My 2022 Retrospective

                                                              

I discovered that there had been 56,041 total views for this blog at the end of 2021.  There are now 64,387 views. This means that there were 8,346 views in 2022. 

The Goodreads statistics that I am including in this post are:

40 reads recorded on my profile for 2022

4 reads with a five star rating.

 

Below are my five star reads from 2022 which are the recipients of:

The Golden Mask Awards

Disability Pride by Ben Mattlin

I thought this was an interesting and insightful book, though I sometimes had a hard time figuring out what Mattlin intended to say.

How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walters

I learned a great deal from this book including that a country in the middle zone between democracy and autocracy is called an anocracy.

Disposable People by Kevin Bales

To many the existence of contemporary slavery is a shocker.  It's illegal, but that doesn't prevent it from existing.

Pelosi by Molly Ball

Looking back on how much Pelosi has accomplished through the pages of this biography felt very worthwhile to me.

Please note that there is no fiction among my top reads.  This is because there was no five star fiction in 2022.

Although my top reads were extraordinary, I read fewer books than the previous year which was disappointing.

 

               

                         

A Tempest of Death: A Terrifying Historical Novel

  Book Whisperer, a website for indie authors, asked me to review this book.  They contacted me on behalf of the author, Peter V. Wright.  My time for blogging is more limited these days.  I started A Tempest of Death on November 12 and finished it November 30. 

 

                               

There were medieval and 20th century viewpoint characters in this novel.  I was grateful that the chapter headings with dates allowed me to keep track of when I was chronologically.

On the other hand, there was too much unnecessary history to wade through.  I might have finished this book sooner if there hadn't been so much historical information to record in my journal that I thought might be relevant for this review.

A Tempest of Death did occasionally educate me.  I have often seen "Albigensian",  but I never knew what it meant.  I decided to research it when I came across it in my notes.  I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that Albigensians  are the inhabitants of the prefecture of Albi in Southern France, and that the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi.  So the Albigensian Crusade described in this book took place in Albi.

Author Peter Wright's realism was admirable.  I can tell you that I was indeed immersed in the narrative, but sometimes felt overwhelmed.  This book is horrifying because it contains massive amounts of religious violence and genocide.  I have known about such real monstrous events.  So I have never needed to read about fictional monsters in order to experience horror. Real history is definitely horrifying enough.  I don't enjoy reading about those horrors, nor do I need reminders that they happened.  I have known holocaust survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms.  Readers who were born more recently and may have lived in protected environments, could experience genuine shock that humans do such things to members of their own species.  If you are such a reader, you have been warned by this review that A Tempest of Death contains this type of content.   

 

                                  

     

 

 

 

 

Early Grave: The Final Novel of the Lassiter Series

My only read of November 2022 that I'm reviewing on this blog is the legal thriller Early Grave by Paul Levine which was sent to me by publicist Wiley Saichek.  This is the fourth book I've reviewed  from Levine's Lassiter series on this blog.  The previous three of these novels were Bum Luck , Bum Deal and Cheater's Game.  My reviews of those books can be found at their respective hyperlinks.  I decided that I could reveal that Early Grave is the last book in the Lassiter series because this information has already appeared in the description of Early Grave on Goodreads.  

                                    

 It's been two years since I last encountered Levine's protagonist, lawyer Jake Lassiter .   Lassiter's health, never very good because of the repeated concussions that he received when he was a professional football player, has declined even more in Early Grave.  Yet he has soldiered on.  At this phase of his career, he has been prosecuting  dishonest or incompetent lawyers.  

Lassiter went to a high school football game because his godson, Rod, was on the team.  Rod was seriously injured and ended up in the hospital.  Lassiter was bothered by the lack of a physician on the field when Rod was injured. 

 So he filed a lawsuit to temporarily enjoin high school football games until it  could be determined that they were safe.  The definition of enjoin that I am using in this context is "to prohibit by judicial order" which is a quote from Merriam-Webster.  

