Marieke54’s 2011 reading

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Marieke54’s 2011 reading

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1marieke54
Edited: Dec 28, 2011, 8:20 am

Hi, welcome in my 2011 thread!
My 2011 introduction: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104688#2406720
My 2010 list: http://www.librarything.com/topic/81838

The 2011 reads sofar:

January:

1. Het lot van de familie Meijer by Charles Lewinsky; 667 p.
2. Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner by Simon Sebag Montefiore; 505 p.
3. Tot de honden komen by Eva Hornung; 272 p.
4. Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People by Jonathan Dimbleby; 592 p.
5. Jonathan Dimbleby: Russia, a journey to the heart of a land and its people, documentary directed by David Wallace; 300 min.
6. The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story by Mary-Kay Wilmers; 476 p.
7. Het mysterie rond Olga Tsjechova : Hitlers favoriete actrice by Antony Beevor; 240 p.

February:

8. In Siberië by Colin Thubron; 319 p.
9. De kapiteinsdochter by Alexander Poesjkin; 159 p.
10. The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia by Douglas Smith; 352 p.
11. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes; 689 p.
12. Maus I : vertelling van een overlevende. Dl. 1: Mijn vader bloedt geschiedenis by Art Spiegelman; 159 p.
13. Maus II : vertelling van een overlevende. Dl. 2: En hier begon mijn ellende pas by Art Spiegelman; 135 p.
14. De witte buldog: een provinciale roman by Boris Akunin; 381 p.
15. Kleine landjes: berichten uit de Kaukasus by Jelle Brandt Corstius; 170 p.
16. Sergej Diaghilev: een leven voor de kunst by Sjeng Scheijen; 638 p.
17. In de schaduw van geen torens by Art Spiegelman; 34 p.
18. The Hill of Kronos by Peter Levi; 258 p.

(Mystery) March:

19. Het kindermeisje by Petros Markaris; 221 p.
20. De zwarte monnik by Boris Akoenin; 320 p.
21. The World at Night by Alan Furst; 238 p.
22. Red gold by Alan Furst; 202 p.
23. Koude lente by Lieneke Dijkzeul; 238 p.
24. De geur van regen by Lieneke Dijkzeul; 247 p.
25. Ons soort verrader by John le Carré; 292 p.
26. Een stille vlam by Philip Kerr; 366 p.
27. About face by Donna Leon; 311 p.
28. De geur van de nacht by Andrea Camilleri; 225 p.
29. Maffia by Petra Reski; 270 p.
30. Als de doden niet herrijzen by Philip Kerr; 446 p.
31. Schaduw over Berlijn by Volker Kutscher; 521 p.
32. Wrede schoonheid by Mieke de Loof; 222 p.
33. Eye of the Red Tsar by Sam Eastland; 288 p.
34. De hond van terracotta by Andrea Camilleri; 328 p.

April:

35. De kraai by Kader Abdolah; 91 p.
36. Bloedlanden : Europa tussen Hitler en Stalin by Timothy Snyder; 639 p.
37. Baltische zielen : lotgevallen in Estland, Letland en Litouwen by Jan Brokken; 463 p.
38. Op de loop : een Letse familiekroniek by Modris Eksteins; 262 p.
39. Luchtfietsen by Jaan Kross; 367 p.
40. Parels van Rome: een reisverhaal by Rosita Steenbeek; 68 p.
41. Nero & Seneca: de despoot en de denker by Anton van Hooff; 262 p.
42. Kameraad Baron: een reis door de verdwijnende wereld van de Transsylvaanse aristocratie by Jaap Scholten; 422 p.

May:

43. Tussen wouden en water / Between the woods and the water by Patrick Leigh Fermor; 239 p.
44. The Transylvanian Trilogy, book one: They were counted by Miklós Bánffy; 596 p.
45. De behouden tong : geschiedenis van een jeugd by Elias Canetti; 349 p.
46. Heer & meester: berichten uit de voormalige Dubbelmonarchie by Jaap Scholten; 334 p.
47. Knossos and the prophets of modernism by Cathy Gere; 431 p.
48. Dronken van het leven : A. den Doolaard, zwerver, schrijver, journalist by Hans Olink; 500 p.
49. Ich bin kein Berliner: Ein Reiseführer für faule Touristen by Wladimir Kaminer; 251 p.
50. Neem het niet! by Stéphane Hessel; 31 p.
51. A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888/1889 by Frederic Morton; 340 p.

