Time for a commercial break

My reading is not going very fast at the moment. I am reading Geert Mak’s In Europe, which at 1100+ pages will keep me busy for a while. I am reading one chapter a day, over breakfast in bed in the morning. At this pace I will finish it at the end of December. I am about 150 pages in, but I am already thoroughly enjoying the book. It’s well-written, informative, and very readable. It may well end up among my favorite reads of this year. Apart from that I am reading Lev Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. Despite the Dutch translation being rather old-fashioned (it was done in the 1960s if I’m not mistaken), once again I am amazed at how readable Tolstoy actually is. I remember that from reading War and Peace and Anna Karenina and his Caucasus-based stories years ago, but I find it true once again.

I do have some old reviews to finish and post, but instead I decided to do some advertizing here. There are two recently published books that I think deserve more attention. I didn’t realize until writing this post, that they have some things in common: they are both set during World War II and in both the main character is female and involved in the resistance movement against the Germans. Though, my guess is that may be where the similarities end (I have only read one of the books yet).

The one I haven’t read yet, but will get a copy of next month, is Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard by Deborah Rey. I found Deborah’s short stories online in early 2008 and wrote about them here. At that time her first novel Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard was supposed to be published in spring, but due to circumstances that didn’t happen. Fortunately, Deborah’s novel was eventually published by Merilang last September. I wrote a long post about Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard here, so I’ll just refer you to that. A video introducing the book is here.

One warning, most of the links I mentioned in my earlier blogposts don’t work anymore, but Deborah’s website is here. She has posted some of her poetry and short stories there as well.

You can buy Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard online here and here.

Reviews of Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard are at (be aware that most were posted in the spring of 2008, when the book was initially supposed to be published):
Belinda Subraman Presents
First Draft
Patricia Debney
Caroline Smailes
Wired Karisma
Sue Guiney: Writing Life

The other book I want to mention was already published over the summer. I was approached by author Libby Cone way back in 2008 if I was interested in reviewing her then self-published novel War on the Margins. I was, so a copy was duly sent my way. I enjoyed the book a lot; you can read my review here. War on the Margins received a lot of positive attention from bookbloggers at the time. At least partly as a result of this, the book was picked up by Duckworth Publishers and it was published this summer. I received a proof copy, which I just wanted to flip through and read parts to find out if the story and text had changed much. But I ended up reading the book front to cover again and enjoying the story once more.

Interviews with Libby Cone are here and here.

You can buy War on the Margins online here.

Here are some other reviews of the book:
Dovegreyreader
Rob Around Books
Letters from a Hill Farm
Random Distractions
Literary License
Bookgeeks
Rainbow Reviews
60 going on 16
The Literary Housewife Review

Resistance by Owen Sheers

I’m back. Or at least I should be. Earlier this week I finished a big project at work. Early next week I should know whether I’m sticking around at the same office for a few more months leading another big project or whether my job is over. In that case I might still work for the company on a project-by-project base, but no longer as a regular job. Either way, I’m pretty much free until the middle of November at least. I plan to do lots of writing and take up regular blogging again here and on my other blog. So here I am, writing my first serious review in months. Feels strange, like I have to get the hang of it again. But I’m happy to sit at a computer and write instead of work.

Two days ago I finished Owen Sheers’ Resistance. Initially, when the book first came out in 2007 and I started reading about it on blogs, I wasn’t that keen on picking it up. It didn’t speak to me, really. But the book grew on me and eventually I added a copy to my TBR-pile. And now that I’ve read Resistance, I’m glad I did. But just like wanting to read the book took some time to develop, the story itself needed some time to grow on me. But once it did, I enjoyed it a lot.

The story is set in the isolated Olchon valley on the Welsh border in 1944-1945 where only a handful of families live. One summer morning, the women wake up to find their husbands gone without saying goodbye and without leaving a trace. Germany has just invaded England and the women suspect and fear their men have retreated into the hills surrounding the valley and joined the resistance movement. Wait a second? Germany has just invaded England? Yes, you read that right. Resistance is set during the Second World War, but with an alternative outcome in which England has been invaded and occupied by the German army.

