Tag: war

The Siege

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Kadare, Ismail. The Siege. Translated by David Bellos. Canongate, 1970.

Reason read: Albania declared independence in November of 1912. They celebrate on the 29th. Read in honor of the day.

Kadare used his knowledge of the 1475 siege in Albania to write The Siege. It is not a factual nonfiction; not of actual events, but rather a retelling of war in general yet horrible terms; what any siege would sound, look, smell and even taste like. Using an army chronicler named Melva Celebi to tell the tale from the Turks’ (attackers) side of the siege, he described the actions of the janissaries, tumbrels, doctor, poet, astrologer, sultan, dervishes, architect, engineer, sappers, and wives. The alternating yet brief chapters were told from the perspective of the Albanians as they defended their citadel. Occasionally, the wives or prostitutes spoke of their perception of war.
Back to the plot: the attackers tried to breach the citadel walls with little success. First, a flurry of man to man combat. When that failed, their next move was to try to dig a tunnel up under the citadel. That also failed. Next the attackers tried to shut off the citadel’s main source of water. [As an aside, I thought using a thirsty horse to find the aqueduct was clever but cruel.] It was this tactic I found most disturbing. In order to know if the lack of water was affecting the besieged, the attackers needed a live Albanian to dissect to analyze his organs. This victim would signal if the enemy was weakened by dehydration. Not wanting to wait for the lack of water to take effect, the attackers then tried a new cannon which backfired (pun totally intended). The Turks’ final assault was to release diseased animals into the castle in hopes of poisoning the Albanians. Each attack was more frenzied than the one before while the besieged practiced stoic resilience.
In The Siege Kadare captured the utter gruesomeness of war: the chaos of men and horses screaming in pain, the slipperiness of blood and gore, the din of weaponry booming, the choking smoke, and stench of death everywhere. There is one striking scene when the chronicle and astrologer are observing a dead man’s face reflected in a shiny pool of oil, soon to be incinerated by the encroaching flames. This image will stay with me for a very long time. Kadare also describes the strategy of war: rations are running low. The attackers know they need another battle to lessen their numbers by 3-4 thousand men as a way to stretch supplies.

Line I liked, “Crows don’t pick out each other’s eyes” (p 236).

Author fact: Kadare was also a poet. He died when he was 88 years old.

Book trivia: The Siege was first titled The Drums of Rain but was changed to The Castle. The English translation is The Siege. It was the least unsatisfactory name for the English version.
And speaking of translation, I would love to know how they say willy-nilly in Albania.

Music: “Te Deum.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Albania” (p 12). Just a note about the index for this book. There is a different book with the same title. Both books are under the same indexing, but they should have separate entries.

Ender’s Game

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Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. Read by Stefan Rudnicki and Harlan Ellison. Macmillan Audio, 2004.

Reason read: October is Science Fiction Month.

Planet Earth is prepping for a galaxy war against the Buggers. The last skirmish was eighty years ago and Earth barely survived. Recruiting this time around has to be aggressive and highly tactical. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, born in a society of limiting offspring: only two children per family, is known as an extra or Third. As a Third Ender must leave planet Earth at six years old for a boarding school where he trains to be a soldier. He leads an army of other children and it is here that he proves to be a natural-born leader and a prodigy at winning battles. So the saga begins.
Back home, the proverbial power struggle between good and evil begins. While Ender grows into a tactical fighter, his brother Peter demonstrates increasing violent tendencies every day. Their sister, ironically named Valentine (the symbol of love) as the token female, stands in the middle of the two brothers.
One of the most fascinating elements of Ender’s Game is that Card challenges the assumption about reality and what is “normal.”

Author fact: the idea for Ender came when Card was sixteen years old. He was fascinated by the idea of a Battle Room.

Book Audio trivia: listening to the audio was a treat because Orson Scott Card explained his process for writing Ender’s Game. I had no idea the book was meant to be read aloud. Also, when Card first presented Ender’s Game he was told it was fantasy. He needed to change some details, bring in aliens to make it science fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

S

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Drakulic, Slavenka. S: a Novel About the Balkans. Penguin, 1999.

