Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich, 470 pages.

Alexievich, the winner for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015, talked to people  all over Russia and in the former Soviet republics and recorded their stories. The stories come quickly, with the shifting of voice indicated sometimes with a simple dash. Everyone is upset about the changes in their lives, and how one feels about the changes in the availability of salami is a indicator of their level of hope for the future.
There are a host of grim stories here; reminiscences from the times of Stalin and the Gulag, as well as more recent accounts of rape, murder, and beatings during the wars, armed conflicts, uprisings, massacres, and other violent interactions in Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbijan, Georgia, Belarus, and other regions.
People tell Aexievich of their loss of identity, their economic dislocation, and the trauma they have experienced during the end of the Soviet era and into the present. A surprising number of people tell of their wish that communism, especially that strain found during the era of Stalin would return. Knowing that there was only one set of truths, believing that your country was great (and single-handedly defeated Hitler), and knowing that your neighbors suffering was on par with your own seems worth the price of freedom and possible failure. Everywhere the men drink and lash out at strangers, the vulnerable, and their families. The women and children, the elderly, and anyone living in a land not decidedly their own suffers horribly.
Fascinating, grim, and sad.

The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson, 380 pages.

Bryson reflects on and follows his classic 1993 Notes from a Small Island with an updated tour of Great Britain. I've read several of Bryson's books before, A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Home, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, but I haven't read any of his other travel books, and I don't remember him being this funny. He is really funny in The Road, in an updated, profane, Andy Rooney sort of way. His imagined dialogues with shop clerks, barkeeps and hoteliers are evil and sharp and funny. Sometimes he seems a little whiny, or self-indulgent, but then he realizes it and makes fun of that too, and it's all better.
He rips into the English (or at least certain English) for their peculiarities, their foibles, and their lack of a sense of humor (though his family and the staff of at least one McDonalds don't seem to get him either), but he does proclaim his love for his adopted home and its inhabitants. Published a year or so before the Brexit vote, it will be interesting to read his take on that, and see his adjustment on his take on the xenophobia of the English. A very fun read, and the audio is well read and features a bonus song, "The Bryson Line," which includes the line, "Great Britain is great, let's not be pedantic, the North Sea's in the east, the Irish Sea's the Atlantic".

The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China

The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China edited and translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung, 150 pages.

In this collection Rexroth presents poems of love and loss, contemplative poems and even some by Chao Luan-Luan (from sometime around the 8th century) that were advertisements for the services of courtesans. All of them were written by women poets; the oldest, "A Song of Magpies" by Lady Ho, who lived somewhere 300 BCE, and the most recent were from poets who were still alive in 1973 when the book was first published. Li Ch'ing-chao, said by the editors to be "universally considered tobe China's greatest woman poet. . ." figures prominently in this volume.
In "Spring Ends," a poem mourning the passing of a loved one, she says:

The wind stops.

Nothing is left of Spring but fragrant dust. 

Although it is late in  the day,

I have been too exhausted to comb my hair. 

Our furniture is just the same,

But he no longer exists.

I am unable to do anything at all,

Before I can speak my tears choke me.

I hear that Spring at Two Rivers

Is still beautiful.

I had hoped to take a boat there,,

But I am afraid my little boat

Is too small to ever reach Two Rivers, 

Laden with my heavy sorrow.

Many of the modern poets, perhaps unsurprisingly given the time of publication, seem to be from Taiwan.
As with other similar Rexroth titles, 100 Poems from the Chinese, and Love and the Turning Year, the biographical essays about the poets add tremendously to the book.A lovely collection.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

My favorite in the series (or maybe the last one, Deathly Hallows, is better. Hard to say). The book in which Dumbledore first mentions, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin to understand the importance of, horcruxes. And the book in which the relationships between Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ginny first become apparent to them. As the book progresses, and the things are building to a climax, Harry commits an act that would have been murder had things gone a little differently. His has some twinges of conscience about this near-killing, but still seems more concerned about the resulting detentions than about the act that caused him to miss a Quiddich match. He's not a perfect characterThe end of the book lets the reader know that no matter what happens in the final book this won’t be a case of “everything is going to be alright”. The movie version, wherein Harry stands by and watches the killing of a person close to him, not intervening because he promised, always seemed much weaker than the original. In the book Harry is petrified by a spell that is only broken once the murder is committed, and that seems more true to character.

The revised fundamentals of caregiving

The revised fundamentals of caregiving / Jonathan Evison 278 pgs.

