Manzaradan Parçalar - Orhan Pamuk

Bu makaleler okuyabildiğimden ve anlatabildiğimden çok şaşırdım.  Sözlük çok kullanmam gerek ve yavaş yavaş gelişiyorum ama yapıyorum.  Orhan Pamuk'un dili çok açık ve çok güzel.  Istanbul hakkinda fikirleri çok ilginç.

The Physics of Sorrow - Georgi Gospodinov

A Bulgarian writer.  His novel has the crazy, rambling, circus-like quality that eastern european cinema can have at times.  Basically the story of the author/protagonist growing up in Bulgaria of the 70s, 80s and 90s.  He jumps around in history, between characters and other creatures, philosophizes, makes political commentary, tells side stories.   The book has digressions titles  SIDE STORY.

The myth of the Minotaur is central to the book in some way, but turned on its head.  The Minotaur as victim, as a sad story deserving of sympathy.  The Minotaur as Everyman lost in the labyrinth of life?  Betrayed by the heros, by the big people, by the big ideas and dreams?

He develops a couple of interesting ideas close to my heart.

One is around page 168, where he proposes a hierarchy and a religion of the ephemeral, of the fleeting and the living, instead of the eternal and the dead.  The title of the section is BUFFALO SHIT, OR THE SUBLIME IS EVERYWHERE.  He points out how all the drama, all the sturm und drang of history would be meaningless if the ephemeral were valued.  You can't fight a war about something that will quickly fade.

"Exactly.  Man is the measure of all things.  And everything that exceeds this measure  and lasts longer and remains after his death is inhuman by its very nature, and a source of sorrow and discord as a rule."  p. 171

"In the small and insignificant - that's where life hides, that's where it builds its nest.  Funny what things are left to twinkle in the end, the last glimmer before darkness."  p. 247  (He then goes on to describe two beautifully insignificant sublime moments from his life.)

Partly the result of having lived through the disaster of two big, timeless ideas or ideologies - Communism and Pirate Capitalism?

The last section of the book is called An Elementary Physics of Sorrow.  It is a collection of short notes and thoughts that are quite sharp at times.

Midnight Sun - Jo Nesbo

Second novel I've read by him.  He is a very tight writer; not particularly deep, but with a great sense of oddball characters and situations.  Good escapist or reading holiday material.

A Concise History of Bulgaria - R. J. Compton

A readable overview of historical Bulgaria, from the early days when it was one of the significant European cultures to the modern era where it ended as a minor player.
The modern story seems to be one of being frozen in time, sidetracked, treading water.  The Ottoman period was a period of stagnation in most areas of Bulgarian life - there was some industrial development, but most of the economy and society remained static.  Then there were the Balkan Wars, where the focus was on territory and borders, not development. Next there was the 1st World War on the wrong side, followed by the next war, also on the losing side.  Finally, there was the the Communist Bloc, and the low quality, unsustainable industrial development of the Soviet period that did not keep pace with modern technological and economic developments.  Today, there is the leap into the mysteries, vagaries and sharks of modern western capitalism.  A sad story...

I am also intrigued by this issue of Macedonia - the battle amongst Balkan powers for control of the territory, and also the Macedonian's long struggle for independence.  Where did this struggle come from?  How did it originate?
This Macedonian obsession seems to have sidetracked Balkan regimes from more significant developments and issues for decades.


To find:
something on the Macedonian independence struggle

The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason

I enjoyed reading this book.  There are some marvellous descriptive passages of the English piano tuner's first impressions of Burma in the late 1800s, both the city and the back county.  Very evocative.  As you read though, there are some small annoyances, some little niggling points around the development of the storyline.  After, you realize some of the main turning points and significant unfolding events are basically delivered in one line.  The one that jumps out the most is the sentence that states the piano tuner has been in the piano village for three months - as you read, you have no sense of the passage of this time.  Other foreshadowings are also crudely done in one sentence earlier in the book.  They seem odd at the time, stand out a bit as sentences or ideas, and you only realize later where they were heading.  A bit awkward...
I also wondered why the author was revisiting this particular moment of long-past British colonialism, and it doesn't really become clear, beyond the usual remarking of the blindness of the colonizer to the local culture, environment and even the people as humans.

There is also a funny parallel to Heart of Darkness, both in the outcome and in the rivier journey.  Not sure if it is annoying or not - tend towards annoying as I don't see any critical or insightful thoughts emerging from this parallel.

Blood on Snow - Jo Nesbo

Norwegian roman noir/crime author.
Story well-told from the perspective of one of the characters who obviously has some unusual (not violent or extreme) personality flaws.  He is essentially a contract killer but tells everything in such a matter-of-fact tone.

Find more

The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi

Another apocalypse novel, similar in theme to The Wind Up Girl (which I would like to reread).  This time the author is exploring a future southwest US, when water has finally become so scarce that the main urban centres begin to fight amongst themselves to have control and access to what water remains.  He also explores what kind of development might survive within this crisis environment using the latest technology around water recycling and waste management.  As in so many apocalypse novels, there is the elite that survives and thrives no matter, and then there are the excluded, the surplus, the excess.  Two societies - one militarized, one a chaos of crime bosses, gangs, criminals and paramilitaries.
A good read, but very american in structure - lots of guns, violence, the obligatory sex scene or two.

There is also a theme of what people will do, how they will change in moments of extreme crisis and threat.  The breakdown of civil society and what relations and structures grow up in their place. What does facing that new reality mean?

The Festival of Insignificance - Milan Kundera

The essence of Kundera in telegraphic form.  As he gets older, his books become almost crystalline reflections of the essences of the themes he has explored through his entire oeuvre.  One sentence, one detail about a character will call up a whole chain of characters, ideas, comments from his other longer early novels.  One comment on a young woman can summarize all his reflections and views on the modern age.  All of it built around his usual structures:  older men, younger women; sons and mothers; the undercurrents between friends and loose acquaintances...
This idea of insignificance seems like some kind of final position on his long exploration of the history of modern European/Western culture.  In earlier books he bemoans the loss of all this nuance, reflection, interplay of idea and the world;  in this book his seems resigned, maybe even finding a freedom in this realization of insignificance?

There is a funny sequence that returns through the book, where he brings in Stalin and his cronies.  The idea around these sequences is the philosophical idea of the relationship between reality and our representation or perception of it.  There are two possible positions:  one, we cannot know reality, only our perceptions, but these personal representations have some kind of relationship to the real; two, we have only our representations and there is no underlying real (or it is completely unknowable).  Kundera seems to see Stalin (and other total autocratic regimes afloat on a world of propaganda and ideology) as definitive proof of the second position.  Reality is unknowable, individual, and a strong individual can force everyone to accept their representation, whatever the individual's personal experience might be.  Some relationship to the trap of language here and the relationship between language and perception...

Another great passage:  "... I've wanted to talk to you about something.  About the value of insignificance... Insignificance, my friend, is the essence of existence.  It is all around us, and everywhere and always.  It is present even when no one wants to see it:  in horror, in bloody battles, in the worst disasters.  It often takes courage to acknowledge it in such dramatic situations, and to call it by name.  But it is not only a matter of acknowledging it, we must love insignificance, we must learn to love it... my friend, inhale this insignificance that's all around us, it is the key to wisdom, it is the key to a good mood..."  p113

Racconti romani - Alberto Moravia

A collection of short stories from the late 40s and 50s, originally published in a roman newspaper on a regular basis (imagine when you could read this quality of fiction as installations in a newspaper!)  Excellent short stories - quickly sketch the characters and outline the situation or incident.  Storie del popolo, which probably would have been different at the time.  Linked to the similar movement in Italian postwar cinema?  Always a jab, a surprise, a little moral at the very end.  Extremely well written.  It creates such a different picture from the romantic daydream that has become our image of Italy and Italians, as if there are no poor, no creeps, no cafone living there (true of certain other European cultures too...)

Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age - Susan Neiman

Great title, but a bit of a disappointment.  Really an overview of philosophers since Rousseau thinking about childhood, becoming an adult and acquiring an education.  A bit of a slow read.  She addresses some of the issues Crawford does in The World Beyond Your Head, but in a more indirect, discursive kind of way, rather than firmly anchored in examples.

You learn a lot about both Rousseau's ideas and Kant's ideas in reading this book.

The World Beyond Your Head - Matthew B. Crawford

Subtitled:  On Becoming and Individual in an Age of Distraction


A broader scope than his exploration of work on work, Shop Class as Soul Craft.

A complex set of ideas.

He explores things like:

- the importance of connecting with the real world as opposed to the virtual world or the inner world

- the concept of freedom, not as 'freedom from' but freedom as mastery of areas of agency

- the importance of attention to the world and people out there

- the modern drift to interiority where encounters with the world and unmediated others is seen as a bother, as something risky

- touches on the culture of safety and the 'smooth society' (for lack of a better word)  where there is no conflict, no jagged edges - essentially the tasteless, flavourless corporate culture and culture of school

- the longterm social and psychological effects of our current view that everyone is a self-made person

- how the concept of revolution in the arts in the early 20th century, by throwing out tradition and history of the arts, ended up killing the arts that were being revolutionized - acutally, no surprise when you consider the results of violent social revolutions in the 20th century in Russian and especially China;  the very culture itself is destroyed and replaced by nothing, or by money and consumerism

Worth rereading, maybe even buying.

