My 2023 Retrospective

 

 

 

 Would you believe that I had almost twice as many views of this blog in 2023 as I had in 2022?  I'm astonished.  I read fewer books this year and posted fewer reviews.  Nice to know that so many more people wanted to see them.  I had a total of 64,387 views in this blog's entire history as of the end of  2022 and 79,622 total views at the end of 2023.

So in 2022 I had 8,346  views.   This year I had 15,235 views.  To me, that's a staggering statistic, but I'm glad to see it.  I must be doing something right.  

I read 37 books this year which is three fewer than last year. On the other hand, I had four five star reads, which is the same number as last year.  So I'm holding steady, but I hope I will have more five star reads in 2024.

Without further delay, I will now post those four books, which are the recipients of the Golden Mask Awards for 2023.

The Doctor and the Saint  by Arundhati Roy

This book caused me to re-evaluate Gandhi.  He apparently had typical prejudices against the Dalits who are the lowest caste in the Hindu religion.  This means that he shouldn't really be viewed as some sort of saint.

When We Do Harm  by Danielle Ofri

This book revealed how and why doctors make errors. We need to know that the practice of medicine is far from perfect despite the best intentions of medical doctors.  Doctors are human beings who are capable of making mistakes. 

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields  by Christina Lamb

This book dealt with rape in the context of war.  Lamb obtained the stories of wartime rape survivors.  I hope that Our Bodies, Their Battlefields will have an impact that will increase the prosecution of rape during wars.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

This year I had an A rated novel. So I would like to celebrate that fact. It's also the best mystery I read in 2023, but what most impressed me about it is the way the violinist author portrayed the relationship between the musician protagonist and his violin.  As I wrote in my review, "This novel lives and breathes music."  Bravo!

                              

The Amish Wife: A Frightening Non-Fiction Book

 I received a hardcover copy The Amish Wife by Gregg Olsen in the mail. I'm not certain if it was directly from the publisher Thomas & Mercer or from the publicist Jennifer Musico, who has sent me quite a number of e-books.  I finished The Amish Wife on December 23.  I am writing this review on 12/24.  It was about a real life monster.

                                     

 

Apparently, the first book that Gregg Olsen wrote about killer Eli Stutzman,  Abandoned Prayers, isn't very different from The Amish Wife except for containing details about Stutzman's sex life. So readers who really don't want to know those details, would be better off reading The Amish Wife. I'm one of those who will probably never read Abandoned Prayers.

The Amish Wife states that the Amish believe that saying negative things about someone reflects poorly on the speaker.  Jews also believe this.  It's called Lashon Hara. (This is Hebrew for "evil tongue".)  This belief is probably why Amish were unwilling to say things they knew about Eli.  Olsen calls Eli "an Amish fabulist".  I understand "fabulist" to mean someone who tells stories that are either not completely true or absolutely false.  The stories with elements of truth are the most insidious because listeners need to determine when the fabulist is lying. 

Olsen tells us that the only way a marriage could be ended in the Amish community was death.  He believed that Eli killed his wife, Ida.  Eli was evidently gay and wanted out of his marriage.  So Olsen thinks the fabulist manufactured a story about her death that would allow him to evade responsibility for it. 

 Eli was the one who reported his wife's death to the authorities. His story about his wife being woken up by a fire in the barn and then wanting to milk the cows instead of rushing to get them out of the barn is a real doozy though.  I don't know how anyone could have believed that.  Ida's death was officially an accident.

Eli also made up stories about his son, Danny.  At the age of two, he allegedly wrote a note that he had fun on the beach.   I don't know of any brilliant two year olds who can write.  I learned to write at age six in first grade like most children. A two year old could theoretically learn to write, but there are prerequisites for writing.  I read online that children need to learn to draw to develop manual dexterity before they learn to write.  This makes sense to me.  Obviously, they also need to learn the alphabet.

At the age of nine Danny was found in a ditch frozen to death on Christmas Eve.  As I write this paragraph, it's still Christmas Eve 2023 and therefore the anniversary of that poor child's death. I wanted to cry when I read that.  He was supposedly a brilliant prodigy at two, but it looks like Eli couldn't be bothered with Danny seven years later.  I wish that Danny had been removed from Eli's custody before that happened.

I found Eli Stutzman's mug shot at a website called Daily Crime for those readers who are interested.  He looked like the sort of person who didn't care about anyone or anything.  He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1985, but was released in 2005. Stutzman committed suicide in 2007.  Good riddance!

 I can't say that I enjoyed this book,  but it was eye opening that this happened in the Amish community.  I suppose that the Amish are like everyone else.  They run the gamut of personalities.  Some Amish people try to behave decently toward their fellow human beings, and there may be a few who perform notable acts of benevolence, and then there are the people whose lives are horrors like Eli Stutzman.   I could never write one book about Stutzman, let alone two.  I wouldn't want to live with Stutzman's terrible actions for the length of time it would take to research and write about him.  This book was about terrible events.  It was well-researched and convincing, but I would be very happy not to encounter such a monster in the pages of a book in the foreseeable future.   True crime isn't a genre that appeals to me.  I hope my next read deals with people who don't make me feel sick.

                                 

 

 

The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr: A Petticoat Diplomat

 I considered whether this book could be considered my first strong female protagonist of 2023, so I could review it on my other blog that is devoted to strong female protagonists, Flying High Reviews.  I haven't reviewed any books there this year.  I decided that Mary Emmons didn't qualify even though the back cover blurb says she is a strong protagonist.  I think it's because she is a real historical individual. The complexity of a real person means that she won't have the stature that I want in a strong fictional protagonist.  That's the way I feel anyway.  We'll see if I can read any fiction with a strong female protagonist in December.  I hope so.