Ben Benjamin is a complete mess.  He is unemployed, fighting a divorce, and terminally sad about an accident that precipitated his fall from grace.  He takes a job as a caregiver to Trevor, a wheelchair bound teen who probably won't live to see 25.  It is a low paying job but all he's got.  He is fighting almost everything that is happening in his life, but unsuccessfully.  Conditions make it difficult for him to get to work on time, he gets fired.  But then he embarks on a epic road trip with Trevor, not as an employee but as a friend.  Not surprisingly, the road trip turns into kind of a mess...just like most of the things that Ben touches.  The plot here is not surprising but the personality of the characters, the pacing, and the dialog is fabulous.  I admit, I could not stop reading.  This is sentimental but but not in a cloying, heart breaking way...Ben confronts a lot of his issues as he should, blaming no one but himself.  The supporting characters are made up of several other men doing their best to be father's even though they have a long history of messing up.  Will they have a second chance?  Will things work out to a nicely tied up conclusion?  Author Evison seems to know how to make it real without making it sappy.

White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America / Nancy Isenberg, 460 pp.

Nancy Isenberg's massively researched and endnoted text wants to remind Americans that our idea of a classless nation is a myth, and a cruel one.  From the earliest colonial period our country has been home to men and women who have been called, at various times, offscourings, clay-eaters, lubbers, and mudsills along with more familiar epithets.  The commercially-interested settlement companies saw these waste humans as cheap labor and barriers against Native American violence, but not as people deserving of decent land, rights, or respect.  (And speaking of Native Americans, it is not Isenberg's purpose to minimize the destruction of Native peoples or the suffering of African Americans; rather, I believe she is trying to show how the subjugation of a substantial portion of the white population worsened conditions for all and maximized opportunities for exploitation by the very few.)

The early chapters on the colonial period through the Civil War were a blizzard of information, all of it interesting but some of it a bit undigested.  I found myself wishing that she were connecting a few more dots.  The latter portion, from Reconstruction, to the War on Poverty, to today, were terrific.  Her analyses of Elvis, Bill Clinton, Honey Boo Boo, and Sarah Palin, and what each of these (and many others) mean to our culture was great reading.

There is something here to offend almost everyone.  I admire her courageous writing; I was only offended that she did not include a bibliography.  Yikes!

Atlas of Lost Cities / Aude de Tocqueville, 142 pp.

From familiar ancient locales such as Pompeii and Teotihuacan, to Pripyat, outside Chernobyl, to bizarre modern developments gone wrong such as Sesena, Spain, abandoned in the wake of the crash of 2008, this was a pleasure.  I enjoyed De Tocqueville's text as she muses on the beauty and strangeness of abandoned places that were once full of life, but the stars here are the charming, fanciful, and evocative maps and drawings.  The color palette is both muted and strong.  This is one I'd like to own.

Vengeance: a Novel / Zane, 274 pp.

Wicket is a pop megastar with a lot of big secrets and a very painful past.  Her 40th birthday prompts her to return to Atlanta, her childhood, to attempt to exorcise her demons by exacting revenge against former friends who've wronged her.

I had mixed reactions to this story - Wicket is a disturbing main character in many ways.  Among other things, her difficult childhood has resulted in an intense BDSM 'problem' which is outlined in eye-popping, vicious detail.  Truly, I had no idea.

On the other hand, Zane does a great job of depicting the growth and change of a character through self-reflection and psychotherapy. In her 'Commentary by Zane' closing chapter she makes clear that her explicit goal is to remind readers that personal growth is always possible.  Bibliotherapy!  I am totally on board with that.

Everyone Brave Is Forgiven / Chris Cleave, 424 pp.

It's the Blitz.  Mary North is, first, a teacher.  Then she's an ambulance driver.  She is connected to two men, best friends Tom and Alistair, one a teacher and the other an airman who endures the siege of Malta.

A subplot involves Mary's relationship with a young black boy she meets while teaching.  I found this part of the novel a bit disturbing.  The character seems positioned as a vehicle for showing the reader that Mary is more open-minded than her peers rather than an actual person in his own right.

Cleave's style is often powerful and lovely; I was especially struck by his sharp dialogue and vivid imagery of the Malta siege.  But occasionally I found his word choice and even his syntax a bit jarring.  I'm not sure I would choose another of his books.

Tales from the loop

Tales from the loop / by Simon Stålenhag, 125 pages

This interesting book pairs amazing illustrations with short stories about a smallish town in Sweden that had a particle accelerator (the loop) built beneath it.  The interesting tales are childhood memories from the time (mostly the 1970's) and leaves you wondering if things were a bit odd in this location due to the loop? maybe imperfect memory?  or maybe thing are this way all over.  It is hard to tell exactly.  Most of the stories are fairly unrelated...you can pick up this book and start pretty much anywhere.  I love the writing in the way that everything is told sort of offhandedly, like the twin brothers who switch bodies (something that was never noticed by their parents) or the kid who had a dinosaur living in his garage.  Very interesting stuff!