Every Man Dies Alone - Hans Falla

A story about Nazi resisters in Berlin during WW2.  Based on a true story.  Falla evokes the pettiness, sadism and egotism of the period, with the SS at the top instilling fear throughout the whole of society, and everyone else either trying to be invisible or curry favour but ratting on others.  An image of a society based on the worst, most destructive attributes of humans, with the criminals and sadists running the show.  Interesting that Communist societies seem to have gone the same route - something about narrow ideology and the opportunities it presents to those who crave power and status.
This is probably a truer portrait of that society than the one presented by Dick in his police mysteries set in that period.  Dick exposes the corruption of the powerful, but he doesn't explore the pettiness, the grinding down of the general population.  Falla does both.

It is interesting, the "you're either with us or against us" mentality - you don't have to actively act against the regime to be arrested.  It is enough to be passive in the face of it; neither acting for nor against.  Reminds me of Bush's comment after 9/11.

The superior, above-the-law attitude of the police in the story is also reminiscent of the many police incidents with Blacks in the US recently.  There seems to be that same sense of superiority, of limitlessness of power, and of despising the Other.

The Moral Lives of Animals - Dale Peterson

A fascinating book with personal anecdotes and scientific research centred around the presence of such "moral" values as empathy, selflessness, helpfulness, generosity, kindness, fairness etc.  He offers many instances of animals demonstrating this moral attributes that are often seen as originating in religion.  The book presents the case that these traits go way back from an evolutionary point of view as useful behaviours, especially in the context of social animals and animals living in groups.  

Worth rereading as it is impossible to truly appreciate the wealth of information and reflections around this topic in just one read.

A Strangeness in My Mind - Orhan Pamuk

The most beautiful ode to a city I have ever read.  Rich in details of the streets and the lives of ordinary people.  He also weaves the social and political history of Turkey and Istanbul into the background of the story.  It is a sad story, though, a lament for a lost city and a lost way of life, essentially the death of community and human warmth and the triumph of greed and materialism.
Mevlut is a beautiful character, sufi-like.

Well-written as well, with a narrator as well as characters that pop in and give their view of events or other characters in the story.

Ill Fares the Land - Tony Judt

One of his most pointed books looking at modern society, how we got here and what the serious problems are.
He looks at both how the two World Wars and, most interesting, the 60s social revolution have landed us where we are today.

He explores and defines the idea of social democracy, as opposed to socialism, and why it rose to prominence after the horrific social fallout of the two world wars.  He also looks at how the 60s obsession with self-expression and individual freedom led to the demise of social democracy and the rise of social relativism.

He underlines the continuing need for strong government, and democratic participation, in the face of  the challenges and social upheaval heading our way from both ecological causes and the effects of globalization.  He underlines the impossibility of big business dealing with crisis issues (even like the crash in 2009 which was exclusively economic).  He points out that, while we have allowed much of our economy to become global, government is still local, and cannot be any other way.

One issue he brings up that I am not sure I see the way around is that much of the social democratic benefits were enacted in a time when people had a much stronger cohesive national identity.  We have to have something to build the concept of "group" on if we are going to work together as a society.  Consumerism and the fragmentation of social life through the internet has tended to minimize these larger local group identities.

Worth rereading.

The Left Side of History - Kristen Ghodsee

One of the few books on Bulgaria at the TPL.  It is the account of the lives of two partisans during WW II, a British officer and member of the British Communist party, and a young Bulgarian girl who ends up joining the communist partisans with her brothers and father.
It is a bit jumbled, with historical elements and also personal elements as Ghodsee relates the people she meets and interviews she conducts as part of her research.  It creates both an historical document (of narrow scope) and a human document of lives lived and remembered.
The books brings up some interesting points:

1) The history of Communism in Eastern Europe is now being written by the winners  ie. Americans and western Europeans, and when the winners write history there is always a strong danger of bias contamination.  She brings up the idea that everything about Communism as a form of governments was not all negative and that it accomplished some positive or important things in many countries.  These are now totally ignored.  It is an area of historical research that needs to be explored.

2) Through her interviews with Elena Lagadinova you also get a sense of how pirate capitalism managed to grab so many State assets when the Communist government fell.

3)  Through personal interviews you gain an understanding of why some people are nostalgic for the old days - most of the public had a more secure, stable life under Communism.  It is the corrupt that have benefited most from regime change.

4)  Through Lagadinova you also get a sense of how states rewrite history to create mythologies that both justify the new regime and also work to discredit the  old regime.  The story in the book is about the monument to the innocent victims of Communism that is erected in Sophia (and in many other formerly Communist countries - as well as Ottawa???)  Some of the names on the monument include former government officials who were allies of the Nazis, former army officers that committed barbaric war crimes against civilians and partisans.  This type of "history" is dangerous, unethical and undemocratic.

5)  In the account of Bulgarian Communist leadership over the decades, you also see how the greedy and the power hungry corrupt a system to protect their power, wealth and privileges.  This is true regardless of the system.  The same could be said of current American "democracy" and, to a degree, of the European government bureaucracy.

A lot of threads to follow from this book.

The Lives of Animals - J. M. Coetzee

A radical exploration of animal rights and the eating of animals in the form of a story and two lectures or debates.  A look at several sides of the question of the nature of being of animals, of equivalency between animals and humans.  Extreme positions from animals are essentially objects to such a rejection of animals as food that would lead to the extinction of cows, pigs, etc. as we know them.
There are also three or four short essay responses to Coetzee's work.  One dryly academic, one in the form of another story and the last one which is the personal reflections of someone who has spent a great deal of time studying animals, in particular baboons(Barbara Smuts).  Her reflections are very interesting.  She explores the relationships that animals have formed with her in her long study of a particular troop of baboons.  She talks about personhood as a willingness to form a singular relationship with another being, animal or human, based on mutual respect and an effort to understand. She convincingly argues that baboons (and dogs) possess personhood as that kind of relationship exist between humans and nonhumans.  Interestingly, she argues that when animals are seen solely as something "other", it is not the animal that loses personhood but the human exhibiting this attitude. It is an interesting concept, one that challenges the "species centrism" of us humans  It defines human as a willingness to engage and form relationships with the world around us (which would clearly place current social trends especially in the West as non- person and inhuman or unhuman...)

A Beam of Light - Andrea Camilleri

An Italian mystery writer who sets his stories in a small town in Sicily.  Creates a nice atmosphere.  Storyline is good (not great) but the real focus is the atmosphere and lives of the characters.  I would read more.

The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan

One of McEwan's early novels.  First the father, then the mother dies.  The mother is buried in the basement so the children won't get picked up by the social services.  This is the story of the children's life as it slowly spins out of control.  A daughter about 18, a son about 16, a younger sister and a young boy, age 5 or 6.
It is a kind of Lord of the Flies tale.  What is interesting is the amorality of it all, of the complete lack of social norms or limits.

Black Dogs - Ian McEwan

A reread of the book that first introduced me to McEwan.  I still find this short novel an engaging read.  Essentially a novel of ideas but well-integrated into the lives of the characters in the book. Nothing dry about it.  He sets two different approaches to evil and social good against each other within the confines of a failed marriage, and then explores the accomplishments and pitfalls of both these approaches through the lives of the two main characters.  His book remains a reflection, a rumination, rather than a resolution of this dichotomy.  The fall of the Berlin Wall is part of the action in this book, and somehow this seems a part of the issue he is exploring - is evil fought and good enacted through the social and political field, or through the work of an individual life.
I will have to go back and look at some of his other books.  I wonder if a central idea like this sits at the centre of some of his other novels.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

By the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Same tone, same feel but less successful perhaps because as pseudo-detective fiction, less open to the whimsy and craziness of the Hitchhiker series.  Not as much scope for his wild imagination.

East of the West - Miroslav Penkov

A collection of short stories by a younger writer from Bulgaria now living in the States and writing in English.  A collection of stories of disordered lives sidetracked by irrational intrusions, some random, some self-created.  Another reflection of the disordered times of Bulgaria in the post Communist period?

Circus Bulgaria - Deyan Enev

A collection of short stories set in Bulgaria.  Stories teetering on chaos, edged with irrationality.  Set in insane asylums, zoos, peasant villages, booze.  Definitely an underbelly fiction.  Bulgaria went through some hard times and big shifts after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  I think these stories reflect the chaos, confusion and hard times of that period.

Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies - Nick Fonda

A collection of short stories by an Eastern Townships writer from Richmond.  The stories focus on childhood lives and school experiences.  I sympathize with the issues and criticisms he brings up around school culture and its effect on children and parents.  The last story is interesting - in a very tentative way, it seems to be an exploration of cultural difference and perhaps even underlying prejudice within the French school system in Quebec.

Solo - Rana Dasgupta

A bit of a schizophrenic novel.  The first half explores the life of a character born in Bulgaria near the end of the 1800s.  Through this life, you see the various social upheavals that have occurred there since the Turkish period.  It is an interesting social history and focuses on a topic I am interested in, which is the long-term effect on society and personal psychology of living under the Communist system where acknowledged reality and lived reality diverged so distinctly.

The second half of the book changes characters and location - Georgia and the US.  Its focus is organized crime and the exploitation of traditional cultures by the american music industry.  Less successful, less subtle, too trendyish.