June:

52. Onweer in de Schemering: Wenen 1913-1914 by Frederic Morton; 318 p.
53. De erfenis van de Tempeliers by Steve Berry; 919 p. (“dwarsligger-pages”!)
54. De boekendief by Markus Zusak; 1054 p. (“dwarsligger-pages”!)
55. Berlin … Endstation by Edgar Hilsenrath; 243 p.
56. De vreesmachine; thriller over de bouwfraude by Ashe Stil; 292 p.
57. De Wittgensteins : geschiedenis van een excentrieke familie by Alexander Waugh; 415 p.
58. This Body of Death (Inspector Lynley Mysteries) by Elizabeth George; 629 p.
59. De noodkreet in de fles by Jussi Adler-Olsen; 448 p.

July:

60. Amsterdam voor vijf duiten per dag by Maarten Hell; 143 p.
61. Spoorloos by Harlan Coben; 366 p.
62. Hitlers Edeljude: das Leben des Armenarztes Eduard Bloch by Brigitte Hamann; 511 p.
63. Doodskap by Arnaldur Indriðason; 285 p.
64. The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan: A Novel of New Amsterdam
by Bill Greer; 306 p.
65. Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, (Einbändige Ausgabe) Teil 1: August 1967 – Dezember 1967 by Uwe Johnson; 432 p.
66. De Patagonische haas : memoires by Claude Lanzmann; 577 p.

August:

67. Over het doppen van bonen by Wieslaw Mysliwski; 383 p.
68. Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World by James Mather; 302 p.
69. Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken: Roman by Edgar Hilsenrath; 640 p.
70. Napoli! by Jan Paul Hinrichs; 284 p.
71. Het Pauperparadijs: een familiegeschiedenis by Suzanna Jansen; 255 p.

September:

72. Dorsvloer vol confetti by Franca Treur; 185 p.
73. Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte; 168 p.
74. 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire by Giusto Traina; 203 p.
75. De utopie van de vrije markt by Hans Achterhuis

October:

76. De ingewijden by Hella Haasse; 388 p.
77. Zwanen schieten by Hella S. Haasse; 125 p.
78. Jeruzalem: de biografie by Simon Sebag Montefiore; 732 p.
79. The Penelopiad by Matgaret Atwood; 199 p.
80. The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone; 365 p.

November:

81. De hare with the amber eyes by Edmund de Waal; 354 p.
82. Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham; 134 p.
83. De Grote Turk by Henk Boom; 343 p.
84. Kus me, straf me : over lezen en schrijven, liefde en verraad by Marja Pruis; 283 p.
85. Niccolo Rising: The First Book of The House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett; 470 p.
86. The Spring of the Ram: The Second Book of The House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett; 469 p.

December:

87. Race of Scorpions: The Third Book of The House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett; 535 p.
88. Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of The House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett; 519 p.

2alcottacre
Jan 1, 2011, 5:07 am

Glad to see you back, Marieke!

3marieke54
Jan 1, 2011, 5:10 am

Hello to you!!

4alcottacre
Jan 1, 2011, 5:15 am

Did you have a nice New Year celebration?

5marieke54
Edited: Jan 1, 2011, 5:27 am

Quiet and cosy. Because of the dog we stayed at home. I used the evening to bring my 2010 thread up to date and my partner made a grand pan of real Dutch peasoup for a solid start of the New Year. How was your turn of the year?

6alcottacre
Jan 1, 2011, 5:29 am

Just fine. I am at work, but it has been quieter than I expected here.

7maggie1944
Jan 1, 2011, 9:53 am

Hi, welcome to our little book crazy group. I enjoyed your introduction and thought I'd stick a star on your thread and follow along with your reading this year. And I'll say peasoup sounds like a great start to the new year. Lucky you!

8richardderus
Jan 1, 2011, 10:50 am

Hello Marieke! Very glad to see another Dutch person join us here in the weird world of book-lovers. I hope to see you around, visiting the threads, and joining the chat.

Cheers and Happy 2011!

9drneutron
Jan 1, 2011, 4:28 pm

Welcome back!

10marieke54
Jan 3, 2011, 6:54 am

Hi Maggie, Richard, drneutron,

Glad to be here!
I plan to do some more visiting around this year.

