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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It’s as good as everyone says. I hated it to end, I wanted to keep reading. Gripping style, beautiful story…and doesn’t purport to explain or fix Afghanistan either. Loved it.
It’s a must read.
For everyone.
And for fun…
Messenger of Truth: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Either Winspear is getting better or I’m just getting used to her writing, but I found this book to be the most compelling Maisie Dobbs books to date. As always, interesting mystery, solid historical context, and deep development of character. I miss Maurice from earlier books, but enjoy that Maisie is growing up and out and no longer needs her mentor. The ominous rumblings from Germany and Hitler are also intriguing and I can’t help but hope the novels move toward WWII with continued development of Maisie’s character and abilities. I now recommend the Maisie Dobbs series.
The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Husain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Saw the author on “The Doha Debates” last year. During the program he was very articulate and dedicated to combating extremism.
This book is Ed Husain’s story of his personal journey into and out of the Islamist movement in the UK. As Husain depicts it, Islamism is the idea that the Islamic faith requires an Islamic political state–that political power and religion are one. Husain’s family, from India/Bangladesh, practiced a Sufi Islam which focused on spiritual connection to God and to other humans and he sees this as a more “mainstream” Islam. Living in Jordan, a moderate Islamic state, I’m not sure that his Sufi brand of Islam would necessarily be accepted–though most of the Muslims I know here do support secular governance.
The first few chapters, relating his time in the islamist movement, including Jamaati-e Islamia and Hizb tTahrir, were distanced, written almost dispassionately. It is like he can’t even relate to the boy he once was. This was frustrating for me, as I’d hoped the book would help me grasp the emotional and intellectual pull of such movements for the young people raised in the West. However, as he related the incidents which brought him out of the movement, including the violence, hypocracy, and time spent, ironically, in Syria and Saudi Arabia, his passion in delivery grew. By the end, he was writing eloquently and passionately against Islamism.
I learned quite a bit from the book:
1–Husain related how the Islamists gained power in Britain (and similarly in the US) until the British authorities believed them to be speaking for and representing the views of all Muslims. This gave them legitimacy–whereas most of these groups were outlawed in the Middle East.
2–Husain argues that Islamists must be countered, fought, and challenged. I realized that in all my studies of Arabic and Islamic culture, we never talk about the extremists: Islamists, Wahabis or others. I had never heard of most of the groups Husain mentioned tho they are well-known here in Jordan and elsewhere (especially Hisb Tahrir which has many factions and is involved in violence in Palestine, Bagladesh, and I believe India among other places). Husain implies, and I agree, that the refusal to talk about such groups in mainstream education means that we don’t understand the movement and can’t launch effective opposition to it. Our courses should not ignore such groups–nor suggest that “all” Muslims belong to them. Acknowledging and debating their merits would be much more effective.
3–Husain traveled to Saudi Arabia (where I have never been and have NO desire to go) where much of the desires of the Islamist movement are fulfilled and was appalled at what he saw there. He strongly denounces the Wahabi form of Islam (a very repressive one) which funds a great deal of the Islamist movements and seeks converts around the globe. Husain reported that it is a country where the more women are wrapped and hidden away (women must wear full-face veils and long, loose black robes in public, must only go out with close male relations, only recently gained the right to drive, etc.) the more Saudi men objectify them. He said that his wife, dressed appropriately, was often leered at, insulted, and propositioned even while he accompanied her. Others I know in Jordan who’ve lived in Saudi report conflicting stories–that on the compound everything is fine and there’s no reason to “go out”, that Saudi men are very respectful during the Hajj, etc. I don’t know from personal experience, but from the public behaviors of Saudi men in Morocco and here, I can’t believe it is a place I would ever want to go.
4–Husain described all the ways the groups in which he participated manipulated the laws, freedoms, and rights of British citizens. The police seem, from his telling, to be naive in their treatment of Islamist youth groups; universities and other moderates completely incapable of countering their methods. We need to teach our youth how to think critically about what they see and experience around them, to look beyond what such people say and see clearly what they do, believe, and propagate.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the inside of the Islamist movement, particularly as an introduction for one mostly unfamiliar with the phenomenon.
FYI Ed Husain co-founder and co-director of The Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank devoted to combating Muslim (and I assume other forms of) extremism.
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus
My rating: 5/5 stars
Read this actually a few months ago, but was reminded of it from a tweet this morning. The book is solid. A good idea, well-described, in language a non-economist can understand. Yunus is looking to bridge the innovation and efficiency of for-profit business with the social-improvement mission of the non-profit sector. I say: It’s about freaking time!!
No, business models can’t solve everything (though you can expect Yunus to think so as a Nobel Winning Ecnomist and founder of the Grameen Bank), but Yunus conceives of a business model which can, in the right context, combine profitability with helping the poor, solving social problems, and changing the world for the better. BTW, he is pulling all this off in more than a dozen companies in Bangladesh and beyond, so it’s not all pipe dreams.
I highly recommend this book!