This is the second novel of Susan Holloway Scott, who is a bestselling author.  I read very few books by bestselling authors.  The last one I read was  Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: An Anthology Edited by Jeffrey Deaver in November 2020.  It will probably be some time before I read another book by a bestselling author.  

Petticoat Diplomat, the subtitle of this review, is a quote from Mrs. Prevost, who is a major character in the book.

                          

There is a mention of Elizabeth Freeman who was the first African American slave to sue for and win her freedom in the state of Massachusetts during 1781.  In this book, a fictional version of Alexander Hamilton said this would never become a precedent in law because the Southern states wouldn't agree.  Yet it did become an important precedent in the state of Massachusetts.  In fact, it was one of the precedents that brought about the abolition of slavery in that state.  

Yet  The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr  largely took place in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York.  The Articles of Confederation governed the U.S. for almost that entire period.  The Constitution wasn't ratified until close to the end of this book. 

I liked this book enough to give it a B+ which means it will have four stars on Goodreads.  I have only one A rated novel so far in 2023 .  Since the year is almost over, I don't really expect that I will read another novel that I will consider that exceptional. We'll see. There is a slim hope that it will happen in December.

                         

DNA and Evolution in The Violinist's Thumb

 I think that genetics does play an important role in people's lives.  Its role can be favorable or limiting.  Yet I also believe that when it seems as if your genetics are going to be a limitation, you shouldn't just accept that.  You should find out how to overcome those limits or compensate for them.   

The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean is a book dealing with DNA and evolution that I purchased from the sale cart in front of the local library's bookstore. I didn't read The Disappearing Spoon by this author though I am interested in it.  I decided to put it on hold at the library.  So I may be reviewing that earlier title in the forseeable future.

 

                                       

 I learned from this book that the famous pioneering geneticist Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was embroiled in a disagreement with his fellow liberals who prevailed on the authorities to revoke the tax exempt status of monasteries in 1874 because of that disagreement.  At the time he was the abbot of an Augustinian monastery.  Augustinians are an order of monks whose founding document is The Rule of Saint Augustine  which was written circa 400 C.E.  Mendel fought for tax exemption but didn't  succeed.  This made him infamous and his papers were burned.  This must mean that we only know his work from secondhand sources because the originals don't exist.

Another important figure in the history of genetics, Hermann Muller, was considered a subversive who was placed under FBI surveillance.  When he established an institute in Germany, the Nazis vandalized it.  He joined the Communist side in the Spanish Civil War, but the Communists lost. 

I'm sensing a pattern here.  The best known geneticists have been dissidents.   I am reminded of the Scopes Trial that centered on the theory of evolution which is scientifically accepted, but remains controversial in some American communities.  I first found out about this trial by watching the movie about it, Inherit The Wind, as a teenager.

Kean discusses knots in physics which were first proposed by Lord Kelvin , a 19th century mathemetician, physicist and engineer.  Lewis Carroll, which was the pseudonym of Charles Dodgson , might have read Lord Kelvin's work at university.  Carroll published A Tangled Tale ,in which each chapter was called a knot, in 1880.  Knotted DNA wasn't discovered until 1976.

Getting back to the history of genetics, Nobel Prize winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, fought with her mother who wanted her do more feminine things rather than science and sports such as ice skating. 

 It's interesting that back in the 1920's ice skating was considered a masculine sport.  Now figure skating is often considered a feminine sport although there are certainly many male figure skaters.  Most of the fans of figure skating are women.

So a Russian biologist named Ilya Ivanov  was working on creating human/chimp hybrids that Kean calls humanzees.  The Ku Klux Klan sent Ivanov irate letters warning that he was doing satanic work.  He had to go as far as the Congo to find a physician who would work with him on using a chimp to impregnate human women.  When a governor in the Congo told Ivanov that he couldn't do his experiments in a Congolese hospital,  Ivanov went back to Russia to work in a Soviet primate station.  The Soviet police arrested Ivanov for "counter-revolutionary" activities and exiled him.  He was cleared of being a counter-revolutionary in 1932, but died of a brain hemorrhage soon afterward. 

 You know, I might have called a scientist who had such a tough time finding a place to do his work, a victim of persecution.  Yet I am actually delighted that ethics triumphed in this case. While I wouldn't call Ivanov satanic like the Ku Klux Klan, I definitely consider his work horrific and utterly repulsive.  The U.S. would not allow a patent to be taken out on humanzees on the grounds that the process of creating them would have violated the 13th amendment against slavery.  

 I had heard of The Year Without A Summer which happened as a result of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815.  That was the summer when Lord Byron got together with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and Clare Claremont in Switzerland which resulted in the novel Frankenstein. See my review of Claire's Last Secret by Marty Ambrose, which deals more centrally with this event, here. That volcano eruption caused the sun to be dimmer for six years.

There is a reference in The Violinist's Thumb to the violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini having practiced on his violin while in prison.  I considered it dubious. I couldn't imagine a musician being allowed to keep a violin in a prison cell.

On the other hand, I found a website called  Music For The Future  which holds concerts and teaches courses in prison.  There is a video from that website which is dated two years ago in which professional musicians played music written by a formerly imprisoned composer. The musicians were wearing masks. So it's definitely a Covid pandemic era video.

