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9798989689200
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| 4.20
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| unknown
| Jul 02, 2024
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it was amazing
| Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a telephone pole in front of the house where she grew up. At least once a month in the warm weather, she’d hear the neighbor kids yelling, “Cat’s on a pole!” as they gathered around to taunt the poor thing.-------------------------------------- When he was forty-three, he met Judy. By then, construction work had taken second seat to massage therapy, where he discovered he had a gift.Harmony and Joshua have special abilities. You might even call them superpowers. As with most such talented people, that has not necessarily led to them being happy. Joshua makes a living running healing classes at his own studio. He has always had what seems a pheromonic gift for attracting women. Woof! But commitment has never been a strong suit. Until he married Judy and they had a baby, Emily. Still, it is tough to resist all those longing gaze from his students and assistants. [image] Betsy with pooch - image from her site Harmony is forty-something, works at a gardening magazine, is of uncertain ethnicity, having been adopted and having no real memory of her birth parents, and is different from the rest of us. She sees colors around people, auras, and has a sense of smell that allows her to tell about a person’s health, among other things. It is understandable that being in a relationship can be tough if you can pretty much read the other person’s thoughts and feelings. Insightful? Yes, very literally. She thinks of it as being about energy, hers, others, an experiential milieu no stranger to her than seeing the usual colors or hearing the sounds of the world are for most of us. But can you live through every day seeing, sensing the world like that? Harmony is in mourning for her best friend, her late pooch and beloved companion of 18 years, Delilah. Each believes they are unique, and are destined to remain that way. It is pretty clear that these two crazy kids are destined to get together in one way or another. In this magical rom-com, they meet cute on a Manhattan bus, and we are off to the races. The story centers on their relationship, which, surprisingly, never gets truly physical. Maybe metaphysical? With or without physical touching it is intensely sexual. They are both, because of their abilities, outsiders. Joshua manages by running a school, trying to help people find the abilities they have, but do not recognize. He is able to direct his energy to healing as well. ”We all have this capacity,” says Robinson in her video promo for the book. She has been involved for a long time with spiritual psychology and healing arts, so brings an interesting perspective to Joshua and Harmony’s capacities. [In therapy] I was talking about how I reacted to various people in the office. There was one guy there who wanted an office wifey. I couldn’t stand this guy. Every time he would approach me it was like I was getting slimed with ectoplasm. Etheric gunk would come over me. I wanted to take a shower.Harmony gets more ink of the two, with a large piece of that her interactions with her therapist, Doctor Thompson. These are fabulous. Spectral beings are also a considerable presence. Ghosts? Angels? Something else? Like Julie Jordan in the musical Carousel, Harmony’s favorite musical, both Joshua and Harmony see or sense presences, which sometimes become active to the point of issuing directions. Keep an eye out for mirrors, an image that pops up multiple times. Can you actually see yourself? Or does truly getting to know yourself require another person? There are a few cockroach POV scenes that are hilarious, even to a native of NYC who had to contend with them for a lifetime, sometimes in large numbers. Lord knows, those of us who have spent much of our lives in city apartments can well attest to their persistence, and share Josh’s frustration at their ability to mockingly skitter away from our attempts to extinguish them. Robinson is a funny writer, so there are plenty of LOLs throughout the novel, not all related to bugs. Cats on a Pole is a moving story about people searching for…something, love, companionship, understanding, truth, connection, release. There will be tears as well as laughs. The novel also offers a deeper perspective on spirituality and the meaning of death. It all builds up to a surprising climax, so buckle in. These cats may be stuck atop a pole, (or multiple poles?) getting some temporary safety, but they also gain a broader view of the world, and so will you. What was extraordinary were her colors—raw red and orange energy around her torso, a deep indigo, bluer than the bottom of the ocean with radiant purple wafting through it vibrating so fast above her head it made him feel faint just to watch it. But watch it he did. How could he not? Her desire was direct and raw. Review posted - 07/05/24 Publication date – 07/02/24 I received an eBook version of Cats on a Pole from the author in return for a fair review. Thanks Betsy. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Robinson’s personal, Twitter and FB pages (Partial) Profile – from her site Betsy Robinson was raised an atheist and went on to make her living as a writer and editor of spiritual subject matter: as managing editor of Spirituality & Health magazine for six and a half years and as an editor of spiritual psychology and books about shamans and traditional healers.She is or has been an actor, a playwright, an essayist, an editor, a freelance writer, messenger, paralegal, legal secretary, chambermaid, IHOP hostess, fortune cookie writer, novelist, and more. Cats on a Pole is her third novel. Plan Z was published in 2001 and The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg came out in 2014. Interviews ----- Ectoplasmic Inspo + Publisher at 73: Betsy Robinson - mostly on becoming a publisher ----- Why Publish "Cats on a Pole" and "The Spectators" Now? self-interview - video – 4:25 My review of an earlier book by the author -----The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg Songs/Music from Carousel – Harmony buys a CD of the 1987 revival It does make one wonder if Harmony’s last name was an homage to the composer. -----What’s the use of Wond’rin -----The Carousel Waltz -----You’ll Never Walk Alone -----If I loved You Items of Interest from the author ----- Her promo video -----Book trailer -----Betsy reads from the book ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 20, 2024
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Jul 2024
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Jul 04, 2024
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Paperback
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1640093982
| 9781640093980
| 1640093982
| 4.36
| 99
| unknown
| Nov 15, 2022
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really liked it
| …it feels today that we are in the middle of a profound transformation of humanity.-------------------------------------- We don’t live in a cos …it feels today that we are in the middle of a profound transformation of humanity.-------------------------------------- We don’t live in a cosmos. We live in a cosmogenesis, a universe that is becoming, a universe that established its order in each era and then transcends that order to establish a new order.Cosmos - The universe seen as a well-ordered whole; from the Greek word kosmos ‘order, ornament, world, or universe’, so called by Pythagoras or his disciples from their view of its perfect order and arrangement. – from Oxford reference Genesis - Hebrew Bereshit (“In the Beginning”), the first book of the Bible. Its name derives from the opening words: “In the beginning….” Genesis narrates the primeval history of the world - from the Encyclopedia Britannica [image] Brian Thomas Swimme - image from Journey of the Universe So, Cosmogenesis means, at its root, the beginning of everything. Diverse cultures have come up with diverse understandings of how everything came to be. Where Swimme differs is in seeing the genesis, the beginning, the creation of everything as an ongoing process, not a one-off in deep history. Cosmogenesis tracks Swimme’s journey from math professor to spokesman for a movement that seeks to rejoin science and spirituality. The stations along this route, which runs from 1968 to 1983, consist of people he considers great minds. He gushes like a Swiftie with closeup tickets to an Eras Tour show over several of these genius-level individuals, while relying on his analytical capacity to note shortcomings in some of the theories some others propose. Swimme mixes his approach a bit. It is in large measure a memoir, with a focus on his intellectual (and spiritual) growth, along with descripti0ns of the places where he lived, taught, and studied, and the people who inspired him, providing some background to the theories and ovbservations to which he is exposed. A mathematics PhD, with a long and diverse teaching history, he grounds his work in the scientific. But he does not separate the scientific from the spiritual, from the human. In his view, we are all a part of the ongoing evolution of everything, noting that every subatomic part that make up every atom in our bodies, in our world, was present at the Biggest Bang, then was further refined by the lesser bangs of supernovas manufacturing what became our constituent parts. Even today, we bathe, wallow, bask, and breathe in radiation from that original event. It may have occurred fourteen billion years ago, but in a measurable way it is happening still. And we all remain a part of it. There is a piece of Swimme’s material-cum-spiritual notion that I found very appealing. I have experienced an ecstatic state while perceiving beauty in the world. On telling my son about one such, I remarked that it was like a religious experience. He answered, “why like?” Swimme recruits like experiences to bolster the connection between the humanly internal and the eternal of the cosmos. Bear in mind that Swimme grew up in a Catholic tradition, which clearly impressed him. There is a strong incense scent of religiosity to his work. Not saying that Cosmogenesis is a religion, but I am not entirely certain it is not. As a child I had learned that the Mass was where the sacred lived.I had a very different response to the religious world to which I was exposed as a child through twelve years of Catholic education. There was no connection for me between the Mass and the sacred, whatever that was. Mass represented mostly a burden, a mandatory exercise, communicating nothing about layers of experience beyond the material, while offering hard evidence of the power of institutions to control how I spent my time. I did not, at the time, understand the community building and reinforcing aspect to this weekly tribal ritual, separate from the religious content. I believe that what we think of as spiritual or spectral is the reality that lies beyond our perceptual bandwidth. The ancients did not understand lightning, so imagined a god hurling bolts. With scientific understanding of lightning, Zeus is cast from an imagined home on Mount Olympus to the confines of cultural history. Science expands our effective, if not necessarily our physical, biological bandwidth, and thus captures, making understandable, realities once thought the domain of imagined gods. But what of feeling? The ecstatic state I experience when witnessing the beauty of the world, is that a purely biological state, comprised of hormones and DNA? Or do we assign to that feeling, which can be difficult to explain, a higher meaning because of our inability to define it precisely enough? And, in doing so, are we not following in the path of the ancient Greeks who assigned to extra-human beings responsibility for natural events? So, I am not sure I am buying in to Swimme’s views. It is, though, something, to pique the interest of people like myself who have rejected most forms of organized religion, particularly those that focus on a human-like all-powerful being, (see George Carlin’s routine re this. I’m with George.) but who hold open a lane for a greater, a different understanding of all reality. Where is the line between the material and the spiritual? How did we come to be here? Evolution provides plenty to explain that. But we still get back to a linear understanding of time as an impasse. If the (our) universe began with the big bang, then what came before? Einstein showed with his special theory of relativity that time is not so fixed a concept as we’d thought. Things operate at different speeds, relative to each other, depending on distance and speed. Who is to say that there might not be more fungability to our understanding of time, maybe even radically so? In a way, this is what Swimme is on about, ways of looking at our broader reality, at our origins and ongoing evolution, (not just the evolution of our species, but of the universe itself) through other, more experiential perspectives, (a new Gnosticism?) while still including science. Humans have expressed their faith in a great variety of symbols, many of which have inspired me at one time or another. But today, if you ask for the foundation of my faith, I would say the stone cliffs of the Hudson River Palisades.Overall I found this book brain candy of the first order. Take it as a survey-course primer for the theory he propounds. There are many videos available on-line for those interested in going beyond Cosmo 101. So, Is cosmogenesis one of the ten greatest ideas in human history as is claimed here? That is above my pay grade. Some of the notions presented here seemed a bit much, but there was enough that was worth considering that made this a satisfying, intriguing read. Suffice it to say that it is a fascinating take on, well, everything, and can be counted on to give your gray cells, comprised of materials that have been around for 14 billion years, a hearty jiggle at the very least. Everything is up in the air. We are living in a deranged world where nihilism dominates every major state. The contest today is for the next world philosophy. Review posted – January 13, 2023 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - November 15, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - December 12, 2023 I received a hardcover of Cosmogenesis from Counterpoint in return for a fair review. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, and Twitter pages Twitter and Facebook do not appear to have ever been used you might also try Interviews -----Deeptime Network - Brian Swimme -- What's Next? Planetary Mind and the Future - video – 1:12:41 – from 6:50 -----Sue Speaks - SUE Speaks Podcast: Searching for Unity in Everything - podcast - 31:27 Items of Interest from the author ----- The Third Story of the Universe -----A Great Leap in Being - 28:56 -----Human Energy - Introduction to the Noosphere: The Planetary Minds -----Journey of the Universe Items of Interest -----San Francisco Chronicle - Science doesn’t cover it all, author Brian Thomas Swimme explains ----- George Carlin on religion ...more |
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Jan 08, 2023
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1250783712
| 9781250783714
| 1250783712
| 3.57
| 385
| Aug 26, 2021
| Aug 31, 2021
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it was amazing
| We think of wilderness as an absence of sound, movement and event. We rent our rural cottages ‘for a bit of peace and quiet.’ That shows how switch We think of wilderness as an absence of sound, movement and event. We rent our rural cottages ‘for a bit of peace and quiet.’ That shows how switched off we are. A country walk should be a deafening, threatening, frantic, exhausting cacophony.-------------------------------------- All humans are Sheherazades: we die each morning if we don’t have a good story to tell, and the good ones are all old.Up for a bit of time travel? No, no, no, not in the sci-fi sense of physically transporting to another era. But in the mostly imaginary sense of picturing oneself in a prior age. Well, maybe more than just picturing, maybe picturing with the addition of some visceral experience. Charles Foster has written about what life is like for otters, badgers, foxes, deer and swifts, by living like them for a time. He wrote about those experiences in his book, Being a Beast. He wonders, here, how experiencing life as a Paleolithic and a Neolithic person can inform our current understanding of ourselves. I thought that, if I knew where I came from, that might shed some light on what I am…It’s a prolonged thought experiment and non-thought experiment, set in woods, waves, moorlands, schools, abattoirs, wattle-and-daub huts, hospitals, rivers, cemeteries, caves, farms, kitchens, the bodies of crows, museums, breaches, laboratories, medieval dining halls, Basque eating houses, fox-hunts, temples, deserted Middle Eastern cities and shaman’s caravans. [image] Charles Foster - image from Oxford University His journey begins with (and he spends the largest portion of the book on) the Upper Paleolithic (U-P) era, aka the Late Stone Age, from 50,000 to 12,000 years ago, when we became, behaviorally, modern humans. Foster is quite a fan of the period, seeing it as some sort of romantic heyday for humanity, one in which we were more fully attuned with the environments in which we lived, able to use our senses to their capacity, instead of getting by with the vastly circumscribed functionality we have today. Interested in the birth of human consciousness, he puts himself, and his 12 yo son, Tom, not only into the mindset of late Paleolithic humans, but into their lives. He and Tom live wild in Derbyshire, doing their best to ignore the sounds of passing traffic, while living on roadkill (well, I guess they do not entirely ignore traffic) and the bounty of the woods. They deal with hunger, the need for shelter, and work on becoming attuned to their new old world. We’re not making the wood into our image: projecting ourselves onto it. It’s making us. If we let it.In one stretch Foster fasts for eight days, which helps bring on a hallucinatory state (intentionally). Shamanism is a major cultural element in the U-P portrait he paints. It is clearly not his first trip. He recalls an out-of-body experience he had while in hospital, the sort where one is looking down from the ceiling at one’s physical body, seeing this as of a cloth with a broader capacity for human experience. He relates this also to the cave paintings of the era, seeing them, possibly, as the end-product of shamanic tripping. This section of the book transported me back to the 1960s and the probably apocryphal books of Carlos Castaneda. Social grooming was important to ancestors of our species. But, with our enlarged brains able to handle, maybe, a community of 150 people, grooming became too cost-intensive. To maintain a group that size strictly by grooming, we’d have to groom for about 43% percent of our time, which would be deadly. Something else had to make up for the shortfall, and other things have. We have developed a number of other endorphin-releasing, bond-forming strategies that don’t involve touching [social distancing?]. They are…laughter, wordless singing/dancing, language and ritual/religion/story.It sure gives the expression rubbed me the wrong way some added heft. He has theories about religion, communication, and social organization that permeate this exploration. He posits, for example, that late Paleo man was able to communicate with a language unlike our own, a more full-body form of expression, maybe some long-lost form of charades. There is an ancient language, thought to have been used by Neanderthals, called HMMM, or holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical, and memetic communication. It is likely that some of this carried forward. And makes one wonder just how far back the roots go to contemporary languages that incorporate more rather than less musicality, more rather than less tonality, and more rather than less bodily support for spoken words. He writes about a time when everything, not just people, were seen as having a soul, some inner self that exists separately, although living within a body, a tree, a hare, a blade of grass. This sort of worldview makes it a lot tougher to hunt for reasons that did not involve survival. And makes understandable rituals in many cultures in which forgiveness is begged when an animal is killed. This becomes much more of a thing when one feels in tune with one’s surroundings, an experience Foster reports as being quite real in his Derbyshire adventure. This tells him that Paleo man was better able to sense, to be aware of his surroundings than almost any modern human can. Foster has a go at the Neolithic as well, trying to see what the shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture was like, and offers consideration of the longer-term impacts on humanity that emanated from that change. This is much less involved and involving, but does include some very interesting observations on how agriculture revolutionized the relationship people had with their environment. …the first evidence of sedentary communities comes from around 11,000 years ago. We see the first evidence of domesticated plants and animals at about the same time. Yet, it is not for another 7,000 years that there are settled villages, relying on domesticated plants or fixed fields. For 7,000 years, that is, our own model of human life, which we like to assume would have been irresistibly attractive to the poor benighted caveman, was resisted or ignored, just as it is by more modern hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers only become like us at the end of a whip. Our life is a last resort for the creatures that we really are.He notes that even when farming took root, many of those newly minted farmers continued living as hunter-gatherers for part of the year. He finishes up with a glance at the contemporary. More of a screed really. He notes that phonetic writing severed the connection our languages have with the reality they seek to portray. Pre-phonetic languages tend to be more onomatopoeic, the sounds more closely reflecting the underlying reality. He sees our modern brains as functioning mostly as valves, channeling all available sensation through a narrow pipeline, while leaving behind an entire world of possible human experience that we are no longer equipped to handle. To that extent we all have super-powers, of potential awareness, anyway, that lie waiting for someone to open the right valve, presuming they have not been corroded into inutility by disuse. He tells of meeting a French woman in Thailand whose near-death experience left her passively able to disrupt electronic mechanisms. She could not, for example, use ATMs. They would always malfunction around her. He takes a run at what is usually seen to indicate “modern” humanity. I’ve come to wonder whether symbolism is all it’s cracked up to be, and in particular whether its use really is the great watershed separating us from everything else that had gone before.He argues that trackers, for example, can abstract from natural clues the stories behind them, and those existed long before so-called “modern man.” He calls in outside authorities from time to time to fill in gaps. These extra bits always add fascinating pieces of information. For example, Later I wrote in panic to biologist David Haskell, an expert on birdsong, begging him to reassure me that music is ‘chronologically and neurologically prior to language.’ It surely is, he replied. ‘It seems that preceding both is bodily motion: the sound-controlling centers of the brain are derived from the same parts of the embryo as the limb motor system, so all vocal expression grows from the roots that might be called dance or, less loftily, shuffling about.Foster is that most common of writers, a veterinarian and a lawyer. Wait, what? Sadly, there is no telling in here (it is present in his Wiki page, though) of how he managed to train for these seemingly unrelated careers. (I can certainly envision a scenario, though, in which we hear lawyer Foster proclaiming to the court, “My client could not possibly be guilty of this crime, your honor. The forensic evidence at the scene clearly shows that the act was committed by an American badger, while my client, as anyone can see, is a Eurasian badger.”) It certainly seems clear, though, from his diatribes against modernity, where his heart is. In the visceral, physical work of dealing with animals, which lends itself to the intellectual stimulation of a truer, and deeper connection with nature. The first time (and one of the only times) I felt useful was shoveling cow shit in a Peak District farm when I was ten. It had a dignity that piano lessons, cub scouts, arithmetic and even amateur taxidermy did not. What I was detecting was that humans acquire their significance from relationship, that relationships with non-humans were vital and that clearing up someone’s dung is a good way of establishing relationships.In that case, I am far more useful in the world than I ever dreamed. GRIPES Foster can be off-putting, particularly to those us with no love of hunting, opening as he does with I first ate a live mammal on a Scottish hill. (Well, as least it wasn’t haggis.) I can well imagine many readers slamming the book shut at that point and moving on to something else. Will this be a paean to a manly killing impulse? Thankfully, not really, although there are some uncomfortable moments re the hunting of living creatures. Sometimes he puts things out that are at the very least questionable, and at the worst, silly. Our intuition is older, wiser and more reliable than our underused, atrophied senses. Really? Based on what data? So, making decisions by feelz alone is the way to go? Maybe I should swap my accountant for an inveterate gambler? He sometimes betrays an unconscious unkindness in the cloak of humor: The last thing I ate was a hedgehog. That was nine days ago. From the taste of them, hedgehogs must start decomposing even when they’re alive and in their prime. This one’s still down there somewhere, and my burps smell like a maggot farm. I regret it’s death under the wheels of a cattle truck far more than its parents or children possibly do.I doubt it. One stylistic element that permeates is seeing an imaginary Paleo man, X, and his son. Supposedly these might be Foster and Tom in an earlier era. It has some artistic appeal, but I did not think it added much overall. All that said, the overall take here is that this is high-octane fuel for the brain, however valved-up ours may be. Foster raises many incredibly fascinating subjects from the origins of religion, language, our native capabilities to how global revolutions have molded us into the homo sap of the 21st century. This is a stunning wakeup call for any minds that might have drifted off into the intellectual somnolence of contemporary life. There are simply so many ideas bouncing off the walls in this book that one might fear that they could reach a critical mass and do some damage. It is worth the risk. If you care at all about understanding humanity, our place in the world, and how we got here, skipping Being a Human would be…well…inhuman. It is an absolute must-read. We try to learn the liturgy: the way to do things properly; the way to avoid offending the fastidious, prescriptive and vengeful guardians of the place. Everything matters. We watch the rain fall on one leaf, trace the course of the water under a stone, and then we go back to the leaf and watch the next drop. We try to know the stamens with the visual resolution of a bumblebee and the snail slime with the nose of a bankvole and the leaf pennants on the tree masts with the cold eyes of kites. Review posted – 9/17/21 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 8/31/21 ----------Trade paperback - 8/9/22 This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! I received an ARE of Being a Human from Metropolitan Books in return for a modern era review. Thanks, Maia. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, and Twitter pages By my count this is Foster’s 39th book Foster’s bio on Wiki Charles Foster (born 1962) is an English writer, traveller, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel (particularly in Africa and the Middle East), theology, law and medical ethics. He is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. He says of his own books: 'Ultimately they are all presumptuous and unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions 'who or what are we?', and 'what on earth are we doing here?'Interviews -----The Guardian - Going underground: meet the man who lived as an animal - re Being a Beast by Simon Hattenston -----New Books Network - Defined by Relationship by Howard Burton – audio - 1h 30m Items of Interest from the author -----Emergence Magazine - Against Nature Writing - on language as a barrier to understanding -----Shortform - Charles Foster's Top Book Recommendations Items of Interest -----Wiki on Bear Grylls - a British adventurer – mentioned in Part 1 as an example of someone more interested in the technology of survival than the point of it (p 62 in my ARE) -----Wiki on Yggdrasil - mentioned in Part 1 – humorously (p 85) -----Wiki on the Upper Paleolithic -----Dartmouth Department of Music – a review of a book positing that Neanderthals used musicality in their communications Review Feature - The Singing Neanderthals: the Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body by Steven Mithen - Foster addresses this in this discussion of the origins of human language -----Wiki on Carlos Castaneda -----Discover Magazine - Paleomythic: How People Really Lived During the Stone Age By Marlene Zuk Like it says – an interesting read ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 16, 2021
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Jun 30, 2021
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0062671189
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| 0062671189
| 4.10
| 77,743
| Mar 03, 2020
| Mar 03, 2020
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it was amazing
| On August 1, 1953, the United States Congress announced House Concurrent Resolution 108, a bill to abrogate nation-to-nation treaties, which had been On August 1, 1953, the United States Congress announced House Concurrent Resolution 108, a bill to abrogate nation-to-nation treaties, which had been made with American Indian Nations for “as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow.” The announcement called for the eventual termination of five tribes, including the Turtle Mountain Band of Chipewa.The resolution was one of a series of like measures that sought to deny Native American tribes the benefits treaties with the U.S. government had conferred, things like the government providing medical care, schools, and food. More importantly, it made the tribes vulnerable to loss of their land, which was usually the purpose of such laws. In the case of the Turtle Mountain Band, it would mean, ultimately, forcing reservation residents to relocate to “the cities,” a place where sustaining traditional life would be impossible and living conditions were often appalling. The novel offers a payload of information about this legal abomination while keeping track of the watchman of the title on his nightly rounds at the plant, and in his dealings with his Chippewa community on a diversity of matters, personal and official. [image] Louise Erdrich - image from Citypages Thomas Wazhushk is the fictional representation of Erdrich’s real-life grandfather. We follow his route, from awareness of the proposal, to seeking advice from more knowledgeable tribe members, to organizing resistance, to recruiting expertise, to appearing before the Senate committee that was considering it. Patrice (Pixie) Paranteau is 19. She works at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, (a real-world place) where gems and semi-precious stones are drilled for use in military ordnance, and Bulova watches, and which Thomas guards at night. The novel’s focus alternates between Patrice’s coming of age and Thomas’s representation of the tribe. Patrice faces many challenges. As a primary supporter of her family (pop being mostly an out-of-work alcoholic who steals rather than contributes, whenever he deigns to show up), Patrice must hang onto her job at all costs. Not a simple thing, as she is reliant on others for transportation to and from work, and lacking any sort of union protection, she can be let go on a whim. Asking for days off, for example, can be a fraught thing. But family comes first, and Patrice negotiates some time to go looking for her older sister, Vera, who has gone missing in Minneapolis. Vera’s absence certainly rings bells, given the ongoing travesty of Native American women and girls who continue to go missing year after year. She is also well aware of the relationship choices facing her. A white teacher (and boxing coach) is puppy-dog smitten with her, or at least with his idealized image of her. And a local young man, Wood Mountain, finds himself interested as well. Patrice seeks some sex-ed from a good, and experienced, friend before even considering pursuing such interests. She had seen how quickly girls who got married and had children were worn down before the age of twenty. Nothing happened to them but toil. Great things happened to other people. The married girls were lost…That wasn’t going to be her life.Speaking of things sexual, the atmosphere at the plant is challenging for some of the women, but defenses are craftily erected, and major misery is mostly avoided. Unrelated to the plant, Patrice faces an attempted assault, barely escaping. Erdrich offers a look at a very dark side of Minneapolis, where exploitation, the worst of which occurs offstage, is extreme, and very disturbing. The desire to experience the wider world comes in for a look. Patrice wants to see more of life than is possible on the rez, but has limited possibilities. Wood Mountain, on the other hand, feels deeply wedded to the land and would be more than happy to spend the rest of his days there. Sometimes he found small ocean shells while working in the fields. Some were whorled, others were tiny grooved scallops…Vera and Patrice’s experience with “the cities” would hardly seem an inducement, but another young native woman, a grad student, who was raised in the city, which was not a horrifying experience, has to study, on-site, the rez, a somewhat alien place to her, to get a fuller appreciation of her own roots. Overall, The Night Watchman offers a portrait of a community struggling to survive despite the onslaughts by forces official, religious and economic. Along the way, Erdrich offers a very deep and powerful look at life on the reservation, how Native Americans relate to each other, (living and dead) and interact with the wider non-native world beyond. The borders, however, are quite permeable. Many native women work at the Jewel Bearing Plant. The white world enters the reservation in person of Lloyd Barnes, a teacher and boxing coach. Two young Mormon missionaries stumble through the landscape as well. They are mostly there for comic relief. Mormonism comes in for a look beyond the two young men, as Thomas studies Mormon teaching as a way to better understand the Senator behind the House resolution, and has a vision that is very resonant with Mormon lore. Erdrich often shows in her books connections between religions, usually between native beliefs and Catholic or Protestant Christianity. This is of a cloth with that. She also devotes considerable attention to dark circumstances in native life. Her characters must often contend with poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, and domestic violence. There is plenty of that to go around here as well. But, while they are significant elements in the stories being told, they are not the focus. Thomas’s battle to save the community and Patrice’s growth toward finding her best road ahead are the lead narrative elements. Erdrich employs a rich palette of magical realism in most of her books, and this one is no exception. The lines between living and not-living are blurry. A member of the tribe allows himself to be occupied by a spirit to facilitate an out-of-body search for a missing person. Thomas sees the spirit of a young man at the plant during his nightly rounds, and sees beings of light descend from on high, as well. A golden beetle emerges from the husk of a nut. Someone has a conversation with a dog. An evil-doer is cursed with a physical deformity. One character is changed after sleeping near a hibernating bear. Where living ends and the spiritual begins, where the past ends and the present and even future emerges are more curtain-like crossings than hard barriers. This is always a wonderful feature in Erdrich’s books. One of my favorite elements of the novel was the transcendental experiences felt by some as they viscerally connect with the world in which they live. In one passage, Patrice is returning home, walking through woods when it begins to rain. Her hair, shoulders, and back grew damp. But moving kept her warm. She slowed to pick her way through places where water was seeping up through the mats of dying grass. Rain tapping through the brilliant leaves the only sound. She stopped. The sense of something there, with her, all around her, swirling and seething with energy. How intimately the trees seized the earth. How exquisitely she was included. Patrice closed her eyes and felt a tug. Her spirit poured into the air like song.In another, She could hear the humming rush of the tree drinking from the earth. She closed her eyes, went through the bark like water, and was sucked up off the bud tips into a cloud.We learn what happens with the Resolution, decisions are made about paths forward, characters find themselves, so there is much satisfaction to be had in the wrap up. And along the way we have picked up a payload of learning about native culture, about the relationship of the tribes to the government, a nugget or two about Mormonism, and been led on this journey by warm, relatable characters who are very easy to care about, through a landscape both harsh and ecstatic, to see realities pedestrian, brutal, and magical. What more could any reader want? Review posted – February 14, 2020 Publication date ----------March 3, 2020 (hardcover) ----------March 23, 2021 (trade paperback) June 11, 2021 - The Night Watchman wins the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Well deserved. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store. This is Erdrich’s sixteenth novel, among many other works. She has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, among many other recognitions. Her familiarity with cultural mixing is personal, her mother being an Ojibwe tribal leader and her father being a German-American. Familiarity with both native spirituality and western religion also stems from her upbringing. She was raised Catholic. Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed -----2017 - Future Home of the Living God -----2021 - The Sentence -----2017 - Future Home of the Living God -----2016 - LaRose -----2010 - Shadow Tag -----2012 - The Round House -----2008 - The Plague of Doves -----2005 - The Painted Drum Items of Interest -----Yump - ”In the Old Language”: A Glossary of Ojibwe Words, Phrases, and Sentences in Louise Erdrich’s Novels - by Peter G. Beidler -----Ojibwe People’s Dictionary -----Wiki on Lamanites -----Timeline.com - Upset with mistreatment, Puerto Rican radicals stormed the Capitol and started shooting in 1954 -----NY Times – December 25, 2019 - In Indian Country, a Crisis of Missing Women. And a New One When They’re Found. - By Jack Healy -----Emily Dickinson’s Success is counted sweetest - Patrice quotes from this Songs -----El Negro Zumbon -----Bill Haley and the Comets - Crazy, Man, Crazy -----Slim Whitman - My Heart is Broken in Three ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 26, 2020
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Feb 10, 2020
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Feb 10, 2020
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Hardcover
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1501137573
| 9781501137570
| 1501137573
| 4.19
| 34,050
| Sep 24, 2019
| Sep 24, 2019
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it was amazing
| Ruth knew what evil could befall a girl traveling alone. Especially now, when there were demons dressed in army uniforms on every corner. Ruth knew Ruth knew what evil could befall a girl traveling alone. Especially now, when there were demons dressed in army uniforms on every corner. Ruth knew of them as mazikin, terrible creatures whose work was the misery of humankind. They had accomplished their work in Berlin…newspapers printed captions beneath photographs of Jewish businessmen and lawyers and professors. Here are the animals. Do you know this Beast? That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls. To fight what was wicked, magic and faith were needed. This was what one must turn to when there was no other option.Berlin, Spring, 1941. Hanni Kohn’s husband, Simon, a Jewish doctor, has been murdered, for being a Jewish doctor. She lives with her mother, Bobeshi, and Lea, her twelve-year-old daughter. The old lady was in no condition to travel, so Hanni was stuck, but there was still a chance that she could save her child. If you do not believe in evil, you are doomed to live in a world you will never understand. But if you do believe, you may see it everywhere, in every cellar, in every tree, along streets you know and streets you have never been on before. In the world that we knew, Hanni Kohn saw what was before her. She would do whatever she must to save those she loved, whether it was right or wrong, permitted or forbidden.She finds a rabbi renowned for his expertise and begs him to make a golem (a magical being made from clay) to protect her daughter until she was safe. His wife will not even let Hanni speak to him, but his daughter, Ettie, denied the religious tuition she craved, but an always eager listener at doorways, offers to do the deed. Thus is born Ava, (based on the word Chava, which means life) a creature built not just of clay, water, and mysticism, but of tears and menstrual blood, a female golem, sworn to protect her charge, Lea, as others of her kind had been charged with protecting Jews from worldly evil in the past. But Hanni is warned not to let the creature persist beyond the duration of her mission, as golems were inclined to increasing their knowledge and power over time. Hanni begs the creature to love her daughter as if she were her own. She tells Lea that Ava is a distant cousin. [image] Alice Hoffman - image from The Guardian Lea’s journey with Ava is the primary thread in the novel. In an essay in the book that follows the story, Hoffman calls it a “fairy tale motif of a girl who loses her mother and must find her way in the world.” But there are others we follow as well. The Levi family in Paris is made up of math Professor Andre, Madame Claire, Victor (17), Julien (14) and their young housemaid, Marianne. As the horrors of the Reich reach Paris, the three young people set out on their separate paths. We track them, and the golem-maker, Ettie, along with Lea and Ava. Paths will intersect. The spark for the novel came in the form of a fan who approached Hoffman after a book signing, and told her about having been taken in and protected in a convent during the war. She was afraid that her history and the history of others who had likewise been saved would be lost. She wanted Hoffman to write her story. The author told her that she does not do that, but the notion stuck, and some time later, wanting to write a book about the Holocaust, she returned to it. Partly, I felt it was my last chance to meet survivors and try to understand how they could go through something like that and continue to be in the world. That’s what I really wanted to find out. After all that has happened, can this still be the world that they knew? (The title alludes to that.) And how can they still want to be in it? - from the Moment Magazine interviewHoffman traveled to France and visited the chateaus, homes for children, that had been refuges for refugees. She met with Holocaust survivors both in the USA and in France to inform her knowledge of this heretofore unknown (to her) aspect of that dark, dark time. In an interview with the Philadelphia Enquirer, Hoffman recalls, One really amazing gentleman came to the country from Paris, and we went to the village where he had been a hidden child. He hadn’t been back. It was extremely emotional. She did not limit her view to what had happened in the past but sees growing dangers in the world we know today "I was writing about what hate does, the effects of the fear of people who are ‘other.’ I didn’t realize that so much of what was happening in France during World War II was anti-refugee, that it began not as a movement that was anti-Jewish but simply anti-refugee. So I found myself writing about how it’s really a choice, about how easy it can be to look in the other direction. These things happen slowly and then, all of a sudden, they have happened.” - from the Bookpage interviewThe secondary characters are amazingly well realized, from a doctor who treats resistance fighters, to Marianne’s father, who keeps bees on his farm, to Sister Marie, a nun with a complicated past, who protects refugees. There is a heron who plays a significant and touching role. Tales told by Bobeshi are recounted throughout the story, family lore regarding wolves as often as not. The Kohns feel a close kinship with them, a sort of family totem. Hoffman’s earliest exposure to story was the tales she heard from her Russian Jewish grandmother. We do not know if Hoffman’s family shares the Kohns’ lupine affinity. Granny is nicely represented here. In addition to the emotional engagement of the story, you will learn about resistance organizations, and about peculiarities of governance in occupied France that affected how Jews were treated. And about the Huguenots’ experience of persecution informing their welcoming of refugees. While I may be a bit more subject to literature-driven lachrymosity than most males, it is usually of the whimpering sort, a few sniffs, snorts, leaky eyes, with maybe a crying gasp or two bursting forth. The power of the character creation here, the emet with which Hoffman has imbued them with her inerrant form of magic, the power of the connections she had forged for them with others and the ultimate loss of some, left me bawling into a pillow, desperate not to wake others. Keep a box of tissues handy. And maybe don’t read where you might disturb anyone else. There are great issues at play in this beautiful, dazzling, heart-rending, book. What is life? What is the soul? Are souls restricted to humans alone? What is the power of faith? The power of love, parental, spousal, love of nature, love of god, and longing, to help keep us alive, to give life meaning, and to transcend death? What can good people do to fight evil? The power of the transmission of lore, of faith, of culture down through the generations. How do people survive in dark times? The World That We Knew is among Alice Hoffman’s best novels ever, and may be the best. The world that we know has been blessed with arrival of, not just a great book, but an instant classic. When you read this not-to-be-missed novel, you will find reaffirmation that it is indeed a good time in which to be alive. I always start a novel with a question. With THE WORLD THAT WE KNEW, my question was How do survivors of tragedy manage to go on? I found my answer when speaking with survivors in this country and in France. Even those who had suffered enormous loss valued life, wanted to live, and found joy in their families, their work, their memories and their daily lives.- from the Moment Magazine interview Review first posted – November 1, 2019 Publication date – September 24, 2019 December 2019 - The World That We Knew is named one of Amazon's Best Books of 2019 (Literature and Fiction), which it certainly is, and one of Amazon's overall Best Books of 2019 [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Instagram and FB pages One wonders if the Doctor Girard of the novel might be a tip of the hat to Professor Albert Guerard, a mentor of Hoffman’s at Stanford. Interviews -----BookPage - A little magic is necessary to write the darkest stories -----The Morning Blend - "The World That We Knew" by Alice Hoffman: The Latest from the New York Times Best Seller - video – 5:45 -----Moment Magazine - The Magic of Alice Hoffman - by Amy E. Schwartz -----Reading Group Guides - Author Talk: September 25, 2019 -----The Philadelphia Inquirer - ‘Write my life’: A stranger’s plea inspired Alice Hoffman’s new novel - by Chris Hewitt Items of Interest -----Simon & Schuster - Alice Hoffman shares the inspiration behind The World That We Knew - video – 1:49 ----- Simon & Schuster - Alice Hoffman on Writing - 1:08 Other Hoffman books I have reviewed: -----1999 - Local Girls -----2003 - Green Angel -----2004 - Blackbird House -----2005 - The Ice Queen -----2011 - The Red Garden -----2011 - The Dovekeepers -----2016 - Faithful -----2017 - The Rules of Magic ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 26, 2019
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Oct 26, 2019
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Hardcover
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0316449717
| 9780316449717
| 0316449717
| 3.83
| 12,139
| Nov 13, 2018
| Nov 13, 2018
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really liked it
| When you dance with the Rite of Dreaming, you dance with the gods.Mehr’s got it made, I guess, There were perks to being the Governor of Irinah When you dance with the Rite of Dreaming, you dance with the gods.Mehr’s got it made, I guess, There were perks to being the Governor of Irinah’s daughter—even an illegitimate one. People obeyed you. Servants rushed to your bidding. Even the ones who loathed you—and there were many—were forced to veil their contempt and keep their loathing eyes lowered. All people faced hatred. All people suffered. Few had the cushion of wealth and privilege to protect them as Mehr did.nice wardrobe, plenty to eat, time on her hands, but it comes with downsides. Her father’s grounds constitutes a golden cage. And mom’s side presents a whole other problem. [image] Tasha Suri - image from her Twitter pages While dad is a member in good standing of the Ambahn clan, the ruling caste in the empire, Mehr’s mother was a member of the oppressed Amrithi clan. Not your usual ethnic minority. The Amrithi began ages ago when a magical being called a daiva (djinn-like, with both a physical and a more ethereal nature) got jiggy with a human, making the Amrithi not entirely our sort. The magical side DNA comes with some benefits, though, for some Amrithi anyway. An ability to communicate with the daiva who still roam the world. And how do they communicate, you may ask? Here is the genius of the book. Amrithi communicate with the daiva via physical movement, specifically through dance and sigils,something between magic spells and prayer. (If you have ever seen the TV show, The Magicians, they do a lot of hand sigils there, and not all are of the middle finger variety) They also have dance rites that are the equivalent of the prayer rituals common to many religions. Mehr keeps up the rituals she learned from her mother and from a mentor her mother asked to look after her when she left. The rituals give her a sense of connection not only to her heritage, and her mother, but in a very real sense to the magical events in this world. Suri took some inspiration from her own upbringing. Kids in Indian dance training make abundant use of hand symbols. She also wanted to incorporate that signaling with an element of martial arts. Her characters’ hand sigils are no mere form of artistry. They have real world impact. They kick ass. [image] Author Suri likes Anneika Rose for the role of Mehr More family enters into it. Mehr has a little sister she loves and wants to protect, (and whose safety can be used as leverage against her) and then there is the evil-stepmother, Maryam, (a true bloom of Ambhan womanhood) who does her best to hiss and sneer her way across the page whenever she shows up. She is particularly eager to keep Mehr from continuing the practices of her Amrithi heritage. There’s more. In this fantasy world, which is inspired by a Bollywood version of what the Mughal Empire might have been, reality is not the relatively consistent universe we have come to know. It is a product of the dreams of the gods. Only sometimes those dreams get disturbed, generating hurricane-like storms that dump a whole new type of precip, a thing called dreamfire. Way beyond oobleck. The dreamfire was everywhere now. It was in the air she breathed, in the sweat at the nape of her neck. She could feel the strength of it churning the city into a storm. The buildings were drenched in light, debris flying through the air as if the world had tipped on its side and sent everything sprawling. Even the earth felt like it was moving beneath her feet. It was dizzying, terrifying. Exhilirating.Dad, who clearly loves Mehr, and evil-step-mom, who clearly doesn’t, may have Mehr’s best interests at heart in keeping her confined to the grounds. Seems the talent she has for things magical is in high demand by dark sorts. So, when Mehr slips out and puts her skill to the test, word gets around and she is in a whole mess of trouble. Way worse than being grounded. [image] I like a young Oded Fehr for the role of Amun – image from GirlsAskGuys.om (Yeah, I know Amun is supposed to be dark skinned, but this guy’s face just kept popping into my tiny mind) The religious leader of the empire (midway between Thanos and the High Sparrow), has sent a delegation of mystics and a not-so-subtle Like so many other of the other mystics Mehr had seen in Lotus Hall, his face was swathed by cloth. Only his eyes and bridge of his nose were revealed but his head was lowered, hiding his gaze. The little of his skin she could see was dark She couldn’t tell if he was young or old, ugly or handsome. He was simply male, broad-shouldered and intimidating with footsteps that were soft, too soft. He had a predator’s tread.It is an offer she cannot refuse. No more mani pedis for you, dear. Mehr hits the road with her new associates and the game is afoot. No, really. No saddles or palanquins. They walk across the desert to the evil leader’s oasis-centered temple. His name is Maha, and the similarity to mwahahaha cannot possibly be accidental. Ok, entire-world-fantasies can really get you bogged down in describing everything, (like the above) and then you lose track of the thread. Ok? We got all our words straight, Daiva? Sigil? Amrithi? Ambahn? Jeez, can we move on with it already? The change of scene also signals a change in approach. What ensues is not just learning what dark plans Maha, who is entirely cruel and not entirely human, has in store for Mehr, and taking on that challenge, but getting to know Amun. Is this bad boy really so bad? Why does everyone think he’s a monster? What’s the deal with all the blue tats? And what else will be forced on Mehr? A challenge for sure. The book heads in two directions here. First is getting the lay of the land and finding out who you can trust, and where you can get the best figs. Part of this is dealing with being invited to hang by one group, when you really want to be doing something else, figuring out who can be trusted, deciphering the palace politics in her new town. Very relatable, particularly for the younger set. The other major element is the reveal of what the Maha has in mind, and how Mehr will cope. But the major bit for what seems the largest chunk of the book is Mehr getting to know Amun. They have to come up with modus vivendi in order to accomplish the tasks with which they are charged, and not get, you know, murdered. It was not the fastest read. I enjoyed the first 100 pps of intro to the world and Mehr’s situation, and I enjoyed watching her face diverse challenges and overcome, or not, yet still grow in the process. But I did not enjoy the pace or duration after that. It was reasonably-paced and engaging at first, but settled into a slower, drawn-out tempo that was a bit frustrating. The book might have lost about fifty pages, maybe more, without suffering too much. There are a few interludes when we see events away from Mehr from the perspective of other characters. These offered a break from the central pillar of the tale, and added in a few details Mehr could not deliver to us. There was an element of romantic interaction that was appropriate and engaging, but which took up way too much of the book, detracting from the much more interesting magical, and palace intrigue elements. You know I like a good romance. Well, I read a lot of romance…That’s something that romance series do really, really well. they create books that draw on each other but they’re also kind of discrete stories in themselves. You’ve got a beginning, a middle and end. You’ve got a satisfying conclusion. You know if you pick up the next one you’re going to get the same thing. So, that’s what I’m trying to do with the series. - from the Reddit sessionNot the romance thing, per se, but the beginning-middle-end thing. It was a bit unclear to me whether this was intended for YA readers or adults. Certain tropes made me think YA. Things like a sheltered girl being forced to face life’s realities and find out if she will face-plant or be the stuff that dreams are made of. We have certainly seen plenty of examples of kids or teens with hidden powers that emerge as they grow and confront danger of one sort or another. Evil stepmothers are a dime a dozen in YA tales. And Mehr has a little sister she is eager to protect, like that Everdeen kid. But then, the challenges that Mehr confronts extend well beyond showing the world her stuff. She has to contend with complex moral questions. Suri is also looking at larger issues relating to women. She is interested in how women could exercise power in a heavily patriarchal society, and not settle for invisibility. She shows them choosing paths for themselves, despite the external limitations on their freedom, and sometimes having to hide their true feelings. She managed to catch herself on her hands before her skull met the floor. Then she bowed to the floor, her forehead to the cool marble. She allowed herself to tremble; feigned being a thing bent and broken by his cruelty. She did not have her jewels or her fine clothes, but she had this power, at least: she could give him a simulacrum of what he desired from her. And hold her crumbling strength tight. Let him think he had broken her. As long as he believed he already had, as long as she fooled him, he would not succeed in truly doing so.I very much enjoyed the extreme creativity that went into the literary construction of this world. The magical concepts were impressive, exciting, and fit well with the story. Mehr is an engaging character you will find it easy to root for, particularly when she is faced with wrenching decisions. The writing is beautiful and evocative. I enjoyed much less what seemed a shift from the magical elements and court machinations to an excessive focus on the romantic. But was brought back by the action, twists, and resolutions at the end. I expect there are many castles to be made of Suri’s sands. She has a second book in the series planned, The Realm of Ash, set many years later, looking at the consequences of the actions in book 1. Some dreams can be made real. Published – November 13, 2018 Review first posted – November 30, 2018 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram, and FB pages Interviews -----Definitely check out this audio interview with Suri on InkFeather Podcast -----Not really an interview, Suri takes questions on Reddit - worth a look Other -----The use of dance for communication reminded me of Spider and Jeanne Robinson’s award-winning work Stardance ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 2018
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Nov 19, 2018
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Oct 25, 2018
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Paperback
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1683317211
| 9781683317210
| 3.77
| 155
| Aug 07, 2018
| Aug 07, 2018
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liked it
| Abbie was sure Church leaders had hoped that changing the temple ritual would change history. You could talk about it; you could expand your view Abbie was sure Church leaders had hoped that changing the temple ritual would change history. You could talk about it; you could expand your view about it; but you couldn’t change it. Blood atonement was part of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It had always been and always would be…Early Mormon leaders had taught that certain sins were so egregious that not even the blood of Christ was sufficient to wash away the stain of sin. Such sins required the sinner’s throat to be slit from ear to ear and his blood spill to the earth.Thus the fate of one Stephen Smith, found with one smile too many, dressed in special garments, having dripped red in quantity. Maybe Pleasant Valley, Utah, was not so pleasant. Certainly wasn’t for Steve. Enter Abish Taylor, the sole detective in town. Abbie is thirty-something, model thin, a widow, seems filthy rich, (having to do with a dead rich husband, on top of her family resources) worked as a detective in NYC, Princeton graduate, and was awarded an FBI medal for Meritorious Service. She’s obviously been pretty busy. Her father is a religion professor at Brigham Young University. They are descended from the third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or LDS to those counting characters. But there is some discomfort there, as Abbie is no longer an insider, having thrown off her religious allegiance some years back. Makes family connections awkward, as most remain observant. But it does leave her with an appreciation for the social nuance that informs this book. [image] D.A. Bartley - image from Google Plus Smith was done in as per the banned LDS ritual noted in the book quote at top of this review. So, who is keeping these old rites alive? And what did Steve do to merit such an unhappy ending? It does not take long to determine that Steve had been a very, very bad Mormon, a sleazebag of the Trump variety, multiple bankruptcies, stiffing his workers, protecting his personal money from company failures, shady real estate deals, using some of his company money for personal expenses, grand theft everything, very conspicuous over-consumption of the gluttonous sort, not to mention being less than an ideal husband, all of which offers up a nice long list of suspects. It is good fun going through the steps as Abbie and her very capable partner, Officer Jim Clarke, follow the breadcrumbs. Clarke is an appealing second, young, intelligent, curious, respectful, professional, and connected to the community in ways Abbie is not, so a good source of local intel. Easy to like. Also, he has a range of talents that made me think of Inspector Gadget. What’s he gonna pull out of his personal talent pool next? Wish he was a bit more flawed though. Jim could have used some closet skeletons or annoying habits, acne, a hangnail, something, to make him a bit more human. The primary payload here is, of course, Mormonism. The author, like Abbie, was born into LDS-world, but found a different path forward. So Bartley knows of what she speaks when pulling the curtain aside on the Mormon world. There are many nuggets of information about the religion, its history, and local culture. A lot of this is fascinating. Did you know that there is an LDS organization, The Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMS), that takes in tales of apostasy? News to me. It makes them the Latter Day Stasi. How about the set of four books that all Mormons are expected to have? Or the special garments that full members receive, what protection they afford, how often they are worn. How about the Mormon view of heavenly levels? And what they call the place where Satan kicks back? Contemporary practices and nomenclature are introduced smoothly and effectively. Abbie/Bartley is an agreeable and informative Virgil through the levels here. An element of most procedurals featuring a female lead is the inevitable presence of chauvinism. Check. Add in planting our female detective in one of the most paternal, hierarchical places and cultures in the United States, to ramp up the real and potential conflict. Blessed be. My personal contact with Mormonism is minimal. In 1971, I was in Montreal and stopped in to an LDS pavilion in what had been EXPO ’67. Caught their promotional vid. The image of a heaven populated solely by white people was laughable, and I dismissed the organization as cultish. Many years later I found a copy of the Book of Mormon in a Southwest hotel room and spent some time poring through. While I found the reading quite interesting, and continued it beyond that trip, I got the impression that at least one of the book’s authors had been chewing a bit too much peyote, as the images portrayed seemed particularly psychedelic, reinforcing my initial take. And for any who believe I am singling out the LDS for a particularly dark view, rest assured, I take a dim view of most religions. Still, it is way interesting learning details about Mormon history, beliefs, and practices. Gripes concern surfaces that I felt were too smooth. The book would have benefited from, would have felt more balanced with, a bit more imperfection. I understand that having a wealthy lead offers writers a bit of freedom to do more things than might be available using a more down-and-out investigator. But I would imagine that I am not alone in being sick and tired of the one percent. Tossing their wealth at us is not a great selling point, at least not to me. I do get that it might hold appeal to a different demographic. Wealthy characters do not represent escape for me. They feel more like rubbing my nose in my lack of wealth. Had to roll my eyes over sections in which Abbie expounds on her familiarity with and taste for expensive wines, notes some brand name details that indicate her six-figure wardrobe, even while tossing it all aside for a more modest local brand of camo. I was not thrilled with the super-rich, super-studly, impending boyfriend. Dude needed some downsides a bit weightier