Becky's Books –

Good, good book –  *IF*  – you’re interested in how deconstruction and other literary ideas back to Borges et al,  as well as the great propaganda machines of 20th century dictatorships as well as technology have contributed to the trouble we seem to have found with the idea of truth today.  This is not just a matter of critical thinking –  it’s a matter of being able to distinguish between truth and lies and who benefits from the confusion.   –  I mean –  it’s called “The Death of Truth”  and subtitled “Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.”

Imo,  it’s  an excellent denunciation of Trump and his version of the truth as well as a little lesson on where this sort of blasé attitude toward truth came from –  the many sources.

I’ve been a fan of Michiko Kakutani for a very long time –  she was the New York Times chief literary critic for 34 years and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 in the category of Criticism. I usually agreed with her reviews.   Currently I follow her on Twitter where she tends to blast the current political issues.

*******
The Death of Truth:  Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
by Michiko Kakutani
2018 / 208 pages
read by Tavia Gilbert – 3h 45m
rating:   8.5   / politics 
*******

Kakutani says that this questioning of and then disregard for truth, scientific or almost any other kind,  goes back way before Trump brought the attitude to his role as “leader of the free world.”

From Jorge Borges and the News-speak of 1984 (George Orwell) through the social media troll projects of the Russians,  Kakutani spells it out with plenty of examples.   At only 208 pages,  she doesn’t go beyond the surface of the various  aspects of  today’s “fake news” and “alternate facts,’   but she covers a wide variety of what’s being disseminated from Washington and other places these days.

This is an overview more than an in depth report on any one aspect of “disinformation”  from skewing the news to outright lies and their promulgation.   The book goes into a possible future, too –  eeks.

“Kakutani has written the first great book of the Trump administration. The Death of Truth is a fiery polemic against the president and should go down as essential reading. In nine exquisitely crafted broadsides, the Pulitzer winner calls upon her vast knowledge of literature, philosophy and politics to serve up a damning state of the union.” —Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/michiko-kakutani-on-her-essential-new-book-the-death-of-truth-666137/

This is the discussion between Gingrich and Camereta on CNN: https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/12/01/gingrich-camerota-crime-stats-newday.cnn

Review:   http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/michiko-kakutani-on-the-death-of-truth.html

And a less glowing review:   https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2156418/death-truth-nails-fake-news-and-lying-donald-trump-flair-little-depth

The study referred to in the book –  Data Manipulation and Disinformation by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis:   https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipulationAndDisinformationOnline.pdf

This is the book which kinda-sorta in a way  predicted the current Russia election scandal – without specifics but with heavy duty big issues.   It’s political fiction and a thriller to boot in addition to having been published two months BEFORE our most recent election,  the focus is slightly different than matters which have come up in the news recently, but Politco comments on all that:   https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/17/political-thriller-russia-scandal-trump-david-pepper-217020

Politico says it “reads like a user’s guide to the past two years in U.S. politics.” –  Yup – kind of.   And Politico also notes that it was first self-published,  then noticed by the Wall Street Journal and finally picked up by St. Helena Press.   This explains the two versions.

I got it the Audible version on the recommendation of my son,  but after I started reading I realized I needed the Kindle version to go with it because the time frames change from chapter to chapter and it’s hard to pay attention to that  when listening only.

*******
The People’s House
by David Pepper
2016-2017 /  285 pages
read by Jon Eric Preston –  11h 2m 
rating:  A  / political thriller
(#1 of 2 in Jack Sharpe series)
*******

The two versions reflect a certain “polishing” by the author –  that’s really the only difference although it shows up a lot.

For authenticity,  the author, David Pepper,  ran for public office  in Ohio and is currently the chairman of the Democratic Party there which is also  the setting of the book.

There are several points of view in this pretty fast-paced and very enjoyable novel.    the first person protagonist is a reporter named Jack Sharpe who is divorced with a grown  son.   Sharpe covers politics for the particular beat is politics.  But then the chapters skip around between that frame story taking place on specific days after the election and a couple of prior time frames dealing with events prior to the election.

The issues of the election are the same ones which plagued the 2016 election:   gerry-mandering and Russian involvement,   but the focus is on actual computer fraud via rigged electronic voting machines.   And there’s oil involved – and greed and lust for power and women and other matters.