Regarding attitudes toward lawyers, Jake says "They don't call us sharks for our ability to swim."  I've never considered lawyers as a whole predatory.  I think that any profession contains predatory individuals, but there are also well-meaning lawyers who may even be idealistic.  After all, there are lawyers who do pro-bono work.  

If we didn't have lawyers, people would have to defend themselves in court with varying degrees of success.  People who don't have the ability to argue well would be at a disadvantage.  So would people who couldn't afford to pay legal expenses which are considerable. It seems to me that without lawyers our society would be even more unjust and lacking in equality than it is now.

The opposing lawyer in this case, mentioned that participation in high school football had been declining for the last ten years.  I found an article on the National Federation of State High School Associations website about the decline of participation in high school sports in general at NFHS.org.  I noted that they said they were working to make  high school football as safe as possible by "teaching proper tackling skills".   

The poet Langston Hughes and his poem "Let America Be America Again" was brought up in this novel. I wasn't familiar with this poem and did a search for it.  I found it here. Though the style isn't what I prefer in poetry, I thought it was thematically significant.  I recommend reading it. 

The resolution wasn't surprising to me, but I still found it moving.  I will give Early Grave four stars on Goodreads.

                           

                                    

 

 

 

A Novel Dealing With The Iranian Jewish Community Circa WWII

A publicist asked me to read Love and War in the Jewish Quarter by Dora Levy Mossanen for review.  That was back in July.  I'm terribly sorry that it has taken so long for me to finish reading it. It's a World War II period novel, but being set in Iran makes it unusual.  I would like to thank publicist Emi Battaglia for sending me an advance copy of Mossanen's novel.  Love and War in the Jewish Quarter will appear on November 8.

One thing that drew me to this book is that Mossanen was born in Israel when it was in the process of becoming a state.  My grandmother was born in what would become Israel, though it was a good deal earlier than Mossanen.

                                        

Love and War in the Jewish Quarter opens in Tehran in 1941.  The main protagonist is a Jewish dentist who treats the Governor of Iran and his wife.  The dentist, Dr. Soleiman Yoran, had introduced novocaine to Iran.  He had brought his supply of novocaine from Paris where he went to dental school.

Soleiman's wife, Ruby, had died in childbirth.  Ruby had been a rebel.  I need to explain that during all Jewish synagogue services there were separate sections for men and women.  This is still the case among Orthodox Jews.  Among other Jewish sects, families are currently allowed to sit together for prayer. Mossanen reveals a scandalous incident when Ruby went into the men's section during the Sabbath service and sat down next to Soleiman.  This caused general consternation, but they stayed together smiling and holding hands.   I was smiling myself as I read this because I was brought up Orthodox, and could imagine how shocked everyone was.  Ruby continued to sit next to Soleiman at Sabbath services.  Over time increasingly fewer men attended.

We learn that Iranian Jews were required to have houses with low doors so they had to bow low as they left their homes.  Jews also weren't allowed to leave their homes on rainy days because they could supposedly drip Jewishness and defile Muslims.  So Iran was far from an ideal environment for Jews.

On the day when Soleiman was about to marry his second wife, he was summoned to the governor's bedside.  The governor had taken an opium overdose because he had been in terrible dental pain. Soleiman knew that he would be blamed for the governor's death.  He prevailed on a high official not to announce that the governor had died until the next day, so that Soleiman could get married.  

Velvet, the governor's wife, had inherited all his wealth.  She brought a sack of gold coins to Soleiman's wedding saying it was a wedding gift from the governor.   Soleiman said he couldn't accept it.  The father of the bride hauled the sack away saying it could be used by Tehran's Jewish community to build a hospital or other important projects.

I found Soleiman a sympathetic character and I admired him.  I also thought that Mossanen wrote very authentically about Jews.

The book ends with Soleiman's wedding to his second wife.  We don't find out what happens to Soleiman afterward. I would like to believe that he and his second wife successfully fled Iran, and eventually settled in Palestine.

From the acknowledgements I learned that Mossanen had felt for the first time that writing was lonely when she finished the manuscript of Love and War in the Jewish Quarter during a Covid quarantine. 

