There is a terrific bookstore a few blocks from our house. It carries most new books, many used books (from college students), and piles of remaindered books (usually hardcover with prices slashed to the irresistible). A week ago I saw on the remaindered pile Notes on a Century by Bernard Lewis. I am not a fan of Professor Lewis, neo-con and big supporter of Bush II's war in Iraq. The sub-title Reflections of a Middle East Historian, and the index suggested a collection of autobiographical essays. I hesitated. Fortunately my recent promise "Know thy Enemies," prompted a look at the price, "$5.98." Hard to resist.
Notes on a Century went from the pile at the bookstore to the pile on my desk. On July 4, I started in. Lewis, like Tony Judt and Oliver Sachs, comes from an English Jewish family settled there early in the 20th century. Judt and Sachs, (both now deceased) were distinguished writers and thinkers. Lewis is not as punchy or as analytic as they, but he is a story teller fluent in Middle Eastern history and languages, to wit:
In 1952, Turkey joined NATO to the delight and pride of the Turkish people. Invited to a dinner party, Lewis reports that a Turkish general asked about Turkey joining NATO replied, "The real problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they will turn around and stab themselves in the back."
Still true! And Turkey, having learned from the U.S., is doing a solid job of stabbing its own self in the back.
I haven't read anything written by Lewis but I have read some of Oliver Sacks' articles and books. We read some of his books in college psych courses too, and his stories made into movies were also interesting. I wrote him once about a sleep problem I was having after seeing one of his videos about people with visual impairments - one of his associates was kind enough to write back.
ReplyDeleteHope the sleep problem got better; not being able to sleep is the pits.
DeleteIt was a weird thing. When I was falling asleep or waking up, sometimes I would hear a sound that wasn't really there, like a scraping or banging. I thought I was going crazy. But they told me lots of people have auditory or visual hallucinations at that stage of sleep ... it's a thing called hypnagogic hallucinations
DeleteWhen I was a kid, as I was drifting off to sleep, I'd hear my name called. But I knew it was some kind of brain trick.8
DeleteIf you like Oliver Sacks, have you read Island of the Colorblind? I picked it up on a remainder table a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteSaid one of the reviews on Amazon: "The Island of the Colorblind is filled with history and science concerning the superficially unrelated topics of neurology and botany. The first part of this book focuses largely on inherited blindness among a tiny Pacific population, and the second part examines a strange illness afflicting the older residents of Guam that in some patients looks like ALS and in others looks like parkinsonism. Some researchers have speculated that the disease may be the result of poisoning brought on by the consumption of cycad seeds, and it so happens that Oliver Sacks harbored a lifelong fascination with cycads and other "living fossil" plants." I found it a fascinating read, I enjoyed it. It was amazing that he could make the seemingly disparate subject matter fit together, but it worked. Oliver Sacks was a bit of a tree-hugger, in a literal sense. I laughed when he recounted impulsively embracing a cycad and getting a snootful of pollen. I guess I have a twisted sense of humor.
I once saw a tv interview with him and he had a zillion plants at his apartment that he cared for. Did you ever see the movie "Awakenings", with Robin Williams playing him?
DeleteShe titles it "Summer Reading," and then she opens Bernard Lewis. For the dog days of August, maybe Bernard Lonergan? I have begun my annual rereading of a Dickens. It's Barnaby Rudge. My eyes will not cross, nor will they cloud over. I will feel no compelling urge to underline or make notes. Summer!
DeleteDickens and Austen were once my summertime reading. Bleak House. Barnaby. Dombey. How many times can you read Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield. Have never read Bernard Lonergan...seems a bit heavy for summer reading. But if you're recommending it....
DeleteCrystal, yes, I saw Awakenings years ago. It was good, but sad.
DeleteYes, very sad. The other movie I know of made from one of his stories was "At First Sight" in which Val Kilmer played someone blind form birth who gets an operation that gives them sight. Also kind of sad.