This is a crime as well as political thriller – certain people die suddenly in car crashes

https://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2016/08/review-the-peoples-house-by-david-pepper/

“For political and current-event junkies, this book is a heart-pounding must-read.  I almost missed a flight connection because I just could not put it down.  David Pepper has written an irresistible page turner that combines mystery and thrill, politics and power.  When you get your copy, clear your schedule: You won’t be able to do anything else!”

– Jennifer Granholm, former Governor, Michigan

This is a marvelous book IF  you are interested in the Bolshevik Revolution and what happened BETWEEN February and October of 1917.

This was written in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution –  October 25, 1917,  this is a wonderful detailed look at the actual blow-by-blow events of that year,  from February,  the first revolution,  to the bitter end and beyond –  the Epilogue concerns alternatives to the doomed bloodbath of Stalin.

From the Epilogue:   “It is not for nostalgia’s sake that the strange story of the first socialist revolution in history deserves celebration. The standard of October declares that things changed once, and they might do so again.”

*******
October:  The Story of the Russian Revolution
by China Miéville
2018 / 384 pages
read by John Banks-  11h 37m
rating:  8.5 /  non-fiction history
*******

I thought I knew a fair amount about the Russian Revolution of 1917 – the October one – where the Bolsheviks took control from the Provisionals and led the country into a Civil War.  Turns out I knew some surface and general things.  The whole revolution took about 9 months,  from February to October (and I knew that) but what I didn’t know was that between the Tsar of  February and the October Bolshevik takeover, known as the  Bolshevik Revolution,  there was a lot going on – a lot – especially underneath.

This is a month by month account of the events between February (a bit before) and March (with an afterward part)  of 1917.  There were Tsar struggles (mostly ended when the family was killed), parliamentary struggles, Duma struggles,  military struggles on the front lines of WWI,  international struggles (Finland and others),   and internal military struggles.  There were struggles  and clashes between radicals and moderates of all sort – many violent,  some not.  There were conspiracies and complex tactics –  there were committees within committees and  Lenin was revered and shunned over the question of when and how to complete their revolution and how large it should be –  there were assemblies and more assemblies,  insurrections and more insurrections,  there were congresses and more congresses as the tension and struggles mounted –   when would the Bolsheviks have the support of  enough to successfully proceed with armed insurrection.    When to wait and when to charge against Kerensky’s forces  –  that was the question.   The final decision among the Bolsheviks was very split but screaming,  Lenin won out.   The Soviets were nervous,  but went ahead with their scheduled Congress; meanwhile,  the soldiers at Peter and Paul  Fortress voted.  –

For all those activities,  Mieville has organized the material masterfully and he writes well.  He calls the October 1917 Russian Revolution the Revolution of Trains and expounds on the idea.

This is not a political work, it’s a history without much editorializing about which side or whose position was correct. All players,  including Lenin,  have deficiencies in some way.  Mieville describes in detail the events between February and October – and there were lots and lots of events – It was basically two revolutions and we get that from the history books,  but each one had it’s own buildup and side-taking and military battles complete with  traitors,  heroes, multiple parties, at least a couple of governments,   and so on –    It gets exciting and this reader was totally drawn into the action

This is a subject close to the heart of Mieville,  a long-time self-proclaimed Marxist and a brilliant writer of science fiction/fantasy.   He sticks to the facts here,  as amassed from numerous accounts –  but not actually sourced.  What he’s done is include an annotated bibliography geared toward the layman.  This works very nicely because I don’t really care where he got certain specific information as much as I’d like to know where I can read more.

But he writes t with painstaking detail and a lot  of literary devices including rising tension.  The same stuff used so masterfully in his best sellers as The City & the City and numerous other award winning novels.

Brilliant  and masterful.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/october-china-mieville-russian-revolution

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/sheila-fitzpatrick/whats-left

https://www.ft.com/content/bb5849b6-340b-11e7-99bd-13beb0903fa3

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/22/fuck-stalin.html

https://www.socialistalternative.org/2017/10/20/china-mievilles-october-defends-revolution-fails-counter-anti-bolshevik-slanders/

I grabbed it when I saw it as an Audible Daily Deal not noticing it was an abridged version –  eeks!   But, oh well …   it was very cheap and made a nice break while reading China Mieville’s October and Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich,  both of which are nonfiction and fairly complex.  And it will give me a substantial idea of what the whole thing will read like.   Because yes,  it did convince me that I should.