than an ex-wife. And how many ridiculously expensive cars does he have? Really? You need that many? I am presuming that a lot of this is a nod to the romance genre, which features such things in abundance. Thankfully, the “R” word was mostly applied by inference here. Also, I do allow for the possibility that there are probably complicating elements of various characters that are being held in reserve for future volumes. I get that, but I wish more rough surfaces had been presented in this volume. The interfering higher-up, a bit of a trope in books centered on police, is trotted out again here. Why Is Chief Henderson making Abbie’s life difficult? Is he being told what to do by higher ups? Is he somehow involved? Is he just eager to avoid any sort of scandal involving the LDS? Did he used to be a less tropish character? Inquiring minds want to know. Abbie is smart, capable, and her knowledge of the one percent (the upside of placing her in that group) offers her insight into the doings of well-to-do baddies. Jim Clarke is probably too good to be true, but if his ups can be offset, even a little, with some downs, he can be a wonderful partner. I particularly enjoyed the growing connection and mutual respect between him and Abbie. One character in particular caught my eye, an insufferable, know-it-all of a young lawyer who has the brains and insight, but who is seriously lacking in people skills. Loved the scene with her. It would be great to see her back again as a foil for Abbie. I don’t know it for a fact, but will believe until I hear otherwise that this person was inspired by a pushy Noo Yawkah that the author must have encountered. Bring her back! Make her an ally! Or just a factor. Abbie needs some tough women cohorts to battle with and/or against. Most of the other women we see here do not leave much of an impression. Overall, despite my class whingeing, I still felt that Blessed Be The Wicked was a solid procedural, introducing a character who can offer us insight into a culture that is unfamiliar to most, but which does have some national significance. The mystery was a good one. I found myself eager to return each day for my daily dose. It is easy to see how Detective Taylor can move forward. I am sure there is much more payload to be had on Mormon religion and culture. And then there is the outdoorsy element that was touched on here, but which could offer considerable material for future books. And lots of family dynamics to peck away at. In short, while I would do some touch-ups, the core seems solid, and should offer a strong central foundation on which Bartley can build an engaging and informative series. Review posted – August 3, 2018 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - August 7, 2018 ----------Trade paperback - August 16, 2022 I was not made to wear any special garments in order to receive this book from Crooked Lane. I did promise, though, to provide an honest review. But if you really need to know, the book was mostly read and the review mostly written, while wearing some lovely blue Eddie Bauer pajama bottoms, spattered with images of tiny moose, and a pair of fifteen dollar slippers from Boscov’s. They protect me from very little, except the loss of modesty to peeping toms with poor taste in subjects, and the full brunt of spilled liquid. They do a terrible job of fending off cat claws that seem to find any uncrossed leg with a foot planted on the floor in need of scaling. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Linked In, and FB pages The author bio page in the book offers a nice and exhausting list of Bartley’s peregrinations. A member of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Donna Alison Bartley‘s (aka Alison von Rosenvinge) Mormon stock is significant. She was born in Scotland, lived in several European countries, (looks like her parents were moving about on Church assignments) studied international relations, politics, and law. She worked as a lawyer, an academic, and a freelance writer. She currently lives in the place Abbie left. And her husband, unlike Abbie’s, is very much alive, as are her son and daughter. Interesting Mormon items ----- Mormon Reformation - Includes intel on the Danites and blood atonement -----Even more on Blood Atonement ----- Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMS) - the Stasi of the LDS – takes reports of apostasy – in case you missed the link in the review -----Degrees of Glory, or heavenly levels. Excuse me, young lady, could you tell me where to get off for home appliances? -----A very nice piece of choir music. You know the band. Other books I have read that deal with Mormonism ----- Educated - reviewed this year -----Under the Banner of Heaven - not really reviewed ...more |
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it was amazing
| On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping. I am only 7, but I understand that it is this fact more than any other that makes On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping. I am only 7, but I understand that it is this fact more than any other that makes my family different. We don't go to school. Dad worries that the government will force us to go, but it can't because it doesn't know about us. Four of my parents' seven children don't have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we've never set foot in a classroom.Educated is both a tale of hope and a record of horror. We know from the first page of her book that Tara Westover is a bright woman, a gifted writer with an impressive, poetic command of language. But her early life offered no clue that she would become a Cambridge PhD or a brilliant memoirist. She was the youngest of seven children born to Gene and Faye (not their real names) Westover, fundamentalist, survivalist Mormons, in rural Idaho. [image] Tara Westover - image from her The Times We had a farm which belonged to my grandfather, and we had a salvage yard full of crumpled-up cars which belonged to my father. And my mother was a - she was an herbalist and a midwife. And as children, we spent a lot of hours walking on the mountain, gathering rose hips and mullein flowers that she could stew into tinctures. So in a lot of ways, it was a very beautiful childhood. - from NPR interviewThe children constituted his workforce in Gene’s scrapyard. Father was the law in their household, but it was a rule informed as much by significant mental health issues as it was by his ardent religious beliefs. In a less rural, less patriarchal, less religious community, theirs could easily have been deemed an unsafe environment. The scrapyard was a particularly dangerous place. …he just didn't have that bone in his head that said, this is dangerous; don't do this. And he had a really hard time understanding injuries even after they had happened and how severe they were. I just - I don't know what it was about the way his mind worked. He just wasn't able to do that. - from NPR interviewRuby Ridge had occurred when Tara was five, and fed her father’s paranoia. Everyone had to have head-for-the-hills bags for when the government, Deep State, Illuminati, choose your own boogeyman, would come for them. He had a profound distrust of the medical profession, believing that doctors were agents of Satan, intent on doing harm. He saw the herbalism Faye practiced as the only true, righteous treatment for one’s ills, calling her products “god’s pharmacy.” And he practiced what he preached, for himself as well as for his children, even after suffering a devastating injury. Maybe not an ideal way to make sure your kids reach adulthood in one piece. [image] View from Buck Peak - image from Westover’s site Home schooling was also less than idyllic, with mom’s attention spread not only over seven children but to her work as an herbalist and later, in addition, a midwife. Luke had a learning disability, frustrating mom, who really had hoped to educate them all. Dad undermined this, dragging the kids out to do chores and learn practical skills. Eventually mom gave up. Education consisted of Faye dropping them at the Carnegie Library in town, where they could read whatever they wanted. Dad rustled the boys at 7am, but Tyler, who had an affinity for math, would often remain inside, studying, until dad dragged him out. …there was not a lot of school taking place. We had books, and occasionally we would be kind of sent to read them. But for example, I was the youngest child, and I never took an exam, or I never wrote an essay for my mother that she read or nothing like kind of getting everyone together and having anything like a lecture. So it was a lot more kind of if you wanted to read a book, you could, but you certainly weren't going to be made to do that. - from NPR interviewSuccessful schooling or not, Tara acquired a desire for and love of learning. Tyler, a black sheep, not only loved books but music, as well. This was a major tonic for Tara, who was smitten with the classical and choral music her brother would play on his boom box. Not only did she find a love for music, but she discovered that she has a gift for singing. Being a part (often the star) of the town musical productions gave her greater contact with peers outside her family than she had ever had before. It formed one pillar of her desire to go to school, to college, to study music. (I included a link in EXTRA STUFF to a music video in which she sings lead, so you can hear for yourself.) At age seventeen, Tara Westover attended her first school class, at BYU, clueless about much of what was common knowledge for everyone else, resulting in her asking a question in class about a word everyone, I mean everyone, knows. Oopsy. Her intellectual broadening and education forms one powerful thread in her story. How her natural curiosity emerged, was nurtured, discouraged, and ultimately triumphed. The other thread consists of the personal, emotional, psychological, religious, and cultural challenges she had to overcome to become her own person. The world in which Westover was raised was one in which a powerful patriarchy, fed by a fundamentalist religious beliefs, applied its considerable pressure to push her into what was considered the proper role for a young woman, namely homemaker, mother, probably following in her mother’s dual careers as herbalist and midwife. And what about what was the right course for Tara? There was some wiggle room. Once dad sees her perform on stage, he is smitten, and softens to her musical leanings. Male siblings had been allowed to go to college. But every step outside the expectations, the rules, came at a cost. Do something different and lose a piece of connection to your family. And family was extremely important, particularly for a person whose entire life had been defined by family, much more so than for pretty much anyone who might read her book. [image] Westover as a wee Idaho spud - image from the NY Post A piece of this proscribed existence was a tolerance for aberrant behavior. Father was domineering, and was feckless about physical danger, even as it applied to his children. And distrustful of the medical establishment. His solution for infected tonsils was to have Tara stand outside with her mouth open to allow in the sun’s healing rays. Severe injuries, including Tara having her leg punctured by razor-like scrap-metal, a brother suffering severe burns on one leg, and even dad himself suffering catastrophic third-degree burns in a junkyard explosion, were to be treated by home-brew tinctures. He was also extremely moody, a characteristic that carried forward in some of the family genes. Tara’s ten-years-older brother, Shawn, was a piece of work. She felt close to him at times. He could be kind and understanding in a way that moved her. He even saved her life in a runaway horse incident. But he had a reputation as a bar brawler, as a person eager to fight. Sometimes his rages turned on his own family. And it was not just rage, sparked by trivialities, but cruelty, to the point of sadism. Tara was one of the objects of his madness. Dare oppose him and he would twist her arm to the point of spraining, drag her by her hair, force her face into unspeakable places and demand apologies for imagined offenses. Possibly even worse than this was her family’s denial about it, even when it occurred right in front of them. It is this denial that was hardest to bear. If your own parents will betray you, will not look out for you, in the face of such blatant attacks, then what is the value of the thing you hold most dear in the world? All abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is, foremost, an assault on the mind. Because if you’re going to abuse someone I think you have to invade their reality, in order to distort it, and you have to convince them of two things. You have to convince them that what you’re doing isn’t that bad. Which means you have to normalize it. You have to justify it, rationalize it. And the other thing you have to convince them of is that they deserve it. - from C-span interviewHer brother, aliased as “Shawn” in the book, was a master manipulator, who, for years, succeeded magnificently in persuading Tara that what she had just experienced had never really happened. One frustrating aspect of the book is Tara’s dispiriting, but also grating ability to doubt herself, to allow others in her life, bullies, to persuade her she does not think what she is thinking, that she does not feel what she is feeling that she did not see what she has seen. She was living in a gaslit world in which multiple individuals, people who supposedly loved her, were telling her that what she had seen was an illusion, and that bad things that other people did were somehow her fault. Honey, wake the hell up. How many time ya gonna let these awful people get away with this crap? That gets old well before the end. I was very much reminded of victims of domestic abuse, who convince themselves that they must have done something to cause, to deserve the violence they suffer. One can only hope that she has been able to vanquish this self-blaming propensity completely by now. Years of therapy have surely helped. [image] Tara at Cambridge - image from Salt Lake City Tribune She struggles with the yin and yang of her upbringing and finding her true self. Her father was extreme, but also loving. Her abusive brother had a very kind side to him. Her mother was supportive, but was also a betrayer. Her parents wanted what they truly thought was best for her, but ultimately attempted to extinguish the true Tara. The dichotomy in the book is gripping. At times it reads like How Green Was My Valley, an upbringing that was idyllic, rich with history and lore, both community and family, and featuring a strong bond to the land. Their home was at the foot of Buck Peak, which sported an almost magical feature that looked like an Indian Princess, and was the source of legends. At others, it is like a horror novel, a testament to the power of reality-bending, indoctrination, and maybe even Stockholm Syndrome. How she survived feeling like the alien she was in BYU and later Cambridge, is amazing, and a testament to her inner strength and intellectual gifts. Westover caught a few breaks over the course of her life, teachers, one at BYU, another at Cambridge, who spot the diamond in her rough, and help her in her educational quest. Reading of this support, I had the same weepy joyful feeling as when Hagrid informs a very young lad, “Yer a wizard, Harry.” When setting out to write the book, Westover had no clue how to go about it, well, this sort of a book, anyway. She had already written a doctoral thesis. But she did have stacks of journals she’d been keeping since she was ten. In figuring out how to get from wish to realization, one important resource was listening to the New Yorker fiction podcast, with its focus on short stories. And she took in plenty of books on writing. It is certainly clear that, just as she had the wherewithal to go from no-school to doctorate at Cambridge, she has shown an ability to figure out how to write a moving, compelling memoir. Educated is a triumph, a remarkable work, beautifully told, of the journey from an isolated, fundamentalist, survivalist childhood, through the trials of becoming, to adulthood as an erudite and accomplished survivor. It is a powerful look at the ties, benefits, and perils of families. Ultimately, Educated is a rewarding odyssey you do not want to miss. Review first posted – 3/23/18 Published – 2/20/18 November 29, 2018 - Educated is named as one of The 10 Best Books of 2018 December 2019 - Educated is named winner of the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for memoirs, beating out Michelle Obamas's blockbuster hit, Becoming. From a GR interview with Westover Goodreads: Congratulations on your win! What does the award and all the support from Goodreads readers mean to you? [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Although the internet yielded no vids of Tara singing lead in her town’s production of Annie in the wayback, here is one of grown-up Tara singing lead vocal on The Hills of Aran with John Meed Interviews ----- C-Span - interviewed by Susannah Cahalan – video – 1 hour – If you can manage only one of these, this is the one to see -----CBS This Morning - video – 6:41 -----Penguin promotional video – 7:01 -----Channel 4 News - 8:46 -----NPR - with Dave Davies – the link includes text of the interview. There is a link on the page to the full audio interview – 38:18 - This is the source for several quotes used in the review, and is definitely worth a look and/or listen -----GoodReads interview A sample of the audiobook, read by Julia Whelan, , on Soundcloud A brief interview with Westover and Whelan re the making of the audiobook - on Signature -----NY Times - 2/2/2022 - I Am Not Proof of the American Dream - a powerful essay by the author on the need for help to get an education - MUST READ STUFF ...more |
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0060981180
| 9780060981181
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it was amazing
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Mariette is a strange, beautiful young (20) woman who has just entered a convent, the second daughter of a wealthy doctor to enter that order, to dad'
Mariette is a strange, beautiful young (20) woman who has just entered a convent, the second daughter of a wealthy doctor to enter that order, to dad's chagrin. There is the cut and paste of varying timelines, as we jump back and forth between a later interview with and about her, juxtaposed with earlier events as they unfold. The writing is lush, incorporating rich color set against a plain background, scents permeate the senses. A splash of red on the young woman's bathrobe offers the merest hint. Poetic understatement illuminates each chapter and verse, as do the hints of undercurrents of things less than pure. This gives the book an almost painful level of suspense as we wonder just what is the strange revelation toward which the author is building. Mariette manifests stigmata that seem to heal, or vanish, far more quickly than nature unaided would allow. Is she a saint or some sort of somatizing lunatic? [image] Ron Hansen - image from PBS This short novel is not so much about events but ideas. What is the nature of faith? What role does it play in our lives? What is Mariette in the absence of her beliefs? Hansen was inspired by two 19th century saints, who also manifested the wounds of the crucified Jesus. I developed this idea of the stigmata as a kind of metaphor for a passionate love affair with Christ, and that was the stumbling block for the other nuns. - from the PBS interviewThe structure is organized around the names of each day's Mass. I do not know if this is merely an affectation, or if there is meaning behind the names of the saints for whom a given Mass is said, relative to the actions within that section. I suspect the latter. Something worth checking out on a second reading. Ron Hansen is a beautiful writer, offering intelligent considerations of real human issues with a poet's appreciation for language. He is a big fan of the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and it shows in his prose. Mariette in Ecstasy is not a book for everyone, but if this sort of writing appeals, it is a delectable treat and a religious experience. Review Most Recently Posted – 4/23/2021 Publication date - 1/1/1991 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Wiki and FB pages An interesting item - On Being a Catholic Novelist: Questions for Deacon Ron Hansen - by Sean Salai, S.J. A fascinating PBS interview - Catholic Writer Ron Hansen - by Bob Faw Writer Ron Hansen - by Bob Faw A must-read interview with Hansen in Image - A Conversation with Ron Hansen by Brennan O'Donnell - it covers several of his books, including Mariette ...more |
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0735221154
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really liked it
