<p>Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith.
Iced by Karen Marie Moning to keep me from being really depressed by the Smith book.</p>
<p>Currently reading The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamont, author of The Red Tent and Day Into Night. I must have missed this one before but someone brought into my office where there is a place to pass along books.
Just finished Girls Like Us, long book about Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, very detailed and I totally enjoyed reading it. Very interesting details that took me back to many places and also, very interesting to read now as James Taylor figures in all three of their stories.</p>
<p>Soul By Soul by Walter Johnson. It’s a worthy, though sometimes annoying attempt to get “inside” the slave markets of the South. By “slave markets” is meant the breeding, raising and trading of slaves from owner to dealer and dealer to owner. It’s sort of a close-up look mostly based on primary sources, as opposed to Carry Me Back, which is the best history of the domestic slave trade as a whole, meaning facts and figures as opposed to the experience. </p>
<p>What annoys me is perhaps my familiarity with the material; Johnson demonstrates repeatedly how slave owners evaded all moral questions and blamed slaves for their troubles - you were ungrateful, you, you, you. Yes, it stands out when it’s a response to a letter asking to sell a traded slave’s daughter so she could be with her mother but if you’re familiar with the moral and religious justifications for slavery, it becomes overkill very fast. The litany of masters whipping their slaves because they had to, because the slave was impertinent or didn’t work hard enough … you understand quite quickly when studying material like this that slave owners (and the entire slave society) had their truth. </p>
<p>It’s interesting to hear echoes today of the quotes in the book. About how slavery wasn’t all that bad. About how slaves were happier and how everyone got along. I gather it’s difficult for many Christians to accept that if you own human beings, you invent a Christianity that says you should own human beings. I understand the difficulty of that context, the need to say these past Christians must not have been that way, could not have believed exactly that, when the alternative is right at hand: just believe slavery wasn’t that bad and we all got along better than now. I’d hope people who think and say such things would read books like this and see themselves in the mirror but that doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>I’m also reading Sebastian Faulks Devil May Care, a James Bond novel written “as Ian Fleming” in honor of his 100th birthday in 2008. Just started it but I really, really enjoyed his new Jeeves and Wooster book as PG Wodehouse “Jeeves and the Wedding Bells”. </p>
<p>Thanks ignatius! Definitely sounds like a book I’d like.</p>
<p>Just finished “The Sandcastle Girls” by Chris Bohjalian, a novel about the Armenian genocide (really good, but sad) and am about to start Dan Harris’s new book, “10% Happier.”</p>
<p>Chance by Kem Nunn</p>
<p>Ooh, I like Kem Nunn. I’ve never met anyone else who’s read him. Looking forward to Chance.</p>
<p>I am enjoying Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America 1927. I always learn so much from Bryson and I enjoy his sense of humor. The book before this one was Doc by Mary Doria Russel l. It was a good story about the life of Doc Holliday. I can’t say that I knew much about him before I read this. I also learned a lot about tuberculosis. My book that I am reading for sheer relaxation (ie- in the bathtub) is Maeve Binchy’s A Week in Winter. I always find her books to be like a mini vacation. </p>
<p>Reading “Winter People” by Jennifer McMahon.</p>
<p>I’m reading “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami. </p>
<p>^Big Murakami fan here. I’ve read seven books by him so far.</p>
<p>Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. S recommended it to me when it was a $3.99 download and I’m halfway through. It won the Pulitzer in 2013. A real eye opener into Florida’s racial climate in the 1940s-50s which was evidently worse than AL, MS, etc. I’m most enjoying the chance to read about Thurgood Marshall at his best. While he achieved important positions in the 60s, he was probably at his best as the lead attorney for the NAACP LDF.</p>
<p>Just finished Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and loved it.</p>
<p>^^ The setting for Don Pearce’s novel, Cool Hand Luke, was the Groveland/Lake County, Florida region. The towns weren’t mentioned in the film starring Paul Newman.</p>
<p>Emily, Alone–Stewart O’Nan…</p>
<p>I recently looked at the list of Nobel Prize winners in Literature and realized I had read books by only a few of the authors, so I decided to attempt to expand a bit.</p>
<p>The first book I picked up, last night, was “Adrift on the Nile” by 1988 winner Naghib Mahfouz. I am quickly losing my resolve.</p>
<p>I’m reading America’s Women,400 Years of Dolls, Drudges ,Helpmates and Heroines
by Gail Collins</p>
<p>I’m reading Dear Life, a collection of stories by Alice Munro. I normally do not like short stories, but Munro is a huge exception. </p>
<p>Consolation, I don’t like short stories either. I ended up being pretty impressed by Munro - but it took the CC discussion to make me appreciate her.</p>
<p>I finished The Chaperone last night and today I have a pang of regret when I realized I didn’t have it to look forward to tonight! </p>
<p>Everything got boring after certain age along with many other activities, like shopping, TV, others. I had to find new activities. My favorite “reading” now is Rosetta Stone, fascinating to be able to read in different language. I have done only 2 days of it though. I wish it stays exciting to me, I wish NOT to get bored with it and I wish that I started many years ago, I definitely missed out. </p>