There is a discussion of a genetic condition called Marfan's Syndrome in this book.  Lincoln may have had it, but his DNA was never tested because there was too much interest in commercial exploitation of it.  If Lincoln did have Marfan's Syndrome, he might not have lived much longer even if he hadn't been assassinated. 

The Violinist's Thumb has portions that were very enlightening.  So I do recommend it for people who are interested in genetics.

                                   

A Controversial Book Dealing With Revelations About Gandhi

This book actually deals with two figures.  It's called The Doctor and the Saint by  Arundhati Roy.  The "Saint" figure is Gandhi.  The other is Dr.  Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.  He will be referred to as Ambedkar for the remainder of this review.

 I got this book from the library, but it's the publisher that probably caused me to request it. I get e-mails from Haymarket Books.  Haymarket describes themselves on their website as a radical independent publisher.  Arundhati Roy surely does take a radical independent perspective on Gandhi.  I was overwhelmed by revelations.   This book caused me to totally re-evaluate him.                                    
                                  

The Doctor and the Saint  was originally written as an introduction to Ambedkar's book The Annihilation of Caste which was intended to be given as a speech.  The organization that invited Ambedkar to speak disinvited him after they read the advance copy.

My view of Hinduism had never focused on castes, but rather on the deities who are worshiped in Hindu temples.  I used to attend rituals at a Hindu  temple in the United States. I watched the priests bathe and dress the statues that were representations of the Gods.  I also heard the Hindu priests tell stories about the Gods before the rituals.  I thought that the Hinduism that I experienced was a wonderful religion.

Sometimes news happens that is relevant to the book that I'm writing about on this blog.  A  Canadian Sikh who was in favor of making part of India into an independent Sikh nation was murdered on 9/18 which is when I started this post. (Sikhism is a religion that began in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century. ) So this killing has impacted the relationship between Canada and India. Canada has stopped negotiating a trade deal with India.

In The Doctor and the Saint, it's stated that there is a belief that Hindus who convert to Sikhism are no longer part of the caste system.  It seems likely that the murdered Canadian Sikh who wanted to establish a Sikh nation on what is now the territory of India, was probably from India.  An independent Sikh nation where there are no castes would definitely be a magnet for Hindus of the "Untouchable" caste who would instantly want to become Sikhs.

The Doctor and the Saint did mainly focus on the impact of  Hinduism on the lowest status people known as "Untouchables".  The rampant prejudice, discrimination and violence against them would be regarded as offensive to all readers who believe in justice and human equality.  Gandhi's participation in Hindu attitudes  toward the Dalits who are called "Untouchables" for most of his life made him seem more like a fascist to me than a saint.  The author, Arundhati Roy, called Gandhi "the saint of the status quo".  Anyone who admires Gandhi, as I did before I read this book, should take The Doctor and the Saint's perspective on Gandhi into consideration.  This book deserves to be graded A.  I will give it five stars on Goodreads.

                                            

 
                             

 

Little Follies: A Mystery Novel

 Little Follies by Carolyn Korsmeyer was  a mystery novel given to me by publicist Wiley Saichek.  He has so far given me two dozen books that I've reviewed on this blog.

I decided to accept the copy for review because Korsmeyer deals with interesting issues in her non-fiction.  So I thought that her fiction could also be worth reading.

                                  

 

Krakow, Poland is the setting of this book.  There are many actual locations in Krakow in the novel, but there is no Radincki Museum and the Radincki aren't a real noble family.

The Polish hero and military engineer Kosciuszko doesn't appear in this book, but a diary belonging to a fictional friend of Kosciuszko named Andrzej Gorski plays an important role.

A stolen painting in this novel attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci may or may not be his work.  There is an actual painting with the same title, Salvator Mundi, that was authenticated as Da Vinci's and was sold at auction for $450 million. 

 In Little Follies the  Da Vinci attributed painting called Salvator Mundi was stolen from the fictional Radincki Museum and a security guard died.  The death of the security guard appeared to be an accident.

 The authentication situation in this book seemed clear as mud to me, but then it occurred to me that all Da Vinci paintings were created in a workshop context where other painters contributed to the work.  No one found this problematic at the time.

 There is a reference in this book to Cecilia Gallerani , whose portrait was painted by Da Vinci in The Lady With An Ermine ,  as having been Polish. This didn't seem likely to me.  So I looked her up and found that she was indeed Italian, not Polish.

There is someone referred to as Saint Gertruda in this book.  I thought it likely that she is Gertruda of Poland who was never made a saint.  She is considered by many to have been the first Polish born writer.  She is also known for commissioning an illustrated prayer book and saving a monastery from destruction. 

The most suspenseful part of the book involved returning a manuscript to the museum which was never allowed to be removed from the premises.  Adam, the research scholar who had broken the rules,  wanted no one to know he had taken the item from the museum. So it had to be returned secretly.   I was amazed by the risks that were taken in order to accomplish this goal.   

There was a story associated with a stolen silver chalice at the Radincki Museum.   It brought a supernatural element into this novel.   Readers who don't believe in the supernatural aren't likely to be impressed.

So the theft of the silver chalice was a whydunit and the death of the security guard during the theft of the Da Vinci attributed painting was more like a "What was done?"  Eventually, all questions are answered about these thefts.  So the mystery was resolved.

                                     

 

 

 

War and Punishment: Ukrainian History by a Russian Author

My housemate wanted me to review this book by Mikhail Zygar.  So I purchased it on Amazon.  I spent more than half of August reading War and Punishment on my e-reader.   I had hoped to read more books in August than I had in July, but it looks like my total will be three reads for this month.

