BOOKS THREAD

If I can't write let me at least inspire others! LOL

It started as a lark. The job I was in had a lot of down time ... there'd be flurries of activity and then long stretches where I just had to be there in case a client called with a question. I couldn't watch Netflix all day and was looking for something to keep my middle-aged brain from fogging up so I thought I'd work on a language. I have basic French, German and Italian from the opera side so it came to me to try a new language from scratch and given my obsession with "The Bridge" (note my avatar) I thought Swedish would be it.

I had no idea I'd pursue it this far but I've finished the entire Duolingo course and am starting lessons with an online tutor through Verbal Planet next week. (She's a Swedish woman who has lived in Scotland for 40 years and speaks English with a Scottish accent).

It's been really fun so far.

 

I read "Nothing to Envy" over the past few days after positive passing references to it on here some time back by Big Circus, HC and The Big Ragu, and I agree that it's a very good read.

It follows six average North Korean citizens who eventually defected to either South Korea or China. I've read a couple other books on the same topic that I liked better ("In Order To Live" and "The Girl With Seven Names"), but that was just because I liked the greater depth given to one, more-focused story subject.

The research done and relationships clearly built up between the subjects in "Nothing to Envy" and the book's author, Barbara Demick, are impeccable and genuine, and help allow the reader to be involved and empathetic, too, even though they are only really reading snippets about these people's lives.

 

Read the Autobiography of X when I was in my early 20's (early 80s) after reading Abdul-Jabbar's autobiography (Giant Steps) and learned about KAJ's conversion to Islam. The X story was fascinating and was my first introduction to the Islamic faith. X helped me see Muslims and how that Farrakhan Nation of Islam was a sham (although culturally a positive for rallying people and giving them something to hold on to).

BTW, know one of T. Coates' close relatives and that family is far from blamers but are really forward thinkers.

 

Can you expand on the positives of anti-Semitism?

 

I was only pointing to the positives for that community at that time. As everything, life's complicated. As for the direct answer to your question, no.

 

Reading Gay Talese’s memoir “The Writing Life.” Terrific so far. Interesting how he was rejected for admission to all 20 colleges he applied to in the northeast (he is from Atlantic City), so his father pulled strings with a friend at the Univesity of Alabama. Having grown up in the northeast myself before going to college down south in the early 1990s, I can only imagine how discombobulating the experience must have been in the early 1950s. He hasn’t addressed the racial issue yet, but I am sure it will come up.

 

Splitting time between Chernow’s “Grant” and the new Tiger Woods bio. Strikingly different timelines. Tiger was a star from age 2 onward and was done by age 40. (For now.) Grant was an abject failure until age 40 or so, then became an iconic historical figure in the last decades of his life.

 

I highly recommend "L'Appart" by David Lebowitz, an American pastry chef who relocated to Paris, bought an apartment, and had it renovated. There are recipes at the end of each chapter, but it's an autobiography of that turbulent time -- and a bit of a guidebook to Paris, or at least the "traditional" Parisian lifestyle. I think he just came out with an ice cream cookbook.

 

It makes inferior people feel better about themselves.

 

This retweet is definitely an endorsement.

 

Reading “Sirens of Titan” by Vonnegut. Highly recommend KV as a depression palliative.

 

A new release, "Voices from the Rust Belt," edited by Anne Trubek. It's a collection of essays about the region of the U.S. from (roughly) the western shoreline of Lake Michigan to Pennsylvania. And an attempt to show that the residents of said region are much, much more diverse than a bunch of disgruntled former factory workers who voted for Trump.

As late-night reading, it works because each essay is a quick read, written by people ranging from residents who've fled the Rust Belt (raises hand) to those still living there, fighting the day-to-day battles. A healthy dose of humor helps many of the essays.

In a nutshell: a more focused version of The Baffler.