Reason read: the war in Bosnia started in the month of April.

To set the stage: in 1992 the Bosnian War was raging. S. was only twenty-nine years old. She was a home-room teacher proud of her profession. Single and young, she had her whole life ahead of her. Early one morning, and without warning, she was bundled off to a warehouse by a boyish soldier toting guns and more than plenty of ammunition. Naively, even though he did not say much, she thought she was going away for a short time. Wanting to be prepared for anything, she packed a small backpack with a red dress and her very best fancy shoes made for dancing.
You cannot help but notice any character or location of importance is anonymized with a single letter. S., G., F., and the baby are all nameless. Where they are going is an unnamed town. Despite being nameless the characters are full of personality. E. is a nurse. Z. is E.’s daughter. D. is the cook. You get the picture. This unwillingness to give characters and places formal names gives the story anonymity and, by default, more authenticity. These things further removes S. from the realm of pure fiction. When we first meet S. it is after her detainment and she has given birth to a child. Her character broke my heart. Her newborn baby boy is a product of rape and therefor despised. She sees the child as a disease, a cancer, a parasite, or, at the very least, a burden she is unwilling to carry much less look upon. Who can blame her? Her survival after four months of unthinkable torture is nothing short of heroic.
The soldier’s abuse was hard to read: forcing a woman to drink his urine, putting his cigarettes out on her naked body, striking her about the face until she passes out from pain. Rape seemed like the most benign atrocity. Murder seemed the most merciful. Drakulic takes pity on us: S is only 200 pages long.

Profound words, “…the survival instinct is the highest law of existence” (p 55).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Balkan Specters” (p 31).

Pity of War

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Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Perseus Books, 1999.

Reason read: Armistice Day is November 11th. We have been observing the day since 1918.

Ferguson thinks World War I is not given the respect it deserves. The Civil War and World War II are more widely written about than World War I. His book, The Pity of War, sets out to explain the war in detail by answering ten questions about the war:
1. Why didn’t the Germans win the war?
2. What kept the men fighting through terrible conditions?
3. What made the men finally stop fighting?
4. Who really won the peace?
5. Was World War I inevitable?
6. Why did Germany start the war?
7. Why did Britain get involved?
8. Did the war keep going due to well placed propaganda?
9. Was the war popular on the home front?
10. Why didn’t the British Empire defeat the Central Powers?
In truth, I felt that there was a sort of pissing contest going on about the different wars: which one lost the most men, which country financed which war more, how bloody was each battle…needless to say, they were all pretty horrible.
The table of International Alignments from 1815 to 1917 was pretty helpful. It is hard to believe that in the beginning there was Anglo-German cooperation surrounding finance. Ferguson describes the moments leading up to war minute by minute. Britain went to war at 11pm on August 14th, 1914. Can we learn from history? Few soldiers knew why they were fighting. they blames their involvement solely on the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. Here are other influences, the brilliant marketing of the Parlimentary Recruiting Committee: speeches, letters, posters, leaflets, surging military bands, and news articles. Psychological pressures of wives wanting brave husbands, the peer pressure of friends, the economy, national pride, ignorance of war, and sheer impulse to “try it.” Ferguson goes on to examine why soldiers stayed in the war even though it was sheer hell. He questions the positive effects of war and the adittance that some soldiers actually enjoyed the fight.
Ferguson’s Pity of War is chock full of detailed statistics like food consumption and the fact that Hitler did not approve of holiday cease-fire truces, such as Christmas Day.

Does an arms race accelerate the likelihood of war?
As an aside, Ferguson made me laugh with his tongue-in-cheek comment about George Bernard Shaw being “cranky.”
As another aside, I believe every man made decision is exactly that, man made. War. Peace. Debt. Excess. Behind it all is a person or a group of people. We have the power to change every wrong decision. When we say something is caught up in red tape, we are not talking about a machine denying us. We are talking about people denying people. If something is complicated it is because people, human beings, want it that way.

Author fact: Ferguson’s grandfather served in the Second Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. That explains his passion for World War I.