11marieke54
Jan 3, 2011, 7:34 am

My best 2010 reads were:

My 2010 best reads:

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (novel)
Faust's Metropolis: History of Berlin by Alexandra Richie (history)
Berlin by Armando (literary non-fiction)
Wie es leuchtet by Thomas Brussig (novel)
Blankow of het verlangen naar Heimat by Pauline de Bok (literary non-fiction)
Der Nazi und der Friseur by Edgar Hilsenrath (novel)
The other side of Israel by Susan Nathan (contemporary history, political)
Er werd mij verteld, over Lucia de B. by Metta de Noo (contemporary history, judicial)

12alcottacre
Jan 3, 2011, 7:40 am

I am hoping to get to Every Man Dies Alone this year. Several group members have recommended that one!

13marieke54
Jan 8, 2011, 5:47 am

On 01-05-11 I finished Het lot van de familie Meijer by Charles Lewinsky; 667 p.



As far as I know, this novel is translated in French, Spanish and Dutch, but not (yet) in English, which is a great pity. Original title: Melnitz, original language: German.

It is the saga of four generations of the Jewish Meyer family (some reviewers have called it the “Jewish Buddenbrooks”), living in neutral Switzerland.
The book is divided in five sections: 1871, 1893, 1913, 1937, and a (small) 1945 section.

All starts with the funeral of uncle Melnitz, who turns out to be someone who “shows up” at moments in the lives of the characters when things get seriously out of hand, to whisper his stories of eternal, omnipresent anti-Semitism - Melnitz claims to be a descendant of a raped victim of hetman, Chmielnicki , of which his name is a derivative.

This is a beautiful, rich and compelling novel, with utterly convincing characters in which the turbulent times from the French-German war of 1870-71 till the end of ww ii in 1945 reverberate in full (it has all that I missed in Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, my last 2010 read). Lewinsky shows the hypocrisy of Swiss neutrality in those times and in doing this sharpens the reader towards day to day anti-Semitism / discrimination.
I read it in one breath, so to speak. Strongly recommended!

14alcottacre
Jan 8, 2011, 6:26 am

#13: As far as I know, this novel is translated in French, Spanish and Dutch, but not (yet) in English, which is a great pity.

Well, rats!

15marieke54
Jan 21, 2011, 3:02 am


As it is my aim for this year to go on reading about Central and South East Europe, Germany and Russia included, at this moment I am in Russia where I might keep staying quite a while…

On January the 13th I finished Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s imperial partner by Simon Sebag Montefiore



A rewarding but not an easy read, this meticulously researched biography of a man surrounded by mythology (think of the ‘Potemkin villages’, turned out to be a venomous delusion). Montefiore as a digger in archives produces wonderful histories / biographies, see also his Young Stalin.

Montefiore argues (convincingly) that Potemkin was secretly married to Catherine the Great in 1774, “a marriage in which both fell in love and had sexual affairs with others, while the relationship with each other remained the most important thing in their lives. This unusual marital arrangement inspired the obscene mythology of the nymphomaniac Empress and Potemkin the imperial pimp. Perhaps the ‘Romantic Movement’ and the serial love marriages and divorces of our time, have ruined our ability to understand their touching relationship.” (p. 165)
Together with the Empress Potemkin ruled Russia, but “though he had the power of a co-tsar he was not one. (…) If he had been a tsar, he would have been judged for his achievements, not his lifestyle.” (p. 491). And what a jealous also high & mighty “spectators” he had…

His great achievement was the Black Sea fleet.
“As a conqueror and colonizer he ranks close to his hero Peter the Great, who founded a city and a fleet on the Baltic as Potemkin created cities and a fleet on the Black Sea”.
Pushkin: “We owe the Black Sea to him.
But contrary to Peter the Great, Potemkin was a cautious soldier (“in the tolerance and decency he showed to his men, P. was unique in Russian history”) (p. 491-492)

A thing that impressed me mightily: the many enormous distances Potemkin travelled, high speed on horseback vice versa between St. Petersburg / Moscow and the Black Sea area.
This, plus his lifestyle, make his early death at age 52 (en route of course) accessible.

The book has a select bibliography (> 20 pages), notes (80 p.), illustrations, a list of characters, maps and family trees of Catherine and Potemkin

And something for my further reading: the serfs.