| In his discussion of Genghis Khan’s career, Gibbon inserted a small but provocative footnote, linking Genghis Khan to European philosophical ideas In his discussion of Genghis Khan’s career, Gibbon inserted a small but provocative footnote, linking Genghis Khan to European philosophical ideas of tolerance and, surprisingly, to the religious freedom of the emerging United States.The journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single steppe. (sorry) In this case the author’s twelve-year sojourn began with a single footnote (among about eight thousand) in Edward Gibbon’s six-volume history of the Roman Empire. Was it possible that the notion of religious freedom that has been a hallmark of the United States since its inception as a nation (despite the many over the years, and even today, who seek to impose their religious views on the secular country) was inspired, at least in part, by the notorious Mongol conqueror? Well, as that famous champion of religious freedom, Sarah Palin, might say, “you betcha.” [image] Jack Weatherford From Macalaster College The book is a Genghis Khan sandwich. The slice of bread at the bottom is the notion of GK having had an impact on America’s core value of freedom of religion. Did he or didn’t he? The slabs of meat in the sandwich would be the extensive look at GK’s life, accomplishments, and laws. And finish up with the covering bread slice that brings the analysis to a close. I suppose one might, alternatively, see it as being structured like a mystery. Present an initial notion (instead of a crime) and then look for clues that might offer evidence, whether confirming or exculpatory. Finish up with a Miss Marple-ish, Poirot-ish, or Sam Spade-ish explanation that connects the elements for a final understanding of where the truth lies. [image] Omar Sharif in the lead of the 1965 film, Genghis Khan - from Dusted Off Genghis Khan and the Quest for God makes for a very meaty sandwich. It is so meaty in fact that you might forget the initial question of impact on US history and get lost in the biographical details. It is not a straight-up biography of, arguably, the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen. The Secret History of the Mongols, written soon after GK’s passing was that, and provides a major resource for this book. Weatherford has made it a major portion of his life’s work to study GK, and ferret out how his Olympian accomplishments have influenced the world. His best known book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, published in 2004, looked at how the Mongol empire might have influenced European civilization. It was a NY Times best-seller, taking on the popular view of GK as a barbarian, showing him as a wise ruler, if brutal warrior, whose innovations were significant in fueling the European Renaissance. In this work, Weatherford puts on a different set of lenses and focuses on how spiritual beliefs helped mold Genghis and how he changed the way nation-states did, or at least could deal with religion. We get the biography but also a consideration of what the extant belief systems were during his life, and what he took from them. As a child I became engrossed in reading about Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan and developed a fascination with Mongolia. In college I tried to go to Mongolia to continue that interest, but the Cold War prevented it. I put aside that interest and continued with others that I had, but when Mongolia opened in the 1990's I went to visit more out of curiousity than for any planned work. Once there, the passion of my childhood flamed higher than ever. Although I did not speak the language I felt spiritually, intellectually and emotionally at home. - from the Asia East interview [image] Tadanobu Asano’s GK in the film Mongol - from Metroactive.com I came to this book with little knowledge of Genghis Khan, so it was eye-opening for me. Definitely brain-candy. Khan’s quest was not merely for ever-greater swaths of real estate. He was also very interested in examining the religions of all the peoples he conquered, as well as the religions of other nations, and ferreting out the wisdom from the BS. He was a sincerely religious individual, with a belief system that might find plenty of resonance with seekers of truth in the 21st century. The guy was truly interested in finding out whatever underlying truths each religion might offer. [image] Odnyam Odsuren - Temujin as a boy in Mongol - from Movie-roulette.com The book follows GK from when he was a boy named Temujin, practically an orphan. We see his initial acts of brutality. Do not, I repeat not, pick on that Temujin kid. We see his stepwise rise to power, and gain an appreciation for the lessons he learns along the way. As well as presenting the spiritual elements that impressed the boy and later the man we learn a lot about the family and community structures and values of diverse groups during the sixty-some-odd years of GK’s life. (1162 to 1227). We see him adopt a standard written language for his empire, practice relative meritocracy in managing his widespread lands, unite diverse nomadic tribes, through alliances and conquest, encourage trade along the now stable Silk Road, and implement a core notion of freedom of religion. Some barbarian! Of course, that whole genocide thing puts a crimp in the rosier view one might have of Ghenghis. Of course, it may have been somewhat exaggerated by the history writers of antiquity as well, as it was their class of people GK looked to eliminate when conquering new territory. Still, fairly barbarous, but barbarity is pretty much the only image many of us might have of him. There was clearly a lot more to Khan than wrath. [image] John Wayne as a cowboy GK in The Conqueror (1956) - from Media Pathfinder The only quibble I have with the book may better described as whining. There are a lot, a serious lot of names to try keeping track of here. It may take a village to raise a child, but one does not necessarily need to know the name of every villager. Ditto here. While there are many names to track, the arc of the story will flow along just fine if you only latch on to a few. One thing the encyclopedic name inclusion does is make the book a slower read than it might have been. On the other hand, the actual hardcover text takes up only 362 pages, so it falls far short of tome. And if you spare yourself the form of self-mortification I indulge in while reading, that being writing down every name I come across, it should be a much quicker read for you than it was for me. [image] The standard image of GK - from BBC Genghis Khan and the Quest for God was an eye-opening read, introducing as a real person what had been a stick-figure character of myth, to me, anyway. Weatherford offers a persuasive case for GK’s implementation of religious freedom having had an impact on the American founders. But, as with mysteries, we know that the final explanation is only a part of the joy. The bulk is in the characters, the settings and the language. So too with this. Whether you buy Weatherford’s argument for GK’s influence on the newborn USA or not, the journey through the life of Genghis Khan is worth the price of admission. Go ahead, conquer your ignorance. Lay waste your lack of knowledge about GK. This book is bloody fascinating. Review first posted – 11/24/16 Publication date – 10/15/16 The folks at Viking sent this book, along with some goats and a few horses, in return for an honest review. =============================EXTRA STUFF The film Mongol, on Youtube, covers the earlier portion of GK’s life and is quite beautiful to look at. Liberties are taken with history, but it is a treat. Videos ----- Jack Weatherford speaks about Genghis Khan at Embry-Riddle Honors Series – 1:15:05 -----A nice undergrad lecture - The Mongol Impact on World History by Ed Vajda – 52:29 ----- Genghis Khan - Great Khan Of The Mongol Empire And Great Destroyer - a kitschy documentary that looks at GK from a psychological perspective, among other things, follows the tracks of an ancient book about GK, The Secret History - from Documentary Lab ----- BBC Genghis Khan ----- Mongol – the full movie – 1:56:34 -----Captain Kirk goes monosyllabic - Khan! The Wrestler Princess - a fascinating telling by Weatherford of a Mongolian princess selecting a mate – from Lapham’s Quarterly A 2008 interview with Weatherford – by Daniel White for Asia East – this is a very slight interview There is variation in how Genghis Khan is pronounced. Is the initial G hard, as in goal, or soft as in gypsy? It is the latter, with maybe a tilt toward a "ch" as in cha-cha. What is surprising is that Khan is actually pronounced like Han, as in Han Solo. The Wikipedia page for GK includes a pronunciation app so you can hear it. ...more |
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Nov 06, 2016
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Nov 17, 2016
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Nov 18, 2016
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Hardcover
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4.22
| 31,950
| Aug 15, 2009
| Aug 15, 2009
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it was amazing
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Jul 18, 2020
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May 25, 2016
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ebook
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0062395564
| 9780062395566
| 0062395564
| 3.77
| 1,924
| Jan 01, 2015
| Mar 17, 2015
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it was amazing
| …violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political constituents because they see themselves as participa …violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political constituents because they see themselves as participating in the ultimate battle. Apocalyptic groups are the most likely terrorist groups to engage in acts of barbarism, and to attempt to use rudimentary weapons of mass destruction. Their actions are also significantly harder to predict than the actions of politically motivated groups.For most of us the acronym ISIS conjures up an array of images, mostly of a dark sort. Beheadings, suicide bombers, desert fighters, usually of Middle Eastern extraction, fanaticism, in short, and bloody. All this is pretty much the case, but there is so much more to know about this entity, the latest in a long line of international boogeymen. How did ISIS come to be? What do they want? What differentiates them from other extremist groups? And what might be done about them? [image] Jessica Stern - image from Backlight, a Dutch news program ISIS: The State of Terror, attempts to look past the Kalashnikovs and keffiyehs to get a deeper understanding of this very scary organization. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levent, aka The Islamic State, did not arise, whole, from the sands. Stern and Berger trace the growth of ISIS from its beginning as al-Qaeda in Iraq, headed by a career criminal, through the chaos in Iraq and Syria to a rejection of al Qaeda in favor of a more local, territorial aim. [image] J.M Berger - from The NY Times One of the very interesting distinctions made here is between al Qaeda, in a way a more removed entity, interested in catalyzing this or that AQ franchise, playing a long game, and ISIS’s more direct immediate territorial ambitions. There is enough in here on the many battles, political and kinetic, among many of the like-minded groups in the area, but not so much as to glaze your eyes. [image] From the ABS News piece With chronic instability in Iraq, and growing instability in Syria the table was set for many groups to try to seize pieces, and ISIS had a compelling selling point. They claimed they were about re-establishing the caliphate, a centuries old dream of uniting much of the Middle East under Islamic law ruled by a caliph. Al Qaeda had been promising this, but in the long term. ISIS, every time they gained more real estate, proclaimed it ever louder as a reality. And ISIS has gained a considerable swath of real estate in the area. This became a major selling point. The most interesting element of the book for me was following how ISIS mastered communication skills, using expertise from contributors across the planet, including from Americans. It grew from exchanging information on restricted sites, to using Facebook and Twitter. How successful is the West’s Whack-a-mole strategy against the proliferation of jihadi sites, FB and Twitter identities? How does ISIS try to get around it? ISIS has been very successful at getting out their message. Well, that should be messages, as it is of two general sorts. ISIS is fond of creating videos showing extreme violence, combat, and executions, the bloodier the better. This serves several purposes, not least of which is to encourage folks with a sociopathic bent to come on down and let their urges loose. ISIS really is recruiting an army of psycho killers. Such hateful propaganda has an impact on their enemies as well, as Iraqi soldiers, for example, when faced with ISIS fighters, have been more inclined to flee than to risk capture and certain execution. Not only did [ISIS] implement a draconian regime of crime and punishment, which its members believed to be divinely ordained, but it celebrated and painstakingly documented the process in its propaganda, publicizing everything from the destruction of cigarettes and drug stashes to the amputation of thieves hands “under the supervision of trained doctors” to the genocidal extermination and enslavement of Iraqi minorities.One of the many extreme measures ISIS employs has been called “total organization.” This is an attempt to remove all influence from prior or outside cultures. It includes a monopoly on education and control of all aspects of life, a truly totalitarian approach. This technique was employed by Pol Pot in the 1970s in Cambodia. A related ISIS practice is to recruit and train children for combat, an internationally recognized war crime. Long term exposure to extreme violence can erode moral concerns, as young people become inured to death and killing. It encourages an extreme quest for purification, and woe to anyone deemed inadequately pure. [image] - From the Express article But ISIS also promotes a civilized image, portraying a growing caliphate where devout Muslims can live the good life among their peers. Of course, the peers part may not really hold for women, who are likelier to find themselves sexually enslaved and traded among Islamic fighters than they are to live an idyllic life closer to Allah. ISIS also produces slick, action-oriented videos instead of stale single-frame lectures by old guys, instructing viewers on a particular interpretation of a Koranic issue. They cover diverse subjects, including global warming. There is a look as well on the impact of Western involvement in Syria and Iraq. One unintended consequence has been that the West has done an excellent job of clearing paths for ISIS by taking out Syrian rebel groups that were hostile to them. What one comes away with is at both ends of the spectrum. You can see how disturbed and disturbing these folks are. Scary, crazy, homicidal people, no question. Also, giving the devil his due, how smart and contemporary they have been in mastering social media, leaving al Quaeda in their dust. You will also gain a much more nuanced understanding of what al Qaeda is, and how it functions. Add in an appreciation for the difference between terrorism and insurgency. What is to be done? Opinions differ, of course. It begins with a vision of the threat. Is ISIS an existential threat to the West? Clearly not. They lack the sort of global destructive capacity of, say, the Russian, or American nuclear arsenals. Are they a threat to Western access to Middle Eastern petroleum resources? While ISIS can certainly cause mayhem in their neck of the woods, they are not yet, and may not ever, be strong enough to take on Saudi Arabia or Iran. At the point at which such a threat presents, the West can be expected to ramp up its military engagement, whether directly or through client-states. The more immediate, specific threat to Western resource access, IMHO, is to the oil fields of Iraq. If those are threatened, more than they have already been, expect the big guns to get involved. Some seem to believe that dropping daisy cutters wherever ISIS has planted a flag is the best way to eliminate the threat. It is also an excellent way of ensuring a continuing supply of anti-Western sentiment in the region. You do not save a village by destroying it, and one would expect that there is plenty of anti-ISIS sentiment within areas ISIS controls. Who would know better how awful these people are than those subject to their rule, and why would you want to eliminate a potential source of anti-ISIS rebellion? One option would be to direct military resources to containing ISIS (or trying to, anyway) within a defined area and let them drown in their own inability to rule. Terror does not produce crops, distribute clean water, or manufacture desirable consumer goods. An ISIS-led society is quite likely to collapse from within, given some time. Of course, enforcing a territorial limit on ISIS has not exactly been successful so far, so this maybe purely a theoretical option. It is also worth examining why it is that so many Islamic folks in the West, whether their heritage is Middle Eastern or not, have been radicalized to support ISIS and other crazies cut from the same cloth. Also, it is worth considering that ISIS did not arise from some peaceable society, like a sudden disease. Syria and Iraq have been something less than idyllic for quite a while. From the iron-fists of Saddam Hussein and Bashir Assad, to the ham-fisted approach of Western militaries, there is plenty of blame to go around for ensuring ongoing misery. While I found this to be a fascinating, information-rich book, there was one item that I found puzzling. At the beginning of the book the authors offer a very useful glossary, and a timeline of relevant events. I was struck, in the latter, by the absence of an entry for the date (in May 2003) when the USA-led Coalition Provisional Authority dismissed the Iraqi army, putting over two hundred thousand young Iraqi men, with guns, on the street. Surely, providing a vast pool of resentful, potential recruits for a jihadist movement deserves a place on that list. The paperback version begins the timeline with April 2005, but the original, hardcover version starts with March 20, 2003. Not sure why they chopped off the first ten entries from the earlier version, but, in any case, the Army dismissal is quite significant and should have been included. The challenge of ISIS is likely to be with us quite a while, a generation at least, and the residue of their crimes will echo for decades to come, even were they to be eliminated as a political/military force tomorrow. It is more important than ever that approaches to meeting this challenge be based on knowledge rather than bombast, on nuance rather than nonsense, on facts rather than falsehoods. Stern and Berger’s insightful look into one of the most dangerous political players in the world is a must read for anyone interested in gaining an informed view of what ISIS is, how they arose, and what they are planning. We need all the intelligent analysis we can get if we are to stop their reign of terror before they becomes a global threat. Published March 12, 2015 The paperback edition was released February 9, 2016 This review posted March 18, 2016 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Four excerpts are available on the Brookings blog Lawfare ------ Smart Mobs, Ultraviolence, and Civil Society: ISIS Innovations -----The Race to Caliphate -----ISIS and Sexual Slavery -----ISIS as Cult Some news reports of interest -----To Maintain Supply of Sex Slaves, ISIS Pushes Birth Control - NY Times - By Rukmini Callimach – March 12, 2016 -----ISIS – Trail of Terror - ABC News - By Lee Ferran and Rum Momtaz -----Now depraved ISIS militants encourage children to execute their parents - The Express - 1/13/16 – by Patrick Maguire You might want to check out The Management of Savagery - a how-to for terrorists that has been a field manual for ISIS An interesting piece on how ISIS terror on the continent - How ISIS Built the Machinery of Terror Under Europe’s Gaze - by Rukmini Callimachi - New York Times - March 29, 2016 The US is adding more boots on the virtual ground in the war with ISIS - U.S. Cyberattacks Target ISIS in a New Line of Combat - by David Sanger - April 24, 2016 - New York Times This fascinating piece in The Interpreter feature of the New York Times looks at commonalities between what it calls intimate terrorism and its broader manifestations, in light of the outrage in Orlando - Control and Fear: What Mass Killings and Domestic Violence Have in Common By Amanda Taub - June 15, 2016 August 1, 2017 - NY Times - a sad piece on the devastation left behind by ISIS and the war on it - In Mosul, Revealing the Last ISIS Stronghold - by Ivor Prickett November 21, 2018 - The growth of cyber-tooled terrorism is alarming. This Politico piece by former assistant AG for the DoJ's security division John P. Carlin should cause you some lost sleep - Inside the Hunt for the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist ...more |
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0062400797
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it was amazing
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Cuthbert Handley is a man on a mission. Never mind that he is 90. Nor that he is obese. Nor that he is a drug addict, and a member of the underclass k