Book trivia: Pity of War contains black and white photographs of WWI images. Some of the photos are from the private collections of soldiers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

Hearts in Atlantis

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King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Scribner, 1999.

Reason read: Stephen King’s face should be in the dictionary next to the word ‘scary.’ Read in honor of Halloween.

Critics have cited King’s first novel, Carrie, when reviewing Hearts in Atlantis. Like Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis carries a running theme of the Vietnam War and psychological breakdowns. Like a television on in the background where no one is watching, the conflict begins as a faint constant presence, a hum, until it becomes a deafening roar by the end of the book. Despite having five separate narratives Hearts in Atlantis reads like a fragmented novel. The character narratives are sequential in nature, allowing the reading to stay connected to particular characters from beginning to end, even though the locations and stories change.
In the 254 page short novella that kicks off Hearts in Atlantis, “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” eleven year old Bobby Garfield just wants to buy a bicycle. It is his birthday and all his mother can afford is an adult library card. This is when Bobby is introduced to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the weird upstairs neighbor, Ted. Suddenly, adults are no longer the protectors he has always trusted. Predators lurk behind faces he has known all his life. Bobby was a good kid who slowly soured on doing the right thing. He sank lower into a life of crime – breaking windows, drinking, theft.
In the next short story, “Hearts in Atlantis,” we leave Bobby and follow Pete who ends up dating Bobby’s childhood girlfriend, Carol. Carol is now college-aged and she is the one who ties “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and “Hearts in Atlantis” together. In fact, she, together with the Vietnam war, are the linchpins that hold all of the stories together.

Lines I loved, “Put a glass of water next to Nate Hoppenstand and it was the water that looked vivacious” (p 262) and “In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act” (p 395). Truth.

Author fact: Stephen King is known for taking ordinary situations and making them scary as hell. In Hearts there are no monsters. Only what war can do to a person; how human nature can turn ugly and sinister.

Book trivia: I loved how the genesis of the peace symbol is explained in “Hearts in Atlantis.” I never knew it was the British Navy’s semaphore letters for nuclear disarmament.

Setlist: Andy Williams Singers, Animals, “Angel of the Morning”, Al Jolson’s “Mammy”, Allman Brothers, Beatles, Benny Goodman Orchestra, Bob Dylan, “Boom Boom”, “Bad Moon Rising”, Bobby Darin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Good”, Carpenters, Dave Clark Five, the Doors’ “Break On Through”, Dean Martin, Diane Renay’s “Navy Blue”, “Do You Know What I know?”, “Don’t You Just Know It” by Hury “Piano” Smith and the Clowns”, Danny and the Juniors, Donovan Leitch’s “Atlantis”, Dovells, “Dance to the Music”, Doors, Donna Summer’s “Bad Girl”, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, “Gimme Some Lovin'”, Gerry Miller, “Goin’ Up the Country”, “Hang on Sloopy”, Hare Krishna Chorale, Herman and the Hermits, “Insta Karma”, Jack Scott, Jo Stafford, Jimmy Gilmer’s “Sugar Shack”, “Let’s Work Together”, Little Richard, “Light My Fire”, Liz Phair, “Love is Strange”, “Louie, Louie”, Miracles, Mitch Miller, “Mack the Knife”, Mysterians’ “96 Tears”, “My Girl”, Neil Diamond, “Night and Day”, “Oh! Carol” by Neil Sedaka, Offspring, “The Old Rugged Cross”, “One O’Clock Jump”, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Anka, Petula Clark, Peter Frampton, Platters, Phil Och’s “I Aint Marching Anymore”, “Queen of the Hop”, “The Rainbows”, Rare Earth, “Red River Valley” Rolling Stones, Royal Teen’s “Short Shorts”, “Silent Night”, Sly and the Family Stone, Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints”, “Tequila” by the Champs, Tro Shondell’s “This Time”, William Ackerman, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, “Where the Boys Are”, and the Youngbloods.

Confessional: whenever I think of “Mack the Knife, “I think of a time when I was in my early twenties. The guy I was dating called a radio station to request a song. No one had a person phone back then. My true love had to run out to a payphone up a hill and around a building. I thought for sure he was going to request something romantic; something just for me. Nope. He requested “Mack the Knife.” When I asked him why Mack he said he just liked the song.
More connections to my life: I went to UMaine and dated a guy named Soucie. His twin was named AnneMarie. I also worked in the Bear’s Den.

