My wishlist, part 1

I intended to make mentioning the additions to my wishlist a regular thing on my blog, but somehow I don’t do it as often as I want to. I decided it is time for another clean-up of the bookish items I saved in my feedreader, because the list was getting too long and some of them have been there for months already (ouch!). I will split them up in two posts. Here is the first bunch of books I would love to get my hands on.

Way back in October, at Pages Turned I found a link to a list of the top 10 books about troubled families. The list mentioned one of my all-time favorite books by my favorite writer (My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok), but most of the mentioned books seemed interesting, so it is definitely worth heading over for a look at the other titles. The one title (or rather three titles) that stood out to me is/are JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories and Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour. An Introduction.

A cheat, I know, as there are three books here rather than just one, but the various members of the Glass family appear across these novellas and short stories. They are the dysfunctional family par excellence, and no list of literary families is complete without them. A 20th-century, Upper West Side Manhattan Jewish clan, with seven precocious and deeply unhappy children. Often copied, never bettered.

One of my favorite genres is (American-)Jewish literature, so this should fit right in. I have never read anything by JD Salinger, in fact the only title of his that I’d ever heard of was (no surprises here) Catcher in the Rye.

Another not-so-recent find was a review of Sandor Marai’s The Rebels in The Guardian in October. Marai is a Hungarian writer who was rediscovered and became popular in Europe 1990s, some years after his death in 1989. A few years ago I read one or two of his novels in Dutch translation (Embers and another one I don’t remember the title of) and I kind of liked them. The Rebels is set over two days in a provincial town in May 1918, towards the end of the First World War and the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It tells the story of four boys in the time between their graduation from highschool and their joining the army and being sent of to the battlefields.

The White King by Gyorgy Dragoman is another novel set in Central-Europe, in a country that is a thinly disguised Romania under Ceausescu. Dragoman is ethnically Hungarian, but he and his family fled the Romania of Ceausescu in 1988 when he was 15. The review in The Guardian called the book “a superb novel about childhood, schooldays and gang fights, but one that manages to put the world of the adults firmly into focus as well.” The book’s main character and narrator is 11-year-old Djata, whose father has been arrested by the security forces and is believed to be in a camp.

Way back when, my blogging friend Margaret posted about recent additions to her bookshelf. That was one tempting list and made me add too many non-fiction books to my own wishlist. In random order:

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (ed). The blurb from Amazon:

A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world’s seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements? Activists or careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden expose of the “nonprofit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely by Kate Bornstein:

I am living in a country where gender-stereotypes are still very much alive and kicking. Being confronted with these stereotypes and realizing to what extent I and my behavior do or don’t fit in with these stereotypes has made me so much more aware of the different ideas on the role of men and women, of gender and whether these different perceptions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. From Amazon:

In My Gender Workbook, Bornstein has assembled a collage of simple exercises, quizzes, puzzles, and essay questions that systematically break down our ingrained ideas about how women and men–and whoever is in between–should act. Bornstein’s breezy, “hey, let’s all discover who we might really be” style works to make this potentially threatening material accessible and even intriguing to almost all readers.

Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution by Mark Juergensmeyer. About the book:

Gandhi’s Way provides a primer of Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of moral action and conflict resolution and offers a straightforward, step-by-step approach that can be used in any conflict–-at home or in business; in local, national, or international arenas. This invaluable handbook [...] sets out Gandhi’s basic methods and illustrates them with practical examples. Juergensmeyer shows how parties at odds can rise above a narrow view of self-interest to find resolutions that are satisfying and beneficial to all involved. He then pits Gandhi’s ideas against those of other great social thinkers in a series of imaginary debates that challenge and clarify Gandhi’s thinking on issues of violence, anger, and love. He also provides a Gandhian critique of Gandhi himself and offers viable solutions to some of the gaps in Gandhian theory.

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh is a novel set in the Israeli occupied West Bank in the early 1970s.

Open Minds to Equality – A Sourcebook of Learning Activities to Affirm Diversity and Promote Equity by Nancy Schniedewind & Ellen Davidson. . About the book:

Open Minds to Equality is an educator’s sourcebook of activities to help students understand and change inequalities based on race, gender, class, age, language, sexual orientation, physical/mental ability, and religion.

The activities also promote respect for diversity and interpersonal equality among students, fostering a classroom that is participatory, cooperative, and democratic. An essential resource for teachers, leaders in professional development, and curriculum specialists.

Our Sexuality by Robert L. Crooks & Karla Baur.

The most authoritative college textbook available on human sexuality, this new edition of Crooks and Baur’s Our Sexuality has been thoroughly and carefully updated to reflect the most current research literature. Sensitive, comprehensive, and candid scholars and teachers, the authors continue to engage students with the most exciting, emerging research in the field. The authors have further refined their focus on strengthening healthy communication among partners, as well as their overall coverage on maintaining a responsible and healthy sexual relationship. They have also given even greater attention to diversity and inclusiveness. Other highlights include the very latest research, including a new feature called “Spotlight on Research;” new stories about the experiences of real people from the “Authors’ Files;” and a writing style that is warm, direct, and non-judgmental. As always, thorough coverage of all major topics is incorporated into every section (including sexual health).

I may not be a student, a teacher or otherwise an educator, but that doesn’t disqualify me from being interested in college textbooks and educator handbooks! :-p In fact, one of the most interesting boos I read last year, was a college textbook on Intercultural Communication.

This concludes part one, part two will be up soon with more books to drool over.