After living on their own for several weeks and trying to cope with the sudden disappearance of their husbands and with the heavy-burden farm life, one day suddenly a small patrol of five German soldiers arrives in the valley with. The patrol settles into an abandoned house. Their arrival throws the women’s routine upside down. When an especially harsh winter sets in, the two groups have to decide whether to trust and help each other survive. This is not only the story of the two groups becoming mutually dependent, but it is also the story of one of the women, Sarah Lewis, who begins a careful friendship with the patrol’s commanding officer, Albrecht Wolfram. In the course of the winter and the following spring, it becomes ever clearer that decisions have to be taken, but also that any decisions taken cannot but upset the careful balance of the valley’s inhabitants.

The copy I have, has a blurb on the cover describing Resistance as a “sometimes frightening thriller”. The book is many things, but I would not classify it as a thriller and I think people who expect a thriller based on this blurb are in for a surprise. The pace is not fast, and in fact in a way not a whole lot is happening. I think that may be why the book needed time to grow on me. Owen Sheers’ writing is beautiful, though, it makes the valley and the people come alive, the sparseness of the landscape and of the valley inhabitants’ way of communication, the isolation of the people. The title of the book is well-chosen: throughout the book I kept identifying new references to the theme of resistance, ones that go way beyond the obvious. If I have to mention one thing I didn’t like, it can only be that the reason why the German patrol comes to the valley felt contrived an unconvincing. Though in the author’s afterword it becomes apparent that this is one of the aspects of the book based on a true story. Resistance at first glance seems a quiet and somewhat unassuming book, but it leaves one with a lot to think about. Very much recommended.

Other reviews:
Caribousmom
Dovegrey Reader
Estella’s Revenge
Ready when you are, C.B.
Oklahoma Booklady
Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover
The Linguavore
Page 247
Textual Frigate
A Book a Week
Quippe
Hawkins Bizarre

If you reviewed this book on your blog as well, leave a link to your review and I will include it in the list

Another short update

In good Armenian style, things are moving and changing all the time. All of a sudden, starting from Monday, I am already working from home, though still for the same company. They suddenly had a load of work and needed to free up some computers at the office, so my boss asked me if I could work from home, because that’s fairly easy with the work I’m doing at the moment.

After putting up my previous post I realized I had forgotten to mention another of the summer’s lows: my cat Archy (the gray-white longhair) fell from the balcony and hit his head on the way down. As I live on the fifth floor, that was quite the fall. It took me about a month of nursing him back to something like his previous self and he’s still limping. But he survived and he’s doing fine.

I have another urgent writing job to finish this week, so I plan to be back in business with bookish posts here hopefully by next weekend.

Update

I realize it’s been a few months since I posted anything here and I’ve had some sweet people asking me in the comments, by email and in other places if I’m okay, so I decided to post a brief sign of life.

I had a crappy summer with some emotional rollercoastering regarding my personal and my professional life, but now everything’s okay again. I am doing fine, I am just absolutely swamped in things, mostly work. Add to that, that I have been dealing with a bad internet connection for a while which is limiting my time online.

One of the decisions I’ve made this summer is to quit my part-time and completely unfulfilling job once the project I’m leading is over in another three weeks or a month. From then on I’ll be working on a freelance basis only, making things I have been doing “on the side” for the last few years my main occupation and source of income, translating, teaching Dutch, working on some projects in the non-profit sector and I’ll expand my writing activities over the next couple of months. Of course it isn’t and it will not be as easy as I’m making it sound right now in one or two lines, but ever since I took this decision and started working on making it a reality (financially as well) I’m feeling much better.

For the last month or so, I haven’t even been reading very much. I have started a couple of books, but threw them in a corner after reading a chapter or three and then nothing for weeks so I’d completely forgotten what I’d read weeks before.

I’ll be back when things calm down a bit – hopefully soon.

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The Chosen by Chaim Potok has been my favorite and most beloved book since I first read it when I was sixteen or seventeen. It is the one book I have read more often than any other, this last reread must be the tenth or something close to that. It is my ultimate comfort read, and I desperately needed one these past weeks. It is the one book that still makes me cry all through the last chapter, a book that I immediately want to start again when I finish it.

This was the first reread in five years and I am glad to tell you that everything I just wrote, is still true. I don’t really know why The Chosen affects me so much, but fact is that it does. This is the first time I am actually writing about The Chosen so this time around I tried to figure out what it is that makes this such an important book for me. Truth is, I still don’t have a clue. I have the beginnings of a clue, but nothing that explains it in a completely satisfying way. Chaim Potok is my favorite author, I have read almost all of his books and most of them more than once. Several of his books rank among my top-favorites. I think part of his magic to me is that he is such an excellent story teller.