Cuthbert Handley is a man on a mission. Never mind that he is 90. Nor that he is obese. Nor that he is a drug addict, and a member of the underclass known as Indigents. Never mind that he is probably psychotic. Never mind that the particularly unpleasant police branch known as the Red Watch have a BOLO out for him. [image] Bill Broun - from Philly.com Consider instead that Cuthbert has a heart as big as England, and I don’t mean his medical condition. Consider instead that he may be the last carrier of an ancient tradition known as The Wonderments. Consider instead that the horror he seeks to foil may be real, as an American-based death cult is eager to exterminate all animal life on Earth, although Cuddy knows only that something bad is coming and he needs to act now. When you consider that the London Zoo is the last working zoo on the planet in 2052, and that it contains not only the last wild animals on earth but the DNA of thousands of species that no longer exist, it makes Cuddy’s urge seem less peculiar. Cuddy may be a ponderous Lancelot, but his grail is no less noble, just because it is not an object you can hold in your hands. He wants to let all the animals out. The seed for Broun's story was planted one day in the 1990s when he was living in Texas and went to the Houston Zoo with a friend who has schizophrenia. "He started talking to the howler monkeys," Broun recalls. "It just lit a fuse for me. - from the McCall articleNight of the Animals is both horrifying and heart-warming, a dystopian vision rich with the technological details of oppression, but not so much as to interfere with wonderful story-telling. Cuddy may be damaged goods. Having had an abusive father did not help. Seeing his brother, Drystan, drown while out in the woods when he was six sealed the deal. There is a part of Cuddy that still expects Drystan to reappear someday. Despite some regrettable moments in his life, Cuddy is damaged goods you will very much root and care for. But his youth held more than misery. There was his Gran. since their earliest childhood, their gran had told them various tales, notions, and advices she referred to collectively as The Wonderments. All along Welsh Marches, where Offa’s Dyke once bullied the Welsh with Mercian royal might, a dwindling number of families bound “neither by rank nor nation,” as their gran put it, had for centuries quietly bequeathed the Wonderments, from granddad to granddaughter, then grandmother to grandson, and so on.Is it from magic or psychosis and a lifetime of substance issues that this Dystopian Doctor Doolittle can converse with animals? Is it hubris or a religious summons that makes him feel he has been chosen to carry out this mighty task? Will his quest to be reunited with his long lost brother prove a fool’s errand? At the time, there were news reports about mentally ill men trying to enter animal enclosures in zoos, often alluding to them being religiously motivated. In creating his protagonist, Broun could draw from personal experience with his own struggles with addiction and mental health problems... "I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict. I've been clean and sober for 25 years." Broun said he quit drinking when he was 24. "It was either quit or die and it was so clear," he says. Twice, he was voluntarily hospitalized for mental health issues. - from the McCalls articleAs for the nutters, they are drawn from far too real an example. Called Heaven’s Gate in the book, they are based on a cult that was founded in Texas and moved to California. Also named Heaven’s Gate, they believed much the same things ascribed to this cult. Even the leader has the same name as the model on which he is based. Difference is these folks have some pretty nifty tech, and a huge, global following. I guess if humanity has pretty much spoiled the planet, offloading one’s being onto the spaceship contained in a passing comet might seem appealing. No crazier than building a gigantic wall. And if that entails committing suicide to free one’s spirit, well, it wouldn’t be the first time suicide has been sold as a gateway to paradise. (I have included a link to information about the real Heaven’s Gate cult in EXTRA STUFF) [image] The Penguin Exhibit at the London Zoo The bulk of the novel takes place during and around Cuddy’s attempt to spring the caged, with looks back at his childhood, and early adulthood. There is much that is dark in Broun’s near future world. It is a place where the current extraction of all wealth by the wealthy has continued apace, with civil liberties following suit. There are plenty of tech details offered. Google Glass taken a step further with eye-implants. Spray-on video screens, a new addictive, hallucinogenic consumable called Flôt, that has generated enough addiction to merit its own Anonymous. It is Cuddy’s drug of choice. There is an overarching theme of Anthropocene destruction. And a hearkening back to a sylvan, magical ideal that is at odds with the very anti-nature nature of much of modern civilization. I didn’t consciously think much of the story of the ark as [I] wrote until later in the drafting process. I did think constantly of the post-flood covenant between God and humanity, as depicted in Genesis 9:13: “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.” This line promises that God will protect the animals of earth, but as humans, we must be God’s stewards. - from the Qwillery pieceBroun calls on the history of talking animals in English literature for some backup and some fun. Cuddy has conversations with the four-footed that made me smile with a Hitchhiker’s sort of gleam, particularly during Cuddy’s exchanges with an Islamic sand cat, which also made me think of Sheherezade. A lion is given a particularly fitting name. But these are not all sweetness and light cuddlies. There is plenty of tooth and claw, and attitudes that would be right at home in homo sap. There is a bit of a fairy tale sensibility at work here, but this is definitely no book for the kids. More of a parable about the Fifth Extinction, or, as Broun notes in the Houston Chronicle article, “a modern-day saint story.” [image] The US embassy at Grosvenor Square looms large - from Architectsjournal.co.uk Some things to keep an eye on include the color green with all the hearkenings you would expect. Moths flit in and about with some frequency. You might look for a parallel, or a contrast between Cuddy and the cult leader in their relationship to the magical. Tony Blair comes in for a mention or two, and the dictator offered is one who you might recognize. Religion permeates, from the Druidic through Christian and Islamic into the darkly new ageist. As Winefride [Cuddy’s gran] remembered it, the Wyre Forest before the Second World War seemed like the last verdant haven against all this, a place of glory and grief somewhere between Eden and Gethsemane.This is a special and very unusual book, with large ambitions that are mostly realized. The grand finale was certainly booming and lively. I confess that parts of the big finish were a miss for me, as a bit of tech, that goes a long way to explaining a lot, is introduced late enough to qualify as a deus ex machina contrivance. Given its significance a few clues to its existence should have been inserted earlier on. There is a bit of murkiness with the big show at the end that slowed it down for me. But that is really my only gripe, enough to knock it down to 4.5 stars, but not enough to keep from rounding up to five. [image] What Muezza the sand cat probably looks like - from bigcatswildcats.com There is so much in this book that is wonderful that one glitch should not keep you from giving it a go. I fully expect that you will enjoy Night of the Animals immensely and that it will be a breakout hit this summer. Publication date – 7/5/2016 Review first posted – 7/8/16 [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, and FB pages Interviews and Articles -----The Qwillery interview -----Local writer Bill Broun lets the animals out - into a fine new novel - by Lynn Rosen - from Philly.com -----'Night of the Animals': Novel by Hellertown's Bill Broun gets strong reviews by Margie Peterson for The Morning Call feature of McCall.com Intel -----Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate -----The Undley bracteate is an item that figures in the story’s iconography – the link is to Wiki -----a collection of photos of the Wyre -----A wiki on the Wyre Forest -----A Druidic take on the yew tree, a significant item in the story. (It’s not me, it’s yew) ----- Saint Cuthbert comes in for some attention. Here is a bit of information that should enhance your read. Other -----An audio sample - Read by Ralph Lister – 5 minutes -----What muezza might have looked like when younger - ta die faw - link found by GR friend Mary Duckworth Demis Mimouna ...more |
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Jun 19, 2016
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Jun 29, 2016
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Nov 11, 2015
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0062249215
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| Jan 01, 2015
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| 3.92
| 109,140
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really liked it
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Dan Harris is a bit of a jerk. You don’t have to take my word for it. He says it himself, more than once, in his book. A lot of 10% Happier is about H
Dan Harris is a bit of a jerk. You don’t have to take my word for it. He says it himself, more than once, in his book. A lot of 10% Happier is about Harris trying to be less of a jerk. Among his other journalistic accomplishments, which include more than a few in-country assignments in hot-fire war zones, hosting gigs on Good Morning America and Nightline, and scoring interviews with some very scary people, Harris is known for a live on-camera meltdown that was seen only by close family members, co-workers and oh, maybe 5 million viewers. I have added a link at the bottom. This is a road trip of self-discovery tale, and the path Harris takes is extremely interesting. Of course the self he discovers is still a self-centered jerk, but a jerk who can really, really tell a story, fill it with fascinating, meaningful information, add in considerable dollops of LOL humor, much at his own expense, and emerge with what, for himself and many others, is a life-changing way of going about his life. [image] Dan Harris - photo from 2Paragraphs.com One of the nifty things about the book is that Harris is a seasoned media pro and can deliver a snappy line with the best of them I might have disagreed with the conclusion reached by people of faith, but at least that part of their brain was functioning. Every week, they had a set time to consider their place in the universe, to step out of the matrix and achieve some perspective. If you’re never looking up, I now realized, you’re always just looking around.Of course this presumes that everyone who is looking up is seeking something celestial and not doing so merely to fit in with the pack, or being distracted by a passing drone. Still, my cynicism notwithstanding, the man has a way with words. And that makes this a very easy book to read. He is a charming guide on this search for a better way and you will meet some familiar names and learn of some others who should be. Harris offers small bits on Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer, among other ABC news folks. No surprises are to be had there. Jennings assigned the young Harris to the religion beat, over his (silent) objections, just in time for the post 9/11 world to give a damn about religion as news fodder. Harris covered a range of stories while on this gig, and met many interesting people, but was very impressed with Ted Haggard, who, off-camera, comes across as a pretty reasonable sort, which was surprising. Of course Haggard, who publicly preached against same-sex relationships, was practicing the fine art of total hypocrisy, as he was enjoying the company of a paid male escort. But he comes across as having much more substance than his gawker-headline downfall would lead one to suspect. Harris meets with a few more folks in the self-help biz, whether of the religious, secular, or woo-woo sorts. The up-close and personal here is riveting. But the business at hand is not just about getting a fix on people like Deepak Chopra, it is about Harris trying to find his way past his personal limitations. He does a bit of a pinball route, bouncing among several of today’s self-help gurus in search of a way to quiet the inner anchorman who offers running commentary during every waking moment. The first step, of course was to realize that the ego was on camera all the time, offering a live feed, an internal, personal, and less than wonderful 24/7 personal news channel. One of the first people whose work he found illuminating was a weird but compelling German, Eckhart Tolle, who offered a take on how to live in the now. It was a little embarrassing to be reading a self-help writer and thinking, This guy gets me. But it was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head—the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember—was kind of an asshole.He finds elements of Deepak Chopra illuminating as well, but with reservations. Chopra was definitely more fun to hang out with than Tolle—I preferred Deepak’s rascally What Makes Sammy Run? style to the German’s otherworldly diffidence—but I left the experience more confused, not less. Eckhart was befuddling because, while I believed he was sincere, I couldn’t tell if he was sane. With Deepak it was the opposite; I believed he was sane, but I couldn’t tell if he was sincere.What he arrives at is meditation. In particular a state called “mindfulness”, in which one observes the thoughts and feelings that are occurring, but at a remove, so that one can respond without relying on immediate, visceral and ego-driven reactions. There are different forms of meditation, but he finds one that does the trick for him. And puts it into practice. How he goes about this is sometimes LOL funny, particularly when we are privy to the snarky ramblings of his ego while he is attempting to not lose his mind during a lengthy meditation retreat. At end he learns a very useful skill, and even offers a very accessible step-by-step set of directions for having a go yourself. No beads, sandals, incense or robes required, really. Corporations and even the Marines are promoting meditation among their people. Turns out there are real-world benefits. It is probably worth at least a try. There is an old saw that goes “Sincerity, if you can fake that you’ve got it made.” I do not think that Harris is faking anything here. He is definitely into meditation, and tells lot about the very real benefits to be had. Of course, as a self-centered jerk, it is the self-benefits that get the air-time in his book. There is another realm, which involves compassion. While Harris does talk about this, it is pretty clear that meditation is a way for Dan Harris to do better in the world for Dan Harris. And while there are collateral benefits for those around him as a result of his evolution, the whole compassion thing remains for Harris a means to an end. In 10% Happier, a term he came up with to explain the benefits of his mindfulness practice and stop people from looking at him as if he were an alien, Harris offers a revealing portrait of himself as far, far less than perfect (his meltdown, for example, was made possible in large measure by considerable intake of cocaine and ecstasy), tells a tale of personal seeking and growth, and shares with us the very concrete techniques he has gleaned. So, while self-interest remains the beneficiary of his new knowledge, and while Dan Harris remains, IMHO, a jerk, he is a curious, articulate, and entertaining jerk who has shared some useful experiences and knowledge with the rest of us. Nothing jerky about that. Review first posted 11/21/14 Published - 1/1/2014 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages Dan Harris’s vid on how to Hack Your Brain's Default Mode with Meditation Harris's on-air report about the book on ABC Harris is interviewed on Colbert ...more |
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Nov 12, 2014
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4.08
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really liked it
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And it came to pass that I read and ye shall learn of a pretty amazing book. Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman takes on the subject of how, in history,
And it came to pass that I read and ye shall learn of a pretty amazing book. Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman takes on the subject of how, in history, the notion of Jesus as god developed. Was it there from the beginning? How did it arise? What does it even mean? Was he considered divine by believers before conception, at conception, at baptism by John, when he died on the cross, when he rose from the dead, when he headed upstairs to the executive offices? And the answer? Yes. As with many mysteries there is a paucity of physical evidence. One might consider Ehrman’s task a very challenging episode of [Incredibly] Cold Case Files, or maybe fodder for a new version of a favorite show (as if there are not enough already), CSI Antiquity. Not much to work with here as far as physical evidence goes, but Ehrman does apply his considerable skill to analyzing what documentation we have, tracing provenance, to the extent possible, applying what we know of the period(s), and lasering in on crucial questions. [image] Bart D. Ehrman - image from NPR Ehrman makes it very clear that he is not about trying to turn anyone away from a particular set of beliefs. I do not take a stand on the theological question of Jesus’s divine status. I am instead interested in the historical development that led to the affirmation that he is God.Or who said what, and when, where, and why did they say it? My knowledge of the period is extremely limited. Twelve years of Catholic school taught me a lot more about obedience than it did about biblical scholarship, and while I have read the odd book about the period I claim no particular expertise, so am not in a position to offer a much educated consideration of the information presented. Ehrman, on the other hand, has written vast amounts on things biblical. I refer you to his considerable bona fides, here. I am inclined to give his very accomplished, educated interpretation of the material he examines a bit more weight than I might the opinions proffered by individuals boasting lesser scholarly accomplishment. Key, of course, is the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Without that there is no such thing as Christianity, as prophets and Messiahs were sold by the gross at the dollar-store equivalent of the era. In fact, Ehrman opens his book citing an unnamed individual whom one might expect is JC, as the details are incredibly reminiscent. But no, it turns out to be another prophet entirely. (No, not Brian) His pilot was not picked up by the world at large, so you might find him in the antiquity channel’s version of “Brilliant but Cancelled.” And he was not alone. But, since any Tom. Dick, and Appolonius could claim to be a prophet, it was the claim that Jesus was resurrected that was key to a long run, and Ehrman focuses on that. He looks into the details of Jesus’s death and supposed return. For example, how likely was it that he was buried at all? The answer will surprise you. How about the likelihood that someone who had just tried to have him done in would arrange a burial? How likely might it be for wanted criminals, as the apostles were, to stick around after their chief had been so harshly treated? It continues, but you get the idea. Each tiny piece needs to be examined. One of the things that Ehrman does consistently and well is to define terms. Divine? In what sense? There is a lot of variety in levels of divinity. Ehrman points out a pyramidal structure common to many religions, and how supposedly monotheistic faiths shuck and jive trying to explain how the multiple divine entities in their religions do not violate the monotheism- For [most ancient people—whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan] the human realm was not an absolute category separated from the divine realm by an enormous and unbridgeable crevasse. On the contrary, the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap.(Bette Midler knows about that, for sure) So what was it that was supposedly seen? It was widely believed in antiquity that the spirit we have within us was also made of “stuff.” It was material. But it was very highly refined material that could not be seen with the eyes. (Kind of like what people think when they imagine they’ve seen a “ghost”—there’s something there, made of stuff, since it can be seen, even though it’s pure spirit.) When Paul speaks of a spiritual body, then, he means a body not made up of this heavy, clunky material that now makes up our bodies, but of the highly refined, spiritual stuff that is superior in every way and is not subject to mortality.Who knew there was such a level of detail to consider? Was the risen Jesus made of chunky human flesh or the sort ectoplasm more usually associated with someone like, say, Slimer. Or was he some ethereal non-substance? And what about the veracity of the stories that were told of the supposed resurrection? Even apart from the fact that they were written forty to sixty-five years after the fact, by people who were not there to see these things happen, who were living in different parts of the world, at different times, and speaking different languages—apart from all this, they are filled with discrepancies, some of which cannot be reconciled. In fact, the Gospels disagree on nearly every detail in their resurrection narrativesSo, we are relying, in the gospels at least, on an inconsistent story, from multiple non-witnesses, that was the end result of a decades-long biblical version of the game telephone? These days, of course, you can probably become a god, or at least obtain, Wizard-of-Oz-style, a document attesting to your divinity, by sending a certain sum to a particular web site. (GodsRUs.com would be my guess). It was so much more complicated back then. So, what might be less than divine in Ehrman’s examination? Well, we are digging through some very old material here, and it is not surprising that in a book focused in the Middle East a bit of sand gets in. The level of detail does, on occasion, cause one’s eyes to ascend to another level of being. But I found this a fascinating, and educational read, opening up many notions to consideration that I had never really thought about. Whatever it may do for your spirit, this book will definitely stimulate your brain. Whether you find this examination of history divinely inspired or deserving a place on the lower levels of you-know-where, it is certainly a fascinating look at a critical element of history, and, by implication, religious belief. But don’t take my word for it. See, feel, and read it for yourself. And if it doesn’t work for you the first time, hey, you can always come back to it. Review first posted - May 23, 2014 Published - March 25, 2014 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Ehrman’s blog, Christianty in Antiquity Check here for a very nifty collection of audio and video clips of the author ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 17, 2014
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May 23, 2014
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May 17, 2014
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Hardcover
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0385348681
| 9780385348683
| 0385348681
| 3.64
| 363
| Jan 01, 2014
| May 20, 2014
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really liked it