*******
Out of Africa   (abridged) 
by Isak Denison  
1937 (original 1st published) 
read by Julie Harris 2h  57m
rating –  (nr) /  abridged memoir
******* 

It was on sale so I didn’t notice it was abridged.   Oh well –  I did get a good taste of this widely renowned classic I’ve often wanted to read.  I think I saw the movie a long time ago,  but …

I’m often leery of abridged versions but this is beautiful although I understand there is more to the story.   It’s a memoir of Karen Blixen  (maiden name of Dinesen) written  and it covers her years in Kenya where she ran a coffee farm.

She wrote this memoir (the longer version) 6 years after she had to leave Africa and her lover had died –  then the coffee plantation failed.  It was a tragic time for Dinesen.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Blixen

Nominated by me to read in the Cafe Deletterati reading group –  I was hoping I enjoyed this Ondaatje as much as I’ve enjoyed his priors (that I’ve read) and also kind of in honor of his winning the Golden Booker Prize – 2018  – best in 50 years of Man Booker Prizes. for The English Patient which I read much to long ago to have reviewed here.   I did enjoy it and I feel like I should read it again but … on to the new one.

*******
Warlight
by Michael Ondaatje
2018/305 pages
read by Steve West – 8h 36m
rating:  8 / contemporary fiction
(may read it again)
*******

The book starts out as told by an unnamed  1st person narrator,    Nathaniel Williams,  who, with his sister Rachel,  only two years older,  are left alone in Nathanial’s 16th year with a strange man named Moth (their nickname for him).  This is while their parents are away in the far east – or so the children were told.

Nathaniel is remembering this from some time in the future – how they get involved in apparently rather nefarious things – it is just post-wartime after all,  and then there’s the aftermath of that.

The story unfolds and it’s not really clear what’s going on for a long time.  Nathaniel certainly doesn’t know –  a very naive but fairly sharp narrator.  And when he’s older he realizes he doesn’t have all the pieces to his puzzle.   So we don’t always really know what going on with the other people in our lives,  even the important people – our families.  And in the spy business during and after wartime,  the questions of who is who and what’s going on gets tricky

Beautifully written,  very atmospheric with tension tightening even when the plot seems to wander.   The characters are shadowed but their pain is searing even through the fog.

I’m not sure I got everything the first time round –  this book  may need a 2nd reading .  🙂

Washington Post review

The Cafe de Letterati  chose this book as it’s July 15th read-  I’ve read it before but it’s been a long time and I remember liking it quite a lot.  Published in 1980 –  I think I read it in the mid 1990s –  so it’s not exactly top of the best sellers now – well worth the reread though.

I had to hunt the book down in my personal library –  I wasn’t going to buy a new copy in Kindle format if I already had it (although I’ve done that with other books).   The condition was great on the outside but inside it was marked up with all the marginalia typical of my reading since the 1990s (except earlier,  in college,  where I did quite a lot).
Yes,  it was hard to read because my eyes don’t do print font very well –

*******
A Month in the Country
by J.L Carr
1980 / 164 pages -(p’back)
rating:   8   /  contemp lit 
*******

Tom Birkin is an unemployed English WWI veteran and takes a job restoring an old painting in a village church.  There he meets a guy named Moon and the preacher and his wife the older Reverend Keach and his young and beautiful wife,  Alice as well as  a few other villagers. He makes his home in the belfry.

Moon is digging a hole to find the grave of someone – possibly from long ago.  Both the paining restoration and the grave finding have been commissioned by virtue of a will left by a now deceased parishioner.

The narrator,  Birkin,  is remembering this from about 60 years later (1980?).   It was a good summer,  following WWI and most of the characters are healing from something.  The thing is they are all a bit hidden – like the painting,  like what’s in the hole,  is it a grave? and why did Alice marry the minister?  .

