
  • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (AB + print)
  • Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy*
  • Treachery in the Yard by Adimchinma Ibe*

Nonfiction:

  • Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam (DNF)
  • Big Empty edited by Ladette Randolph and Nina Shevchuk-Murray (EB)
  • No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin (AB)

Series continuations:

  • Red Bones by Ann Cleeves
  • Hall of a Thousand Columns by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (DNF)
  • Endymion by Dan Simmons

Early Review “won”:

  • Ma Speaks Up by Marianne Leone (received and finished)
  • My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul (This has arrived & I have started it)

*Short enough to read in one day.

Spring Forward

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I’m really looking forward to spring. The chance to run outside (sorry, New Guinea) & a little more green in my life. Here are the books planned:

Fiction:

  • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel ~ in honor of the best time to visit Mexico (AB). I think this will only take a few days to read so I’m adding:
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (AB) as a backup ~ in honor of the Oscars (even though they just happened, embarrassingly so).
  • Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy ~ in honor of the time Niagara Falls stopped flowing, and,
  • Treachery in the Yard by Adimchinma Ibe ~ in honor of Nigeria’s president as of 2015.

Both of these fictions are short-short so I should be able to read them in a day or two each.

Nonfiction:

  • Breaks in the Game by David Halberstam ~ in honor of March Madness (basketball)
  • The Big Empty edited by Ladette Randolph ~ in honor of Nebraska becoming a state in March.

Series Continuations:

  • Red Bones by Ann Cleeves ~ to continue the series started in January in honor of Up Helly Aa.
  • Endymion by Dan Simmons ~ to continue the series started in January in honor of Science Fiction month. This sucker is 600 pages long. Not sure I’ll finish it in time…
  • Hall of a Thousand Columns by Tim Mackintosh-Smith ~ to continue the series started in February in honor of Exploration month. This is an ILL and it hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m not sure I will finish it in time.

Early Review for LibraryThing:

  • Ma Speaks Up by Marianne Leonne ~ maybe. I “won” it in February but it hasn’t arrived yet.
  • EDITED to ADD: I just got word I also “won” My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul. It isn’t expected to arrive for awhile so this is really an April book.

Arab and Jew

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Shipler, David K. Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. Read by Robert Blumenfeld. New York: Blackstone Audio, 2003.

Reason read: May is the most beautiful time of the year to visit the middle east…or so I have heard.

This is the history of the relationship between Arab and Jew. Shipler painstakingly traces the prejudice back to its origin and examines the cultural, religious, and socioeconomic divide that has existed ever since. Shipler’s reporting is exemplary. He is unbiased but obviously very concerned about the everyday ordinary people just trying to survive in this land of unrest. Shipler’s voice is at once delicate and forthright in his descriptions and details involving terrorism, nationalism, and political conflict. He refers frequently to information he has collected from textbooks of various grade levels to demonstrate the education & “miseducation” of middle eastern children.

Probably the most disturbing section (for me) was about sexual attitudes, especially those surrounding rape.

Quotes that caught my attention, “Battle has its thrills as well as its regrets” and “Too much hope seems doused in blood.” Because I am listening to this on (22!) CDs I have no idea what actual page these quotes are on.

Book trivia: I listened to an unabridged and revised edition of Arab and Jew. This was also made into a movie in 1989.

Author fact: Shipler won a Pulitzer for Arab and Jew in 1987.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the vague chapter called “The Middle East” (p 154).

May I Read

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I never recapped April nor predicted May. For the first time ever, April books are still being read. To be fair, the Lyndon Johnson series started in February so technically these leftovers are not specific either April nor May.

April was an oddball month in that my reading was all on the fly. I trained for another half marathon and that took a lot of my time. Not nearly as much as the full mara, but still…

Here are the Challenge books finished in April:

  • King Lear – Shakespeare (not scheduled)
  • Guernica – Van Hensbergen (not scheduled)
  • Grand Tour – Tim Moore
  • Green Thoughts – Eleanor Perenyi
  • Alice in Sunderland – Bryan Talbot
  • Considerable Town – M F K Fisher
  • Don’t Eat This Book – Morgan Spurlock

Here are the just for fun books:

  • Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work – John Gottman
  • Spark Joy – Marie Kondo (not scheduled)

Here’s what on tap for May:

For the Early Review program through LibraryThing:

  • All the Rage by Martin Moran

To celebrate May:

  • Brilliant Orange: the Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer by David Winner ~ in honor of the tulip festival in Holland
  • Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt ~ in honor of Just ‘Cause and their 60-mile walk (although this year it’s in June).
  • Jordan: Past & Present: Petra, Jerash & Amman by E. Borgia ~ in honor of Jordan gaining independence in the month of May
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn ~ in honor of Russia’s Victory Day (may 9th, 1945)
  • Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill ~ to celebrate Laos Rocket Day (already read – this took me less than a day)
  • Chosen, the by Chaim Potok ~ in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month (AB – already read)
  • Map of Another Town by MFK Fisher ~ to finished the Two Towns book started in April
  • Master of the Senate by Robert Caro ~ to finished the series started in February in honor of Presidents’ Day.