                                                                                   

Author Zygar says in the introduction that he feels partly responsible for the war in Ukraine.  He states that for centuries Russia has suppressed and destroyed other countries and peoples.  Zygar isn't afraid to offend other Russians.  He is an opposition journalist who believes that nationalism is a disease.

In 2010 Zygar founded Dozhd, which was the only independent news channel in Russia.  It was shut down a month before the Russian occupation of Crimea.

Zygar wrote an open letter against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Tens of thousands of Russians signed it.  

In the 17th century Ukrainians were fighting against Poland.  The Polish Kings were trying to annex Ukraine.  Russians considered Ukraine their "breadbasket", so they couldn't lose Ukraine to Poland.  This was also a struggle between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  Poland is Catholic and Russia is Orthodox. 

In 1656 negotiations began between Russia and Poland over Ukraine.  There was no Ukrainian representation allowed. The Poles claimed that the Russian Tsar agreed to give Ukraine back to Poland.  Given the importance of Ukrainian agriculture to Russia, I consider this highly unlikely.  In 1667 Russia and Poland agreed to divide Ukraine between them.  West Ukraine would belong to Poland, and East Ukraine would belong to Russia.  The Cossacks of Ukraine, who wanted Ukrainian independence, were outraged.

The Russian Tsar known as Peter the Great, ordered Cossacks to build the city of St. Petersburg.  Yet Catherine the Great turned out to be even more threatening to the autonomy of Ukrainians.  

In contrast to the peasants of Russia, who were serfs, Ukrainian peasants had never been serfs.  There was no serfdom or slavery in Ukraine.  The Crimean Khanate participated in the slave trade.  They kidnapped people and sold them.  The Cossacks provided protection against slave raids which allowed most Ukrainian peasants to remain free.

 Catherine the Great decided that free Ukrainian peasants were a threat. So she spread serfdom to Ukraine and destroyed the independence of Ukrainian common folk.  This makes me feel pretty negatively toward Catherine the Great who I had considered to be an enlightened monarch.

At that point, I researched ethnic minorities in Ukraine and was particularly interested in the Gagauz people.   They are a Turkic people who belong to the Orthodox Church.  They speak their own Gagauz language.  There is an article called Gagauzia on Wikipedia.   Apparently, most Gagauz would prefer to be part of Russia rather than part of the European Union. I'd imagine that they feel close to Russian folk culture which may be similar to theirs, but they would certainly be better off in the European Union which has respect for cultural diversity.

Getting back to War and Punishment, when Catherine the Great annexed Poland, she informed the Jews of Poland that they could only live in an area that Catherine called the The Pale of Settlement.  Most of the Pale was located in what is now Ukraine.  It existed until 1915.

While reading my notes about the Russian annexation of Alaska, I found out that Siberian Cossacks discovered Alaska while on hunting expeditions and were very instrumental in the Russian colonization of Alaska in the 18th century.  I found  a link to an article on this subject here.  I could only read the abstract,  but that alone was fascinating.  

I wanted to know more about Cossacks, and consulted the Wikipedia  article on them here.  As Zygar had implied, many of the Cossacks originally came from Ukraine.  Catherine the Great ended the Cossack Warrior Host in Ukraine.  She re-distributed Cossack lands in Ukraine to her officials.  Zygar remarks that two hundred years later Volodymyr Zelensky, the current President of Ukraine, was born on former Cossack land.

In a discussion about name changes, Zygar tells us that an escaped slave named Frederick Bailey with fake documents falsely showing that he had been freed, changed his surname to Douglass.  As Frederick Douglass he became a prominent abolitionist. So according to Zygar,  Frederick Douglass was never officially freed. The name change obscured his origins.  I consulted the Frederick Douglass  Wikipedia article.  It doesn't mention the fake freedom papers.  I learned from this article that Frederick Douglass was the first African American to receive a vote to become President of the United States.  This happened at the Republican National Convention in 1888.  

 I'm skipping to the 20th century when Stalin requisitioned the grain grown in Ukraine for export abroad. Stalin arrested 100,000 peasants who resisted the requisitioning of the grain, but more than a million people protested.  He had taken their food to sell on the world market. The head of the Soviet parliament asked that the grain requisitions be suspended because of the famine.  Stalin denied that Ukrainians were starving.  He proclaimed that crops were state property and farmers can't use any portions of their harvests.  It would be considered theft from the state.  In 1932 4,500 people were shot for crop theft and 100,00 were imprisoned.

The Prime Minster Vyacheslav Molotov went to Ukraine to investigate conditions there.  As a result, Molotov had the grain requisition reduced by 20%.  He confiscated grain, cows, chickens and potatoes from peasants who weren't cooperating with the requisition.  

In 1933 Stalin prevented peasants from leaving Ukraine to find food.  Anyone who tries is called an agent of Poland. The Ukrainian authorities forbid starvation to be recorded as a cause of death, but there is a statistic that 2.9 million died of hunger in 1933.  Maybe starvation statistics were no longer recorded after 1933.

This period was called the Holodomar which means Great Famine. More than 12% of Ukraine's population died.  Peasants from Russia and Belarus were resettled in deserted Ukrainian villages.  Prominent Ukrainians were committing suicide.  The Holodomar isn't mentioned in newspapers or history books until the 1980's.

Stalin wanted to end any concept of Ukrainian identity.  Ukrainian language schools were shut down and books in Ukrainian were banned.

