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"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 4 days ago)
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I just started The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapina. (Did someone here recommend it? I can't find the post).
Opens with a couple coming home from next door in an attached brownstone unit, after dinner with their neighbors, finding their baby gone. They'd brought the baby monitor with them next door during the evening and checked on the baby every half hour.
Echoes Madeline McCann's disappearance, kind of.
Anyway, I've got way too much to do today to sit and read but I'm going to read anyway for a half hour. Just a half hour, promise. ;D
I just started The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapina. (Did someone here recommend it? I can't find the post).
Opens with a couple coming home from next door in an attached brownstone unit, after dinner with their neighbors, finding their baby gone. They'd brought the baby monitor with them next door during the evening and checked on the baby every half hour.
Echoes Madeline McCann's disappearance, kind of.
Anyway, I've got way too much to do today to sit and read but I'm going to read anyway for a half hour. Just a half hour, promise. ;D
That sounds good. I would be upset with the parents though for leaving the baby alone. lol
Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, by Walter Laqueur is a fascinating exploration of the reasons that Russia, whether under the Czars, the former Soviet Union or post-Soviet iterations has never been “able to get its act together.” Russia default mode is towards entropy of one kind or another, with a rich history of alcohol abuse, xenophobia, and zapadophobia (fear of the West). This has resulted in an ability to form alliances or relationships with other countries that are not contentious; unless they are in a dominating or controlling mode.
This malevolent history harks back at least to such Czarist era author and poets as Nikolay Danilevsky (1822-1885), Alexander Pushkin (author of, among other poems, To the Slanderers of Russia) and Georgy Fedotov. The core belief is of Russia being a “great” country, an empire. Russia is not content to be a country with a comfortable standard of living, but not much dominant power.
Around 1990-1, there was great expectation for Russia to democratize, to become a “normal” country, a member of the community of nations. Laquer makes a great case that this was a triumph of hope over experience, much like a third marriage after a succession of divorces.
Among other shortcomings, Russia lacks a real economy. Instead it is a gas station, a petrostate. Laquer expresses little hope for its economy if oil prices remained in the $50 per barrel area. The book was written in 2015; oil has fluctuated around $55-$60, far below the level of $90 - $140 which would be optimal for Russia.
Some international theorists have postulated that the More or less accidentally I fell into reading a lot about Russia. During the early summer I read The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss. This book was ostensibly about a deliberately obscure author, Lev Nussenbaum, writing under other names including Mohammed Essad Bey, who was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and as the antebellum World War I falls apart, flees to Constantinople, then Berlin, and after a short period in New York City, to Vienna and after the Anschluss to Positano, Italy, where he dies as age 35. Reading that book motivated me to read Stalin: The Career Of A Fanatic by Mohammed Essad Bey. Bey (Nussenbaum), writing in1931, makes observations about Russia eerily similar to those of Walter Laquer concerning Russia’s imperviousness to Western ideas of liberalization.
Some international theorists have postulated that the West lost a historic opportunity by not integrating Russia into NATO, and expanding NATO’s reach to the Baltic states. Walter Laquer dismissing these as wishful thinking.
The book earns “four stars” on Goodreads from me. The book was excellent but could have used a proofread. The book has typographical errors. Even within the space of two pages, the book frequently diverges from chronological order; confusing in any book partially about history. But recommended, even mandatory reading for those with a serious interest in Russia or international politics.
If you haven't read this already, may I also recommend a couple of books by Anna Politkovskaya (a Russian journalist who was courageously outspoken against the Russian oligarchy and Putin's regime and assassinated outside of her flat). They are Putin's Russia and A Russian Diary.
On the subject of Stalin, I think Stephen Kotkin would be my go to. If you're interested he has done a number of talks, that are available on YouTube, on the topic of his books.
I've recently decided to surrender my control over what to read next to other people who are now randomly making these choices for me. As a result of one such pick, I'm now reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos and, Oh.My.God., it is breathtaking. I haven't been so excited by a work of fiction since I've read The Lord of the Rings, which was nearly 15 years ago (I'm not counting Discword, as that's a whole different kind of love).
I'm only 60, or so, pages in and the way I've described it to the person who recommended it was - a space opera with the depth of The Lord of the Rings's imagery, saturated in some insanely vivid colours and experiences, crossed with Doyle's The Lost World and a hint of Nabokov's Pale Fire. I don't know whether it is the meds that I'm on that make me so much more susceptible to these sort of things or just the author's genius but there were moments reading the book where I could swear I almost sensed the vertigo at one point or humidity and ozone in the air at another. I find its language stunning and despite my struggles with fiction (and science fiction specifically) I find myself in no way perturbed or discouraged by brand new concepts that have no form in this reality and bear no description beyond their function or place in the story. I mean the spaceship is a tree... how? why? WHAT??? And yet the storytelling creates such a strong emotional bond with that concept that it comes to make perfect sense, despite having no other information about it. I can't comprehend how it works, especially given my broken brain, but it does and its product is an awe-inspiring setting and tale. Man, I pray this holds up through out the book and I won't get my excitement quashed.
For nonfiction, I am halfway through Long Haul by Finn Murphy, who describes his 40-year career as a long-distance trucker specializing in high-end (e.g., corporate-paid) residential moves. The author paints a frank and beautifully articulate (yes, written by a trucker) picture of life spent mostly on the road. With much humor and sharp insights into human nature, he reveals the many aspects of the job that most of us don’t stop to think about, despite encountering these anonymous yet important haulers every time we drive on major highways and, often, on local roads.
For fiction, I finally borrowed a copy of Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women, which I had put on my list months ago. Yay!
Also, I just finished George Takai’s graphic autobiography, They Called Us Enemy. Read it and weep for fear that the US might soon repeat another such atrocity of persecution.
I'm on a bio and autobio kick so I just finished reading "Me" by Elton John, which was excellent.
I think the thing that surprised me the most is just how witty and yet humble he seems to be. Just really seems like a nice guy now, though he is brutally honest about his "days of excess" in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the past few months, I've read bios or autobios of Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, the Bouvier sisters, and now Elton John. Next is a new bio on Janis Joplin, and I just got "Another Life" by Michael Korda in - it's about famous people in the world of publishing - Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Joan Crawford, Truman Capote, Claus von Bulow, etc. I'm trying to finish reading the book about Janis before I start this one but it is surely tempting me!
I kind of got on a kick about that topic and closely related topics and I also enjoyed The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (the movie is good but as usual, the book is better), and Dreamland - about the opioid crisis in those same regions involving many of the same types of people with similar histories a described in Hillbilly Elegy and the Glass Castle. Out of all three books, though they were all excellent, I'd rank them as "Dreamland" first, then "Hillbilly Elegy" and then "The Glass Castle." I really liked all of them, couldn't put them down in fact. Hope you enjoy the JD Vance book!
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Review of Putinism by Walter Laquer