DeleteMy next summer reading just came in at the library - "Wonder Woman: The Official Movie Novelization". Haven't seen the movie yet so it should be fun.
ReplyDeleteEarlier read "The Little Book of Tourists in Iceland." Funny and grim look at Iceland's near economic meltdown and the country's very ambivalent view of tourists who are kind of wrecking the place.
ReplyDeleteJust completed "Hystopia," an experimental novel by David Means that kind of deconstructs itself. It documents a world in which Kennedy survives assassination and the war in Viet Nam continues along a parallel universe track. It is not an entirely successful book, but it is set in Michigan, and documents events I remember very well, so enjoyed that part.
I am on "Embassytown" by China Mieville. It was assigned by my new book club, which I realized was pretty much all Millennial guys. M'okay. I'll try anything once. Mieville has a great imagination, but he is an inveterate landscape artist, can't stop himself from going on and on and on with descriptions of his fantasy worlds. I'm in about 20 percent and no plot has yet emerged. Still, better than George R.R. Martin.
I've read China Mieville's "The City & The City" and really liked it. Wrote a blog post about it here. I haven't managed to finish any of his others.
DeleteBack to Bernard Lewis.
ReplyDeleteI am wavering. Is he really a good story teller or just a dinner table raconteur? I'm skipping ahead to the chapter on politics and the Iraq War to see what he learned, if anything, from his misbegotten support.
I just don't think I can start in with David Copperfield again.
I am not looking forward to another reading of Copperfield, but he doesn't come up again for probably more years than I have left. On the other hand I do look forward to Nickleby and the Infant Phenomenon.
DeleteI resisted Austen as the novelist for the over-achieving perfect girls in the National Honor Society in high school. What did a vicar's daughter, long dead, have to say to me? I was in no society, unless detention for using the bathroom pass to wander the halls or smoking in in designated areas counts.
ReplyDeleteThen in college I met This Guy. He was charming, handsome, and a total varmint. He broke my heart. And I remember at that time checking out Sense and Sensibility. Which is a book about overcoming a heart broken by a charming, handsome varmint.
I galloped through the rest of the novels in the next year, and for 40 years have read two novels every year. I don't have a favorite.
NYT has this linguistic study of Austen to explain her enduring popularity: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/upshot/the-word-choices-that-explain-why-jane-austen-endures.html
Another interesting read about Austen's social commentary:
http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/05/jane-austen-secret-radical-book-book-breakdown/?ref=15144E706811
This year Emma and Sense and Sensibility are up. Here's a really nice essay by a woman who relates to Emma in taking care of an elderly parent: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/jane-austens-guide-to-alzheimers.html
Pride and Prejudice, junior year high school. I could not imagine my mother, any mother, thinking in terms of the first line. Was I just too young?
DeleteMargaret, you may have been too young, but perhaps the mothers in your circle reflected the mores of their own era just as Mrs. Bennet, depicted with not so gentle mockery, reflects the ambitions of some middle class mothers of Jane Austen's era. Jean, I was on of those honor students, but in a small, rural public school. For years, I resisted re-visiting reading list books. At some point, in a new job where I had not yet made lunch friends, I began reading Jane Austen again at lunch time. I found that I had actually stumbled on a great set of lunch friends, turning down offers to join others at whatever local restaurant had caught their fancy while I immersed myself in the world of the respectable middle class in early 19th century England, so charmingly depicted, (and so beautifully satirized) by Austen. The book describing Jane Austen as a secret radical seems on target to me. That is how I read Jane Austen - but only years after I first read her as required high school reading. I was too young then to "get" what her books were really about.
DeleteEveryone here seems to have such serious summer reading lists (except Crystal, thank you!). I prefer escapism - spy thrillers or English detective series primarily. Dickens is depressing and I would rather not think a whole lot about the world situation right at the moment.
Mrs. Bennet was just like our neighbor, Mrs. U---. She always told her two daughters (and all of us girls in the neighborhood) that it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.