 I hope that Mossanen will write other books dealing with the less known aspects of Jewish history like this one.

                                

     

 

 

                                

 

 

Navajo Photographer Protagonist in a Mystery

 In order to make sure I would get a mystery read in September, I got one picked out even before I'd arrived at the halfway point. It was Shutter by Ramona Emerson.  The copy I'm reviewing is a library book.  The protagonist is a photographer which isn't all that unusual.  I've reviewed several books with photographer protagonists on this blog-- most recently Michael Angelo & the Stone Mistress by Steve Moretti.  Yet this is my first Navajo photographer protagonist. 

                             
                                 

As the book opens, Navajo Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer.  This means that she photographs crime scenes. Yet she also sees spirits which isn't a trait that would be considered compatible with professionalism in most work environments.  Needless to say, Rita must be careful not to reveal her paranormal gift  to officers in the Albuquerque PD. 

Being paranormally gifted, isn't the only way that Rita's job is problematic. I also knew that the Navajo avoid mentioning the dead or even the names of dead relatives.  So it seemed to me that Rita's job was extremely incompatible with her culture.  

The issue of the Navajo belief that the spirits of the dead (called "chindi" in mysteries by Tony Hillerman) could contaminate them, arose when Grandma took Rita to a church where ghosts were lingering.  I wondered why Navajo spirits of the dead would linger if they believed they were contaminating people that they loved.  Her grandfather's spirit worried that inimical spirits could make Rita crazy.

I was interested in the fact that Rita's neighbor was evidently a curandera.  Curandismo is a a Mexican healing tradition. She rubbed Rita with an egg, then she cracked the egg into a glass of water and told Rita to put the egg in the glass of water under her bed.  "Whoever has their eye on you will let you go," said the curandera.  There were also jars to put in each corner of the room.  Rita thought it was superstition.  I think that Rita's lack of belief in the measures that Rita's neighbor was taking to protect Rita would undermine their efficacy.

<Spoilers--

Rita learned Police Lieutenant Garcia was behind most of the local distribution of meth. This was a major revelation.  I wondered if Garcia did that because Latinos were being discriminated against when it came to advancement in the police department.  

End spoilers.>

It was mentioned in this book that Saint Veronica is the patron saint of photography.  Since I had never heard this before, I looked for a confirming link.  I found it at St. Veronica which links to a page about this saint's connection to photography.  Since Rita doesn't seem to be a devout Catholic, I didn't think that St. Veronica would have been significant for Rita.

There is a positive resolution to the book from a law enforcement perspective.  I decided to give the book a B+

                             

The Ambiguous Impact of Simone Weil

 I decided to read On The Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil translated from French by Simon Leys because the title attracted my attention.  I also wanted to read a translated book by a woman during August which is Women in Translation month.

 

                                                                 

Simon Leys says in his translator's forward that "taking a conscience vote" in Parliament should be considered a pleonasm.  Pleonasm was an unfamiliar word to me.  I looked it up and discovers that it means redundancy.   

I wondered about Leys' perception.   Aren't members of Parliament supposed to be representing their districts, not themselves as individuals?  So therefore it's not true that they should always be voting according to their own beliefs.  They should be doing what their constituents want and need.  Representing their constituents is what's expected of members of Congress in the United States.  If  members of Congress don't do that, then the United States fails as a democracy. 

Leys, writing in 2012, says that although Weil wrote On The Abolition of All Political Parties 70 years ago, it's particularly relevant now.  Looking at politics in the United States in 2022, I think it's not just relevant but urgent.  I am an Independent who doesn't subscribe to political parties.   I realize that I am in the minority in my extremely partisan country.  

Weil writes that people join political parties in order to be politically effective even if the party doesn't represent their own beliefs and principles.  I don't understand why voters don't consider it counter-productive to achieve political success at the price of sacrificing their principles.  That isn't a victory for the voters.   It's a victory for the politicians who want to have power. 