The countryside is beautifully described but the writing is a bit old fashioned.  There is a lot of humor here too, and it fits nicely.  It’s a curious book.

I read this because it was the choice for discussion in the Allnonfiction reading group for August –  I started early  because I couldn’t find something better to read,  so – why not?   I’ve loved Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie since I first heard them although I haven’t  really kept up.   I was about 15 years old when the folk music revival hit and I  went on continuing to enjoy Dylan and loved it when he won the Nobel.

I know less about Woodie Guthrie,  but heard a lot of his music and read a few bits-  a kind of hero in my eyes of younger years.   I’ve read the novels/biographies of both men.

Also,  although I’m in California now,  my Finnish-American dad grew up about 35 miles from HIbbing and we used to visit his siblings/cousins  who were still on their own farms (not miners or socialists).   I’ve been back there many times.  And that’s not all –  my dad was in the Merchant Marines (like the very anti-fascist Guthrie)  in large part because of the union wages.

*******
Grown-Up Anger:  The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan,  Woody Guthrie,  and the Calumet Massacre of 1913
by Daniel Wolff
2017 / 345 pages
read by  Dennis Boutsikaris  8h 49m
rating:   8 / nonfiction – history/biography 
*******

Also,  I’ve read Woody Guthrie’s novel,  House of  Earth as well as that of Bob Dylan,  Chronicles,  Volume One.   Still,  I certainly don’t consider myself very learned at all about either of them.

The Calumet Massacre of 1913 was a Christmas Eve fire which took place  in a union hall in Calumet Michigan, 1913.  I think I may have heard of that incident prior,  but I’m not sure.   Anyway,  the subjects in the title,  Dylan, Guthrie and a massacre (by the mine bosses?),  get interwoven because  as Dylan grows up Wolff says he has  a certain amount of anger (as in James Dean) which finds expression in Guthrie’s music.  (I’ve read other interpretations but Dylan is a slippery character in some ways.)

It’s a lot of territory in Wolff’s hands and the narrative covers the biographies of Dylan and Guthrie and then goes back to the idiotic ideas of  Louis Agassiz (a very important scientist and businessman from back in the 19th century) and travels forward to  1970 or so – (a change in Dylan’s career there).     Along the way Wolff covers how various labor incidents and movements affected the lives of Guthrie and Dylan –  (fueled their anger,  so to speak) and how the unions and other movements,  civil rights,  anti-war,  etc.  got intertwined in the 1960s.

The book is a bit of everything –  biographies,  discography,  social and union history,  and the ways Guthrie and Dylan were radicalized – or not.   And it’s packed with little tid-bits of information.    lthough it is divided kind of between the “massacre” of 1913,   Guthrie’s life and career between 1912-1967, and Dylan,  1914 – .  There’s a bit of an epilogue re Calumet –

And it sometimes feels a bit of a mishmash what with the major players/events coming in 1913 (and prior), Guthrie of the 1930s and ’40s,   and Dylan of the the 1960s (and later),  but by the end it comes together and makes sense.

I’ll likely read this again when it comes up for discussion  – but it will be a bit at a time –  maybe get the Kindle version to go with it –   we’ll see.   Maybe it will gel better.  –  I’ll take notes

Looking for something to read I finally (!) opted for this one – a new mystery novel by the guy who wrote “Magpie Murders” which I thoroughly enjoyed.

And like Magpie Murders,  it’s really quite clever in its own way. A guy named Horowitz (yes) who is a writer by trade (yup) plays side-kick to a detective named Hawthorne who is technically no longer employed by the London police department. He’s a bit weird, has a few problems, but he’s an excellent detective.  Hawthorne asks  Horowitz to write a book about him and his cases – focusing on the current investigation.

Okay – like I’d seen this on the new release pages for a few weeks and was wondering.  I’m not a Patterson fan at all but I thought it could be interesting and it got some good reviews.   I read it on my Kindle because that’s easier for me up here in North Dakota – (2 more days).

*******
The President Is Missing
by James Patterson and Bill Clinton
2018 / 513 pages
rating A – /  political thriller 
*******

Overall it was a good book –  the tension was high throughout and the plot was very interesting –  a massive cyber attack is planned against the United States and the President has to go “underground” to deal with it.