| Realism has its limitationsDon’t I know. But after reading Joseph Hallinan’s Kidding Ourselves, you will find a way to get rid of those extra poun Realism has its limitationsDon’t I know. But after reading Joseph Hallinan’s Kidding Ourselves, you will find a way to get rid of those extra pounds; you will finally step up and demand that raise you have been denied for the last several years; you will ask out that person you have had your eye on for so long; you will give up that nasty habit, you know the one; and you will finally get around to writing that book. All you have to do is want it enough, and think positively. Yeah, right. We have been fed a steady diet of positive thinkology from Norman Vincent Peale to Professor Harold Hill to Tony Robbins, from cultish directions like EST, and from con artists from Ponzi to Madoff. [image][image] Ponzi – old and new Barbara Ehrenreich, in Bright-Sided, pulled back the curtain on a lot of the sort of scamming that the think-positive sorts have been inflicting on us all. I share her views on this stuff. Most of the see-no-evil promulgators seek little more than to divert our attention from the real societal causes of many of our maladies, and in doing so pad their own pockets. Most of us, for example, are not struggling financially because we got too little education, the wrong sort of education, are lazy, unfocused, not good enough, not beautiful or strong enough, or are bad people who deserve what happens to us. It is because the rich SOBs who run the world decided to steal more than they already had, and have the power to make government hold us down while they go through our pockets, and then demand that we thank them for the privilege. Blaming the victim is a national, no, a global past-time, and urging people to believe that the fault is in them and that if they just had a better attitude they would succeed, is the sort of tangy Kool Aid that people like Jim Jones have been peddling for a long time. This is all to say that I approached the book with a full magazine of attitude and an itchy finger. So, is this guy another in a long line of con artists trying to blame the victim? Turns out, not so much. At ease, soldier. [image] Joseph T. Hallinan - image from Amazon Joseph T. Hallinan is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who reported for the Wall Street Journal, has written on the prison system, and wrote a 2009 popular psychology look at some of our many imperfections as human beings, the how and why we are the way we are, Why We Make Mistakes. Hallinan’s latest, Kidding Ourselves, a relatively short book (210 pps in my proof), looks at a narrow range of human behavior, although it does manage to cover a fairly wide swath of human (and sometimes non-human) experience. He is not so much promoting the notion of looking on the sunny side of life as taking a pop-psych microscope to the behavior itself. He breaks down the many ways in which homo sap practices self-delusion, and it is not exactly all positive. Health-wise, he offers evidence that one’s attitude definitely matters. Expecting a positive outcome has measurable palliative results, independent of the pharmacological benefit of drugs or procedures applied to a medical problem. The obverse is true as well, expecting the worst can often bring it about. One really can die from, say, hypochondria, or a broken heart. Depression does cause physical harm to those who experience it. Hallinan looks into the relationship between our perceptions and reality. You know that right-wing uncle who insists that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim? You showed him all the evidence, right? And the result? He absolutely refused to accept the facts, clinging instead to his attitudes. I’d want to smack him too. Hallinan looks into this and offers an explanation for this seemingly inexplicable dedication to ignorance. The book is about how we need to feel some control in our lives, almost more than anything else, whether it is that the cross-walk sign might flash “Walk” sooner in response to our pressing a button, whether it is that we can, through wise investing, control our financial future, or whether we believe that by repeating some ritual behavior we might therefore succeed in some endeavor. And we kid ourselves in order to be able to feel that there is something, anything, that is under our control. Otherwise we feel completely hopeless and the implications of that are not good. One result of this is that the confidence we gain from our beliefs, regardless of their basis in reality, can sometimes make the difference between success and failure, improvement or relapse, life or death. This is, as noted, a short book, so one does not expect a deep, heavily detailed scientific treatise. It is pop-psychology, written by a journalist, not a scientist, meant for readers like you and me. That said, my antennae started to vibrate a time or three when I felt that the analysis was particularly, and problematically blindered. For example, Hallinan cites surveys of public attitudes regarding taxation that shows a persistent degree of dissatisfaction despite changes in rates over time. Problem is that the rate change under study is the top marginal tax rate, the rate paid by the highest wage-earners. Most people are not affected by this, so why would their attitude change at all? And given that taxes on working and middle class wage-earners had not dropped, and may even have gone up over the time span covered in the study, it is no surprise that general attitudes toward taxation would have seen little change. Another section looks at the persistence of false beliefs, as if they exist in a vacuum. How could so many people persistently believe something unsupported by facts?Fuh real? How dim are you guys? Have you never heard of the 24/7 Lie Network at Fox, the masses of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, or Clear Channel broadcasting, right-wing radio, and the gazillions of know-nothing web-sites that sprout like algal blooms in the path of agricultural runoff, or the deliberately provocative product firehosed across the internet by Russia? Sure, people will cling to nonsense in the absence of such assistance, but when it is blasted into your brain constantly, it will have an impact. So yeah, it does seem sometimes that the author has been a bit blind to some obvious real-world factors, which is ironic, as he points out the bias inherent in some well-known scientists here as well. But he does offer quite a few examples of real scientific studies that indicate that sometimes mind-over-matter really….um…matters. Not, of course, in other-worldly sorts of manifestations, like making that missing limb grow back, or altering the immediate balance in your bank account. But to the extent that confidence comes into play, and it does come into play quite a bit, it might not hurt to accentuate the positive, Whistle a Happy Tune, hum a little Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah or channel a small, very, very small dose of Stuart Smalley. You may be a loser, a 97 pound weakling, too fat, too skinny, too old, too young, too tall, too short, but the extra boost that confidence, fueled by religion, superstition, and downright nonsense injects really can make a difference in many of life’s outcomes. He makes a case that self-delusion, as a defense against hopelessness, is a crucial element in what it means to be human, and that it has provided actual evolutionary advantages. It may be that to err is human, but it would appear equally human to convince ourselves that we were right all along. Hallinan maintains that self-delusion not only exists across all human cultures but is present in animal psychology as well. Rats kid themselves too. There will always be a danger that the limited range covered in this book will be taken by the con artists of the world as being more than it is and be presented as an “I told you so.” It isn’t. It is specific, illuminating and fascinating. I kid you not. This book was received via GR's First Reads program - Thanks, folks Review first posted in March 2014 =============================EXTRA STUFF I did not find a web-site for the author unadorned, but here is one for his earlier book, Why We Make Mistakes. Here is a wiki on a 1986 essay by philosopher Henry G. Frankfurt that seems germane, On Bullshit And a few more musical links that fit right in, from Stevie Wonder, George Michael, and The Monkees. So many more could work here. In Salon, an excerpt from an interesting book by Oliver Burkeman, Positive Thinking is for Suckers October 22, 2014 - A NY Times article, What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set, by Bruce Grierson, looks at the work done by psychologist Ellen Langer on aging and other medical issues. Fascinating stuff. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 12, 2014
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Mar 19, 2014
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Mar 12, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062130315
| 9780062130310
| 0062130315
| 4.02
| 761
| Feb 12, 2013
| Feb 12, 2013
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liked it
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I happened on this book in an unusual way. I was visiting my wife at her office in Harper Collins, and while waiting for her to complete this or that
I happened on this book in an unusual way. I was visiting my wife at her office in Harper Collins, and while waiting for her to complete this or that task, I looked around for items of interest. My eyes alit on this one. "Looks like weird fun," said I. Many of the books I review are selected by my esteemed wife dashing in the door and exclaiming, "you've gotta read this!" Or one or the other of us catches an interesting TV interview with an author and picks the book up at Barnes and Noble (no, not Amazon, NEVER Amazon, which seeks to devour publishers like the one that employs my wife, not to mention most available book-reviewer sites). But this was more of a found object. And so, over a period of a couple weeks, I read this thing, bits at a time. When I had finally finished Our Occulted History I felt like I had just gotten off a roller coaster designed by a person with no inner ear. I have had diverse reactions to this thing, and it should come as no surprise that the first line that popped into my head while reading the book was: "It's one thing to maintain an open mind, but maybe not so good to have one so porous it retains nothing of value. Jim Marrs' brain is so filled with empty space it is unlikely that even a virus could find enough substance to which to attach itself. He puts the pseudo in pseudo-science." Which may be the tiniest bit harsh. But I do think there is something going on here that bears some looking into. [image] Ok, how many of you have ever been exposed to marijuana? Let's have a show of hands. You know what I mean by exposed. Don't get cute. And puh-leez, don't pretend you never inhaled. Looking out over the group, I can see that almost every hand is raised, which means we have some liars out there. Yeah, my hand is up as well. From the tender age of fifteen. And yet here we So, let's steer this vehicle back onto the actual roadway. What has this got to do with Jim Marrs? I'll tell you. There are all sorts of gateway drugs in the world. Not all will have a pharmacological impact, and not all, as with weed, will necessarily pave a pathway to perdition. Our next example is one of those. And again, it is one I have sampled, probably even more than pot. Alien visitation. No, no anal probes, abductions or anything of an extreme sort. Never met, saw or conversed with an alien. (My personal eX-files have to do with a very Earth-based failed marriage) But I have tasted the out-of-this-world product and I like it. I have read my share of UFO books over the years. Although I am not a regular viewer, I have seen more than one or two episodes of the pseudo-scientific eye-roller Ancient Aliens. I mention this not to say that I buy their particular line of BS, but to note my starting position re alien visitation, namely that the subject matter still draws me. I have seen some freaky petroglyphs, in Hawaii, in Chichen Itza, the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, in the American southwest. And despite Don Henley's claim that They're not here and they're not coming, I am inclined to believe that they have at least stopped by for a look-see and were spotted by the locals, actually a lot of locals, all across the planet, so maybe it was less of a look-see than a "whoa-ho, what have we here? Let's check this place out" sort of thing. This requires no more suspension of disbelief than some of our more popular religions. And sustaining such notions does not lead to a suspension of intellectual processing. But the potential exists for this benign belief, given the proper (on in this case improper) influence, to be inflated into something alarming. [image] Just as a druggie friend can push one beyond a little weed into a much darker place, so people like Jim Marrs can take an interesting notion and, through their powers of story-telling, lead the gullible to a vulnerable place. I suspect that Jim Marrs is a lunatic. I fear that he may be a con-man. I can see that he applies the fuzziest of logic in looking for support for his theses. It is obvious that he lives in an echo chamber inhabited by other paranoids and conspiracy theorists and that they reinforce and embolden each other to the point where, as in the right-wing bubble, opposing opinions are routinely disregarded, and whatever theories are being floated by the elect are accepted as revealed truth. This is where the primary problem lies. Step inside the bubble and, like a spacecraft air-lock, eliminate from one's intake any competing notions. I also know that Jim Marrs is a gifted story-teller. However, you might need a pair of these to get through the entire book safely.[image] It is an amazing story he has to tell. Marrs claims that a close look at ancient literature from across our world, particularly from Sumer, reveals not only that aliens have visited our lovely planet, but that, in order to more effectively mine gold, they modified the genetic makeup of the local hominid population to make the homo sap we are today to create a usable labor force. It gets weirder, really. He also posits a magical, and I do mean magical, form of gold that has unnatural properties, like an anti-gravity capacity and maybe even a multi-dimensional one. Guess what was inside the Arc of the Covenant? [image] Funny powder, and not the sort they serve at after-parties on Oscars night. Ok, people. Time to break out your tinfoil hats. But let's make sure they are tinfoil tri-corner hats. (Sorry, I was unable to come up with a corresponding image) Marrs has a political agenda as well. On his web-site, Jimmarrs.com, I found the following: Seeing how Paul and Palin are now candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the corporatists would love to weaken, if not stop, the so-called Libertarian Tea Party influence on the future direction of the Republican Party. [I guess Paul and Palin are not right-wing enough for Marrs] Live and learn and don't fall prey to revisionism, usurpation and political/media manipulation.He makes statements that have the sound of reason, but lack the substance. Here is an example. ìIn his 2010 book, Babylon's Banksters, Joseph P. Farrell, as a doctoral graduate of Pembroke College Oxford, who had unparalleled access to old books and manuscripts in Oxford University's library, said his thesis was both simple to state but difficult to understand. "Since ancient times and with more or less uninterrupted constancy, there has existed an international money power which seeks by a variety of means including fraud, deception, assassination and war to usurp the money- and credit-creating power of various states it has sought to dominate" (implying, of course, that if you find Farrell's case unconvincing it is because you just don't understand it. Yeah, I've heard that argument before).What does unparalleled access mean? Is there a double-secret code that Dean Wormer gave Farrell that allowed him access to materials mere mortals were not permitted to see? Who says his access was unparalleled? Any fact-checking done on this? If there was, Marrs isn't telling. Are we to presume (yes, we are) that having this unparalleled access means that the researcher in question therefore has superior interpretive powers, and was thus able to spot, and interpret this secret info, and incorporate the gained knowledge into his thesis? But what that information might have been we are not told. It goes on. Marrs does not mention that among this great scholar's publications are Roswell and the Reich and Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men: The Surviving Elites of the Cosmic War and Their Hidden Agenda. Be sure to secure the hatch to the bubble after you step inside. I could make a list of the outlandish claims that this guy makes, but it would make my usual, wordy reviews seem like headlines. There is a debating technique favored on the right known as Gish Gallop. It entails spewing so much bullshit in a small amount of time that one's opponent winds up spending all his or her time refuting the bullshit and does not get to make their own case. Marrs' work has that feel. Replay Romney in the first debate for a taste, if you like. And Marrs seems like such a down-home folksy sort that one might be tempted to indulge in a few puffs. After all, even in his political attire, there are positions he holds that are pretty reasonable. But if you toke down, or snort up too much, you drift past the amber fields of reasonableness, and ascend until you are off in la-la-land and the world is suddenly really out to get you; 9/11 was an Israeli plot; remote viewing psychics in the US Army watched as aliens shot down Russian probes nearing Mars; The Rothschilds (translation: Jews) control the world's economic apparatus. It was JFKs driver who killed him. And so on. So make sure you load up on personal weapons, and for sure bring along that special hat, because you never know when they might be listening in. I'll give you an example of Marrs Gish-Galloping later. Back to the book. So, next step. If they came here, why did they come? Was it to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before? Columbus did not sail the ocean blue to check out the Caribbean beaches. He had a concrete, business purpose in mind. Marrs would have us believe that they, a race he calls the Anunnaki, from Sumer legends, came to earth, or at least stuck around on Earth, for the gold. I picture alien spouses asking star-traveler hubby, "So, Gorp, what did you bring me this time? Not another carnivorous flower, Geez!" To which Gorp smiles and hands over vast quantities of the shiny stuff. Lady Gorp blushes, throws her several arms around her main guy and exclaims, "This place is a keeper, Sweetie. When are you going back?" [image] Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For instance, in anthropology, just because we do not have rock (or in this case bone) solid examples of each and every step along a path of natural selection, that does not mean that those steps did not take place. Scientists are constantly finding previously undiscovered bones, unthought of species. Here is one that came to my attention just in the time since I began with Marrs' book. Mr Marrs prefers to fill our knowledge gaps with notions of alien interference. And he is not above the odd lie to bolster his case. Although Darwin never explicitly stated that man descended from the ape, his devotees advocated that conclusion.Actually they did not. Apes and humans are evolved from prior species, not from each other and it was only the opponents of Darwinism who characterized his work as claiming humans descended from apes. Erect straw man. Light match. And he continues, Even after a hundred years of effort, no one has been able to fully substantiate Darwin's theories through documented fossil exhibits.Um, well, actually yes they have. It is frequently the case that in any large chunk of science there will be specific steps from, say, point D to point F in a full alphabetic range, for which there is not 100% complete fossil evidence. It is the nature of science to extrapolate from available information. The absence of specific elements in the range of every possible piece of fossil evidence is not evidence that the missing bits do not exist. For a guy who is positing that humans were designed by an alien race, he seems unusually tetchy about insisting that every possible link be found in the theory that scientists across the planet accept as sound. But if Marrs can believe what he wants, why not the rest of us? I am not completely convinced that Jim Marrs is not the product of an alien huckster having bred with a cactus to produce him, I am still waiting for him to disprove that rumor, and he has never denied his questionable, and possibly prickly parentage. They wanted our gold, so they fiddled with our (homo neanderthal, or maybe homo erectus) DNA to produce a work force trainable enough to to work the mines. It gets better. You may have heard the word Nefilim, basically angel-human hybrids. In the hands of Jim Marrs, it looks like our eight-foot-tall visitors liked a little, very little, relatively, something on the side. I will leave aside all the obvious penis jokes here, although it does pain me to do so. Tall, blue and handsome + human female = the Jim Marrs special, alien/human hybrid children, the Nefillim. Also, the inspiration for a classic film, well maybe not exactly a classic. [image] If you have not yet summoned men in white suits with large nets, here is where the bat really meets the shit. Marrs goes on and feeds into other wing nut paranoid fantasies about a core of thirty-three families (guess what sort of DNA they are protecting) who rule the planet, while, of course, suppressing the discovery of the proof of our alien ancestry. (We wouldn't want the baby to know who gran really is, would we, not until he is old enough to be able to handle the shock, and then, naturally, dominate his personal section of the planet) Of course what he counts as evidence has not convinced real scientists, and is unlikely to do so. So what Jim Marrs has done, and has been doing for some time, is to take the nifty notion that they were here at some point in human history and lace it with his own rich blend of opiated Tea Party paranoid delusion, fusing the two. Smoking at this pipe keeps ya coming back, if, that is, you buy in. And here is one final item, before a bit of a detour. He talks a fair bit in his book about a magical substance referred to as powdered gold. Well, it turns out that there are entities more than willing to sell this stuff to the gullible. I have no specific knowledge that Marrs has a financial stake in any of these companies, but let's just say I have my suspicions. Not only is he proselytizing stealth political messages in his book, but it becomes much more overt when he lectures. I am separating this out from the already lengthy body of this review, tucking it under a spoiler label. There is enough detail involved that only those who are interested would want to spend the time to read it. It consists of a series of political claims Marrs makes in a lecture and how his claims are lacking in foundation. (view spoiler)[ MARRS ATTACKS [image]Here is a quote from Jim Marrs: Hidden History Part 1, a lecture you can find on Youtube. This lecture was posted on February 7, 2012. …global warming, which is turning out largely to be a hoax, because they fudged all the documents…they simply…but there is environmental change and there is a warming. Go outside. You can figure that one out. But, it's not us. It is solar system wide. Something is happening solar-system wide. The outer planets are becoming more luminescent. The ice, the polar caps on Mars are melting. The ice on the moons of Jupiter, they seem to be melting. So, whatever's happening, it's not your SUV, no matter what Al Gore says. By the way Al Gore happens to have been one of the creators of the carbon tax credit company, corporation, out of Chicago, which is gonna handle all the carbon taxes that we're all gonna have to pay, and manage the sale and trade and exchange of these carbon tax credits, which means that they'll rake in billions and billions of dollars. So, gee, Al, maybe you had an ulterior motive in pushing this global warming idea.So we will play Gish Gallop with Marrs here, as time is not much of a factor, but the methodology he uses should be illustrative of the tactic. Throw out enough lies and your opposition will have to spend all their time refuting them, while you move on to more lies. So, here goes. Well, here I thought I was going. But a funny thing happened on the way to posting the review. Turns out that with this section included I have actually exceeded the maximum size for a review. Thanks to a recommendation from Traveller, I have moved the entire section (I know, you're dying to see it. Go ahead, admit it) to comment #6. Sorry. Yeah, I know. I do tend to drone on sometimes. Sheesh! (hide spoiler)] If you are ok with just reading this as an entertainment, Our Occluded History delivers the goods. It offers a wild, entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking tale. But if it strikes deeper in you than that, all I can say is "step away from the hookah." [image] Posted 3/30/13 The trade paperback came out 12/10/13 ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Mar 19, 2013