Poet Czeslaw Milosz's essay "The Importance of Simone Weil" was included in this volume.  Milosz tells us that Simone Weil's support for labor unions caused her to go to work in factories for a year to experience what labor was like.  She contributed her pay to the labor unions.  Milosz says that Weil felt like a slave after having worked in the factories.  She died of malnutrition in a sanitorium.   I have questions.  Was her commitment to that institution voluntary or involuntary?  Did she die of malnutrition because she refused to eat or because the institution was starving her?   The answers to these questions would determine how I see Simone Weil.  

Weil apparently considered the Roman Empire a totalitarian society.  Totalitarianism was impossible until the existence of surveillance technology.  The Romans weren't capable of being totalitarians in our modern sense.  

Milosz said that both he and Albert Camus were drawn to Weil because of her certainty.  Camus was an atheist who doubted atheism and Milosz was a Christian who doubted Christianity.   Simone Weil had said that there were Pagans who were "naturally Christian" and Christians who were "naturally Pagan".  It seems to me that religious beliefs aren't innate.  There is no such thing as a natural adherent to a religion.   You are persuaded to become a religious adherent by your exposure to the religion and its beliefs.  

If I had to try to sum up the influence of Simone Weil on our present times, I don't think that I could do it.  There are unanswered questions that make her life and legacy unclear to me.  So I am inconclusive about Simone Weil at this point.

 

                                           

   

                              

                             

The Clerk's Tale: A Medieval Mystery With Too Many Characters

 I purchased a used copy of The Clerk's Tale by Margaret Frazer from a library sale cart.  It's the 11th book in a mystery series.  There have been 17 books in this series.  I've read a number of them long ago before I was online which was late in the 20th century.  I don't recall having read this particular book.  I'm sure it didn't exist when I was reading earlier books in this series.

I've seen reviewers complain about an excessive number of characters making a novel too complex to follow.  This is the first time that I thought so.  Maybe I'm losing the ability to track all these characters that I once had.  All I know is that I had to page back more than once to where characters were introduced in order to identify them. I also wished that I had been reading this book on Kindle so that I could find past references to characters more easily.  It occurs to me that Kindle features have made me a lazy reader.  I don't have to remember a long list of characters and who they are, if I can find that information using Kindle searches.  It's a possibility.   

Now I need to get into other aspects of The Clerk's Tale, so I can consider this a proper blog review. 

 

                                   

 

While I was reading this book, it seemed odd to me that characters mentioned that Nichola was rather young to be a wife at sixteen.  I've read that it was common during the medieval period to marry girls in their teens to men in their thirties or forties.  I've seen many references in  books to fourteen year old medieval wives. Yet in a search I did for this review, I found an essay here called "This Is What It Was Like To Be A Teenager in the Middle Ages" by Oxford history professor Rachel Moss that indicated that marrying adult men to teen girls wasn't a common practice during that period, and states that medieval people were aware that teenagers weren't fully mature.  So it seems that  The Clerk's Tale is more accurate than other medieval novels that I've read containing teen brides.

Lady Agnes asks protagonist Sister Frevisse to read aloud a Chaucer tale that I've never heard of called "The Tale of Sir Topas".  Apparently, Chaucer intended it to be humorous.  The characters who listened to Frevisse read it laughed.  So apparently Chaucer succeeded in conveying humor to them.  I'm not sure if I would have reacted similarly.  Chaucer might have been disappointed with my reaction. When I read the summary which said that it involved a search for the Elf Queen, I thought that I would have been more intrigued than amused.  But then, I'm a fantasy fan. 

Getting into the mystery aspect, which didn't interest me as much as the historical context, I wondered why the jury for one of the murders was formed from people who experienced an event associated with the murder.  Perhaps during the medieval period objectivity wasn't considered as important in the jury selection process as it is now. It seemed like trials were ad hoc affairs, and that having the trial take place ASAP was a much greater priority than it is now.  The trial took place before an investigation was called for which seems backwards to me. 

 I've read many medieval mysteries that didn't seem so alien as this one did.  I think that the mystery aspect wasn't as strong as the history content.  Yet there was also some good character development which increased my estimation of the book.