Strangely, the guy who wrote this book is Indian.

Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko

Silko is a well-established native american writer from the south-west.
Interesting look into a different perspective on the world based on a native tradition (as interpreted by Silko).
Various themes:
- a pretty clear condemnation of the violent, rapacious and alienated nature of white society
- relationships to nature in a traditional native ethos (she writes beautifully about the natural world around her and the relationship you can have with the land)
- explores the theme of cultural crossover and how difficult it is to live in the two cultural worlds
- though Silko seems to see her salvation in a return to old native values and ways, the book has a fair bit of Christian symbolism, especially in the "ceremony"  that takes place at the end of the book - also in Tayo's days alone in the wilderness

She does a nice job of weaving traditional stories and myths into the narrative.

Find more by her.

Diary of a Bad Year - J. M. Coetzee 2007

An unusual narrative technically for Coetzee - two simultaneous stories running at the same time, sometimes even three.  The top of the page in a collection of short opinion pieces being produced by the author (as a character in the book).
The other narratives are either a) the author's private thoughts around a young Filipina woman he has hired to type for him b) the Filipina's thoughts on the pieces she is typing or on the author who has hired her, or on her boyfriend working in Finance c) for one section, the thoughts and dialogue of the Finance boyfriend attacking and attempting to humiliate the author of the opinion pieces

Not sure how it all ties together.  There is a hint that all the male blah blah, both the author's opinions and the boyfriend's, are essentially a lot of male hot air around a woman who for them remains largely invisible as a person.  And for whom the opinions are both uninteresting and besides the point in terms of living your life.

Within the author's pieces and simultaneous personal thoughts, there seems to be a growing awareness of some fundamental uselessness or besides-the-point-ness of the opinions he has been piling up over a lifetime.  That they become some kind of trap or blinder.  At least in the rather strong and categorical form that they have come to take.  As narrow and categorical of the Conservative, Finance, Survival-of-the-Fittest boyfriend's opinions.

Also and interesting aside, delivered by the boyfriend, that the Finance types have taken of the world from the intellectual, reflective types - which seems to be an accurate observation.

L'élégance du hérisson - Muriel Barbery

Jolie petite histoire.  Très émouvante.  Mais cette histoire montre la même tendance, la même croyance, le même espoir face aux injustices du monde qu'on a récemment vu dans un livre par Amin Malouf.  Cette croyance que l'art, que la culture va nous sauver de nos problèmes, de nos petitesses, de nos défauts en tant qu'humain.  C'est drôle de rencontrer cette foi de nos jours, comme si le débâcle de la première guerre ne s'est jamais produit.  Peut-être que c'est parce que ces deux auteurs viennent d'autres cultures, d'autres régimes sociaux et politiques?

The Gingerbread House - Carin Gerhardsen

Another murder mystery by Swedish writer.  She is truly in the murder mystery style - book opens with a gruesome murder.  Enter investigation.  More gruesome murders may be introduced.
Didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one.  Maybe because I've figured out the formula?  Doesn't seem to have as much depth as spy or political mystery fiction.  Lacks the underlying social criticism of Ian Rankin's work.

Hanging Fred and a Few Others - Nick Fonda

Subtitled "Painters of the Eastern Townships"

An interesting read, not so much because of the elements of Frederick Coburn's story, but because of all the different painters associated with the Townships that you find out about in the course of the book.  Then you get to look up their work on Google Images.
It is a very active artistic region.

The Big Fat Surprise - Nina Teicholz

Subtitled:  Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

Teicholz's book pretty much turns upside down everything that has been gospel about healthy diet for over 40 years.  Turns out butter, meat, etc don't raise cholesterol, or rather, they do, but it is the good HDL cholesterol they raise.  Turns out LDL cholesterol levels show no relation to heart disease risk. Turns out vegetable oils, especially when hydrogenated or heated, show a much stronger relation.
Looks like heart disease, diabetes and obesity are also related to consumption of carbohydrates, especially processed ones.  The food pyramid with grains at the bottom is a recipe for the kind of health epidemics we have been seeing for decades.

This is all very interesting and mind-boggling, but the real underlying issue is how the scientific community's consensus could be so wrong.  The seminal studies behind our modern diet guidelines are highly flawed and show poor scientific rigour.  The results have been reported in a highly biased manner, focusing only on the data bits that have supported the dominant hypothesis.  Challengers to the current field consensus have been humiliated, hounded, shunned and denied funds to pursue their work.  The role of outsized egos, career status and research dollars in creating this "scientific" consensus is shocking.  A prime example of how dangerous and unreliable field experts and accepted norms can be.
Scientific studies must be treated with extreme caution - probably best ignored unless you are personally willing to read it over and verify both its method and true results.

The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich

A native writer from the States.  Recounts the convoluted relations between a native group and the families of the settlers over several generations.  Not so much a direct native issues exploration as a capturing of the history, the twisted life stories, the feelings and thoughts of the characters on both sides within the small town and neighbouring reserve.  A clear weaving of some of the things she perceives as different within native societies and relations - justice, the ironic eye, family and children.  Not an idealized us vs. them perspective.

One of the best known Native writers apparently.  Find some more.

Solo - William Boyd

A James Bond novel by William Boyd!  Set in Africa of course.  Well-written as a spy novel.  Some behind-the-scenes comments on the developed countries' attitudes towards  (and machinations within) African nations.   Catches the Bond tone.

Disordered World - Amin Maalouf

Subtitled "Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century"

An interesting analysis of the current Middle East and where we find ourselves in general today. Maalouf has the advantage of having witnessed first hand the breakdown of social order and the slip into chaos in Lebanon.
He looks at how the West has misused its strength and created political and social disasters in countries in the Middle East, and indirectly helped create Islamic fundamentalism.  He has a long chapter on how political leaders everywhere have lost any sense of legitimacy in the eyes of their people by being tied to narrow special interests of all stripes.  He also talks about how a post-ideological world has fractured into a tribal world based on ethnicity, religion, skin colour, wealth.

He finishes the book with some chapters on how to rebuild, on how to reestablish a solidarity that can transcend cultures, ethnicities and religion.  Very idealistic.  Based on values of culture (I am reminded here of the effect on culture and its values of the cataclysm of WW I).
It is a nice vision, but I am more inclined to agree with Zizek's idea that change to the system will only come after collapse into chaos, probably provoked by environmental crises.

I find his non-fiction style a bit heavy and pedantic, but the ideas are interesting.

Worth rereading.

Comptine des coupables - Carin Gerhardsen

Translation of a mystery originally written in Swedish.

Scandinavia produces some brilliant dark mystery writers.  Cleverly conceived, full of surprises and side mysteries connected to the lives of the characters.  Hangs together brilliantly.

Find more.

The Blue Door - Andre Brink

A short book, but clever.  According to Brink, exploring the possibility of how everything could be different.  Done on a couple of levels.  First, an almost surreal level where the main character leaves and returns to his studio cottage, but when he returns, everything has changes - the layout, his wife, children (none in initial life), even the colour of the door one time.  Also, on a more human level, where he remembers an affair he had with a passionate, fully alive coloured woman (takes place in South Africa) where he made the choice to not run off with her - and regrets how his life might have been lived differently, more passionately.  His affair also bumped him off another road of marrying his fiancee and joining the established, moneyed white elite of the country.

Well-told in sparing language.

Scenes from a Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee

A writer I usually find very gripping and intense.  This book is autobiographical fiction and unfortunately it suffers from the same thing that annoys me in so much current literature - too much navel gazing and whining about life.  Head up the arse...
Will pick up some of his other stories as I haven't read him for a while.

Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway

A book I haven't read in years, decades even.  A great writer.  Stories worth reading, but I still know them too well.  Hemingway's he-man thing just doesn't grab me.

A Concise History of Romania - Keith Hitchins

Unfortunately a rather dull history focusing on the traditional areas of politics, international relations and key figures.  Very little detail on the changes in the lives of the actual citizens.

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously - Slavoj Zizek

Because the essays in this book are tied to a set of events (Arab Spring, Occupy) there is a bit more coherence and his points are more approachable.  Still, there is nothing like a consistent vision as to what might take the place of Capitalism.  He does make some good points though.  One point is impossibility of imagining what might come next, as it would be something completely new (or something old and even uglier...) and beyond what we currently have experience with.  He also makes clearer the link between capitalism and materialism - the great strength of capitalism is its productivity, its ability to produce material goods.  As long as our values are so tied to material goods, capitalism is here to stay.  His criticism of leftist ideas as simply prolonging the life of what is inherently an untenable economic structure is interesting... there is a point to be made here, but post-capitalism is hard to imagine and may not necessarily be any nicer.
The other point he makes is that revolution is probably impossible - the true endpoint of capitalism resides in the coming environmental cataclysm and ecological collapse.
I do enjoy his surprising take on current events, and his ability to make clear the underlying presumptions or false narratives in our media's discussion of these events.

Trouble in Paradise - Slavoj Zizek

Supposedly a critique of capitalism in four parts.  Zizek makes some interesting points but I find them rather overwhelmed by terminology and ruminations based on cultural theory a la Lacan et cie. Theoretical ramblings, polemical asides and divagations into current hot issues make it hard to follow his critical threads.
Maybe if you have background in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and postmodernism this book would be approachable.

Comments about Zizek (and even more so about Lacan) are very mixed - from brilliance to charlatanism.