The Chernobyl disaster is part of the history of Ukraine since Chernobyl is in Ukraine.  I read an excellent article from National Geographic written two years ago that recounts the history of the event and the relatively current situation there. It's at Chernobyl article. There is a Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  People work there now, and some have moved back into the Exclusion Zone.  There have been environmental groups that were launched as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.

I was disturbed when I read in this book that Russian troops were advancing toward Kyiv through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  How much time are these Russians spending in this radioactive zone?  I don't like the fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine, but the soldiers are human beings who certainly weren't given a choice about fighting there.  So I am concerned for them.   I'm sure that Putin won't care about Russians who come home with radiation sickness.

 The acting career of Volodymir Zelensky is discussed including the 2004  Ukrainian/Russian comedy remake of The Three Musketeers in  which Zelensky played D'Artagnan, but the rest of the Musketeers were women. I thought it could be amusing, but I don't know Ukrainian and my knowledge of Russian is too limited to watch a movie with Russian dialogue. So I decided to give it a pass.

I was angry that Crimean Tatars were disenfranchised when Crimea was voting on whether to unify with Russia.  Russians had settled in Crimea and the indigenous Tatars were no longer the majority.  To make sure that Tatars didn't get a say, there were no polling places in Tatar areas.

 Putin said in a speech that Kyiv is "the mother of all Russian cities".  Zelensky, who was still only an actor, wondered in response why Russian news said such terrible things about their mother.   When Zelensky arrived in Moscow to film, he announced that he's "now in the heart of Russia.  If, of course, she still has a heart".  In June 2014, Zelensky was sued in a Russian court.  Zelensky decided not to film in Moscow anymore.  

In 2014 Zelensky had to hire bodyguards after his car was set on fire in Kyiv.  He wasn't in the car, but it was believed to be an assassination attempt. 

 I finally reached the chapter heading "How Volodymir Zelensky Stopped Joking".  Then I realized he was making the transition from acting to politics. In 2015 Zelensky began to make that transition by starring in a series called "Servant of the People" in which an "ordinary guy" becomes President. He definitely far surpasses this character.  The last thing I would call Zelensky is ordinary.  He has become a leader of stature on the world stage.  When he ran for President in real life his political party was called "Servant of the People".  His victory was overwhelming.

When Zelensky first met Zygar, the author of this book, Zelensky said he read Zygar's book,  All The Kremlin's Men,in order to help him understand Putin.  My opinion is that you don't need a book to understand Putin.  He's not a complex man.  He wants all the power he can get, just like Stalin or any other totalitarian dictator.  

In November 2021, Zelensky signed the anti-oligarchy law.  Ukraine has a register of oligarchs.  They have to declare how much money they have.  They can't sponsor political parties and Ukrainian civil servants have to reveal any connection they have with an oligarch.  Ukraine is trying to move away from an oligarch based economy, and substitute it with a market economy that welcomes foreign investment. I assume that an oligarch based economy is one in which oligarchs are favored and  may even have monopolies.

I very much liked a Zelensky quote that I found in the footnotes.

"I can't become the President.  Who will make the country laugh then?"

I hope that when Zelensky retires from politics, he can go back to making people laugh.  Yet I fear that the genie can't be put back in the bottle.  Vladimir Putin probably won't let Zelensky go back to his civilian life.  So retirement won't be in the cards for him.  He has become a prominent world leader who is widely admired.  I respect him and Ukraine enormously for standing up to Russian power.

                              

                            

                                     

Black History Has Always Been Contraband

The title of this review is an adjusted version of the book's title which is Our History Has Always Been Contraband.  Yours truly, the owner of this blog, is a white woman.  It is not my intention to otherize black people, but to tell it like it is.  

 I didn't learn black history in school.  There were no black people in the schools that I attended from kindergarten through high school, but black history is part of American history.  It should be treated as such.  People should be learning the history of blacks in classes about American history.  

I was given a copy of this book for review by someone unknown.  I can't find the e-mail among my saved messages.  It's a bit of a mystery to me.  

 I was glad to receive it.  I had read books dealing with black historical events, but I didn't think I knew as much about this subject as I should know.                               

                          

 

This book is a collection of essays and excerpts.  My review will include what I learned from this book that I considered most significant.

 In "On Racial Justice, Black History, Critical Race Theory and Other Felonious Ideas" by Robin D. G. Kelley, I found out about Freedom Libraries for the first time.  I was never taught about them in the library history class I took at library school.  So I looked up Freedom Libraries on Wikipedia.

Most Freedom Libraries were established in 1964 in response to the Civil Rights Movement.  African Americans had to sue for access to most Southern public libraries.  In Mississippi alone fifty Freedom Libraries were established.  There were also Freedom Libraries in Alabama, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. This implies to me that Pennsylvania had racially segregated libraries before the Civil Rights Movement. I did not know that any northeastern states had segregated libraries.   Freedom Libraries were staffed by volunteers.  They were vandalized or firebombed by local whites or Klan Members. 

An excerpt from The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution  by C. L. R. James taught me about racism among white Jacobins, the "radicals" of the French Revolution.  They didn't condemn slavery because property rights were so important to them.

I recorded a quote from the essay called  "The Case For Reparations" (2014) by Ta-Nehisi Coates which I underlined and starred. Here it is:

"Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net."

My comment on that quote was that any personal emergency becomes a financial disaster.  Now we have to think about an environmental disaster destroying a home that could be a black family's only wealth.

