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lightning round book reviews! 9-13
Jul. 17th, 2012 04:56 pmI have way way way too many books to review. I just need to bang these out. There are another several already waiting in the wings, ack. I'm not going to belabor these ones. Lightning round! Kapow!
9. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
Is this cheating? It's a re-read but I'm still counting it because I get something new out of it every time. For instance, although I've read it five or six times, this is the first time where I was mostly certain I could distinguish between Henry and Francis. There's always Camilla and Charles and Bunny and the narrator and then...those other guys. Honestly until this rereading I wasn't sure if there were three or two of them. And it's kind of important to know who Henry is. I'm still not convinced I'm not missing a character.
10. Wildwood by Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis
Awesome alt-vision of my beloved Portland! However: disappointingly white, disappointingly and problematically ahistorical (no tribes), and occasionally just not as deep or nuanced as I would have liked it to be.
11. Crucial Conversations, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler
This book introduces a concept that my friend Havi teaches about, the 4 questions to ask yourself when going into a difficult conversation: what do I want for me? What do I want for the other person? What do I want for our relationship? What can I do to help make that happen? I have used this as an entry process for lots of difficult conversations this year, and it is awesome. I especially loved the "shared pool of meaning" concept, the idea that two people can only participate in a conversation if they are both contributing to the pool; if there is "silence or violence" being done by one to the other, nothing is added to the pool and it goes nowhere. Yes! This! Highly recommend this book, but it's a library or skim-in-the-bookstore read. I spent an afternoon with it and felt I had what I needed.
12. One Day a Year: 1960-2000 by Christa Wolf.
This is a book I started a couple years ago and never finished; this time I picked it up halfway through and finished it. It's a dense book, 650 pages. Wolf, a writer living in East Germany when it starts, writes a narrative essay describing the events of each September 27. It is fascinating to glimpse her everyday life as a mother (her children are quite young when it begins) and also the work of an intellectual in the former German Democratic Republic, which is intimately connected to the sphere of politics in a way that was foreign to me. The conceit of the structure could be maddening, as when giant world events happen (like the dissolution of GDR!) with only passing mentions, because of course unless they are thought about or interacted with on September 27, they don't enter into the narrative--it is explicitly not a meditation on the whole year, just on the day itself. There are copious footnotes on literary and political figures mentioned (in the ridiculously wide circle of the Wolfs' acquaintance, all over Europe) but very little about historical context. Given the interesting facts of her life (in the Nazi Youth as a girl, fled the Soviet Troops from eastern Germany at the end of the war) a lot is left out or requires digging -- not an effort for the faint of heart. (I'm also re-reading her memoir Patterns of Childhood and will review that one soon.) Reading this book took even longer because I spent a lot of time going through wikipedia picking up pieces of post-WWII and East/West history that I've never had a good grasp on. Like the Berlin airdrop that my grandfather was in Berlin for? Finally figured out what that was, in the course of wikipedia'ing the background. I've never really reckoned with Germany as a part of my (distant) family history, so this helped get a few wheels turning.
13. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp, by Christopher Browning.
Picked this up in the library, as long as I'm on the WWII/Shoah theme, as it's not a part of the history I was familiar with. Browning is an excellent writer, and draws this detailed account of the Jews in Starachowice camp, slaves to munitions factories, from a rich trove of testimonies provided for the trial of Walther Becker (ultimately and heartbreaking acquitted of his crimes because Germany's postwar justice system was FUCKED UP let me tell you). It covers a lot of detailed ground, beginning with the largest group of Jews who came from the same ghetto, and following the narrative through different guard regimes, investigating how official policy was interpreted or defied by camp leaders, going into the nuances of in-camp underground economies, childbirth and rape. Although the Starachowice survivors were ultimately sent to Auschwitz (from which a high number survived compared to other groups, since as tested 'workers' a selection was not performed at their arrival) and the book covers that period as well, it situates it in the much longer-term narratives of ghetto aktions and slave labor systems. Browning is very very good at going into the nuances of survivor testimonies, talking about who the survivor was speaking to (their families? the public? a german investigator for the courts?) to contextualize details given or withheld, things like that. It's the kind of nuance and sensitivity I appreciate about Hermione Lee's biographies, which is about the highest level of praise I can give a nonfiction author, if that means anything to you.