16marieke54
Jan 21, 2011, 3:08 am

N.B.: The book is also known as The Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin

17marieke54
Jan 22, 2011, 10:09 am

Nr. 3, finished on 01-22:

Tot de honden komen, (Eng.: Dog boy) by Eva Hornung



Very impressed I was by this novel based on reality and research, in which abandoned boy Romochka, about 4 years old, gets himself adopted by the leader of a pack of dogs living in a cellar close to a rubbish-dump in a Moscow suburb, and lives with them for more than three years.
The boy becomes a dog and at the same time stays a human, and that becomes his problem. When much later the leader dog brings in a human baby, you see the difference: the baby, much younger than Ramoschka when he came in, becomes all dog.
The end of the story is, unavoidable, tragic. You wonder: how can / will things continue?

I was deeply shocked by the great number and the circumstances of children living street-lives in nowadays Russia. Have not quite finished my Jonathan Dimbleby read and view, but can understand now why he tells not to have seen in very poor countries such bad things as in some places in nowadays Russia, notwithstanding all the riches the country has.

The description of the life of the dogs in the packs is beautiful. As is that of Romochka’s coming into his new family, the growing mutual understanding and interaction. The members of the pack are such responsible “souls”, but only for their own. Against the outside world of dogs and humans xenophobia reigns. As for their own they travel great distances to find food, if necessary by metro…

Great book!

18marieke54
Jan 25, 2011, 12:19 pm

No. 4
On 1/13 I finished the book Jonathan Dimbleby's Russia by Jonathan Dimbleby



No. 5
And on 1/24 I finished the documentary series Jonathan Dimbleby: Russia, a journey to the heart of a land and its people, directed by David Wallace



Dimbleby made his enormous journey through “Putin’s Russia” in 2006. These were the stages: 1. From Murmansk to Novgorod, 2. from Moscow to the Caspian, 3. from Astrakhan to the Urals, 4. from Ekaterinenburg to the Altai Mountains, 5. from Irkutsk to Vladivostok.

All the way, by car, by train, by boat, by plane, he talks to all kinds of people of all ages and in that I found him more daring in his questioning, more critical than Michael Palin in his series about Eastern Europe. According to this documentary, most of the Russians are very, very critical about democracy.

Book and film complement each other. In the book, which is also very personal (a thing the film is not), he tells more of these conversations and gives stories that are not in the film, for instance his visit to the island Solovki in the White Sea, the first Gulag. He also gives a lot of history, plus suggestions for further reading. And what a history the Russians have!

For the beautiful scenery, I liked the film best. But I shouldn’t have wanted to miss the book.
Amazing country!

Solovki:

19marieke54
Edited: Jan 30, 2011, 9:02 am

No. 6 - 01/23

The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story by Mary-Kay Wilmers



In her book the author, an editor of the London Review of Books, researches the history of some members of her mothers Jewish-Russian Eitingon family.

There is Leonid, a staunch Stalinist secret agent, a man who travelled the world (among many other things he organised the assassination of Trotsky) of whom Stalin once said: “As long as I live not a hair of his head shall be touched”.
There is Motty, who migrated to the USA and became one of the world’s biggest fur traders with many contacts with the Russians - and with American labour organisations.
And there is Max, living in Europe and Palestine, a rather secretive psychoanalyst, member of Freud’s inner circle and very close to Freud. He financed “Freud’s free clinics” but is also connected with the abduction of a White Russian general in Paris.

Wilmers’ key question, “were Max and Motty agents of the Sovjets?”, stays unanswered, but her book transcends mere family history in giving a fascinating deeper glimpse in some of 20th century's history and from that might be a goldmine for future documentaries, or film-scenario’s.

20alcottacre
Jan 30, 2011, 9:18 am

You have been busy, Marieke! I will be back later to add several titles to the BlackHole. I am off to bed now. . .

21marieke54
Jan 30, 2011, 9:34 am

Hi Stasia! I see forward to that.
Sleep well!

22marieke54
Edited: Feb 5, 2011, 2:33 am

No. 7 01/26

Het mysterie rond Olga Tsjechova : Hitlers favoriete actrice by Antony Beevor



Another family history.
Olga Tsjechova was a niece of Olga Knipper-Tsjechova, Anton Tsjechov’s wife but in the book not only her story but also that of members of both the Knipper and the Tjechov family, most actors but also a musician, is given.

Antony Beevor explores the wanderings (literally) of Knippers and Tsjechovs through the Russian Revolution, the Civil War, “the Great Patriotic War”, and post war times. More than by the fate of Olga Tsjechova, I was fascinated by her aunt, Tjechov’s wife, till the end of her life travelling with her theatre group, always inspiring, always helping out. In the twenties they even came to America and introduced the Stanislavsky way of acting there (which became "The Method").
What a great (and enjoyable!) lady.