DeleteWe also had a Miss Bates and a Mrs. Jennings, whom I adored.
Austen reminds me that all great literature is, at heart, gossip about the neighbors, whether they live in England, on Main Street, in a castle, or on Planet Gethen. It's the parade of humanity that fascinates.
Here is fun. Find out which JA hero is your soul mate. Mine was Mr. Knightley. Pfft. It's been Henry Tilney 4ever.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/which-austen-hero-is-your-soulmate?utm_term=.xa6vo5bP#.ss4A3GZo
I somehow reached the age of 60 without ever having completed a Jane Austen novel. I finally decided I must remedy that, and downloaded Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma on an MP3 player from our library's site (I did that one at a time). Then I listened to them on longish drives out to visit my family in the other end of the state. That was the way to do it, and I actually enjoyed them. I totally have known people like Emma, who knew exactly what other people needed (they thought), but had no clue about themselves.
DeleteI'm a fan of the Emma Thompson movie version of Sense and Sensibility .... Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Ruckman ... trailer
ReplyDeleteI like that. Hugh Grant is great pussyfooting through his part. Great casting job.
DeleteBut I just reread Margaret's post, and maybe we should be talking about Turkey ... Oopsie. I am the Great Derailer.
ReplyDeleteIs that a novel by Orham Pamuk?
DeleteWhat I'm really fascinated by is countries that shoot themselves in the back....must be Brit espionage novels about that.
I have friends in Istanbul and one lives very near Pamuk's neighborhood of Nisantasi. I haven't been back to Istanbul in about 6 years now and have great memories of one of THE most fascinating cities anywhere. I am so very sorry that Erdogan is systematically destroying the secular underpinning of at least that part of Turkey. One friend of Armenian extraction says that things are so very tense anymore, particularly for Christians who have always had to keep a low profile in the cities. Churches in Istanbul and Izmir (don't know about Ankara) are behind walls, in basements and generally not immediately visible. I'm sure that things will not go well for even those places.
DeleteOn the other hand, speaking of reading, I was re-reading Pamuk's autobiography Istanbul and he says that his favorite Turkish writer is Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and his favorite book by that author is A Mind At Peace. I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I am reading Tanpinar's The Time Regulation Institute and am so far finding it as wonderful as One Hundred Years of Solitude.
DeleteBack to Turkey! And a book as wonderful as One Hundred Years? Hard to imagine...a book so absorbing that my children could not distract me even by lighting matches in the wood pile.
DeleteThere has been very little summer reading for me. I like to be outdoors, gardening, walking, etc. Intellectual pursuits take a back place in summer, and the reading that gets done tends to be serious reading of things either left over from last winter or in preparation for the coming year.
ReplyDeleteAugust 15- September 15 is serious reading time since it is ragweed season. Then I only go outside in the early morning to water the garden and harvest the vegetables. It is usually the time I begin the next winter's intellectual projects. Of course there is a break in September and October to be outdoors again.
The nearest thing to summer reading was probably my graduate courses at Notre Dame in the summer. One had to do the reading for those courses in the spring. I came back home for the weekends to tend my gardening, etc.
The closest thing to relaxing summer reading was my time spent in ND's library browsing the stacks. Our print allowance was 300 free pages per summer, so I always made sure that I got my quota to take home for winter reading.
I just read "Vinegar Girl", by Anne Tyler. Its a Hogarth Shakespeare retelling of the Taming of the Shrew. It was great, I'm going to get the other books in the series (they each have a different author). I passed it on to my 17 year old daughter who also liked it.
ReplyDeleteMy DIL just lent me "Into the Water" by Paula Hawkins, who was the author of "The Girl on the Train" (which was the train wreck I couldn't quit watching). The Amazon reviews weren't very favorable, but as my daughter-in-law said, the main thing you have to deal with is a lot of characters, and a story told from many viewpoints. So far, I like it.
ReplyDelete