BookLust Twist: Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

War and Remembrance

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Wouk, Herman. War and Remembrance: Vol. 1. Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Memorial Day in May.

War and Remembrance: Vol 1 covers the Americans at war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and even though it picks up where Winds of War left off, Wouk assures his reader that War and Remembrance can be read independently of Winds of War. I disagree to a certain degree. In Winds of War we have gotten to know the Henry family very well. You can’t help but get tangled in their lives. There is something about this passionate family! We have followed their adventures in love and war. Torrid affairs and wild ambitions have led each family member through various trials and tribulations. We rejoin Victor as he struggles to understand his feelings for the young and beautiful Pamela while traveling across the globe from the Soviet Union to Manila and Hawaii. His time on the Northampton set my teeth on edge. Natalie and Byron still haven’t rendezvoused on American soil. Natalie is still trapped in Italy with the young son Byron has never seen. Warren and Janice have welcomed a baby into their family, too, but Warren is always away, piloting top secret missions. Rhoda can’t decide between an absent husband and a totally different man, one more than willing to be there in the flesh. Like Winds of War, Wouk will take his reader to intimate places most are unlikely to go, like the belly of a thin-skinned submarine.
Military politics can be a fine line to balance upon. It can have career-ending ramifications to reject a vice admiral’s invitation to tea, for example. Wouk recreates military conversations that are fraught with tension and innuendo. His characters vibrate with drama. War and Remembrance is every bit as exciting as Winds of War.

Confessional: by now you know that I sometimes get hung up on the details. Here is one: Warren and Byron are sitting on the lawn, drinking beer straight from cans. Dad comes out and Warren produces a “frosty glass” for him. To create a “frosty glass” one has to chill the glass, most likely in a freezer. Why would they have such a glass out on the lawn while they are drinking straight from the can?
Second confessional: I knew something was going to happen when Warren’s mission does not go as rehearsed; when they alter the plan from what they practiced. That sense of foreboding was pungent.

Line I liked, “This isn’t the war we trained for, but its sure as hell the war we’ve got” (p 45).

Author fact: Wouk lived to be 103 years old.

Book trivia: War and Remembrance was dedicated to Abraham Isaac Wouk who didn’t make it to his sixth birthday.

Playlist: Bing Crosby, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Boogie Woogie Washer Woman”, “Der Fuchrer’s Face”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Hut-Sut Song”, “Lili Marlene”, “Reactionary Rag”, “Rozhunkes mit Mandlen”, “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, “Yah Ribon”

Nancy said: Pearl called War and Remembrance good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

For the Sake of All Living Things

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Del Vecchio, John M. For the Sake of All Living Things. Bantam Books, 1990.

Reason read: For the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge of 2023 I needed a book of historical fiction to pair with a nonfiction on the same subject. I am reading For the Sake of All Living Things with When Broken Glass Floats. Both books cover Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. A second reason is Cambodia had its monarchy restored in the month of September 1993.

I don’t care how many years pass. The plight of Cambodia in the years following the Vietnam War is atrocious. For the Sake of All Living Things is a difficult read. It is powerful. Powerful like a 250 pound man of all muscle punching you in the gut. From scenes when the poorest of poor farmers have to pay tolls or “donations” just to travel a road to the vicious methods of torture and killing (chopsticks driven into the brain via the ears, bodies cleaved in two, children buried alive) I was wincing the entire time I read For the Sake of All Living Things. Through fear and violence the dominance of the Khmer Rouge spreads like a staining black oil throughout Cambodia, indoctrinating and training villagers to become killing machines for the Pol Pot regime. The methods of brainwashing are subtle and sly. As a historical fiction For the Sake of All Living Things reads like a nonfiction because of the appropriate terminology, government reports and various strategic maps. At times I was internally cringing to be American.
I read somewhere that For the Sake of All Living Things is actually the second book in a trilogy about the Vietnam war, Cambodia and the Pol Pot year zero cleansing, and veterans coming home.