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Mar 20, 2013
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Hardcover
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0988155400
| 9780988155404
| 0988155400
| 4.03
| 29
| Nov 14, 2012
| Nov 14, 2012
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liked it
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The author asked me to review this book, and sent along a free copy for that purpose. There are two stories in Tanja Kobasic’s Angels in Stone. The fir The author asked me to review this book, and sent along a free copy for that purpose. There are two stories in Tanja Kobasic’s Angels in Stone. The first is that of Claire Preston-Lockwood, an accomplished real estate broker, drop dead gorgeous, and cougarishly older than her studly hubby, Jonathan. Smitten when she met this diamond in the rough, she gave him an education, access to the finer things, and career opportunities, but she cannot give him the thing he most desires, a child. What’s a controlling sort to do? Turns out there is a way. All she has to do is sell her soul to Satan. She finds her hope in a voodoo priestess living in a dodgy neighborhood in the Bronx. And that is where the other piece of this story resides. Esperanca’s story goes back hundreds of years to the jungles of Brazil, and a ground war between the forces of Satan and God. Claire was damaged as a child when her mother died in an auto accident. She has buried a secret about that event and it eats at her. It is fueled by her hatred of her father, whose infidelities she blames for her mother’s death. Claire shows occasional moment of humanity, but remains, for the most part, a stone cold The story here takes place in two time lines and with two very different looks and feels. Claire’s story is of her quest to keep her man, and she will do whatever it takes. It is contemporary, set in the high life of New York, where money flows like water and ethics are a sometime thing. Claire is not above the occasional blackmail to get what she wants. She is not a nice lady, and engenders little sympathy, from me, anyway. But the story picks up considerably once she encounters Esperanca. Esperanca is a voodoo witch. She lives in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, a high-density, primarily minority neighborhood, not nearly as appealing as it’s most famous former resident, Jennifer Lopez. The Canadian author lived there for a while and gives us an informed look-and-feel of the place. Not a prime vacation destination. Claire may be our preening bird of paradise, but Esperanca’s arrival is where the story takes wing. Not only does Espie offer a mechanism through which Claire connects with the real bad guys, but she is also the teller of a fascinating back story. The character of Esperanca makes this tale fly, like a great actor to whom your eyes are drawn in every scene. Hers is the most angelic element of the novel. Get out your Google, Bing or search engine of choice. There will be names and places to look up, which is part of the fun of this book. Names taken from, or based on angels are rampant. Kobasic takes the back-story to Brazil and peers several hundred years into the past. You will visit coastal Bahia, heart-of-darkness Mato Grosso, and get a front row seat for some nasty good-vs-evil goings on. I found this to be the most engaging part of the book. It also took a bit more attention, as there are several instances in which the rules of engagement were a bit of a challenge to keep straight. Too much maybe, but not quite enough to ruin the adventure. There are some striking visuals here too, as long as you do not suffer from ophidophobia. Some dark scenes are, or should be, a bit too disturbing for sensitive or young readers. The book is a bit uneven. There are passages that I quite liked. “You’ve been a bad girl,” Esperanca said, with a lazy smile. “Got a lot of fuckage on you.”But there is a bit too much telling, on top of showing. Kobasic has fun feathering her novel with bird imagery. My copy arrived with an actual black feather in it, a lovely, light-hearted touch. I hope that in subsequent volumes there is some more payload on the actual details of early missions in Brazil. I believe that is the plan. If the battle between good and evil in its very primal state is your thing, you won’t go wrong with Angels in Stone. The author shows promise, and we expect her skill to continue developing as she works her way through this series. This book is the first in a series. The second, Ashes in Stone , is due out later this year. Posted 3/11/13 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 07, 2013
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Mar 07, 2013
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Mar 07, 2013
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Paperback
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0062113763
| 9780062113764
| 0062113763
| 4.09
| 6,172
| Feb 26, 2013
| Feb 26, 2013
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it was amazing
| The past is never dead. It’s not even past.It is this notion, of the past steering the present away from a true course, tha The past is never dead. It’s not even past.It is this notion, of the past steering the present away from a true course, that drives the narrative in The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow, and in at least one way, it is the past that helps steer it back onto the road. [image] Rita Leganski - image from The Quivering Pen If you liked Edgar Sawtelle, the story or film of Benjamin Button, the TV show Pushing Daisies or the more imaginary tales of Alice Hoffman, you will love this book, a tale imbued with a few large dollops of magical realism. Like Edgar, Bonaventure is born somewhat different from other children. Like Edgar, he makes no sound. But while Edgar has a particular Mowgli-like talent for relating to his pooches, Bonaventure is possessed of an otherworldly sense of hearing. The medical term for one aspect of this is synaesthesia. He is able to hear color. But his gift goes far beyond the odd skills that as many as one in twenty-three humans might have. As he grows into his gift, he can hear the stories of inanimate objects. Eventually, Bonaventure is able to hear at a molecular level. He is even able to hear sounds that happened long ago. Bonaventure never met his father, William, at least while he was alive. Before the boy’s birth, Dad was shot down on the streets of New Orleans by a madman known only as “the Wanderer.” But William hangs around, having a few tasks to complete before he can graduate from Almost Heaven, and helps his unusual son adapt to the world and complete his own mission. Bonaventure’s mother, Dancy, lives with a burden of guilt originating in the day her husband was killed. Dancy’s mother, Letice, carries a heavy load of sorrow from her adolescence. It is only through Bonaventure’s gift, with the help of his father, that these decent people can move ahead with their lives. Another force is at play here as well, in the person of Trinidad PreFontaine, maker of healing potions, and well versed in the potential of most plant life. She feels the presence of Bonaventure as if they are connected by a personal, psychic tether. She has a role to play as well in seeing Bonaventure realize his potential. It is easy for a story with a fair bit of magic in it to get caught up in the pyrotechnics (verbotechnics?) of the incredible. (See The Night Circus) But that is not a fate suffered here. We are acutely aware of the humanity of these characters, and it is their emotional life that drives the story. The Magic takes an appropriate, supportive role. We follow the Wanderer, a physically maimed and mentally ravaged war veteran, from his constricted life in Detroit, as he sets out on a mission of unknown origin, to the point of his deed, and after that we see him occasionally in an asylum. He is very fixated on Alexandre Dumas, particularly The Count of Monte Cristo. One wonders what the wrong is that he is avenging. It is possible that there may be readers who are put off by the obvious religious perspective presented in Bonaventure’s world. Like the Blues Brothers, some characters here are most definitely on a mission from God. Bonaventure Arrow had been chosen to bring peace. There was guilt to be dealt with, and poor broken hearts, and atonement gone terribly wrong. And too there were family secrets to be heard; some of them old and all of them harmful.One cannot help but wonder if Trinidad PreFontaine, given her evocative name, might have some sort of baptismal relationship with BA. But take it from this atheist. It is worth the weight of Leganski’s perspective to gain the benefit of this wondrous landscape. And she does offer an image, as well, of some who would use religion for unseemly purposes. Leganski feathers her literary nest with some lovely imagery. Sparrows flit in and out, standing in for, probably, a variety of things. Birds, as a group are a significant presence In the middle of her sleepless night, Trinidad experienced a vision. A scavenging raven circled the room, its beady eyes questing after death. The bird spread its wings to swoop and glide, its feathers sounding like rustling silk. From the bird’s shaggy throat came a prruk-prruk call and a toc-toc click and a dry, rasping kraa-kraa cry. After the raven came a pure white dove, and after the dove, a sparrow.Later, Trinidad regarded circles as symbols of God’s eternal love. Her favorite circle was that which is found in the small dark eye of a sparrow.And again Tristan had rescued a bird—a sparrow—and needed her [Letice’s] help. It was a life or death situation…The bird seemed no more than a wisp, nearly weightless. She believed she could feel its bones and imagined them to be made of straw, all hollowed-out and light. Letice decided the bird was a girl sparrow, a young and delicate one. The tiny creature lay on its left side, breathing very fast. Letice could feel its heart beating in sync with her ownAre sparrows the souls of these characters? Angels? Don’t know, maybe, or maybe something else entirely. Bonaventure associates another character with an eagle later in the book, keeping the bird imagery aloft. There are plenty more, but I will stop there. There is a lovely sequence in which a few of the characters incorporate some voodoo gris gris into their experience, in a very warm, nurturing way. No black magic here, thank you very much, but maybe a bit of the sympathetic variety Some characters seem to have maybe a bit too much of a vision, if not always an absolute road map, directing them toward their goals. Trinidad certainly has a finger on the pulse of the force. William seems to have gotten a bullet-pointed memo from the Almighty in his in-box, and Bonaventure has his father to show him the way. While this may be tactically a bit convenient, strategically it supports the emotional journey of others. Bonaventure struggles to adapt to a world that is not all that accepting of someone as different as he is, particularly in the social cacophony of school, where he tries mightily to feel normal despite his large difference. I wish that we had gotten to see more of that effort. But the boy remains a pretty nifty character on his own for someone charged with helping change others. Really, it is the women whose journey we follow most here, Dancy, Letice, and Adelaide, Dancy’s awful mother, who could easily be a member of the De Vil clan, and who adds a layer of unpleasantness to the expression going postal. Along the way, Leganski offers a fascinating look at a time and place, New Orleans and the fictitious town of Bayou Cymbaline of the 1950s, primarily. The author, although from Wisconsin, and currently residing in Chicago, has a Southern heart. She has always been enamored of many great southern writers, Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Harper Lee, among others. That sensibility comes through. Despite her northern Midwest DNA, the soul of this book resides in the South. She all but strokes the landscape with her rich, languid prose. There are enough overt literary references to offer tethers to other works. Dancy is, like her creator, a huge fan of Faulkner. From a different, if no less wonderful world, C.S. Lewis gets a mention, as does Lewis Carroll. Leganski writes with conviction about a sense of god, but not in a good versus evil way, although there is a bit of that in this tale. Here the battle is, mostly, about good versus despair, belief as a tool to help one overcome barriers and find again one’s better personal paths. Her notion of god, while clearly Christian in origin, extends the concept to a sort of areligious universality. Hers is not one of those church-bound deities, but a wondrous extra layer of existence that embraces profound beauty, kindness, forgiveness and understanding. The Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sorts are anathema here. The story of Bonaventure Arrow takes place in a universe of love, a universe in which bad things certainly can and do happen, but in which there are forces at work trying to heal wounds and make things right. In addition to lifting up some of its characters, this is a book that will lift up its readers. Enjoy it as pure fantasy if that works for you. Embrace the religious aspect if you prefer. The characters feel real and their struggles are all too mortal. The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is most assuredly worth shouting about. ==============================UPDATES March 18, 2013 - I just came across this - lovely interview with the author. It adds a lot to one's appreciation of the novel. March 21, 2013 - I just learned that Bonnie made the Indie Next list for March ==============================EXTRA STUFF I stumbled on a fascinating web site pertaining to Bonaventure's particular talent ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 31, 2012
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Oct 22, 2012
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Paperback
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my rating |
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4.20
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it was amazing
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Jul 2024
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Jul 04, 2024
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4.36
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really liked it
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Jan 08, 2023
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Jan 10, 2023
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3.57
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it was amazing
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Sep 13, 2021
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Jun 30, 2021
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4.10
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it was amazing
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Feb 10, 2020
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Feb 10, 2020
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4.19
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it was amazing
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Oct 26, 2019
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Oct 26, 2019
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3.83
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really liked it
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Nov 19, 2018
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Oct 25, 2018
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3.77
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liked it
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Jul 30, 2018
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Jul 29, 2018
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4.47
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it was amazing
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Mar 18, 2018
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Mar 18, 2018
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3.75
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it was amazing
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Apr 13, 1999
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Apr 27, 2017
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4.03
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really liked it
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Nov 17, 2016
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Nov 18, 2016
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4.22
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it was amazing
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Jul 18, 2020
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May 25, 2016
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3.77
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it was amazing
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Nov 26, 2015
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Nov 19, 2015
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3.01
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it was amazing
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Jun 29, 2016
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Nov 11, 2015
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3.44
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Apr 19, 2015
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Mar 18, 2015
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3.92
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really liked it
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Nov 12, 2014
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Nov 16, 2014
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4.08
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really liked it
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May 23, 2014
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May 17, 2014
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3.64
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really liked it
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Mar 19, 2014
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Mar 12, 2014
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4.02
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liked it
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Mar 19, 2013
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Mar 20, 2013
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4.03
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liked it
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Mar 07, 2013
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Mar 07, 2013
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4.09
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it was amazing
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Oct 31, 2012
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Oct 22, 2012
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