BOOKS THREAD

Read Brands' Teddy Roosevelt bio last year. He is a research genius.

 

"Truevine" by Beth Macy, a Roanoke Times reporter.
It's supposed to be the story of two black albinos who end up with traveling circus (Ringling Bros and others), but it ends being a long tome on the history of Roanke, traveling circus, circus freaks and segregation.
I suspect the book was borne from her newspaper series on the two brothers and she built it out to a book. There's a lot of differing paths as she goes through the supposed center of the story.
I liked it, but it was hard to read.

 

My interest in North Korea piqued by the case of Otto Warmbier, as well as recent current political events and discourse involving Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, I read "In Order To Live," by Yeonmi Park.

The author escaped from North Korea with her mother as a 13-year-old, but they lived a hard-scrabble, poverty-stricken, oppressed and government-regulated life, and both were sold in two deals among the widespread cases of human trafficking and raped at the hands of "brokers" in China before it happened.

The book is essentially an autobiography, and written, if not particularly stylishly, it is forthright and eye-opening, and gives a good sense of the understated, sometimes-veiled government oppression in North Korea, and direct experience with the not-so-veiled consequences of saying something untoward, of running afoul of informants, everywhere, who you thought were just your neighbors and friends, but who could get you arrested and sent to hard-labor prison and "re-education camps."

It also was informative about the difficult 1990s and the famine and poverty that gave rise to mandated government programs that included filling the need for crop fertilizer by having every adult worker and every school child be required to collect quotas of human and animal waste. To wit: "Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school, the teachers would send us out into the streets to find poop and carry it back to class. So if we saw a dog pooping in the street, it was like gold. My uncle in Kowon had a big dog who made a big poop -- and everyone in the family would fight over it. This was not something you see every day in the West."

The author describes in detail her weekends filled with propaganda meetings and mandatory "self-criticism" sessions. Such meetings began with people writing out quotations from Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il, and now, Kim Jong Un -- "the way people in other parts of the world would copy Bible verses"..."Next, you had to write down everything you had done in the previous week. Then it was time to stand up in front of the group and criticize yourself. At a typical session, I might begin, "This week, I was too spoiled and not thankful enough for my benevolent Dear Leader's eternal and unconditional love...After we had finished our public confessions, it was time to criticize others..."

It was a good book to read, a good start on the topic. But now, I find, I still want more information regarding the Hermit Kingdom, particularly now that I have a better, deeper understanding of why North Korea is, appropriately, called that.

 

This is reminiscent of when you read like seven books by outspoken anti-Muslims in order to expand your empathy for and understanding of Islam.

 

reading the Collected Essays of George Orwell. A behemoth that's really more like a compilation of newspaper columns and literary reviews. Right now smack dab in the middle of December 1943. They were interesting times, my friends.

 

I'm reading "My Sister's Bones," a debut suspense novel by Nuala Ellwood. The main character is a war correspondent in the Middle East who has returned home to coastal England after her mother's death, and somehow has gotten into some sort of trouble with the police that is as yet unexplained. (The structure is a lot like "True Detective" or "LOST.")

Clunk dialogue and some plot elements that are starting to drag on a bit, but entertaining enough.

 

Random NK-related aside: I got my UVA alumni magazine yesterday and there in the in memoriams was Otto Warmbier. Obviously the obit didn't mention the circumstances of his death, but there was a reference to his adventurous spirit.

Speaking of North Korea books, I read "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick a couple of years ago and enjoyed it.

 

Another thumbs up for "Nothing to Envy".

 

Got new contact lenses a month or so ago so my eyes don't hurt anymore when reading. On my sixth book since then. Best of them was Steve Rushin's new memoir, which could easily be made into a Wonder Years/A Christmas Story type show. Filled with sentimental stories about growing up in the '70s revolving around yearning for Bic pens and the Sears catalog and lots of other product placement anyone growing up in that era will remember. I never thought a two-page history of the Bic pe's n would be so fascinating.

The one I'm reading right now rivals it, though. About halfway through Evicted, which focuses on housing and rental problems in Milwaukee. Incredibly detailed and well written by Princeton sociology professor Matthew Desmond. It won the 2017 Pulitzer for General Nonfiction. Amazing the detail he gets into. He's an excellent writer as well. Any would-be journalist would get a lesson just from reading this book.

 

Speaking of North Korea, this book is fantastic. It's a novel, but the author sent time researching in North Korea. Who knows how exaggerated the things that happen in the book are. I know a few of them are based on truth. Won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

 

started reading that and got about 100 pages in and bailed.