Author fact: While Del Vecchio has written a few other works, this is the only one I am reading for the Book Lust Challenge. Confessional: I am kind of relieved.

Book trivia: this should have been a movie or a mini-series. Maybe it is a movie. I don’t know. Everyone has made comparisons to The Killing Fields, the 1984 film directed by Roland Joffe.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about For the Sake of All Living Things.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Cambodia” (p 47).

Hiroshima

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Hersey, John. Hiroshima. Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

Reason read: There is a day in November that is celebrating in Japan called “Cultural Day.” Read Hiroshima to celebrate the day. I also needed a book with a one-word title for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge of 2022.

Isn’t it strange that in times of intense tragedy (like your country being at war), that one could be lulled into a false sense of security just because of the Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome? When the village of Hiroshima was bombed many people didn’t heed the warnings. Even those responsible for alerting others to oncoming attacks didn’t see it coming or want to believe it. As a common citizen, what are you supposed to do when the system you are taught to trust gives the “all clear” signal? How are you supposed to react to false alarm no. 42,364?
Hiroshima follows the lives of six Hiroshima bombing survivors from the moments before the blast on August 6th, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. to the aftermath of the following year: Miss Toshiko Sasaki, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, Mrs. Hatsyo Nakamura, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki (no relation to Miss Toshiko), Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto.
Fair warning: you will be privy to excruciating details about their injuries and subsequent health issues. People with no outward visible wounds had a delayed response to radiation sickness with symptoms difficult to fathom. Your heart will break to read of their confusion when trying to understand what happened to them. Theories and rumors about the “strange weapon” abounded. For example, for a while people assumed powdered magnesium was dumped on power lines, creating explosions and subsequent fires. Survivors believed they were doused with gasoline from airplanes high above them. As an American, born nearly twenty-five years after the attack, I hung my head in shame to read of the atrocities.
The edition of Hiroshima I read included a section called “Aftermath” and carefully detailed the rest of lives of the six survivors; how they lived out their remaining years. A few thrived after the attack, but most didn’t.

I like to learn things new when reading outside my comfort zone. The Japanese culture of families who move into their loved one’s hospital to care for them during an illness was fascinating. Family is everything. A decent burial for a loved one is far more crucial than adequate care for the living.

Quotes to quote, “…they could not comprehend or tolerate a wider circle of misery” (p 40).

Author fact: when I was reading up on John Hersey, I discovered his style of storytelling journalism was in its infancy and John was an early adopter of the method.

Book trivia: Do not let the size of the book fool you. While this is a short read (less that 200 pages), it packs a wallop. My 1988 edition included an additional chapter written forty years after the original.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Hiroshima.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1940” (p 175).

Mosquito

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Tearne, Roma. Mosquito. Europa Editions, 2008.

Reason read: Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaska’s party wins majority in elections (August 2020).

Mosquito has been compared to The English Patient and Atonement because of its theme of love in a time of war. Sri Lanka is a country torn apart. The Liberation Tigers want a separate Tamil state. Everyone is supposed to speak Singhala, the national language. There is violence over this mandated language. Mosquito is exquisite in its portraits of people. Each person lives and breathes with vitality. Notable author Theo Samarajeeva has fallen under the spell of a teenage artist (twenty-eight years his junoir) and, despite the growing conflicts, is brazen enough to think his fame will keep him safe. His latest book is being made into a movie. Teenaged Nulani Mendis (modeled after the author?) lost her father to the conflict. With a brother who can do no harm, a difficult uncle and an overbearing mother at home, Nulani finds solace and happiness painting Theo’s portrait over and over again. But she has also attracted the attention of Liberation Tiger convert, teenaged orphan Vikram. To watch Vikram being groomed and manipulated was hard. My favorite character was Sugi, Theo’s manservant who had become an unusual friend to the famous writer. His character is critical to the love affair between Theo and Nulani.
Tearne has captures poignant elements of grief. The not wanting to be near reminders of a loved one forever gone is very familiar to me. My only eye-rolling comment is the repeated insistence that 17-year-old Nulani is “wise beyond her years” as if this makes it okay for a man 28 years her senior to be attracted to her. My confessional: at the end of the book I wanted the fairytale ending. I didn’t care about the age difference and felt petty for doing so in the first place.