The British definition of  "liberalism" as opposed to the American definition of "liberalism" has come up for me in this discussion as it did in my review of We Organize To Change Everything here. If you read what I had to say about Neoliberalism in that review from nearly a year ago, you'll be up to speed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates  mentions The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander in his reparations essay in this collection, Our History Has Always Been Contraband.  I decided that I needed to find out whether Alexander's book appeared during Obama's Presidency. It did.  What an interesting confluence of references and eras! 

In "Introduction: Black Health Matters" from Black Disability Politics (2022) by Sami Schalk ,Schalk says that the mainstream disability movement is very white and racist.  This alienates Black disabled people.  

Schalk also points out that disability justice is intersectional. White supremacy and ableism are intertwined.  It occurs to me that people who are deeply prejudiced are prejudiced about everything.  For them, prejudice is a pervasive mindset.

"Crip theorist" Alison Kafer is brought to our attention by Schalk.  Kafer says that diabetes and asthma are more common conditions among minority populations.  Schalk  quotes Kafer as saying  that asthma occurs more often in heavily polluted neighborhoods where minorities live.  I would also like to cite an excellent article from the Diabetes Council on the prevalence of diabetes within minority communities which can be found here. 

On the other hand, I read another book a while ago that included the salient insight that pollution can't actually be confined to poor neighborhoods if they share borders with more prosperous ones.  Your nice neighborhood that is adjacent to the polluting factory in  the general vicinity will not totally escape the foul fumes. 

Finally, I will bring the essay "In The Spirit of the Midnight School" by Roderick A. Ferguson to your attention.  It centers on an enslaved woman named Lily Ann Granderson who founded a secret school for black slaves in Natchez, Mississippi.  It was called a "midnight school" because classes began at midnight and ended at 2 AM.  Granderson started with twelve students. She eventually graduated hundreds of  people knowing how to read and write.  They could then write their own passes and flee northward. And that's exactly what they did.

Now that I am finished reviewing Our History Has Always Been Contraband , I will give this collection the very good grade of B+.

 

                                       

An Unexpected Novella About Queen Elizabeth II

I had selected The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett for its brevity.  It's a novella that's only 120 pages in length. I hadn't expected to blog about it.  I imagined that there would only be enough content for a brief paragraph on Goodreads.   I now think I have enough comments for a few paragraphs.

                                 

The reader in question was the late monarch Queen Elizabeth II.  Let me emphasize that this did not happen.  It's a fictional tale.  Alan Bennett's Queen borrowed books from an imaginary traveling library that periodically came to Westminster which is the section of London where most of the British government is located.  

I looked up two authors that the Queen read.  There was Ivy Compton-Burnett whose novel she didn't care for, and Nancy Mitford whose work she decided to continue reading.  I decided that I wouldn't be reading either one of them.  The content that they deal with doesn't interest me.  I might have read Nancy Mitford when I was in my twenties, but not now.

Security confiscated a book she had been reading in a coach from which she was periodically waving at the public.  I would have been very irritated by the confiscation of my book.   The Queen requested another copy, but that would mean she'd need to re-read from the beginning.  That would be time wasted.  Since my reading is of great importance to me, I suppose that I'd consider this a significant drawback to being Queen if I were one. 

As someone who rarely likes the classics, I was pleased by the Queen deciding that Henry James "needed a good talking to".  I tried to read Henry James once, as I recall.  I think the James book that I attempted to read was Daisy Miller.  I don't believe that I got very far with it.  I was also pleased that the Queen disliked Jane Austen.  She thought that the characters were too similar. I don't want to deal with even one character like the ones in a Jane Austen novel.  I despise the entire Regency genre.

Elizabeth II got to read aloud from A Tale of Two Cities  for a Christmas broadcast.  This happens to be a favorite of mine which makes it a rare exception among the classics.  I hope she enjoyed the book as much as I did.

There was a surprise ending which I hadn't expected at all. I hadn't thought that this Queen would do anything surprising.  In fact, the actual Queen Elizabeth II probably never wanted to surprise.  The monarchy is supposed to be a predictable and dependable element of   English society.  At least, that's the way I see it.  English readers of this blog may have a different perspective on the monarchy.  I would give this book a grade of B-.

                                   

 

 

                                 

 

Whiteboard Warrior: Reading Congresswoman Katie Porter's Memoir

I not only swear that I read Katie Porter's memoir, but I can swear that I finished it in ten days.  Congresswoman Porter sent it to me as a gift given to those who donate to her campaign.  I have never voted for Katie Porter because I don't live in her district, but I have been an admirer of this member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  I first encountered her on the news making a whiteboard presentation to Congress.  That's why I decided to call this review "Whiteboard Warrior".  Katie Porter's office actually purchased a whiteboard on wheels for Congress.  I'm sure that the Congresswoman herself is getting good use out of that purchase.

                               

 

 Porter feared that if she didn't run, her district would be represented by a Republican as it had been in the past.  Yet it turned out that Democratic State Senator Dave Min who ran against Porter in the Democratic primary, had ideas similar to Katie Porter's. She has endorsed Min as the successor to her seat in the House of Representatives if she becomes a U.S. Senator.     

Congresswoman Porter tells us about how her first day in Congress went off schedule by many hours. In her experience, this happens frequently in Congress. Being able to schedule is crucial to an employed single parent.  If Katie Porter can't plan, she can't get child care.  

Porter went back to Iowa, her original home state, and remembered that she'd gone to Congress to create change.  So she had to keep trying to make Congress work for her.  It occurred to me that there might be other single mothers elected by their districts.  If Katie Porter found a way to be both single parent and legislator, others could follow her path.