I was just interested in this book due to the subject matter,   and it looked pretty good, had good reviews, etc.   I got it.    David  Sanger is the national security correspondent,  senior writer,  for the New York Times reporting for them since 1982.  He’s also written books and teaches at the Kennedy School of Government.  I figured it would be pretty enlightening and yes,  it was!

*******
The Perfect Weapon:  War,  Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age
by David E. Sanger
2018 /  384 pages (Kindle)
rating –  9 / nonfiction – current events
*******

Man has been involved in espionage and propaganda for centuries but times have changed since Sun Tzu wrote about military intelligence in  The Art of War (my review)  in the 6th century BC.  Sanger’s book is not a history though as it actually only covers the period since cyber warfare began – 1980s or so,  1990s maybe.   And he really starts with the Russian/ Ukrain incidents,  the US/Israel vs Iran’s nuclear program,  (Stuxnet)  followed by   Snowden the election fiasco of Trump and North Korea under Kim Jong Un.

This is an accounting of many of the incidents since the Iran episode in GW Bush’s presidency including some of what’s going on in North Korea,  Russia,  China and so on.  There’s quite a lot on the US also.

I really enjoyed it,  learned a lot and it set me up for the James Patterson/Bill Clinton book I read next.

I really missed the boat on this one –  I’d never even heard of it or it’s author prior to reading it for discussion in one of my reading groups.   Oh well –  I’m glad to have got to it now.   (I think I wasn’t reading all that much when the book was first published.)

The setting is Lincoln, Illinois in the 1920s and told from the perspective of an old man many years later – the landscape is lovingly and evocatively presented,  there would be a nostalgic element to it if the story itself weren’t so compelling and thought provoking in its own way.

*******
So Long,  See You Tomorrow
by William Maxwell
1980/ 136 pages
rating:   8 /  US fiction-metafictional bio? 
*******

Maxwell winds his way into the story,  setting up an unnamed 1st person narrator in the frame story before getting into the main story which includes a murder.  This narrator’s life is much like Maxwell’s, for what it’s worth.

It turns out that at about age 14 or so, Maxwell’s friend’s father is involved in the murder,  but as a child at the time,  our 1st person doesn’t quite understand what was going on –  as an adult he tries to put the information together with very limited personal clues and he warns the reader that all or none of his version may be true.   (sigh …  how many books are fuzzy like this?)

Events described in a newspaper clipping are by their nature stripped of quite a lot of information so when we read about a murder which happened in a small town and even if we are acquainted with one of the people involved,  we don’t,  can’t,  know all the circumstances.   So,  the question is,  do we invent a story to suit ourselves?  Probably,  quite often,  we do.

This is just such a story as told by that old,  unnamed narrator,  remembering the situation of Cletus Smith whom he knew briefly as a child and to whom he was rude or cruel or something and has never forgotten it.

The narrator tells us that he delves into his imagination to produce a tale based on that bit of newspaper clipping and community hearsay of an event which occurred decades prior.   Of course Maxwell warns us not to believe everything,  so we have either a very unreliable narrator,  or a fiction not passing itself off as anything other than the product of his own imagination.

The themes abound. There’s memory,  guilt, family, love, fidelity, truth, friendship, anguish, temptation and adultery, death, loss,  grief,  and more.  The structure is a kind of literary theme in itself and there’s a certain amount of self-awareness to the authorship making it a kind of metafictional biography – .  The unfinished house is symbolic

I loved the descriptions of the small midwestern town and countryside as well as the chapter toward the very end where the dog,  Trixie is having problems.   Maxwell writes beautifully.

https://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/stories-we-love-so-long-see-you-tomorrow-by-william-maxwell/

This book by Tommy Orange had been catching my eye recently – very recently as  it was only released this month (6/2018).   I just had some space and picked it up and read it – well … downloaded it and read it.  Native American Lit fascinates me – from Louise Erdrich to Sherman Alexie and many others,  Leslie Silko but also Aboriginal or First Nation lit from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and elsewhere – places in Central and South America.

