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winterbadgerMore books.
24/50: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston.
I was very disappointed by this book. I've heard Dina Temple-Raston's reporting on NPR for years, and while I don't know that I've formed a strong opinion of her based on that, I've not heard anything that made me think that she *wasn't* a solid, professional reporter. This book does, though. She gets all sots of little, simple, basic facts wrong (e.g., she refers to the church in Lackawanna, an upstate NY steeltown, as being modeled on "St. Paul's Basilica in Rome"). She has very curious judgments (she refers at one point to Yemeni teenagers in Lackawanna as being just like kids everywhere, getting into a little trouble now and then, nothing serious--and then describes them as being smugglers, thieves, addicts, and drugpushers. Sorry, but that may be what kids in the worst part of inner cities are like, but it's not typical of the small-time misadventures of most American kids.
Most of all, though, she tries to be so sympathetic to the Lackawanna Six and their community within a community that she loses all sense of objectivity. She suggests that the Yemenis in Lackawanna *celebrated* acts of terrorism (the bombing of the USS Cole) as "David standing up to Goliath" but neither the Yemenis nor she seem to grasp that this reaction is vastly at odds with the rest of the American population. She portrays the Six's travelling to Afghanistan to learn how to fight in the jihad as perfectly normal and unremarkable *for American teenagers* and portrays sympathetically their confusion when, having met Osama bin Laden, learned how to fire military weapons and make bombs, they come home and are later arrested and charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. Before 9/11, most Americans may not have known what al-Qaida was or who bin Laden was, but everyone in the Yemeni community in Lackawanna did--they celebrated them!
The procedural aspects of the book are interesting, and the portraits of people are engaging, but Temple-Raston tries so hard to make the Six seem like innocent victims that she ends up looking highly partisan (instead of even-handed) and, more than that, ridiculous.
25/50: Riddle of Stars by Patricia McKillip.
The minister at the UU church I go to occasionally quoted this trilogy in one of her sermons, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed the books many years ago and made me want to read them again. The first was very familiar--I think I've read it several times--but the others were much less so. I'm not sure I've ever read them both, and if I did it was a long time ago. Like others of her books, these show what an an amazing descriptive writer she is, but who weak she is a plotting. She creates characters and marvelous landscapes for them to inhabit, intriguing backstories for them to live in, but she seems sometimes unsure what to do with them once they're created. The climax of the firs volume comes on its last page and is shattering. The next two volumes try to do the same but don't quite reach the pitch of interest, as if a wave that has broken down a sandcastle is content thereafter to wash back and forth in its ruins. The central love story becomes less and less credible over time, as the reader sees that what began rather improbably ("but there's got to be more to it than that, which we'll find out in time" one thinks) continues on with very little explanation or convincing depth of emotion. The eventual resolution of the trilogy's main arc is somehow rather less than what one is expecting and the ending, however agreeable, is very much diminuendo.
26/50: The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall.
I only found this sequel to my beloved childhood read "The Gammage Cup" when trying to reacquire a copy of that book and found this referenced as a follow-up. It brings the reader back to the Land Between the Mountains and introduces a new set of unlikely heroes (I assume this word, like "actor", is now fully pansexual). We even see from time to time the heroes of TGC, but the newest Minipins get the narrative largely to themselves. They travel widely, encounter new dangers, strange peoples, and difficult challenges. As with TGC, nothing is quite the same in the Land after the adventure, but... well, read it and see! :-)
27/50: The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King.
A re-read when I needed something familiar. A young British-American woman meets a retired detective while walking on the Sussex Downs during World War I. They become friends and have many adventures, demonstrating that while the gentleman may be on the older side, his wits have not deserted him. Highly recommended, but accept that it's a character study not an out and out detective novel.
28/50: A Soldier of the 71st by Thomas Howell (?) edited by Christopher Hibbert.
A privately published memoir by an educated young man who, in a fit of pique, enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry in 1806 and served all the way through the Napoleonic Wars until the battle of Waterloo. It's a slender volume and a quick read; the author doesn't go into the voluminous detail that an officer might (and many did) who had notes, correspondence, a journal, and peers to consult. But for all that, it's got brilliant flashes of colour and movement, like a tropical bird seen flitting through a jungle. A long series of anonymous and unremarkable marches will suddenly be interrupted by a roadside anecdote. A battle may be described in sparing detail, but the platoon's first chance at a real meal in weeks will be detailed with pleasurable recollection. Horrifying incidents get mentioned with gravity, but the omnipresent soldiers' gallows humour wins through (one young officer, ducking at the sound of gunfire is calmly admonished by an old sergeant not to hide, "...if there's anything there for you, sir, it will find you out"). Wargamers love to read about battles, but as someone who's spent just as much time in living history, I love reading about all the things that were *really* important to soldiers: food (or the lack thereof), chores, sore feet, women, money (or the lack thereof), bad weather, and all the little odd incidents that one remembers when the cannonfire and the parades are all gone (the incident of the stewbeef is disturbing, but the account of the retreat to Corunna is just miserable and heart-rending).
OK, that's it for now; I have a couple more that are almost done. Among the several books on deck is my latest listen-in-the-car book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. It's taking a while, partly because it's difficult to listen to and partly because I realised I was getting out of touch by never listening to the news on the radio. Should be done soon, though.