Katie Porter actually collapsed on the floor of the House.  She asked a  colleague how he managed, and he told her she was working too hard.  All she really had to do in Congress was "show up and vote".  This meant following the agendas of others.  Porter wanted to be a change maker.

Dressing up as Batgirl for Halloween  may not be a radical change-making act, but it was certainly unusual for a Congresswoman.  There's an image of Katie Porter as Batgirl that I found from The U.K. Daily Mail which is a tabloid newspaper.  The link to this image is here. If you want to find out more about The U.K. Daily Mail, you can go to their article on Wikipedia here. 

Before Porter was a Congresswoman, she was a law school professor. Like other professors, she was expected to do research. She decided to research homeowners who had been foreclosed on because the terms of their mortgage had been changed without prior notification.  This meant that the lenders were cheating, but the debtors' lawyers never asked for documentation.  Porter found that  mortgage companies were guilty of violating the law more than half the time.  So she did valuable work before she was in Congress, and could do so again.

 Katie Porter has Iranian American constituents who have sung to her about the Zoroastrian festival of Nowruz which happens at the Spring Equinox.  It's considered Iranian New Year's Day.  They were trying to educate their Congresswoman about an important holy day in their religion.  I found information about Nowruz on Wikipedia here.

Porter tells us that there are fake PACs.  In this context, PAC stands for Political Action Committee.  Voters often receive fundraising e-mails from PACs saying that they're working for a variety of causes. It seems to me that it's a good idea to be wary of their claims--particularly if you've never heard of their organization.  

I was surprised that Porter had apparently never taken a statistics class.  Perhaps her law school thought that lawyers don't need to know the ins and outs of statistics.  Yet at one point, Porter was working with Elizabeth Warren who expected Porter to know that she couldn't ignore mothers in a survey  because she thought they were too busy.  This invalidated the data that Porter had collected.  I had to take a class on statistics in library school. Finding out what types of  patrons they have is how librarians know what their priorities should be. I didn't enjoy the statistics class, but I have since found out how useful it is to understand what makes statistics valid or invalid.

Porter revealed that members of Congress aren't allowed to have other jobs.  I didn't know that.  I thought that lawyers, for example, were still practicing law when Congress wasn't in session.  They can get stock dividends and other types of investment income.  Porter realized that her lack of wealth made her very different from many other members of Congress.

Katie Porter is currently one of three California members of the House of Representatives who are running for Dianne Feinstein's U.S. Senate seat. Senator Feinstein is retiring. I normally don't get this political on this blog, but the political content is relevant to the review.

I liked  I Swear Politics is Messier Than My Minivan very much.  I gave it a B+.

 

                                    

 

 

                        

 

The River We Remember

The first book I read by William Kent Krueger was This Tender Land back in 2020. I obtained it from the facilitator of a formerly in person book club that is now online.  I also recently got The River We Remember, the subject of the current review, from that same facilitator. This particular book club is a longstanding commitment for me.  I appreciate that the facilitator makes books she receives from publishers available to members of the club.

                              

 It took me ten days to read The River We Remember.  That was twice as long as the last book I read.  I hope that doubling the amount of time I need to read a book doesn't become a trend.                                 

Jewel, the fictional town in Michigan where this novel took place,  had a book club that was in the process of reading Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.   I hadn't liked this book when I read it in high school.  I still remember it as an unpleasant experience.  I'm so glad I belong to a club that reads only mysteries and thrillers.  I wouldn't want to have to deal with Catcher in the Rye in a book club context.    

I was interested in the background of Marta, who was the wife of Jimmy Quinn, the victim in The River We Remember.  Marta was born in Germany.  Her parents were non-Jewish dissidents who were killed by the Nazi authorities for their political views.  Marta was related to Jimmy's first wife, Gudrun.  She sent for Marta because she was very ill and needed help.  Then Gudrun died soon after Marta arrived, and Marta married Jimmy a few months later. 

Charlotte Bauer, the attorney for the person who was charged with  murdering Jimmy Quinn,  also had an interesting background.  Charlotte's father didn't think that women needed an education. We are told about a childhood incident in which Charlotte was caught reading Jane Eyre by her father. They struggled over the book and Charlotte's father finally took it from her. 

I also have a personal story dealing with Jane Eyre. My father gave me my childhood copy of Jane Eyre. I paged through it and decided it was a horror novel because of the monstrous illustration of the wife hidden in the attic.  I was so terrified of that illustration that I didn't actually read Jane Eyre until I was an adult. 

I thought that one of the most admirable characters in The River We Remember was Kyoko Bluestone, the Japanese born wife of Native American Noah Bluestone.  Kyoko was widely hated in the town of Jewel for being Japanese in this post World War II novel.  Her inner strength in the face of terrible adversity was never shaken.

I liked The River We Remember.  I found it emotionally involving with some striking characters.  I think I'll give it a B.  

                                  

                                

  

Five Biblical Portraits by Elie Wiesel

I read Five Biblical Portraits because I'm interested in what Elie Wiesel had to say about the Bible.  I also wanted to find out more about him. I had read his book Night some time ago.  I know that Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor, but can't recall Night. So Five Biblical Portraits is a re-introduction to Elie Wiesel for me. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

                                   

The introduction by Ariel Burger tells us that Wiesel refers to the Holocaust as "the Kingdom of Night" which is poetic and doesn't sound anything like the soul destroying trauma that the Holocaust must have been for survivors.  Yet perhaps Wiesel needed to distance himself from his experience by using a euphemism like "Kingdom of Night". 