Okay. More reviews coming soon.
9. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
Is this cheating? It's a re-read but I'm still counting it because I get something new out of it every time. For instance, although I've read it five or six times, this is the first time where I was mostly certain I could distinguish between Henry and Francis. There's always Camilla and Charles and Bunny and the narrator and then...those other guys. Honestly until this rereading I wasn't sure if there were three or two of them. And it's kind of important to know who Henry is. I'm still not convinced I'm not missing a character.
10. Wildwood by Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis
Awesome alt-vision of my beloved Portland! However: disappointingly white, disappointingly and problematically ahistorical (no tribes), and occasionally just not as deep or nuanced as I would have liked it to be.
11. Crucial Conversations, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler
This book introduces a concept that my friend Havi teaches about, the 4 questions to ask yourself when going into a difficult conversation: what do I want for me? What do I want for the other person? What do I want for our relationship? What can I do to help make that happen? I have used this as an entry process for lots of difficult conversations this year, and it is awesome. I especially loved the "shared pool of meaning" concept, the idea that two people can only participate in a conversation if they are both contributing to the pool; if there is "silence or violence" being done by one to the other, nothing is added to the pool and it goes nowhere. Yes! This! Highly recommend this book, but it's a library or skim-in-the-bookstore read. I spent an afternoon with it and felt I had what I needed.
12. One Day a Year: 1960-2000 by Christa Wolf.
This is a book I started a couple years ago and never finished; this time I picked it up halfway through and finished it. It's a dense book, 650 pages. Wolf, a writer living in East Germany when it starts, writes a narrative essay describing the events of each September 27. It is fascinating to glimpse her everyday life as a mother (her children are quite young when it begins) and also the work of an intellectual in the former German Democratic Republic, which is intimately connected to the sphere of politics in a way that was foreign to me. The conceit of the structure could be maddening, as when giant world events happen (like the dissolution of GDR!) with only passing mentions, because of course unless they are thought about or interacted with on September 27, they don't enter into the narrative--it is explicitly not a meditation on the whole year, just on the day itself. There are copious footnotes on literary and political figures mentioned (in the ridiculously wide circle of the Wolfs' acquaintance, all over Europe) but very little about historical context. Given the interesting facts of her life (in the Nazi Youth as a girl, fled the Soviet Troops from eastern Germany at the end of the war) a lot is left out or requires digging -- not an effort for the faint of heart. (I'm also re-reading her memoir Patterns of Childhood and will review that one soon.) Reading this book took even longer because I spent a lot of time going through wikipedia picking up pieces of post-WWII and East/West history that I've never had a good grasp on. Like the Berlin airdrop that my grandfather was in Berlin for? Finally figured out what that was, in the course of wikipedia'ing the background. I've never really reckoned with Germany as a part of my (distant) family history, so this helped get a few wheels turning.
13. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp, by Christopher Browning.
Picked this up in the library, as long as I'm on the WWII/Shoah theme, as it's not a part of the history I was familiar with. Browning is an excellent writer, and draws this detailed account of the Jews in Starachowice camp, slaves to munitions factories, from a rich trove of testimonies provided for the trial of Walther Becker (ultimately and heartbreaking acquitted of his crimes because Germany's postwar justice system was FUCKED UP let me tell you). It covers a lot of detailed ground, beginning with the largest group of Jews who came from the same ghetto, and following the narrative through different guard regimes, investigating how official policy was interpreted or defied by camp leaders, going into the nuances of in-camp underground economies, childbirth and rape. Although the Starachowice survivors were ultimately sent to Auschwitz (from which a high number survived compared to other groups, since as tested 'workers' a selection was not performed at their arrival) and the book covers that period as well, it situates it in the much longer-term narratives of ghetto aktions and slave labor systems. Browning is very very good at going into the nuances of survivor testimonies, talking about who the survivor was speaking to (their families? the public? a german investigator for the courts?) to contextualize details given or withheld, things like that. It's the kind of nuance and sensitivity I appreciate about Hermione Lee's biographies, which is about the highest level of praise I can give a nonfiction author, if that means anything to you.
Okay. More reviews coming soon.