Lines I liked, “In this short intermission between twilight and darkness, a mysterious transformation had occured” (p 106) and “How many lives does a man have to live before he can finally be at peace?” (p 131). A little Bob Dylan, anyone?

Author fact: which came first, Roma Tearne the artist or the author?

Book trivia: Mosquito was shortlisted fothe 2007 Costa First Novel Award.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Mosquito other than to explain the plot.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Scenes From Sri Lanka” (p 196).

Love Thy Neighbor

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Maass, Peter. Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Reason read: History books state the Bosnian War started in on April 6th 1992 despite earlier acts of violence.

April 1st, 1992. My father was five months and twenty days away from dying. On that day, Serbians commenced their brutal attack on Bosnia. I think I might have done damage to my psyche to read about Bosnia and Guernica in the same month…To wipe out an entire community or ethnicity for absolutely no reason other than pure dominance is unfathomable.
Line that gave me pause, “There was even a slip of paper from the library saying they didn’t posses any overdue books” (p 86). Imagine giving up everything you own, including items you don’t, like books borrowed from the library. The business of the bureau for ethnic cleansing demanded Bosnians claim they handed over all worldly possessions to a Serbian. This act does not encompass the horrific violence, but rather the senseless humility.
About the violence. Most of the time I found myself twisting and twitching in my chair, wanting to turn away from the sentences of torture Maas wrote. I am one of those fat and happy and white privileged people who blissfully and ignorantly cite misunderstanding when it comes to the war in Bosnia. I was oblivious to the death and destruction with the exception of what the U.S. media decided or cared to reveal to me. What baffles me the most is that, like the Hutu and Tutsi, Serbs and Bosnians at one time got along like neighbors and family. Another war similarity from forty years earlier, like Franco denying the bombing of Guernica, Serbia denied the bombing of Bosnia was their responsibility. Death and destruction is not a macabre mirage and yet they do refuse see or own it. The practice of modern warfare with age-old atrocities was hard to read. Reporters and journalists had the luxury of escaping Sarajevo – taking a break was not an option for its entrapped residents. Maas takes his time to carefully humanize the narrative by inserting personal anecdotes from his own life.

Quotes to quote, “They didn’t wear normal uniforms, they didn’t have many teeth, and they didn’t want us there” (p16), “At the time, I didn’t think there was anything strange about flying through the air with 35,000 pounds of feta cheese” (p 23), “If surrealism had not existed, Bosnia would have invented it” (p 28).

Playlist: Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way,” Ringo Starr, Guns N’ Roses, Edith Pilaf’s “Je ne regrette rien,”Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Ella Fitzgerald, Mick Jagger, Louis Armstrong, Ike and Tina Turner.

Author fact: Maas has written a bunch of other books, but I am only reading Love Thy Neighbor for the Challenge.

Book trivia: As an aside, it is a shame the public library from which I borrowed Love Thy Neighbor had to plastic cover the book. The original material would have felt good to hold.

Nancy said: Peter said Love Thy Neighbor “expose(s) the horror of life during wartime in the former Yugolavia” and Maas is more “visceral” about his writing (Book Lust p 31).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Balkan Specters” (p 31).

Picasso’s War

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Martin Russell. Picasso’s War: the Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece that Changed the World. Dutton, 2002.

Reason read: the bombing of Guernica happened on April 26th, 1937. Read in honor and memory of the lives lost that day.