 I am a generation removed from the Holocaust, and my parents weren't themselves Holocaust survivors.  So most of my knowledge of the Holocaust comes from classes I have taken or books I've read. 

 In the "Joshua" essay, Wiesel claims that Jews have no tradition of writing songs to celebrate war.  It definitely seems to me that the Song of Deborah  from The Bible is a celebration of  war. Here is the actual text. 

I have to say that I have never been a fan of Saul.  He seems to have been the kind of king who only cared about maintaining his own power.  Wiesel obviously sympathized with him, but I don't find him persuasive.  Wiesel's portrayal of Saul convinced me that he may have been psychologically unstable.

 Wiesel wrote about the massacres at Babi Yar in the "Jeremiah" essay.  I had heard of Babi Yar, but my teachers never taught us where it's located.  I now know it's in Ukraine.

(A search for Babi Yar led me to the website of a Holocaust denier who is definitely a member of the lunatic fringe. I felt I needed mental floss after reading his fulminations.)

I will now get back to what has been written about Babi Yar.  When  author Anatoly Kuznetsov was born in Kiev, it was in the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union no longer exists. Kiev is now the capital of Ukraine.  Kuznetsov wrote a novel called  Babi Yar  that dealt with the massacres. I am hoping to read this novel by a Ukrainian in the not too distant future.    

I have to say that I'm not overly fond of any of the Biblical personages in Five Biblical Portraits.   I will give this book three stars on Goodreads.           

                                   

            

Water Touching Stone: A Mystery Involving Tibetan Religion

 Water Touching Stone by Eliot Pattison is actually a re-read. I rarely re-read books, but the mystery book club that I attend is reading this novel for the June meeting. I read it so long ago that I didn't remember very much about it.  I never reviewed the book. Yet at the time I read it, I remember thinking that it was one of the best books I'd ever read.

                                   

 

This is the second book in a series whose central character is Shan Tao Yun.  I have reviewed  Mandarin Gate (Shan series #7) on an earlier blog here , and Bones of the Earth which is the final book of the Shan series here. 

I was angered to learn from this book that the Chinese had been using Tibet for nuclear testing.  I found an article on the subject at Nuclear Tibet.  It includes the use of prisoners for constructing nuclear facilities.  I am concerned about their exposure to radiation.

Shan must stop the murder of boys which involves finding out why these murders were happening.   I wasn't surprised when the killer's motive was revealed.

There are American archaeologists who turn out to be pivotal characters.  I didn't think that archaeologist Jacob Deacon would have mentioned that "there might be treasure" at his site.  From an archaeological perspective "treasure" is an artifact which belongs in a museum.  This is why museums often sponsor archaeology.

I found this book suspenseful, but I'm not as impressed with it as I was when I read it the first time.  Since I really hadn't remembered the plotline, this wasn't due to familiarity.  It just didn't strike me as remarkable or original, though I did very much like the Tibetan religion aspect.  

                               

 

 

                                

The Physicists' Daughter : A World War II Thriller Dealing With Sabotage in a Defense Plant

I have read all the books in the Faye Longchamp mystery series by Mary Anna Evans except for the most recent one, Wrecked.  The Physicist's Daughter is not labeled or marketed as a mystery, but it looks like a thriller from the summary.  Yet I think that Mary Anna Evans is trying to establish herself as a mainstream writer, and leave behind the genre label.  I'm going to call this one as see it, and I see it as a historical thriller.

                                       

I was impressed that protagonist Justine was taught how to weld by her father.  I was also delighted that her mother was the one who taught Justine about physics.  During WWII, Justine was welding for a living but she suspected that someone was sabotaging the defense plant where she was employed. This sabotage was the main focus of the plot.

I would have liked physics to have played an important role in the novel, but I imagine that many readers wouldn't have found that interesting.  Intrigue and secrets are what make books in the thriller genre thrilling.  The Physicists' Daughter certainly had those elements. I would grade this book B.  

                                

 

Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I : The Mother and Daughter Who Changed History

 Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I:  The Mother and Daughter Who Changed History is a joint biography by historian Tracy Borman.  I downloaded it in digital format from Netgalley and read it on my Kindle e-reader. I'd like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy.

                         

                                                                                                

Before reading this book,  I was a huge fan of Queen Elizabeth I because the theater flourished during her reign. Yet more importantly, she stood against the Catholic powers, Spain and France.  I knew relatively little about Elizabeth's mother, Anne Bolelyn, , and I never thought about Anne's influence over her daughter.

I was interested to learn that Anne had books by women, most notably Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies.  I read in the Wikipedia article on Christine de Pizan here that she thought that Joan of Arc was the fufillment of prophecies by Merlin, the Cumaean Sybil and Saint Bede. She also wrote a poem about Joan which was her last work.  Christine de Pizan didn't live to see Joan imprisoned by the English and burned.  I am sure that if Christine de Pizan had lived later, she would have celebrated the Tudor Queen, Elizabeth.

It's mentioned that "Solomon and the Queen of Sheba" by artist Hans Holbein, was hanging at court during Henry VIII's reign.  I wonder if  Anne identified with the Queen of Sheba, mother of King Solomon.  If so, Anne's equivalent of the wise Solomon was Elizabeth I.

The coronation of King Charles III recently took place.  The author remarks that King Charles is descended from Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, and that his son, the Prince of Wales, is descended from Mary Boleyn through both his parents.  Elizabeth, however, will always remain the only descendant of Anne Boleyn.

I enjoyed this book and learned a number of things I hadn't known previously.  I will give it a B+ on Goodreads.