The Chosen tells the story of the friendship between Modern Orthodox Jewish Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders. Reuven is raised in a more modern way, whereas Danny is the son of a Hasidic rabbi, raised according to traditions and laws that go back centuries, and destined to inherit his father’s place when he grows up. The story takes place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the final years of the Second World War and the early post-war years. The two fifteen year olds meet as a result of an accident while playing baseball and become close friends. Danny’s father raises his son in silence according to an old tradition, meaning that the two don’t talk with each other except during Talmud studies. Needing someone to talk to, Danny turns to Reuven and soon tells Reuven his biggest secret: for a while now he has been secretly visiting the public library to read books that his father would most certainly forbid him to read. Neither is Danny sure he wants to take his father’s place as a rabbi any longer. Instead, Danny wants to become a psychologist, but this would mean confronting his father and breaking with centuries old traditions. The Chosen tells the story of Danny’s confrontation between the old way of life he grew up in with its centuries old traditions and the inherited position of the community’s leader that Danny is supposed to take over and the twentieth century which Danny will have to enter if he chooses to pursue his dream of becoming a psychologist.

The Chosen is a book about friendship and father-son relationships, but also about loyalty and growing up, finding a place where one belongs and making choices.

One of the questions I am trying to find an answer to is why I still love this book so much even though I have so little in common with the characters. I’m a non-religious, feminist thirty-five year old (give or take a few days) woman, but every time I read The Chosen it still completely pulls me in and wins me over the same way it did when I first read it as a teenager. I think one important reason is the role of learning, education and books in the book. Another that both Reuven and Danny are very intelligent and learn easily. I was like that in high school and university. Neither held much of a challenge for me. I had to study, sure, but intellectually there wasn’t much challenge. If there was no challenge in substance, I created the challenge myself in taking up a second studies ending up with two Master’s degrees.

While reading this book, I realized once again how little intellectual challenge or activity there is in my life right now and how much I miss it in a way. You know what, I even miss studying, acquiring knowledge, learning new things. I have to admit that I reread The Chosen at a time when I have a lot to think about, changes to make and getting back to what is important to me.

So this ended up less a review of The Chosen than me going off on a tangent about…what? Life? I guess that’s what happens when I try to write for the first time about a book that’s so important to me. More than anything else I tried to find out why this book is so important to me. I feel the answer I have found is a start, but it’s not complete yet.

A short review I wrote about Chaim Potok’s The Gates of November is here.

Other reviews of The Chosen:
Banquet of Books
Ted at Bookeywookey

I you reviewed this book on your site, leave a link in the comments and I will add it to this list.

I’m curious

Is there anyone out there in the big wide world who can explain to me why my review of Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers (which I wrote in April of last year) has been getting so many views since July 19? Over half of all the traffic to this blog in the last couple of days has been going there and there is no way I can explain it by looking at search terms or incoming links. I’m just very curious, that’s all. Anyone?

Trial and Retribution III by Lynda la Plante

I don’t really have a lot to say about Trial and Retribution III by Lynda la Plante. It’s a decent, middle-of-the-road police mystery, the third in a series all called Trial and Retribution and all adapted for tv by La Plante. I am not sure what was there first, the book or the TV series, both came out in 1999. The book was obviously written with TV in mind, the writing was very visual, focused on what could be seen, rather than on the thoughts or internal actions of the characters.

Detective Inspector Pat North is called on to deal with Stephen Warrington, who has repeatedly called the police to complain about the house across the road from his own. As Warrington turns creepier and more annoying with every complaint, North’s partner (boyfriend sounds weird when talking about two people in their late thirties, early forties) Detective Superintendent Michael Walker is investigating the disappearance of fifteen year old Cassie Booth. She was seen being dragged into a car while doing her paper round early one morning. As Warrington begins to stalk DI North, a possible link between the two cases appears.

Nothing bad, nothing spectacular, but it did keep me turning the pages. An OK read, perfect for the holidays or when you don’t want to read something taxing your brain too much (which is why I took it up).

My review of Bella Mafia, also by Lynda la Plante, is here.