On May 11th, 1937, only two weeks after the insurgent Nazi Condor Legion bombed Guernica, Spain, Pablo Picasso commenced painting his famous masterpiece. While Picasso’s War celebrates Picasso’s work of art, “Guernica,” it also paints a biography of Picasso, the passionately flawed man. Picasso who couldn’t stay faithful to one woman; Picasso who saved everything ever given to him. As an aside, these two details make me believe I would have never gotten along with him. As a painter, his art was as polarizing as cilantro. In 1981 the famous painting still had to be protected from terrorists with armed guards.
Coincidentally, Martin was standing in from of “Guernica” on September 11th, 2001.
As an aside, I love books that make me want to explore more. I looked up Picasso’s cartoons “Dream and Lie of Franco” because of Russell’s book.
The biggest surprise for me was learning of Herbert Southworth, an unsung hero of the Guernica saga. He had a clerical job at the Library of Congress and he was convinced he could get to the bottom of who actually bombed Guernica. Despite denials, he needed to convince the American public of Franco’s threat to Democracy.

Author fact: Martin also wrote Beethoven’s Hair which was a bestseller. I am only reading Picasso’s War for the reading Challenge.

Book trivia: I wanted photography in Martin’s book. If nothing else, just a picture of Picasso’s famous Guernica for reference.

Playlist: Beatles and Joan Baez.

Nancy said: Pearl said Picasso’s War was “wonderfully readable” (Book Lust To Go p 90).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Guernica” (p 89).

Lost

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Treichel, Hans-Ulrich. Lost. Translated by Carol Brown Janeway. Pantheon Books, 1999.

Reason read: April is known for April Fool’s Day. Lost is known for its black humor.

Who is more important? The son who didn’t go missing in1945 or the lost son who has the potential to be found? When we think of war, we think of brave soldiers on the battlefield; soldiers sustaining horrific wounds and giving up previous lives. We hardly think of the refugees, the byproducts of conflict. Treichel tells the German story of an-every wartime family fleeing Russian encroachment. In haste and confusion, an infant is handed off for safe keeping, never to be seen again. Despite having a second son, the parents never forget their firstborn son, Arnold. When this second son is told the story of his missing older brother he is only eight years old and wise enough to know that if Arnold is found, his life will change forever. As the younger and more insignificant brother, he will have to share everything he has had to himself for his entire life. Thus begins his story of his parents’ obsessive journey to identify Arnold. Told through the first person lens of an eight year old, the narration is at turns darkly funny and heartbreaking.
Treichel speaks volumes in the things he doesn’t say, “…the dreadful thing that the Russians had done to them, my mother in particular” (p 13). Is he talking about the event when his older brother was “lost” or something more sinister? Is he implying rape?

Author fact: Lost is Treichel’s first novel.

Book trivia: Lost has been called a “small masterpiece” by several reviewers. Indeed, being only 136 pages long, it is a tiny but well written book. Interestingly enough, there are no chapters or even paragraphs.

Nancy said: While Lost is mentioned twice, neither time does Pearl say anything more about the book than to describe the plot.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust twice. First in the chapter called “Black Humor” (p 40). and then again in the chapter called “First Novels” (p 87).

First World War

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Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Reason read: November 11th is Armistice Day. Read for the veterans.

World War One rocked our planet to its core. There wasn’t a corner of the globe that didn’t feel its effects in some way or another. Historians like John Keegan call it the Great War because it left over ten million people dead and countless others shattered both mentally and physically beyond recognition. As Keegan explains, it was the first time world powers used ferocious modernized brutality to subdue their military enemies along with innocent women, children, and livestock. No living creature stood a chance against this new age of warfare. Keegan pushes you into the muddy trenches, onto the blood soaked battle fields, and into the intimate lives of courageous but doomed soldiers. Against this bloody backdrop Keegan also brilliantly sheds light on secret political and religious negotiations, heated war-room strategies, and closed-door council room debates. With Keegan you travel to the Western front, East Africa, the Carpathians and beyond. This is a comprehensive history of one of the most polarizing events known to man.

Confessional: I am usually not a history fanatic, especially when it comes to war of any kind.
Second confessional: I am not a proofreader by any means, but this seems a little too obvious a mistake to overlook, “The French did not speak English, French scarcely any French; General Henry Wilson, Deputy Chief of Staff, translated” (The First World War p 103).

Author fact: Keegan is the master of historical warfare. I am also reading The Second World War for the Challenge.

Book Trivia: The Frist World War offers three sections of photographs and a bunch of maps, all in black and white.