Murder by Decree by Robert Weverka
My rating: 2/5 stars
A few months ago, I started reading collections of Sherlock Holmes stories written by authors other than Arther Conan Doyle. Many are fun, but some are too formulaic–a bit too many “It’s elementary Watson”s and such. This, a novel adapted from some 1970s movie, is one of the latter. Watson is a bumbling idiot (and of course narrowly avoids being murdered), Holmes is sneering (and much too late to do any good), and the whole social order is in danger (only this time it’s the socialists instead of the anarchists). Plus, it adds nothing to the intrigues of the actual Jack the Ripper murders. Sigh, you’d think if they were going to combine one of history’s most fascinating unsolved crimes with one of fiction’s best detectives they would have actually made it interesting!
The Canterbury Papers: A Novel by Judith Healey
3/5 stars
I’m getting tired of saying “this was better than expected” so I guess I’ll have to expect better in the future! A gutsy, smart heroine; a bunch of royalty, knights, and monks; mysterious kidnappings and letters; and love, passion, and old betrayal. There’s a lot in this book. The dialog is fun, the emotion good (if a bit over-dramatic at times), and the action is well-played. Oh, and it takes place in 1200, so there are horses and maids and everything, thankfully excepting the body odor and diseases of the time.
The author might be working on another, and I’ll probably read it if she does!
The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology by Gary S. Gregg
Very interesting, insightful, yet easy-to-read, this is a great overview of Middle Eastern society in the first 3 chapters, then of the development of the people who live in them for the final 7 chapters. I especially enjoyed that the author used many Arabic sources, and used ethnographies and sociological studies rather than purely “psychological” literature to understand the complexity of this culture.
Best points:
1) Gregg takes a big-picture view and notices that cultural structures and value systems are created in an ecological context. Hence shifting alliances evident in Middle Eastern and North African societies respond to the dynamic availabilities of food, forage, and environment in the region.
2) Gregg spent a whole chapter delving into the different value systems of the honor/modesty code and Islam. They are not one and the same (even if many tie them together), sometimes Islam supports, sometimes conflicts with, the honor-modesty code. Also, the whole male-protector (machismo) and female-secluded and protected aspects of the region (the honor part of the honor-modesty code) are prevalent throughout the Mediterranean area–which is why southern Italy treats women very similarly to Jordan. It is NOT simply a part of Islam–Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards tie it to Christianity. I think it’s really important not to assume that such things are tied to the religious beliefs or dogma when they may be socio-cultural (or even ecological) in origin.
3) Terrorism/Violence/Authoritarianism is NOT part of “traditional” society. Rather, they are a result of underdevelopment where powerful interests control the benefits of modernization and the majority are excluded from them. This is something I’ve been trying to articulate to people in the U.S. for ages–it’s not inherent in people, it’s tied to the oppression they face every day. According to Gregg, the authoritarianism especially is a result of both tradition and modernity failing.
In brief: if you’re interested in Middle Eastern and North African societies cultures and value systems, read chapters 1-3. If you REALLY want to understand how these people develop over a lifetime, or are a psychology buff, go beyond to chapters 4-10.
Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Let me begin: I am not a chick-lit fan. I don’t watch “Sex and the City.” My life does not revolve around shoe shopping and Vogue magazine. But I won this book in a goodreads give away and thought I’d give it a try. I’m so glad I did!
So the premise is simple, girl loves boy who is engaged to girl’s best friend… Tacky and irritating. And yet, the Molly Ringwalds of the world (myself included) know how we each dream of being the one to get the popular boy instead of the pretty, selfish cheerleader.
I was a bit irritated that the main character is 30 before she realizes her best friend isn’t a very good friend (which obviously makes it easier to love the fiancee) but it is enjoyable to watch her learn, slowly, how to like herself, to find her path, to grow up. Just wish she’d done it in her mid-twenties, but I guess there are just some late bloomers.
The story is good, but I have to admit, I wasn’t moved to laugh or cry. Yet I am curious if further stories by Emily Griffin follow the same characters. I guess because it seems like Rachel (main character) still has some growing up to do, and I want to see her do it.
Ok, so it doesn’t sound funny, but this is a hilarious, entirely fictional (of course) telling of the lost years of Jesus.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just finished one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. A fictional re-telling of the Christ story from the POV of his best friend, Levi called Biff (for the sound when someone gets smacked in the head), Lamb is a look at the Son of God as a human (and a conflicted and struggling one at that) in the years that didn’t make it into the official cannon of the church, the missing years of Jesus’s youth until he was 30 and preaching. There’s something even funnier, and yet tragic, in that you know how the story ends but you keep hoping it will turn out different. And it does, sort of but not really, so I’ve been crying about it for 12 hours. The best thing is that while the rest of the apostles and disciples are struggling with believing, Biff doesn’t. He just has Christ’s back. Period. Where else could Jesus have learned unconditional love?
The epilogue sadly disappoints and the question of the afterlife is mysteriously ignored, but it is an incredibly creative and human rendering of the greatest story never told. Plus it is rock-your-guts hilarious. Biff is the guy we’d all want protecting our Messiah–and our own rears if it came to that!