The story is a tale of Native Americans in urban America, Oakland to be exact,  and as it’s very 21st Century, it’s not a nostalgia piece.  It’s about life for natives in the big anonymous, drug and violence infested big city –  lives of loss and grief and the desire or need to escape. And it’s a search for identity in many cases – in search of what it means to be Indian.

*******
There There
by Tommy Orange
2018 / 304 pages (Kindle)
rating:  9.5  /  contemp US fiction –  Native American
*******

A pow-wow is being planned to take place in Oakland,  California current day.  A whole number of people are looking forward to it and either planning the event itself or planning to attend. Some live quite near,  others are coming from a distance.  Some know each other,  some don’t.   They are very different from each other in some ways,  but very much alike in others.

From:   https://www.amazon.com/There-novel-Tommy-Orange/dp/0525520376

“Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in public for the very first time.

And there are the others, 12 wonderfully drawn and detailed characters who populate this book,  an amazing debut novel.

There is so much pain involved, with touches of joy and a lot of love and grief thrown in.   What’s past may be prologue – or maybe not.   Highly recommended!

I’m back reading in the 1970s and although it never occurred to me before to think of Barbara Pym and Kngsley Amis in the same paragraph – this book shows some similarities – in some ways.   If 50 years and still in print is the sign of a classic both Pym and Amis are almost there.    Pym’s “Quartet in Autumn”  is a big favorite of mine and was published in 1977.   It’s about 4 people who work in the same office and are all at, or very nearly at,  retirement age.   Amis’ story is about 5 people who are older than Pym’s group,  but both books  are a study of characters.

*******
Ending Up
by Kingsley Amis
1974/1   pages
rating:  7  /  
*******

I’s a good book although not terribly exciting,  and  is actually rather silly in its own way – either that or I didn’t “get” something.  (Pym’s book is not “silly” in any way.)

In Ending Up,   five elderly people live in a big house together – three men and two women.   They really aren’t “friends,”  per se,  but they’re friendly and tolerant – for the most part,  except that … well … that becomes more and more difficult as they age and lose their abilities.

Shorty is a drinker but helpful around the house when he wants to be.

Adela  basically manages the household finances – because she’s a tightwad.

Marigold is a rather flighty type,  fashionable and proud but losing a few marbles you might say.

Bernard is a crotchety old man and a little mean.  He  likes to play pranks.

George is pretty close to bed-ridden due to a stroke but he’s been improving.  He still writes articles and so on.   Bernard and George were/are lovers.

The main event is Christmas when Marigold’s grandchildren come for the day but it doesn’t end there – there is an aftermath.

The writing is old fashioned with unusual language and sentence structure.  There are a couple good metaphors but also a couple of really wrong ones.  There are places where it is very funny but also places where it’s bleak.  It was hard to get into but once I did,  once I knew the characters and their ways I very much enjoyed it.

This book by Dave Eggers just caught my eye.  I enjoyed Zeitoun many years ago and actually gave copies away for World Book Night in 2012.   I also read his 2000 memoir,  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  

*******
The Monk of Mokha
by Dave Eggers
2018 / 375 pages
read by Dion Graham – 8h 17m
rating:   8 / nonfiction 
*******

Interesting book –  it’s the third in Eggers’  series of stories about American immigrants in trouble –  “Zeitoun” is the basically true story of a Syrian immigrant, a successful businessman,  and his family in New Orleans at the time of Katrina.  And the first book of the series is fiction,  “What is the What?” about a Sudanese boy who journeys from his homeland in the war-torn Sudan  to safety.

In Monk of Mokha the American son of Yemeni immigrants has the idea to bring Yemeni coffee back to greatness.   He has some harrowing adventures getting his business of coffee importing going from training growers in Yemen to getting investors to actually getting the beans out.   It’s pretty good.

I was Googling and after finding Blue Bottle Coffee on line I suddenly got ads in Facebook for them.  LOL! –   I like coffee but …   This is the stuff which sells for $16 a cup in the upscale coffee houses of the world.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali’s Port of Mokha   https://www.portofmokha.com/team

Blue Bottle with Interview:
https://bluebottlecoffee.com/frequency/port-of-mokha-interview

Btw,   our protagonist here has been recently (May 1) taken to court over the his business practices.   http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/05/dave-eggers-monk-of-mokha-coffee-trader-sued-for-racketeering.html

Wow!  Maybe I’m just the right audience at the right time and place but it seems this is the book I’ve been wanting to read – the book whose main idea mirrors my own in terms of where this country is now and where it’s been and where it’s going.  The Pinker books (The Better Angels of Our Natures and Enlightenment Now –  links are  to my own reviews) almost did it but not quite –

The question is –  Are we doomed in some way?  Or is there light at the end of the tunnel – is the seeming backslide into divisions and some kind of feudal economic system in a crumbling environment?

