Waiting for Sunrise - William Boyd

Another new genre and new setting for this versatile writer.  Set in the early 20th century modern horrors of WWI, it is a look at the social mores of prewar Berlin, and account of some of WWI's horrors, combined with a spy story.

Excellent read. 

Fascination - William Boyd

A collection of short stories by this brilliant and most versatile of writers.
Views of life and the world from a collection of perverts, misfits, failures and marginalized but intelligent people.

Worth rereading.

The Happiness of Blond People - Elif Shafak

subtitled A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity

An interesting short critical essay on the problem of identity in this age of migration.  She basically comes out in praise of cosmopolitanism and subtle, complex personal identities. She highlights the falseness and artificiality of narrow identities and the tendency to stay within these narrow groups and highlights the social problems that arise from this.  While it has a large application, she also makes the point that these narrow identities come into play on both sides in the Muslim issues of current European politics and society.

Armenia: Masterpieces of an Enduring Culture - Theo Maarten van Lint & Robin Meyer

A very large exhibition catalogue of the Bodley Library's Armenian artifacts.  I didn't have time to read the text, but of note are some reproductions of miniature paintings or book illustrations from bibles.  The style is very interesting, and quite different from the Turkish or Iranian illustration style.

Field Notes from the Edge - Paul Evans

A unique, very provocative book in the naturalist vein.  Among other themes, Evans explores how the natural world survives and asserts itself in marginal, damaged and abandoned locations.  He is critical, or at least doubtful, of the conservationist approach to the natural world, and stands back from our human concepts of what natural environments should be.  In some of the essays, he looks at how the genie is already out of the bottle and we cannot turn natural systems back to what they were before - and notes that this preoccupation is a human one, a human concept, not one found in the natural world.  There is a quote in there somewhere to the effect that Nature is always good, even if it is not good for us.
Evans also has a good collection of startling facts, and new biological hypotheses and theories.

Tea at the Midland and other stories - David Constantine

This book shares some stories with the one read earlier, but also includes some different ones.  Subtle writer.  Subtle exchanges, some unspoken, between those who pass their life on the outside.  There is something definitive in each story, but it is hard to say exactly what - or to do so is to end up with only a truncated, simplified version of what is there.

Even Dogs in the Wild - Ian Rankin

The latest Rebus book.  This time the corruption of societies leaders in examined through abuse in youth holding facilities.  He also incorporates the issue of PTSD into the forces pushing one of the main characters to murder.
Superbly wirtten, as usual.

Dispersed but not destroyed : a history of the seventeenth-century Wendat people - Kathryn Magee Labelle

A history of the Wendat people originally living around the south shore of Georgian Bay.  The book looks at their traditional social and political organization, and then goes on to explore their relationship to the French, especially the missionaries and the introduction of Christianity.  It takes a much more subtle look at Christian and non-Christian interaction within the group, and also at the political and social forces that played a role in the Wendat's conversion and continued relationship with the French.  The author discusses how the Wendat sought to use the French connection to further their tribal role as economic intermediaries and negotiators in relationships between various north eastern tribal groups.  She creates a portrait of a very subtle and savvy people looking to best further their goals and survival, which is very different from the older view of the Wendat as losers forced out in a war with the Iroquois.
Another subject explored is the dispersal of the Wendat, some to Quebec, some to further west on the Great Lakes, some into Iroquois territory south of Lake Ontario.  The groups that moved down into Iroquois territory did so very much on their own terms, and then served as middle-men between the French and the Iroquois, who had traditionally aligned with the English and the Dutch.  Turns out the Iroquois raids into Wendat territory were motivated by the need to recruit new members to the tribe after the devastating disease outbreaks of the late 1600s.  The Iroquois' goal was to build a large population formed of all the united Iroquoian groups as a way of having a counterbalance against the English.

A bit academic, but interesting in that it portrays these societies in a much more subtle and active way than traditional historical portrayals.