Plat list: “Sambre et Meuse,” and “Le Chant du depart”

Nancy said: Pearl said there are many good general military histories and Keegan’s is one of them.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

The Photographer

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Guibert, Emmanuel, Didier Lefleve, and Frederic Lemercier. The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders. New York: First Second, 2009.

Reason read: Afghanistan gained its independence from British rule in July 1919.

I didn’t know what to expect when I read a review of The Photographer, calling it a “photographic graphic novel.” It is quite unique and simply put, amazing. In three parts, The Photographer tells the story of how the aid workers of Medecins Sans Frontieres, smuggled across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan disguised as women in chadri, provided medical support to small communities during conflict. Didier Lefleve, a French photojournalist, traveled with the group to Zaragandara during the Afghan-Soviet War of 1986. In this district of Yaftali Sufla MSF establishes a field hospital while staffing a second one. The final part is Didier Lefleve’s nearly disastrous solo departure from Afghanistan. As the tagline for MSF reads, “We go where we are needed most,” The photographs and journal of Lefleve tell the entire story in intimate detail. It is a powerful print documentary.
It seems impossible for there to be humor in The Photographer, especially when you read of children with their eyes apparently glued shut and paralyzed by shrapnel, but it exists. One word: peaches. I confess. I giggled. That’s all I can say about that.
Most amazing fact: despite the reality they are fighting the Russians, Afghan doctors are able to obtain x-rays for patients, disguised as English speaking colleagues. they send men who are too old to be conscripted. No one suspects the men of being part of the resistance.

As an aside, I have supported MWF (known by the American subsidiary as Doctors Without Borders), for years. I first learned of the organization when Natalie would invite members to speak about their work during a set break in her concerts. I shared Natalie’s pride when they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. I appreciated learning about Juliette Fournot, the woman who started the US arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Author facts: Emmanuel Guibert is an accomplished graphic novelist. I am only reading one of his works. Didier Lefleve died way too young at only 49 years of age. Frederic Lemercier was the mastermind behind the layout and coloring of The Photographer.

Book trivia: The English translation of The Photographer was publisher in 2009. Lefleve didn’t live long enough to see it. He passed from a heart attack in 2007.

Playlist: Michel Jonasz

Nancy said: Pearl called The Photographer “one of the best books” she read in 2009.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires” (p 3).

Testament of Experience

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Brittain, Vera. Testament of Experience: An Autobiographical Story of the Years 1925 -1950. Wide View Books, 1981.

Reason read: to continue the series started in May in honor of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. As an aside, Vera watched the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

At the start of Testament of Experience Vera is newly married and trying to juggle a relationship with a man she has only known for two years and a career as a writer and journalist. From her style of writing the reader can find evidence of Brittain maturing her focus since Testament of Youth. She no longer speaks of an entire generation experiencing war. On the brink of World War II and focusing on herself personally, she repeatedly feels the strain of inequality as she watches her husband enjoy a balance of employment and home life while she is expected to chose between relationships, motherhood, and a career. This only fuels her feminist fire as she hungers for a life she can put into words. She needs to experience life in order to have something to convey to the world. What does she write about if she cannot experience extraordinary things? As time goes by the threat of war becomes reality and as Brittain starts traveling, her life grows increasingly imbalanced. Living more often apart than together, her marriage to “G.” is a series of rendezvous when their careers allow. As an author she experiences the threat of rejection at the same time as the thrill of success as Testament of Youth becomes a best seller. Motherhood is a confusing conflict with her pacifist endeavors lecturing around the globe. As an aside, Vera’s advocacy for peace through her fortnightly Peace Letters attracts the attention of the Gestapo and as a result Testament of Youth was banned in Germany.

Author fact: Brittain wrote a fourth “Testament” book called Testament of a Generation which is not on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: Testament of Experience is the sequel to Testament of Youth even though Testament of Friendship was published in between Youth and Experience.

Playlist: “Old Man Noah,” “The Bells of Hell,” and “Sweet Adeline,”

Nancy said: Pearl only called Testament of Experience a continuation of Testament of Youth. Nothing more specific.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Living Through War” (p 054).