*******
The Soul of America:  The Battle for Our Better Angels
by Jon Meacham
2018/ 416 pages
read by Fred Sanders – 10h 54m
rating:  10  / history and current events
*******

I read this book for the All-Nonfiction  group where I believe I nominated it because of the author and the subject.   Stephen Pinker wrote The Better Angels of Our Nature which I read back in 2012 and  then another book,  Enlightenment Now which I read this very years.  Meacham’s book takes a similar stand except that he approaches it through US political history.

The phrase,  “the better angels of our natures… ”  is from Abraham Lincoln’s 1st inaugural address –  no,  Lincoln was not perfect,  but Meacham puts him into perspective.

Jon Meacham has taken up the argument that civilization is improving and providing humanity with better lives.

Meacham’s an optimist.  He says we in the United States, have seen very troubled times before and this book takes the reader back to the end of the Civil War then through Reconstruction,  Teddy Roosevelt, the Ku Klux Klan,  the Great Depression, the Red Scares,  Huey Long,   and so on –  JFK, Martin Luther King and on through Ronald Reagan and in the conclusion, Barack Obama.  Donald Trump is mentioned in a few scattered places.

We’ve seen fear and hatred which fosters division and turmoil in many areas –  racial, ethnic,  gender and religious intolerance and strife – economic oppression.  The list goes on.

This is the sequel to Where the Hell Is Tesla? which I thoroughly enjoyed  –  so funny.  Sad to say this book doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor although I see why Dirck had to write it.

******
Don’t Touch the Blue Stuff!
by Rob Dirck
2017/ 388 pages
read by Rob DIrck
rating –  6? /  silly sci-fi
******

Maybe it was me and my current mood and health (nothing that some rest and exercise won’t fix –  a pinched nerve which has morphed from other issues), but I just couldn’t get into it.

I’ve had so many really excellent books this month – I shouldn’t complain.   I have some in my wish list and on my schedule which look excellent so …

This book won some awards and made several  best seller lists last year,  besides intriguing me for a couple reasons.  But I didn’t get around to it and it fell off my personal little wish list.  Then we had to nominate books for the BookGroupList,  an online  reading group,  and I just picked this one as something I thought the group would like to read. It got selected – and then I read it.   Finally.   🙂   Too bad –

The audible version is read by a woman who is a very good reader but does not distinguish between voices,  not even male/female.  As a result there are places where he/she sounds like a giggly and flirtatious girl.  Other times the girls sound like they have more masculine voices than the characters of the actual masculine roles.

*******
Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York
by Francis Spufford
2016 /  321 pages
read by Sarah Rogers- 10h 46m
rating-  6.5  / historical fiction 
******* 

What intrigued me?   It was  written by a very talented British writer and takes place in New York circa 1746 –  that is,  a couple decades prior to the War of Independence.   The book was widely published in Europe prior to its being published in the US,  but I had no idea it was so different from standard US historical fiction of the era.

Fiction wasn’t published in the colonies until a few years after theRevolution but religious and political tracts were common.

Spufford took his inspiration from books actually published during the times –  Fanny Hill and Tristram Shandy,  maybe others.  Fortunately I’ve read those – and in some ways it reminds me a bit of The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth.

The plot – Richard Smith arrives in New York from London with a note which makes him the recipient of 1,000 pounds –  which he is unable to get cashed immediately – as it turns out  he’s going to have to wait for a ship from England for 6 weeks.

So,  he and a couple friends/acquaintances have some adventures – and then all’s well that ends well –  kind of sad in a way,  maybe.

http://www.librarything.com/work/17834463/reviews/144202238

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/golden-hill-a-crackerjack-novel-of-old-manhattan