Crowded Grave - Martin Walker

ETA, Neanderthal and early Homo Sapiens history, animal rights activists - and foie gras.

Resistance Man - Martin Walker

Another good mystery (with a shootout at the end...sigh).  It involves art theft, French Resistance history, spying, internal security agencies, and nuclear warhead development.  As well as the usual wines, cheeses and good meals.

Il tempo invecchia in fretta: nove storie - Antonio Tabucchi

Another bit of a hit and miss by Tabucchi.  The more traditionally told stories I enjoyed, but his run-on endless paragraph monologue stories I had trouble focusing on and following - too much effort for what they were.

I suspect his big work is Sostiene Pereira.

Time's Arrow - Martin Amis

A brilliant project, but somewhat of a better idea than read, though still compelling enough.  The original idea is to retell the main character's life story backwards from old age to birth.  Movements are backwards, interactions are backwards, even conversations are backwards - it sometimes requires a fair bit of effort to picture exactly what is happening.  The main character is also a former Nazi involved in the work and death camps.
Something about the recounting of events backwards makes them all the more creepy and horrific. For example, exhuming corpses, bringing them back to life and restoring them to their homes.  In some way, it rehumanizes all these small horrors.  The narrator (a person or voice living inside the narrator's head) constantly refers to the amazing power of creativity in the universe -  all the humans dug up from the earth, pulled in from the smoke in the air, brought to life in the gas chamber on the back of a van.  The astounding ability of a foot to create an ant by simply lifting itself from the ground.  Somehow this again underlines the incredible destructive force of Nazis in particular but also of humans in general.
In recounting the human interactions backwards, especially those focused on women, you also get a sense of the violent emotional swings that run through troubled relationships.

An incredible feat of imagination on Amis' part.

The Devil's Cave - Martin Walker

Another well-written mystery, detective novel.  This time he links arms trading, shady property development and international finance with the small village in Dorgodgne through a holiday development proposal.  Same big shootout at the end, but not as Ramboesque as in the last one I read.
Still want to read more.

Madness in the Family - William Saroyan

Bit of a forgotten writer.
Some amusing short stories about life and the Armenian community in Fresno in the early and mid-20th c.
His stories seem very light, and not typical of the more angst ridden work of the 20th century, but he actually addresses some deep, almost mystical issues in some of them.  There is almost a sense of Sufi wisdom, or traditional wisdom and social insight of traditional middle-eastern societies.
The influence of his Armenian-ness, his cultural background is what makes him interesting in this book.

Try a couple more.

Fenland Chronicle - Sybil Marshall

A reference from the book "Fields".
A lovely chronicle of life in another time - a small village and farming community on the fens at the end of the 19th C and the beginning of the 20th C.  The original manuscript was started by the author's father in the wonderful voice of a man of little education of the time - lovely vocabulary and turns of phrases.  It reads more as spoken word than as writing.  The author finished off the book after her father's death and then went on to collect her mother's story.

A great evocation of life in another time before so much of what has shaped our life in the course of the 20th century, when people's worlds were much smaller.

Bruno - Martin Walker

A mystery/detective novel.  Well-written, evocative of place (Dordogne region, small village) with a nicely maintained building tension.  This part I really enjoyed, like a Louise Penny on steroids.  But the end of the book is very American - irresistible sexual attraction between two main gun-toting characters,  bit shoot out with a paramilitary flair.  Reads well at the time, but after the tension wears off, it seems a bit stereotyped in structure.
Will try a couple more before finally deciding.

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

A history of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic States and Western Russia from the late 20's (Stalin's takeover) to the end of WWII.  An account of the upheaval, planned murder, mass relocations and the effects of war in this area that was occupied three times over that period - first by Russia and Germany, then by Germany and finally by Russia.
The history of this time period is not well-presented in the West's version of WWII.
Some facts:
In this period, Germany and Russia killed roughly the same number of people.
Most Jews who were killed in the war came from Poland - Western European Jews represented a small percentage.
As many Poles were killed by the Russians and the Germans as Jews.
Belarus lost half of it's population at that time.
Jews represented less than 1% of the German population at the start of the war.
More Jews were killed in one day by a bullet to the head than all the people who died in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped.
The Allies actually did not see any of the German death camps - they were all liberated by the Russians.  The Allies saw the work or concentration camps, and more people survived in those than died.
The Russian's system of concentration camps was far larger than what was established by the Nazis.

There is also some discussion of why Hitler and the Nazis developed the war plans they did, and also why Stalin was involved in so much ethnic and political cleansing (or Terrors).

A good read for a revision of our picture of WWII and where the action really was.

The Zone of Interest - Martin Amis

"Zone of Interest"  seems to be a Nazi term referring to death camps in general or perhaps specifically to Auschwitz.
The various characters present different lives within the camp as well as different views and reactions to both the Nazis and the camp itself.  There are hardcore Nazis, SS officers who support the war but see the Jewish death camps as pointless and unnecessary, there is an SS officer who works behind the scenes to slow and sabotage the Nazi war effort, there is the wife and family of the head of Auschwitz who also live at the camp, there is a Sonderkomando prisoner also.
It is a fairly heavy book, though not as much as you might expect.  The focus is not on the details of the exterminations and living conditions, but on the lives and minds of the people surrounding the camps.
There is also an exploration of the Nazi idealism - views on women, patriarchy, sexuality (male) - and some hints of the crazy ideas they came up with such as a extraterrestrial origin of Aryans.  Amis captures the strangeness, the craziness and the essential incomprehensibility of the whole period.

There is an excellent bibliography in the back of the book:

To Find:
- Primo Levi's books about his time in Auschwitz, If this is a Man & The Truce
- Explaining Hitler; Ron Rosenbaum
- Defying Hitler & The Meaning of Hitler, both by Sebastian Haffner
- The Journey Back from Hell, Anton Gill ( survivor accounts)
- book on Hitler by Alan Bullock
- Doctor 117641, Louis Micheels
- I Shall Bear Witness. Victor Klemperer
- Diary of a Man in Despair, Friedrick Reck
- (others there to pull out too)

Sogni di sogni - Antonia Tabucchi

A clever idea.  Tabucchi imagines one dream for a number of important historical artistic figures from Roman times to the 20th century - Villon, Rabelais, Leopardi, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rimbaud, Chekov, Debussy, Fernando Pessoa.
The dreams can be amusing if you know anything about the work and lives of the people chosen.

Not as gripping as Sostiene Pereira, but an amusing short read.

Armenian Golgotha - Grigoris Balakian

An account of Grigoris' life in Turkey during the Armenian genocide.  It traces his experiences from his arrest in Istanbul in 1915 until his departure after the war in 1918.  He also looks at many of the specific methods of deporting and killing the Armenians.  One thing that struck me was the similarity to some of the methods Nazis would adopt later when eliminating the Jews.
It seems a balanced account.  Their are monsters and morally reprehensible deeds on all sides - Turkish, German and Armenian.  There is also kindness, help and critical voices on all sides
Balakian also criticizes the Armenian leadership early on in the book for being so outspoken in their support of the Allies and the Russians at the beginning of the war, and so critical of the Germans and their allies.  He points out the folly of this when living amidst the enemy.
One definite purpose of this genocide was wealth transfer.  Leadership and officials often seem to have grabbed the best part of the wealth from the abandoned homes and also from the caravans as they slowly abandoned what they had brought.  The poorer Turks were left with taking the clothing and the last few personal belongings.  One effect of warning the Armenians before they were to be exiled was that they would pack up their most valuable items and hide gold in their clothes and in their baggage.  It was much easier to confiscate it once the deportation caravans were on route as the victims has gathered it all up beforehand.
Local villagers seem to have also played a willing role in the massacres and inhumane treatment not only for money but also for religious reasons.
The German military does not come off well at all, though the German civilians working on the Baghdad railroad seem to have done what they could to help and protect both Armenian employees and passing caravans.  This experience may have provided some critical insights used by the military and Nazis later.
I come away wondering why the Turkish government had such a fixation on eliminating the Armenians - they continued trying to eliminate every last one right up until the end of the war.  They also continued to chase the leadership arrested in Istanbul in 1915 right up until the end.  After all, this was wartime - to waste so much energy and manpower on chasing down the last few Armenians seems strange, a psychological affliction of some kind.  Similar questions could be asked about the Germans and the Jews.  It went far beyond breaking power and grabbing wealth; almost a bizarre crusade of some kind.

L'amour humain - Andrei Makine

Makine a une façon magique d'évoquer les lieux, les atmosphères, la vie intérieure de ses personnages.
L'histoire de rencontres à travers les années entre un journaliste russe et un africain révolutionnaire professionnel.  D'une façon c'est une critique de cette période des années 60, 70 et leur politique de libération et post-colonialisme.  D'un autre part c'est un lament pour le manque de sincérité, les masques, la corruption, le conflit entre la personne sociale et le coeur intérieur d'une vie.

J'ai déjà lu un livre de Makine, mais en traduction.  Peut-être Le Testament Français.  J'aimerais le relire dans l'original.

The Long Way Home - Louise Penny

Another one of her recent well-written mysteries.  Armand Gamache is now retired and living in Three Pines.  I think this is the first  book I have read by her where there isn't a moment in the plot where everything gets a bit improbable and fuzzy.

Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler

Another book of social satire, well-observed, from a perspective in line with the Hemingway/Layton period.  Many of the characters resemble the characters in the Solomon Gursky book.
Richler handles the characters slow descent into Alzheimers well as it slowly creeps in through the book.  There is also a critique of the hard-drinking, abrasive, cynical narrator type in that he manages to alienate just about everyone by the end of the book, but there isn't much personal insight there.
I notice a link between Duddy Kravitz and Barney, the narrator of the book - Kravitz is a competitive, crass business type, but in the need to be top dog, in the need to have the outward effects of the good life (cognac, scotch, cigars, expensive accoutrements), in the constant need to compete, put down, cut others, he resembles the narrator, Barney - and to a degree, the character Mike in the Solomon Gursky novel.

Four Fields - Tim Dee

An excellent example of a genre I really enjoy - reflections and explorations on encounters with a particular natural landscape.  Dee shows a great understanding of natural ecology and human history within the environment of fields - fens in England, grasslands in South Africa and the Midwest, exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

To Find
1. books/art by E A R Ennion (some in reference library TPL)

2. Sixty Years a Fenman, Arthur Randell (reference, TPL)

3. A.K. Astbury, The Black Fens (robarts)

4. The old stories : folk tales from East Anglia and the Fen country /

Kevin Crossley-Holland (Robarts)

5.  Tales from the fens / by W. H. Barrett Enid Porter. (request from Robarts/Downsview)

Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman

A gargantuan novel based largely on the seige of Stalingrad.  Mostly from the Russian point of view, but also some sections from the German point of view.
The real subject of the book is a critique of Russia under Stalin.  Never published in Russia, and when you read it, you understand why.  Grossman was ahead of everyone else I think, in his insight into the Russian communist project and how it went so totally off the rails.

Le complexe de Di - Dai Sijie

An account of the main character's ramble through both urban and rural China as wandering psychoanalyst offering his dream interpretation services.  The main character is heavily shaped by years in Europe studying psychoanalysis and is fanatically devoted to Freud.  His encounters with the lives and mentalities of Chinese characters in modern mainland China provides opportunities for lots of bizarre humour.  At the same time, he seems to be drawing a critical portrait of many aspects of China - politics, social relations, interpersonal relations, social norms.

If you can get into his unusual subtle humour, an interesting book to read.

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe - Fernando Pessoa

A reference from Tabucchi.
A portuguese poet from the early/mid 20th century.  Wrote under several identities, each "author" with a distinct style, thematic.  Fairly philosophical as poetry
I enjoyed the unusual perspectives on the world in some of the poems, but some are a bit too heavy handedly idea based.
Worth flipping through.

The Great Catastrophe - Thomas de Waal

Thomas de Waal writes very well on the Caucasus region - his books are very well-balanced and thorough.

This book looks at the Armenian catastrophe or genocide but from a different perspective.  It begins with a good summary of the events of 1915 to 1916.  The rest of the book looks at what has happened within the Armenian community, between Turkey and Armenian organizations and also between Armenia and Turkey in the decades following the Catastrophe - the post WW 1 negotiations, the attacks on Turkish diplomats, in-fighting between different Armenian organizations, differences in points of view between diaspora Armenians and Armenia's government and citizens, recent diplomatic initiatives between Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Nothing earth shattering in terms of revelations, but very informative on the subject.

To Find
1. Caleb Gates, Not to Me Only
2.  Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent (period acc't from Ottoman officer)
3.  Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha (period acc't)
4.  Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy (state-building and genocide)
5. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (Balkan history early 20th c)

The Lonely War - Nazila Fatih

Subtitled "One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran".
What makes this book so interesting is the contextualization of modern Iranian history and politics through Nazila Fatih's life as a reporter on Iran for the New York Times.
It provides insights into the social realities of Iran during the revolutionary period and also the shift in those realities with the passage of time.  It also shows the complexity of the political culture in Iran.  Contrary to Western images, it is not a monolithic dictatorial state structure; there are different branches in the government and they have their different agendas and different relationships to the modernizing movements in Iran.  These branches can be at cross purposes and even work against each other in the many surveillance and prosecutorial activities.
The recent unrest and violence in Iran has been caused by this type of conflict between different branches of the government with varying levels of support from the people of Iran.  The diehard conservative element is headed by Khamenei - this group traces its roots back to the early days of the revolution (though they no longer have much support from the clergy in Qom, who see the need to modernize Shia Islam practice in Iran).  Without support of the people and their "democratically" elected representatives, Khamenei has created an oppresssive force with the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij.  This is a client relationship in that Khamenei can use oil revenue to provide benefits and perks in exchange for their support.  On the other side are the main body of clergy, the reformists (both secular and religious, and some even tracing their roots back to Khomeni and the original revolution),  the democratically elected Parliament, and the majority of the people.

This situation is another example of the saying, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". Khomein set up the system so that the absolute power of last word rests with the religious leader of the country.  This amount of power contains an invitation to abuse.  Khamenei is abusing this absolute power to keep himself and his small group in power against the will of the people.  The goal becomes, not just government for the good of the people (however you define it), but the maintenance and continuance of power for its own sake.

Children of the Stone - Sandy Tolan

This is the story of Ramzi Aburedwan, a Palestinian born in Ramallah during the occupation.  The book chronicles his development from a stone-throwing child to the director of a number of music schools in Ramallah and various refugee camps in Lebanon.  It is a story of how an encounter with music can transform someone, give hope and a life beyond the anger and frustration that people live with in situations of occupation and repression.  A complicated man.
The book inevitably touches on many issues related to the plight of Palestinians under occupation.  You get a picture of some of the elements of day-to-day life for Palestinians living in Israel.  As background, the book also touches on the various steps and failings of the peace process, the two Intifada's, and the current divestment campaign.
Worth the read in that it humanizes certain aspects of this troubling situation that seems to never get closer to being resolved.

Leeches - David Albahari

A very convoluted first person telling of a story.  One long tell in sentences but with no paragraphs.  Underneath, the book seems to be about the difficulties that arose with being Jewish in Serbia following the breakup of Jugoslavia.  Unfortunately, I find the telling too twisted and mired in the main characters obsessions and paranoia.  Couldn't finish it.

Learning Cyrillic - David Albahari

A Serbian author currently living in Calgary.  A collection of short stories, many of which focus on his experiences as an immigrant and his encounters with a new culture.  Not straightforward - a bit Kafkaesque at times.  His imagination can take off and soar with some strange ideas, premises or images that surprise.

Shop Class as Soulcraft - Matthew B. Crawford

Subtitled 'An Inquiry into the Value of Work'.   An interesting book that pursues several threads:

- the mind-numbing inutility of most work in our society at both the top and the bottom end - at the bottom because it is repetitive and mindless - at the top because it deals in nebulous concepts and half-baked ideas that don't actually produce anything, and that focus on a process that often seems to go nowhere

- the intellectual value of work that focuses on engaging with things, whether it be motorcycles or children - he explores some of the same concepts as Taleb in the idea that knowledge is born of experience and working with things, not of formulae and abstract reasoning

- the relation between mindless, repetitive work and consumerism

- the contradiction of the pursuit of freedom while living in a society where we have little agency and depend completely on technology and experts to build and maintain our 'stuff'

- he also explores how university education has been perverted by its relationship with the corporate world, both in its teaching and in its very structure

To find:  The Electronic Sweatshop:  How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past - Barbara Garson

The Lady from Zagreb - Philip Kerr

A detective novel of the hard-boiled noir variety.  Well-written from a style point of view and follows the model closely.  Set in Germany during the Nazi period - an interesting background for detective fiction.  Well-researched - learned some new things about the period.  An entertaining read, but not a lot of depth, apart from the irony of crime fiction in a time when the biggest criminals were the government itself.

The Edge of Extinction - Jules Pretty

Subtitles Travels with Enduring Peoples in Vanishing Lands.  Pretty can be a bit airy-fairy at times, especially when dealing with some of the less developed native groups.   Sometimes his narratives can be a bit unfocused and wander too much.  There are some interesting section, though - Tuva, Russia; Karelia, Finland; the marshes of East Anglia; Nitassinan, Labrador; Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana.  He sometimes has a touching way of presenting ways of life on the edge of extinction - no pity, but an evocation of a different way of being in the world that is far from modern mass consumer society, poignant in its imminent disappearance.

Trois vies chinoises - Dai Sijie

Encore un roman par l'auteur de "Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise".  Moins impressionné par ce roman.  Il ne m'a pas saisi de la même façon.  Les personnages des histoires semblent moches, les vies petites et cramponnées.  Leurs histoires me semblent étrangers et inconnaissables.  Je n'attrape pas les ondes de cette société.  Il y a par contre quelques bonnes observations à propos de la propagande et le language politique du point de vue d'un enfant.

Notturno indiano - Antonio Tabucchi

Piccolo libro dall'autore di "Sostiene Pereira".  Mi piaceva meno.  L'histoire divague ici et là sans vraiment jamais prendre une direction claire.  Ce livre n'a pas cette touche du détail évocateur de son autre livre.