Was "young Olga" an agent for the Russians? In Beevor’s view she was a only a bold survivor. But her nephew musician Lev Knipper, aunt Olga's favourite, he was.

23alcottacre
Jan 31, 2011, 12:02 am

The Montefiore and Wilmers books were already in the BlackHole, but I added the Beevor and Dimbleby books to it as well. Thanks for the recommendations, Marieke!

24marieke54
Jan 31, 2011, 11:43 am

You'r welcome. I have a probably stupid question, Stasia: what is the BlackHole?

25alcottacre
Jan 31, 2011, 3:03 pm

Ah: the BlackHole is what I call my TBR stack. It started out as Mount TBR, then got to be Continent TBR, Planet TBR. . .so I finally just dubbed it the BlackHole so I never have to name it again :)

26FAMeulstee
Jan 31, 2011, 4:31 pm

hi Marieke

You have a good start this year!
I might look for Het lot van de familie Meijer, the Potemkim biography and Tot de honden komen, they sound promising/interesting :-)

27marieke54
Feb 1, 2011, 6:31 am

> 25

Capisco.
My Russia-reading this year, can also be seen as a way of attacking my pile.

Let's rejoice in our piles and holes! ;)

28marieke54
Feb 1, 2011, 6:34 am

> 26

Hi Anita!

I think you will like Tot de honden komen immensely. For me it was so enlightening on (the caring of) dogs.

29Whisper1
Feb 2, 2011, 12:48 am

Hi There

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

30marieke54
Edited: Feb 5, 2011, 7:17 am

No. 8; 02/01
In Siberia by Colin Thubron; 319 p. (Dutch translation)



Another travel book.
Less than 10 years earlier than Jonatham Dimbleby (see post 18) Colin Thubron traveled Siberia, trying to capture its essence. Although the routes they took and the places they visited were often the same, both books are very different. As Dimbleby (in book and film) took a lot of sips, Thubron, taking more time for people and places, absorbed. He travelled alone, was more vulnerable than Dimbleby who had a film crew etc., which also enlarged his opportunities to “plunge in” and “stay under”.
There is also the difference of time. For instances: in the nineties Thubron was captivated by the beauties of Irkoetsk as Dimbleby in 2006 was more focussed on its gigantic social problems (explosion of AIDS, drugs, alcoholism).

Both books in their own way are very informative. Although with Thubron I was more in the atmosphere of Siberia (probably as a consequence of his search for an essence which he didn’t find), I needed Dimbleby’s book and documentary for the scenery and the most up to date information.

31alcottacre
Feb 5, 2011, 7:23 am

#30: I already had In Siberia in the BlackHole or I would add it again.

32marieke54
Edited: Feb 5, 2011, 8:02 am

> 30
Do you have the next one in the BlackHole? I think you will love it:

No. 9; 02/03
De kapiteinsdochter by Alexander Poesjkin; 159 p.



My first book ever by Alexander Poeskin.
Sebag Montefiore in his Potemkin biography (see post 15) referred to this novel as giving a good image of the times of the Pugachev Rebellion in 1774/75, which was a very serious threat to Catherine the Great’s throne. That’s why I wanted to read it.

Reading it I loved Poesjkins descriptions of people, (social) relations etc., his eye for (telling) detail, his humour and – how modern! – his conciseness.
And although a lot of terrible things do happen and you certainly get a picture of the living of all kinds of people in those turbulent times, the love story between lieutenant Grinjow and Masha, who is the daughter of the commanding officer of the fortress captured by Pugachev and his Cossacks, this love story has a happy ending.
Very interesting novel. I think I haven’t read the last story by Poesjkin.

33alcottacre
Feb 5, 2011, 8:05 am

#32: Has the book been translated, Marieke? I do not know what title to look for it under in English.

34marieke54
Feb 5, 2011, 8:11 am

> 33 O yes, Stasia: The Captain's daughter!

35alcottacre
Feb 5, 2011, 8:14 am

#34: I thought that might be it, but was not sure. Thanks. I will check and see if my local library has a copy.

36marieke54
Edited: Feb 6, 2011, 5:04 am

The girl, the
woman and the
singing on Tahir Square.

(hear and see the woman: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/saadawi040211b.html)

37PamFamilyLibrary
Feb 6, 2011, 7:29 am

Oooh, In Siberia sounds great. (into the pile!)

Have you read the Danziger travel books?