From Beirut to Jerusalem

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Friedman, Thomas. From Beirut to Jerusalem New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.

Reason read: Iran is beautiful in May…or so I’ve heard.

This book follows a chronology of the Middle East that begins in 1882 and ends in 1988. It could be seen as a love story, a biography about a region Friedman knows intimately and loves dearly despite its many contradictions. In spite of the ever-roiling Arab-Israeli conflict Friedman is right in the thick of it and writes as if he is at home. While he has a reporters flair for the detail there is a cavalier nonchalance when it comes to the dangers. He has grown used to the gunfire, the bombings and the kidnappings. His ambivalence in the face of such violence could almost be comical if it was not so conflicted.

Quotes that grabbed me, “Death had no echo in Beirut” (p 29). That spoke volumes to me. Here’s another, “Levin’s kidnapping, and the dozens that would follow, taught me a valuable lesson about journalism that one could learn only in a place like Beirut – to pay attention to toe silence” (p 74).

Book trivia: From Beirut to Jerusalem in the winner of the National Book Award of 1989.

Author fact: According to the dust jacket of From Beirut to Jerusalem Friedman had won five different awards by the time this book was published.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter simply called “The Middle East” (p 154).

Dining With Al-Qaeda

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Pope, Hugh. Dining With Al-Queda: Three Decades Exploring The Many Worlds of the Middle East. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010.

Thirty years is a long time and while I don’t think Hugh Pope spent all of tho0se thirty years researching his book, Dining with Al Qaeda, I think the thirty years gave him plenty of time for him to collect the juicer antidotes. Pope covers everything from culture to society to politics and of course, war. Even though Pope’s experience begins in 1980 there isn’t a logical layout to the format of the book and chronological order is almost nonexistent, making the text feel disjointed and, in some places, messy. However, despite being a seasoned journalist with the Wall street Journal, Pope takes on a tone of conversation and casual – something he admittedly was striving for. To further lighten the mood Pope included revealing photographs (all taken by him).

Reason read: Osama Bin Laden was assassinated on May 2, 2011.

Book trivia: The title, Dining with Al-Qaeda is a hook to draw the reader in. There is much more to the text than chowing with a terrorist.

Author fact: Pope wrote a book called Turkey Revealed that made the New York Times “notable” list.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 143).

Reading Lolita in Tehran

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Reading lolitaNafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2004.

The first thing I think as I am 13 chapters into Reading Lolita in Tehran is maybe, just maybe I should have read Lolita first. Yet, it is not just about Lolita. It’s also about Gatsby, Daisy Miller and Pride & Prejudice. Those, I have read. But, these four books are not the only ones Nafisi recommends. There is a whole list of them. I am tempted to start another challenge and add them to my “must read” list.

But, back to Reading Lolita in Tehran. Where do I start? Blanketing the entire story (nonfiction) is the outrage I felt. Professor Azar Nafisi must secretly meet with seven students to study Western classics, books that are forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I don’t know how they dared. Morality squads roamed the streets, raiding homes and shops whenever they wanted, fundamentalists took over the university where Nafisi formally taught, women are arrested for not wearing the veil, being seen in public with men other than their husbands, brothers or fathers, for wearing makeup…It just reminds me I am a spoiled Westerner who can paint my eyes black as night, show the curve of my neck, and most importantly, read any book I want.
Think of a braid. One strand is politics, another literature, the last society. This is Reading Lolita in Tehran. Woven over and under and throughout is Azar Nafisi’s life. Her personal views on relationships, society and of course, the books she loves. Because it’s her point of view and hers alone we have to trust that she is telling us the truth. Her truth. Here are my favorite quotes – some with my commentary after.

“Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all can paint now are the colors of my dreams” (p 11).
“I think I somehow felt that as long as I was conscious, nothing bad could happen, that bad things would come in the middle of my dreams” (p 45).
“Some people take up alcohol during periods of stress. I took up Jeff” (106).
“In the midst of gunshots and chants we hugged and chatted about the almost two decades since we had last seen each other” (p 148).
“The administration wanted us to stop working and at the same time pretend that nothing has changed” (p 151). ** I’m reminded of a relationship I once had when the entrapment was the same. **
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat” (p 170).
I became more anxious. Until then I had worried for the safety of my parents, husband, brother and friends, but my anxiety for my children overshadowed all” (170). ** I thought of my sister when I read this line. I think she would agree. **

Random comments~ I want someone to explain these things to me. How someone can be pompous and meek at the same time; how someone can speak precisely and leisurely; and how someone can murmur a defiant no. Just odd descriptors in my opinion.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust and the chapter called “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies and Memoirs” (p 162). I would say Nafisi’s story is a chapter of a memoir; a partial snapshot of a life.