Bookloot and strange Tweets

Ok, so I was not planning to post again today, just as I was not planning to go to the bookstore today. But after meeting a friend for coffee, I somehow mysteriously, through a slight unintentional (yeah, right!) detour on the way from the cafe to the pet shop, found myself browsing the shelves at one of the two bookstores in Yerevan that have a quarterway decent English collection of books. This is what I came home with:

The topbook speaks for itself, below is a book called Gender: Key Concepts in Philosophy by Tina Chanter, the last book is called Deviation: Anthology of Contemporary Armenian Literature. This combination of books was unintentional, but it made me laugh.

When I came home I sent out this Tweet:

Went bookshopping. Came home with anthology of contemporary #Armenia writers, book on #gender and an English translation of the #Koran.

Within seconds this one came back:

ThaBookie@armenianodar You should read Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

The Tweet contained a link to a page at Amazon for a book with that title. ThaBookie? I don’t follow a ThaBookie and neither does it follow me.  Turns out @ThaBookie is a bot that makes book suggestions based on your Tweet. Now I am wondering what exactly triggered it to come up with a book about angry and controlling men? Koran and gender in one sentence maybe? Or possibly gender and Armenia? The more I think about it, the more it annoys me, because it is such a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) way to confirm already widespread prejudices about Islam.

And for the record: no, I am not interested in ThaBookie’s recommendation, thank you very much.

Furry Intermezzo

While I am working on three or four posts, here are some recent pictures of my furry kids.


This is Nirvo’s favorite place, he’s the Master of the TV.

I disturbed Archy in one of his favorite activities, watching the neighborhood from the balcony railing. One of his nicknames is the Neighborhood Watch.

Another favorite activity: relaxing in the bath tub. Hence his other nickname, King of the Bathroom.

Echte mannen eten geen kaas by Maria Mosterd

Echte mannen eten geen kaas has been a bestseller and its author Maria Mosterd a bit of a media hype in Holland since the book was published a year and a half ago and I think it deserves the attention, because it is an urgent and important book, though it does raises some important questions. I finished the book over two weeks ago, but I am still thinking about it and I will for some time to come.

The book’s author Maria Mosterd is now barely twenty years old, but she has already lived a lifetime worth of experiences. From age twelve till age sixteen she was in the hands of a loverboy, a guy called Manou, who forced her into prostitution and turned her life into one of crime, sex, drugs and violence. I am not sure the term loverboy is used in the same way outside of Holland. In Dutch the English word has come to refer to guys who start a relationship with young women and then force them into prostitution and crime. Over the last couple of years, the problem of loverboys has come to the foreground in Holland. Quite a few cases have been discussed in Dutch media in the past years.

Echte mannen eten geen kaas (literally translates as: Real men don’t eat cheese – a quote from Manou) recounts these four years Mosterd spent with Manou and how she eventually broke free from that life. It also describes how Mosterd became mentally so dependent on Manou, on someone telling her when to do what, even when to go to the bathroom. Some of the most poignant parts of the book are when she talks about the physical and mental control Manou has over her, the double feelings of love and hate she has for him and how hard it is for her to break free from him, especially mentally.

The book is written in a very conversational style and uses quite a lot of current slang and curse words. I needed a few pages to get used to that and quite honestly it made me feel “old”. Once I got used to the writing style, I raced through the book, reading especially the first part with a continuous knot in my stomach. The book is written in a very straightforward way and the slang, curse words, sex and violence may not be to everyone’s liking, but I feel they are necessary in this book, they are not superfluous. They are part of the culture, the world Mosterd lives in and they reflect her age and her character. The fairly simple and conversational writing style also make this book accessible to teenage girls. I feel this is a book that should be read widely by teenagers (and their parents) as a warning.

The book raised many questions, things I didn’t “get”, things I am still thinking about. So please keep in mind that especially the following part of this review are “thoughts under construction”. I find that the more distance (in time) I take from the book, the more I see its shortcomings.