Pakistan: A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven

Recommended by Mohsin Hamid.
A very interesting read about a very complex country.  Lieven clearly lays out the complexities of family, tribal, regional and social class relations with Pakistani society.  He underlines all the divisions, conflicting agendas and endgames that complicate political, social and even personal lives. He makes it abundantly clear that Pakistan is not a jihadi monolith as reported in the West, but is in fact a rich, multilayered, complex society.  On top of the tribal and familial complexities you also have to lay over that eastern/middle eastern thing of the dichotomy of reality as idealized and discussed in public space vs. reality at the personal action and decision level.

This is a society and political system built on a basis completely different from Western societies.  It is far more complex than our social structures - I think we would be lost if we had to try and navigate in that social and political world.   Our western politicians and foreign policy must seem like bulls in a china shop to them.  It is abundantly clear after reading this book that our concepts of democracy and the free market don't have much place in that social world.  As concepts they may be adopted, but would become so changed in practice I don't think we would recognize them.

I suspect the same holds true for a country like Egypt.

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide - Taner Akçam

This is a very good book on the topic.  Akçam steps away from the mythology, hype and rants of both sides to undertake a thorough examination of the historical documents and records around the Armenian genocide, and the history of Armenian Ottoman relations in the late 19th and early 20th century.  His focus is entirely on determining how this genocide came about, who planned it and how it was seen by members of the political elite at the time.  In the end, based on the evidence, there is no doubt this was a planned attempt to eliminate the Armenians from the Ottoman empire; it was a more systematized approach to what had been going on since the late 1800s under Sultan Abdulhamid. The events of 1915 and later were directed and overseen by Talat Pasha.

His historical research reminds me of the work of Ilan Pappé - using careful historical research to clarify events and set this up against the myths of the victors in a political or social conflict.

He raises some interesting points related to the background of the Ottoman state at the time.  They were experiencing a number of violent revolts in the Balkans through the late 1800s early 1900s which led to Muslim deportations and a refugee crisis within the empire.  These revolts caused a growing mistrust of Christian subjects, a growing Muslim/Christian dichotomy, and the newly arrived refugees harboured anger and resentment towards Christians in general.  A dangerous mix.
After centuries of feeling superior as a conquering people, the Ottoman ruling class was experiencing a series of crushing failures and defeats at the hands of what they perceived to be inferior peoples. This created a sense of cognitive dissonance, which makes it hard to be rational or even perceive the reality around you.

The Ottoman government was a very old style government compared to what was evolving in western Europe - it was a system based on despotism with no concept of rights, checks on power, or duties of government towards its citizens.  The Christian ethnic groups were aware of these changes through contact with outside groups, but there was no sympathy or even understanding of these new currents in the ruling Ottoman elite.

As for the Armenians, they had been through several decades of mistreatment and insecurity.  The were subject to arbitrary property confiscation especially by local Kurdish tribal leaders, kidnapping (especially women), murder and other abuses.  The Armenian leaders complained repeatedly to local governors and the Sultan but the Sultan showed no interest in protecting his Armenian subjects.  This rankled even more, as the Armenians, through contact with Western Europe, were aware of political developments there, and such concepts as citizen rights, government duties, accountability, etc.  This treatment would have only further increased their interest in these new political ideas.  It also pushed them to try and use the large foreign powers to pressure the Ottomans to guarantee better treatment.

The Ottomans and the Young Turks perceived the Christian minority groups as a weak spot which allowed European powers to interfere in matters within the Ottoman state.  The Christian groups did use the foreign powers to try and advance their agendas to there some truth in this viewpoint.  The European powers, under the guise of humanitarian motives, used these opportunities to take advantage of the weakness of the Ottoman state.

It seems the Porte and the Sultan's cabinet were kept in the dark with regard to the plans for the elimination of Armenians.  Much of the communication between Talat and the regional authorities was carried out is a very indirect kind of code to mask what they were really up to.

The Young Turks not only eliminated Christian groups, they also assassinated any regional administrators and politicians who objected to or resisted their policy regarding the Armenians and Greeks.

1177 The Year Civilization Collapsed - Eric H. Cline

An attempt to get to the bottom of what happened in the early 12th c BC, which saw the collapse of every current major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.  Cline begins with a thorough overview of the world of the late Bronze Age.  It is a fascinating picture, with every civilization built around a ruling political/religious elite that governed from a central palace temple complex.  Most of these political religious elites also ran the economy, both internally and external trade.   At least at the elite level, this was a very international, interconnected period, with lots of movement of both luxury goods and goods essential to the elites - such things as tin for weapon making, gold, as well as emergency food supplies to hand out to the populace in years of failed crops.  I picture the sailors of these ships from Crete, from Egypt, from Ugarit, from Greece sitting down for a few drinks in bars in the  big port towns of the time - that would have been really travelling!

Turns out the Sea People are a difficult group to pin down.  Their presence outside of the documented attacks on Egypt and probably Ugarit, is pretty difficult to determine.  Much of the destructions blamed on them seems to have been the result of earthquakes and local rebellions rather than warfare. It seems this area may have collapsed due to a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, prolonged droughts, climate shift - coupled with some external raiding, some migration pressures (perhaps caused by the natural disasters), some political upheaval, and a breakdown of a complex system of economic exchange.  The large political units  have evolved a complex system of interdependence and when that began to fray, it dragged most of the involved players down.  It may have been that the elites lost the wealth needed to maintain their position and either buy or enforce compliance from their subjects.

Like with the fall of the Roman Empire, the area seems to have slipped into a "Dark Age" - smaller, more local political units, loss of culture, building techniques and established art styles (and writing in the case of Mycenean Greece), falling off of trade and long-distance exchange, idealization of the preceding Golden Age.

It is so long ago, it may never be possible to determine the exact causes and sequence of events at that time.

Sostiene Pereira - Antonio Tabucchi

The story of the political awakening of an aging small-time journalist in Portugal on the eve of WW II.  Set against the background of fascist Salazarist Portugal and the Spanish Civil War.  Remarkable storytelling, in that during most of the book very little happens that stands out.  There are subtle key conversations, small but important events, the main characters own thoughts and reflections.  There is a further layer of distance with the stylistic effect of it being the report of what Pereira has said.

An author worth exploring further.  I can also see why Mohsin Hamid speaks so highly of him - there is a similarity of style, of building slowly through minor shades and events, especially in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist".

The Falls - Ian Rankin

Another good work, but not of his more recent I suspect, as the political and social commentary is not as clearly present.

Set in Darkness - Ian Rankin

Yet another Rebus mystery.  An earlier work I suspect.  Characters are there, well-developed and articulated.  Edinburgh's looming presence and history there in the background.  A good plot with lots of meanderings.  What is missing is the political and social cr.iticism that you see in some of his more recent work.
Still a good read

Arsène Lupin - Maurice LeBlanc

Une longue série d'histoires basée sur le personnage Arsène Lupin.  Essentiellement des mystères.   Lupin est le vrai centre de toutes les histoires - il est criminel, mais dans le genre "Robin Hood".  Il fait du bien mais n'hésite pas a s'enrichir lui-même si l'occasion se présente.   Lupin est intelligent avec beaucoup d'esprit, finesse et une code morale qui sait s'adapter aux complexités de la vie.  Essentiellement un Sherlock Holmes à la française.
Il y a même certaines histoires où il est question de se moquer de Sherlock Holmes qui se prend très au sérieux, qui n'a aucune subtilité en face de la vie, qui est lourd et litéraliste.

Lecture très amusante.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

A short novel set in China during the Cultural Revolution.  It focuses on two city teens who have been sent for reeducation to a remote, backwards mountain village.  It basically sets the lie to the Cultural Revolution and the re-edcuation process.  You see peasants who submit.  You see educated people maintaing there sense of self in hidden, secret ways.  You see the cadres fulfilling the role of petty dictators in love with their power.
The seamstress is a young girls that the boys introduce to a collection of forbidden Balzac novels, through storytelling.  This is the only real re-education that takes place in the book.

The book is a study of the importance of literature and even of storytelling, as the boys become the village storytellers in several contexts.  It shows how literature serves to develop and keep alive a sense of self, of the personal, in a sea of propaganda and mass culture.

Very well-written, spare storytelling.

Roumeli - Patrick Leigh Fermor

A rambling book about Fermor's exploration of various parts of Greece.

While there are some interesting sections - like the first part about a nomadic shepherd group called the Sarakatsans - he spends far too much time on arcane history of Orthodox monastic orders, the merits of Romios vs Hellene as a word for Greeks, and other topics.  While there may be interesting ideas buried in some of these meanderings (for example, a history of the idea of Greece post-Turk), they are too deeply buried for me.

There is also a lot of the turn of the century English educated public school gentleman's idealized vision of Greece and the Greeks (and Byron) lurking behind his writing.  And that annoying habit of making sweeping generalizations about races, nationalities, etc.

The section on Crete reminds me of some of Hemingway's writing on Spaniards during the Civil War.  The natural peasant man seen as some kind of counter or embodiment of virtue in the face of western civilized man.  It is embarrassing to turn the world into some kind of shadow play of your own mind (again that idea of being trapped in stories and mythologies).

Happy City - Charles Montgomery

A book filled with fascinating observations and research about the crazy way we have come to see and live in our cities.  Too many to list here.  One:  inhabitants of Toronto and Vancouver express less satisfaction with life than people living in small towns and backwaters such as Sherbrooke and Brantford (!!!!!)

