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  1. #1
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    Default What book are you reading now

    Two Lives - Vikram Seth

    I love books about India, (espeically the British Raj) although this book isn't about India, specifically. I'm terrible at writting reviews, so I'll just past this one - from Amazon of course, third on down, I think.


    As I was reading this book I kept thinking what a fascinating (if misleading) cultural document it would make for future generations: the coming together in friendship and marriage of a Hindu from India and a Jew from Berlin . . . in England! And their nephew, years later, retelling not only their story but his own, which spans continents and cultures as if space and language were not barriers. One could get a wonderfully misleading idea of how world-traveled and multi-cultured the average 20th-century citizen was! --But that's not really the point here, just a (to me) fascinating sidelight.

    Readers of Vikram Seth will immediately recognize the clear, balanced, always kind attitude in the writing. Seth takes the interesting approach of telling his own connection with the characters first, so you meet his uncle Shanti and aunt Henny as middle-aged and old people -- and follow them to their deaths before you learn very much about what brought them together or how they wound up in London as husband and wife. It's amazing that this works as well as it does -- instead of being less interested in them, you find yourself anxious to know how Shanti lost his arm, how Henny escaped from Germany on the eve of Word War II, and how they fell in love and came together.

    Each story is told in turn -- Shanti's first, then Henny's, and it is another amazing feat of writing that this doesn't become repetitive or confusing. You are carried from India to Berlin to Edinburgh to Italy to London with Shanti, incidentally learning a lot about dentistry along the way (readers of A SUITABLE BOY will smile and settle in, remembering the long discourse on shoemaking in that novel!). Then you are carried, less directly, from Berlin to England with Henny, but the real force of her story (she died before Seth began the writing project, so he never interviewed her directly in the way he did his uncle) comes in letters from her old Berlin "set" after the war. This is an intriguing story, and makes me wonder why we haven't had a flood of novels and memoirs on the topic before (perhaps we have, and I'm just ignorant of them). Henny, whose sister and mother were unable to leave Germany and perished in the death camps, slowly gets into contact with old Christian and Jewish friends still in Germany and learns piecemeal from them how they managed in the war -- who risked life to visit and bring supplies to her sister and mother in the final days before deportation, who disappeared into the cloud of Nazism, dropping old friends, who straddled the awkward line between assimilation and rebellion. We learn of the compromises everyone made, the choices they regretted and the risks they wished they had and hadn't taken. It's a fascinating glimpse into the minds of ordinary Germans after the war -- all couched in the terms of everyday life, from despair over a stolen cachet of clothing to embarrassment at the gratitude of elderly beggars when they are given just a crust of bread to cold toes in old shoes -- the stuff of life in those terrible years. Henny, safe in England, is filled with sadness and fury, and feels she must "cut" those friends whom she learns were not as kind as they should have been during the war, no matter their friendliness afterwards. She also reconnects with the fiance who buried the Jewish half of his ancestry and married a Christian girl while Henny presumably waited for him abroad.

    I've already given away too much, but this is the kind of book you yearn to sit down and dissect with good friends. It's rich in detail (you will never forget the account of the Birkenau gas chamber), good-hearted, and important, not only for its wealth of historical and biographical information but for a glimpse into the lives of people who traveled continents, making friends and connections along the way, appreciating the differences among religions, cultures, literature, and music without championing any above the others, and living full and well-considered lives. I highly, highly recommend it.
    ]

    http://www.amazon.com/Two-Lives-Vikr.../dp/0060599669
    Excellent non-fiction.

  2. #2
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    Playboy! That's a book, right?


    .....j/k
    UNITED STATES ARMY AVIATION

    Above the Best

    Why the Hell should I have to press “1” for ENGLISH?

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. P View Post
    Playboy! That's a book, right?


    .....j/k
    How dare you make a mockery out of my thread. It's to be pretentious as possible at all times.

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    Default

    I just finished Elizabeth Wurtzels Prozac Nation.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prozac_Nation

    Really good book.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Obama08 View Post
    I just finished Elizabeth Wurtzels Prozac Nation.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prozac_Nation

    Really good book.
    Liz did one helluva job on Prozac Nation. Her other books that I've read are More, Now, Again and Bitch. I wasn't too impressed with either, although More, Now, Again was captivating to read (like watching a train wreck).
    “Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face” - Thomas Sowell

    “What "multiculturalism" boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture” - Thomas Sowell

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    I like to switch between fiction & non-fiction, so:

    Death In Vienna- Daniel Silva (his whole series about Mossad assassin Gabriel Allon is fun)
    Culture Warrior - Bill O'Reilly
    After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box - Author unknown

    “Unfortunately, the truth is now whatever the media say it is”
    -Abbey

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    liberal fascism
    If we were as industrious to become good as to make ourselves great, we should become really great by being good, and the number of valuable men would be much increased; but it is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness; and i pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." - Ben Franklin

    Imagine what good we can do if we all joined together, united as followers of Christ - M. Russell Ballard

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    "Temporary Shepherds" by Roger Nicholson

  9. #9
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    Iam reading now, The Well Of Memory , first edItion copy of 100 copies signee by author E.E. Speight, PUBLISHED in Hyderbad INDIA IN 1926...
    Number 1 signed, of a hundred copies. None of the others are known to exist.--Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

  10. #10
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    Default

    https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2023...abandon-merit/


    What Happens When Schools Abandon Merit?A new book by Heather Mac Donald should serve as a national wake-up call.
    SEP 15, 2023


    George Leef
    FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShare
    America’s educational institutions used to adhere to objective standards of excellence. Students and faculty members had to strive and were rewarded (or not) according to their performance. What their background might be or where their ancestors lived didn’t matter.


    That was true until a corrosive idea called “disparate impact” began taking hold in the country some 50 years ago. What that meant was that objective standards were objectionable if they resulted in poorer performance by certain racial groups. The obsession with disparate impact was kick-started by the Supreme Court’s 1971 Griggs v. Duke Power decision and has been growing in destructive force ever since.


    In her latest book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, Heather Mac Donald surveys the landscape and sees profound changes in crucial institutions: our schools and colleges, law-enforcement, medicine, and the fine arts. Everywhere, merit is being eroded due to the acceptance among “progressive” elites of what Mac Donald calls the bias fallacy—namely, that any underrepresentation or outcome disparities for blacks and Hispanics must be caused by bias against them.

    ...


    "The government is a child that has found their parents credit card, and spends knowing that they never have to reconcile the bill with their own money"-Shannon Churchill


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    A bit pricey, but I love reading Sowell. Chances of reading many more original works diminishing, he's 93 years old!




    "The government is a child that has found their parents credit card, and spends knowing that they never have to reconcile the bill with their own money"-Shannon Churchill


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    The man is a treasure.
    "when socialism fails, blame capitalism and demand more socialism." - A friend
    "You know the difference between libs and right-wingers? Libs STFU when evidence refutes their false beliefs." - Another friend
    “Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” - Paulo Coelho


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    Screenshot_20240114_093503_Kindle.jpg

    The Abyss Trilogy

    #1 Below Us
    #2 Before Us
    #3 After US

    Mad scientist harnesses ocean energy to provide free energy to the world. Wakes up alien worlds and portals. Oh ... and we lose 92% of the population on earth. Sound familiar?
    If the freedom of speech is taken away
    then dumb and silent we may be led,
    like sheep to the slaughter.


    George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

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