There is one small scene at the beginning of the book that is not very relevant to the bigger story, but for some reason I keep thinking about it. Mosterd describes how, as 11-12 year olds (before she meets Manou), she and her friend would walk through their town’s shopping streets handing out notes with their mobile phone numbers to cute guys. They would then wait for them to call and set up a meeting. Of course the girls wouldn’t show up, but instead hide somewhere nearby to watch the guys wait for them. We are talking 11 and 12 year olds here, handing out phone numbers to random strangers on the street!! I could not wrap my head around this. At all. When I was that age something like that would not even enter my head. Okay, I admit, I was twelve in the pre-mobile phone age and I was raised in very different circumstances.

Mosterd’s life with Manou went on undetected for four years, which made me think why didn’t the school or especially the mother (Mosterd comes from a single-parent family) notice anything, take any action? In between the lines you can actually read that both at school and the mother noticed things were not going well with Maria, but it is as if everywhere people consciously looked the other way, trying not to see or to deny that something was going on. Mosterd would come home stoned from smoking marijuana (Man, are my search ratings going to soar because of this post: sex, violence, drugs…), she hardly attended school during those four years, but no one asked questions or, if anyone did, no one pushed further to find out more. I do realize that my knowledge is obviously  limited to what I read in the book and in a few interviews, so it is very hard to judge the situation or put blame on anyone because obviously there is more I do not know than I do know.

The impression I got from Mosterd’s story is that she didn’t have many positive male role models in her life and that this may have played a part. There are hints in the book that she had “bad” boyfriends before and she comes from a single-parent family and hardly has any contact with her dad. I am definitely not saying that all this happened because she comes from a single-parent family. I don’t believe single-parent or other non-traditional families are necessarily a worse surrounding for children to grow up in. Traditional families can screw up just as well and there are many single parents or parents in non-traditional families who do a great job in raising their children. From reading the book, I just got the impression that in this particular case lack of positive male role models may have played a part in making her vulnerable.

It is too easy to just lay the blame with the school or Mosterd’s mother, because things like this (and Mosterd is not the only girl in Holland to fall prey to a loverboy) can only happen in a society or in a (sub)culture that permits situations like that. I am most definitely not blaming Dutch society as a whole, because forced prostitution, crime etc. are most certainly not accepted by society as a whole, but there are definitely sections or subcultures in Dutch society (and in many others), that make things like this possible. Unfortunately, from reading the book one might get the impression that things like this only happen among the Suriname, Netherlands-Antilles and other ethnic minorities in Holland and not among “white” ethnically Dutch. This sure is not the case. This is not an issue confined to ethnic minorities, but ethnically Dutch girls can just as easily become a victim and my guess is that there are ethnically Dutch men posing as loverboys just as well.

Earlier this year, Mosterd’s mother sued the school for negligence, for failure to react to Mosterd’s frequent absences from school. Which is kind of funny, because despite the frequent absences, Mosterd always got passing grades on her report cards and she always seemed to have progressed to the next year and never seemed to have to repeat a year (possible in Dutch schools if you don’t get enough passing grades). Also, it gives me the impression she is turning the majority of the responsibility of raising a child over to the school. I honestly don’t know if she would have gone to court had it not been for the book and the publicity it got. Apparently Lucie Mosterd, Maria’s mother, has now published a book as well about her side of the story. Why is mama Mosterd trying so hard to get money from the school, but from what I read doesn’t make more of an effort to get Manou behind bars? Is it just me, or is mama Mosterd really “milking” her daughter’s new found fame?

Some of the critics of the book raised some completely different but equally legitimate questions: Why have the police or the public prosecutor never decided to investigate Manou? Dutch criminal law is not my legal specialty, but from what I know, if the police or the public prosecutor have enough evidence or a large enough suspicion that criminal facts have been committed, they can launch an investigation even if there is no victim or nothing has been reported to the police. Other major criticisms are that there are points when Mosterd’s story rambles and critics wonder about Manou who appears to have completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Two pieces critical about Maria Mosterd’s story can be found here and here (both in Dutch). I may not agree with everything said on those two sites, but they do raise legitimate questions.

Despite the many questions the book raises, Echte mannen eten geen kaas is an important book. It vividly describes part of the “underbelly” of Holland, something that most people don’t know much about and (fortunately) will never experience, but it also describes problems that we cannot keep silent about, that have to be discussed and solved. It is a book that (unless proven otherwise) needs to be widely read.

A review of Mosterd’s newly released second book, Bindi, continuing where Echte mannen eten geen kaas left off and which was published just a few weeks ago can be found here (link in Dutch).