He looks at many of the unhealthy, unhappy trends in modern urban design and living.  He explores the negative outcomes of our obsessions with suburban sprawl.  He looks at the politics of power and inequality in modern urban environments, from the domination of the car to gentrification.

Throughout the book I met explanations for many of the things I disliked about my suburban living experience and also that I dislike in the changes in Toronto. Why walking is so unpleasant in the suburbs.  Why parks are often so uninviting.  Why the ROM addition is such an abomination.  Why areas like Harboufront, with their endless condos and planned recreational areas, remain lifeless and uninviting.  Why I was compelled to give up riding the subway this winter (the growing stress caused by repeated unreliability combined with a lack of power to circumvent the problem).

It also filled with inspirational stories of change for the better, like Bogata, Copenhagen, neighbourhoods and local movements around the world.

Definitely worth a reread.

Discontent and Its Civilizations - Mohsin Hamid

A collection of wide-ranging essays, from personal to political.

For me, the most interesting are the essays focusing on presenting a deeper, more nuanced picture of Pakistan, and by extension, Islam.

Underlying a lot of his thought is the idea that civilizations are an illusion.  They are stories that are told, often for a political end, or from a position of weakness.  He explores the idea of the complexity and multi-layerd nature of identities,  (This is a theme I read about recently in another book.)  This idea also links into the idea I have been mulling over lately of the possibility of living without stories, without a personal mythology - is it possible?  Or can you simply change your relation to stories and mythology, seeing them less as a definition of self and the world, and more as something to play with, to take on and off, like glasses or costumes?

To Find:
Antonio Tabucchi - Sostiene Pereira (and other works)

Black and Blue - Ian Rankin

Another good, gripping read by Rankin.   A little less philosophical than some of his others, but still the straw men of the modern bureaucratic government service...

The Many Lives of Josephine Baker - Peggy Caravantes

Crazy life of Josephine Baker.  Coming from dirt poor St Louis slums.  Running away to vaudeville at 13.  Smash hit in Paris at 19.  A life of crazy whims, big money and big mismanagement.  In later years, saved from penury by Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer.  Living in the world of larger than life...

Il pleuvait des oiseaux - Jocelyne Saucier

Intéressant petit livre.  Il raconte essentiellement la vie isolée de trois vieux qui veulent finir leurs jours à leur façon.  Un peu romantique à la façon québécoise.

Before the Dawn - Nicholas Wade

This book starts off well.  When he sticks to reporting science research, he presents some interesting current ideas.
- the original homo sapiens population before the spread out of Africa seems to have been about 5000 people living in East Africa near the Red Sea - most of the rest of Africa at that times seems to have been suffering an extreme drought
- the original group that left Africa may have been as small as 150 people
- they seem to have spread east first, along the coast and into India and South-east Asia - from India, some groups spread back west towards Turkey and ultimately Europe
- the original Homo Sapiens would have been dark-skinned as there is strong selection pressure in Africa to have dark pigmentation to protect from degradation of reproductive capability (due to overproduction of vitamin D?)
- based on genetic studies of the differences between body lice and head lice DNA, it can be theorized that humans first started wearing clothes about 10 000 years ago!

- the migration out of Africa would have started about 50 000 years ago - this is also roughly when then last brain mutation appeared in an area affecting speech and language - people where this area is damaged or underdeveloped have trouble both articulating speech and processing incoming messages

- African click languages seem to be the oldest languages in the world - speakers of click languages have the largest accumulated number of DNA mutations in the homo sapiens population, making them the group that would have split off first from the original homo sapiens genetic profile - this suggests click languages may be the closest to the original speech of homo sapiens

- genetically, all lines of homo sapiens are descended from one X chromosome male and one Y chromosome female!!!  Adam and Eve...

Unfortunately, when Wade gets past the earliest years of human development, he starts bringing in a lot of his own speculation and bias.  There is a significant drop off of reference to research and studies once he starts discussing Neanderthal  Homo Sapiens relations, early homo sapiens society and social relations, and intra- group dynamics.  You get the strong sense he is a staunch Republican... war, conflict, social hierarchy and quest for dominance as the natural state of man.
Boring reading - I will not be finishing the book.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - Mohsin Hamid

A fast read but it operates on many levels.  Set in Pakistan, it follows the life journey of a boy from a village who moves to the city and makes it big.  It is  his story, divided into chapters based on the author's overriding concept of a self-help book for becoming rich (as the title says...) with each chapter devoted to a particular piece of advice or strategy, such as "Get and Education", "Don't Fall in Love", "Be Prepared to Use Violence", etc.  Each chapter is an illustration of the importance of each self-help principal.
It is all set amidst a rather tongue-in-cheek introduction to the perils and curiosities of the self-help genre.  Interwoven is a wistful mostly unrequited love story that remains somehow sad.  The story of the main character's lives is the Chase, followed by Loss.
Interspersed are witty little comments and asides that provide glimpses of the frustrations, craziness, and pressures of life in modern Pakistan.
An heavy book recounted in a light and traipsing town.
Worth a reread.

The Great War for Civilization - Robert Fisk

A book by a reporter who has covered every major and minor war and conflict in the Middle east for decades.  A sickening and depressing look at what went on in Iraq (twice), Algeria (twice), Palestine, Armenia, Afghanistan.  He looks at corruption in U.S. policy, European government policy, Middle-eastern government policy.  He looks at the role of the Saudis in the region.

He catalogues both high level corruption and the sad story of the effects of all of this on the little people in these societies.

Then of course, there are the accounts of the three interviews he did with Osama Bin Ladin - I believe the only journalist from the West to interview Bin Ladin, and certainly the only one to be invited by Bin Ladin to do the interview.

Having witnessed all of that, I don't understand how he can continue on and not be crushed by all the horror and injustice he has witnessed.

Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Ventures to the Vikings - Jean Manco

A look at population movements and migration through the records in ancient and modern genetic material.  This is a fascinating approach to ancient prehistory.  The detailed discussion of haploids, y-chromosomes etc. and be a bit confusing or hard to follow in detail, but the discussion of what this rather technical evidence shows is done in clear, easy to follow language.  There are all kinds of little tidbits:

- the Celts seem to be associated particularly with iron work, and seem to have spread in scattered clusters all over Europe, settling in areas with good resources for iron work and other metal work.

- the population of a settled region does not remain constant; population levels rise and fall significantly based partly on weather patterns and long-term climate fluctuations
- in this way, the Indo-europeans seem to have initially entered Europe at a time when population levels in eastern Europe were quite low - this brings into question the whole idea of the Indo-eurpoeans invading and destroying the Old Europe culture that was highly developed in eastern Europe before the I-E's arrival - there is some evidence for shrinking population in Old Europe in the period preceding the I-E's arrival.

- many things can affect climate change - the bursting of a huge glacial lake in North America and the outflow of huge quantities of cold water into the Atlantic sparked a noticeably climate shift in Europe that lasted for at least 100 years!

The Mediterranean in the Ancient World - Fernand Braudel (1998)

An interesting idea, probably quite new at the time of publication but this books seems a bit outdated now somehow.  Braudel was near the end of his career when this book was published, so he has an older approach to history, a more personally interpretive approach -which can be interesting, granted, but the facts on the ground have changed some since the writing I think.  The narrative is quite personal; you sense the value judgements and personal biases in the recounting, and this rather puts me off due to the assumed superiorities, cultural or otherwise.  There seems to have been a revolution in accessing and processing data in the historical research process and this has shifted the style of writing and also interpretation.
Didn't read the whole book but looked through the chapter especially on the 12th century B.C. which saw the appearance of the Indo-europeans in Greece, the fall of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations and the appearance of the mysterious Sea Raiders. Was it climate shift? Was it invasion? Was it mass migration to greener pastures?  The evidence seems to remain inconclusive.

Les héritiers de la mine - Jocelyne Saucier

Un roman qui se déroule au nord de Québec dans la région minière.  Il raconte l'histoire d'une famille nombreuse - chaque chapitre est raconté par un différent membre de la famille, mais ça prend deux ou trois chapitres avant de comprendre cela.  Le centre du roman est la mort d'Angèle, un membre de la famille, dans une mine abandonnée qui a de l'importance dans l'histoire de la famille.  Angèle a  toujours était différente de la reste de la famille, plus fine, plus sophistiquée, plus attirée par le monde hors de leur petit bled au fond de la forêt, et à cause de ces différences elle n'a pas été bien acceptée par les autres de la famille.
C'est comme un trou ou un mystère au long du livre, cette mort.

Thème du livre?  Les rapports familiaux? Les fils du pouvoir et dominance dans la famille?

Pas mal, comme livre.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

A short but very intense novel.  Well-crafted book built on a long monologue conversation in a market in Lahore between a Pakistani former New York financial analyst and what appears to be a CIA agent, though this is never made clear.

It explores issues that came up around the 9/11 event - the role of the US internationally and Corporate America's economic and social effect on countries around the world.  Through his time in Princeton and on Wall Street, he presents a social picture of the upper financial stratum of the US and both its privileged position and the privileges it takes for granted as its right.  This analysis is critical but subtle - worth reflecting on.  There is also an attempt to draw awareness to the kinds of stereotyped images in the US media of other countries around the world and what life is like there.

A subtle book - rare, so worth rereading.

Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution - Neil deGrasse Tyson/ Donald Goldsmith

An easy book to read about a complex subject.  Very well-divided into chapters that focus on particular questions or issues around origins:  the universe, galaxies, stars, planets, life.  There are also a couple of chapters on the possibility and the search for life elsewhere in the universe.  He also includes an interesting chapter on matter and antimatter, and dark matter and energy.  You get a sense of the big pictures and also the ongoing unresolved questions or issues in this domaine.

Lots of interesting facts to pick up:

Living things are made largely of the most common elements in the universe, which differ completely from the most common elements on earth.  This is considered one possible argument for life beginning outside earth and being "seeded" here, but is by no means a final argument.

A great explanation of how stars create those most common elements in the universe through fusion of progressively more complex molecules, up to iron.  Once you hit iron, more energy is consumed in the fusion than is produced, leading to a collapse of the star, a huge rise in temperatures and a final explosive fusion as the star blows itself up.  In this last fusion all the other elements are created, but in much smaller amounts than iron and the preceding other elements.

Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga

This is the same author who wrote The White Tiger.

An excellent read - well-written, the characters are wonderfully developed and explored, the descriptive writing is very evocative.  The book is based around an aging co-op building in Mumbai and what happens when a real estate developer decides he wants to buy out the owners for a project.  Adiga does a wonderful job of charting the the path of the people in the coop from a group of rather ordinary people to a group of murderers driven by greed.  The underlying theme would seem to be how the corruption and greed of the developers creates a situation that destroys communities and families, and brings out the worst in people.  It is like an unmasking of the livable surface of people's lives, the ordinary small kindnesses and grudging acceptance of foibles that make a life, a community  - unmasked to reveal the ability for evil beneath that surface.
Not the first time that story has been told in the 20th or 21st century...

There are no heroes in the book.  One man, Masterji, holds that role at first in the book, but he too has his mask pulled away, in part at least.

Depressing, but an excellent read.

Pay Any Price - James Risen

A look at corruption and industry government collusion in post 9/11 U.S.  He discusses the profiteering that has gone on behind the closed doors of government secrecy.  He looks at how private industry had virtually taken over and profited from the war in Iraq at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers.  He looks at how the surveillance state came into being despite clear legal obstacles post 9/11. He also looks at how the government under Bush and still under Obama works to keep these facts from the public and squash any people and journalists who attempt to come forward about these issues.  Nothing new really (sadly) but it is interesting to see the details.

A Question of Genocide - Suny, Göçek and Naimark

- subtitled:  Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

A collection of essays on the Armenian genocide in the early years of the 20th century.  The authors come from a variety of backgrounds - Armenian, Turkish, American, European - and have been having yearly conferences on this topic for some time now, with the emphasis on scholarly research, examining original source material,  and establishing facts and trends as best as possible.  The essays look at a variety of topics:  CUP ideology and policy evolution, the unfolding of events in specific regions, the implication of Germany as Turkish ally in the Armenian genocide, the awareness at the time of these events, the continuity of CUP and Turkish Republic policy with regards to minorities in Turkey, the Assyrian genocide, the level of involvement of Armenians in revolutionary parties and groups, the role of Armenians within Russian ranks as the Russians moved into Eastern Anatolia during the early years of the war, a short political and ideological biography of an important figure in the organization and execution of the Armenian Genocide, continuities between policy towards Greek and Armenian minorities and towards Kurds under Ataturk. There is also discussion at various points of the relations between Kurds and Armenians, and Kurds and Turks during the period.

Some important points made or clarified in the course of the book:

1)  Anti-Christian and anti-Armenian policy dates back to the late 1800's and the reign of Sultan Abdulhamit.  He was very suspicious of minority Christian groups as they presented an opening for foreign powers to meddle in Turkish affairs.  He was actively looking for ways to create an homogeneous society based on religion more so than ethnicity.  During his reign, pogroms against Armenians occurred, arbitrary land confiscations and kidnappings occurred, and Armenians were generally marginalized in the East.

2)  Once the CUP was in power, Armenians tried to get these grievances dealt with through consultation and parliament but they got nowhere.

3)  A small percentage of Armenians were involved in revolutionary activity and supported the invading Russians, but when you consider their treatment over the preceding 20 or 30 years, they didn't really seem to have another option to guarantee security and basic rights.  One essayist points out that the CUP very early on developed a fear of minorities and in a way, through their treatment of these groups, ended up creating the very internal revolutionary groups they had originally feared.

4)  This whole time period needs to be seen against the backdrop of other wars and population displacements that had been going on since the mid-1800s.  Turkey received several waves of Muslim refugees through that period - from the Caucasus due to Russian ethnic cleansing policy, from the Balkans and Greece due to the wars of independence that pushed out Muslim inhabitants.  They had many refugees that needed to be settled.  These refugees also carried anti-Christian feelings due to their own treatment in their original homelands.  Interesting to note that all the leading CUP figures, and Ataturk as well, were all from the areas in the Balkans that produced large groups of Muslim refugees.  It was these refugees who created the myth of the Anatolian homeland of the Turks and then set about shaping the facts on the ground to match the myth, the daydream.

5)  There is no doubt that this genocide (an the other ethnic cleansing affecting different groups) was planned and ordered centrally.  The details were often worked out locally, but it was a central government policy.  It was a policy that developed over time and became progressively more harsh in response to different events and developments, but it was centralized.  It was a part of what was seem as a social engineering project to increase the percentage of Turks in Eastern Anatolia.

6)  In the 1914-1915 period the Kurds were a major instrument in carrying out this policy.  They were used to form the Hamidiye brigades first created under Abdulhamid more or less for this purpose.

7)  Policy plans developed in Ankara in 1925 to "deal with" the Kurds strongly resembled the policy pursued towards the Armenians - expulsion, relocation, cultural and linguistic repression.

Dinner with Stalin - David Shrayer-Petrov

A collection of short stories by a Russian émigré.  An entertaining collection of short stories, some chronicling the refusnik culture of Jews waiting to leave the Soviet Union, some examining the émigré's experience of american culture, some pointed humorous flights of fancy.  Also a nice spread of emotional tone.

Enjoyable read.

Frogs - Aristophanes

A book I picked up after reading a mention of it in Gimbutas' book on Old Europe.  A bit disappointing in that the frog symbolism mentioned in Gimbutas' books doesn't seem to really play a role in the play, which is actually mostly about current Athenian affairs, both cultural and social.

The only interesting point in relationship to Old Europe is the Chorus in the play - the use of masks and choral poetry as surviving remnants of  worship ceremonies from a forgotten worldview and religion.

The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

Full of interesting bits:

"Of about three thousand languages spoken today, seventy-eight have a written literature.  The rest exist in the mind and the mouth.  Language - man - is essentially oral."  p. 68

Homer can be seen as a remembering of the culture and life of the bronze age warriors.  This links him to the semi-pastoral tribes of the first Indo-Europeans who tamed the horse, first used wagons, and moved outwards as warrior bands from their traditional homeland to establish all the large european language groups of today.

It is an interesting read and personal engagement with Homer's work, especially the Odyssey.  Nicolson presents some interesting evaluations and personal reactions to the work.  A good introduction for actually reading the poems.



To find:
1) Milman Parry - important Homer scholar exploring pre-written storytelling tradition

2) Duncan Macdonald - storyteller from Hebrides, South Uist (The Man of the Habit - one story)

3) Homer - Odyssey - trans. Robert Fagles
    Homer - The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles

4) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry - Adam Parry

5) The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord

6) Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction - Benjamin W. Anthony

7) The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Philip L. Kohl

8) Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World - J.P. Mallory
     and D.Q. Adams

9) Symbols and Warriors:  Images of the European Bronze Age - Richard J. Harrison

10) The Rise of Bronze Age Society - Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson

11) The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard

12) European Societies in the Bronze Age - Anthony F. Harding

Alex - Pierre Lemaitre

Roman mystère de la France.  Scènes d'une violence troublante.  Complot un peu disjoint - le policier n'arrive à rien résoudre; c'est plutôt le hasard.
Célèbre en France mais je trouve la tradition américaine et anglaise plus intelligente, plus intellectuelle.

Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach - Keith Critchlow

A fascinating look at the underlying geometry and design principles of traditional islamic decorative patterns.  There are many examples of how the patterns are built geometrically through several steps and transformations.  Watching the shapes go through their transformations and patterns is fascinating.

Another intriguing element in the book is the cosmology and philosophy behind these patterns.  They are not just decorative; they also express a profound world view.  They are seen as an expression of the One, the unity in all things.  Through geometry, the circle, the square and the triangle become one, interconnected variations on the theme of Oneness, with the circle as the most primal or basic form.  There are strong links to the Pythagorean theory and cosmology of numbers.

To find:
Pythagorean cosmology and number theory

The Honey Thief - Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman

A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Hazara area of Afghanistan.  The author is Hazara and manages to catch a wonderfully guileless voice in these stories, a voice from another time and another life.  Some of the stories cross each other in time or with characters.
The effects of all the war and turmoil appear in the story, but they do not dominate - they are a background against which the characters must live their lives.
This book also offers a different image of practicing Muslims than you usually meet in the media these days.
Another interesting element of this book is the stories portraying a Muslim people living close to nature and in an intimate relationship with their surroundings - this is unusual.  It provides and interesting contrast to the portrayals of native peoples of North America and Australia.

The author's story is also interesting and worth checking out on the Internet.