24/50: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston.
I was very disappointed by this book. I've heard Dina Temple-Raston's reporting on NPR for years, and while I don't know that I've formed a strong opinion of her based on that, I've not heard anything that made me think that she *wasn't* a solid, professional reporter. This book does, though. She gets all sots of little, simple, basic facts wrong (e.g., she refers to the church in Lackawanna, an upstate NY steeltown, as being modeled on "St. Paul's Basilica in Rome"). She has very curious judgments (she refers at one point to Yemeni teenagers in Lackawanna as being just like kids everywhere, getting into a little trouble now and then, nothing serious--and then describes them as being smugglers, thieves, addicts, and drugpushers. Sorry, but that may be what kids in the worst part of inner cities are like, but it's not typical of the small-time misadventures of most American kids.
Most of all, though, she tries to be so sympathetic to the Lackawanna Six and their community within a community that she loses all sense of objectivity. She suggests that the Yemenis in Lackawanna *celebrated* acts of terrorism (the bombing of the USS Cole) as "David standing up to Goliath" but neither the Yemenis nor she seem to grasp that this reaction is vastly at odds with the rest of the American population. She portrays the Six's travelling to Afghanistan to learn how to fight in the jihad as perfectly normal and unremarkable *for American teenagers* and portrays sympathetically their confusion when, having met Osama bin Laden, learned how to fire military weapons and make bombs, they come home and are later arrested and charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. Before 9/11, most Americans may not have known what al-Qaida was or who bin Laden was, but everyone in the Yemeni community in Lackawanna did--they celebrated them!
The procedural aspects of the book are interesting, and the portraits of people are engaging, but Temple-Raston tries so hard to make the Six seem like innocent victims that she ends up looking highly partisan (instead of even-handed) and, more than that, ridiculous.
25/50: Riddle of Stars by Patricia McKillip.
The minister at the UU church I go to occasionally quoted this trilogy in one of her sermons, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed the books many years ago and made me want to read them again. The first was very familiar--I think I've read it several times--but the others were much less so. I'm not sure I've ever read them both, and if I did it was a long time ago. Like others of her books, these show what an an amazing descriptive writer she is, but who weak she is a plotting. She creates characters and marvelous landscapes for them to inhabit, intriguing backstories for them to live in, but she seems sometimes unsure what to do with them once they're created. The climax of the firs volume comes on its last page and is shattering. The next two volumes try to do the same but don't quite reach the pitch of interest, as if a wave that has broken down a sandcastle is content thereafter to wash back and forth in its ruins. The central love story becomes less and less credible over time, as the reader sees that what began rather improbably ("but there's got to be more to it than that, which we'll find out in time" one thinks) continues on with very little explanation or convincing depth of emotion. The eventual resolution of the trilogy's main arc is somehow rather less than what one is expecting and the ending, however agreeable, is very much diminuendo.
26/50: The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall.
I only found this sequel to my beloved childhood read "The Gammage Cup" when trying to reacquire a copy of that book and found this referenced as a follow-up. It brings the reader back to the Land Between the Mountains and introduces a new set of unlikely heroes (I assume this word, like "actor", is now fully pansexual). We even see from time to time the heroes of TGC, but the newest Minipins get the narrative largely to themselves. They travel widely, encounter new dangers, strange peoples, and difficult challenges. As with TGC, nothing is quite the same in the Land after the adventure, but... well, read it and see! :-)
27/50: The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King.
A re-read when I needed something familiar. A young British-American woman meets a retired detective while walking on the Sussex Downs during World War I. They become friends and have many adventures, demonstrating that while the gentleman may be on the older side, his wits have not deserted him. Highly recommended, but accept that it's a character study not an out and out detective novel.
28/50: A Soldier of the 71st by Thomas Howell (?) edited by Christopher Hibbert.
A privately published memoir by an educated young man who, in a fit of pique, enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry in 1806 and served all the way through the Napoleonic Wars until the battle of Waterloo. It's a slender volume and a quick read; the author doesn't go into the voluminous detail that an officer might (and many did) who had notes, correspondence, a journal, and peers to consult. But for all that, it's got brilliant flashes of colour and movement, like a tropical bird seen flitting through a jungle. A long series of anonymous and unremarkable marches will suddenly be interrupted by a roadside anecdote. A battle may be described in sparing detail, but the platoon's first chance at a real meal in weeks will be detailed with pleasurable recollection. Horrifying incidents get mentioned with gravity, but the omnipresent soldiers' gallows humour wins through (one young officer, ducking at the sound of gunfire is calmly admonished by an old sergeant not to hide, "...if there's anything there for you, sir, it will find you out"). Wargamers love to read about battles, but as someone who's spent just as much time in living history, I love reading about all the things that were *really* important to soldiers: food (or the lack thereof), chores, sore feet, women, money (or the lack thereof), bad weather, and all the little odd incidents that one remembers when the cannonfire and the parades are all gone (the incident of the stewbeef is disturbing, but the account of the retreat to Corunna is just miserable and heart-rending).
OK, that's it for now; I have a couple more that are almost done. Among the several books on deck is my latest listen-in-the-car book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. It's taking a while, partly because it's difficult to listen to and partly because I realised I was getting out of touch by never listening to the news on the radio. Should be done soon, though.