38marieke54
Edited: Feb 7, 2011, 6:55 am

No I haven't, Pam. Seems interesting. Thank you for mentioning him!
(Nick Danziger)

39PamFamilyLibrary
Feb 9, 2011, 6:47 pm

I've read 2 of his books. The one where he traveled the silk road, and the other where he commented on the cultural changes that had come about in Great Britain during his lifetime. Both were interesting and his travel on the silk road made me jealous beyond belief. The only time in my life I wished I had been born a dude.

40marieke54
Feb 12, 2011, 5:31 am

The only time, that's a recommendation!

41marieke54
Edited: Feb 12, 2011, 5:44 am

No. 10; 02/06

The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia by Douglas Smith



This book which is a mixture between biography and social/cultural history not only tells the story of count Nicholas Sheremetev and his serf Praskovia, but also that of Russian serf theatre, that in its time “ rivalled all great theatres in Europe” (loc.1368).
To have your own theatre was a mania of Russia’s nobility in the later years of Catherine the Great's reign and the years after; the first serous blows against it came with Napoleon’s invasion.

The H-net review on it:

“The basic love story told by Douglas Smith in The Pearl was known, if more in legendary than absolutely historical form, to virtually every Soviet school boy and girl. What Smith has done is to separate fact from legend and place the whole in the context of Russia’s social and cultural history. Many more published and archival materials exist for the Sheremetevs than for the family of one of their serfs. Furthermore, like other biographers of Praskovia before him, Smith found that someone early on carefully culled from the documentary record of Praskovia’s life anything that might be construed as negative. Resorting to conjecture, Smith enters the inner emotional lives of both Nicholas and Praskovia, a strategy he admits is “not widely employed by historians but common among biographers” (p. 7). Enough survives in family records and the memoirs of close associates to reconstruct the relationship between them, but hardly more than to merit the thinnest of biographies of Praskovia.

For this reason Smith added two valuable “interludes” in keeping with his theatrical theme, one discussing the uniquely Russian phenomenon of the serf theater and the other providing stories of other serf actresses to demonstrate that Praskovia’s role was hardly unique. For Russian cultural history these asides are equally as valuable as the details of Nicholas and Praskovia’s love affair. This strange conjuncture--or should it be termed a clash?--of traditional Russian social stratification and aristocratic eighteenth-century European culture has been studied in detail by specialist scholars but is still in process of working its way into mainstream historiography. It was, as Smith colourfully describes, “simultaneously alluring and repellent, magnificent and squalid, and shot through with the paradoxes, injustices, and cruelties of a society in which millions ... laboured to provide a life of luxury and leisure for the noble elite. Few art forms have ever displayed so nakedly the inequities of wealth, power, and status that made their existence possible” (p. 97). That opera, perhaps the highest and most artificial genre of the dramatic arts, could be and was performed entirely by artists belonging to the most degraded group of people in Russian society was not the least of the paradoxes. Smith has given us far more than simply a “true tale of forbidden love.”
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31493

Great book!

42alcottacre
Feb 12, 2011, 6:04 am

#41: That one looks very good! Thanks for the recommendation, Marieke!

43marieke54
Feb 13, 2011, 7:28 am


No. 11; 02/12

Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes



After finishing my struggle with Molotovs toverlantaarn by Rachel Polonsky (no. 59 of my 2010 tread) I decided to reread this Orlando Figes’ book, a profound basic introduction for interested ‘beginners’ in Russia’s culture. A book that I enjoyed so much when reading it for the first time (± 2004).

Figes: This is “ an interpretation of a culture, not a comprehensive history, so readers should beware that some great cultural figures will perhaps get less than their full pages worth. (…) My approach is thematic. Each chapter explores a strand of the Russian cultural identity from the 18th to the 20th century. (…) I have provided some explanation for readers who lack detailed knowledge of Russian history” (p. xxxiii).

His themes are: “Europe”, “Asia” (= Siberia, Central Asia, Caucasus), “Petersburg, “Moscow”, “Russian soul”, Soviet period, Russian exile.

After my No. 2 (by Simon Sebag Montefiore) I cannot leave unmentioned that Figes unfortunately repeats the ‘myth of the Potemkin villages’ (p. 8), but he wrote beautiful pages about Praskovia and Sheremetev (protagonists of my No. 11, p. 28-38).
While during my first read I was very impressed by the Decembrists , the “children of 1812”,
this time the Russian conquest of the ‘Orient’ (which is also the Caucasus) fascinated me most. I will certainly read more on this theme.

The book has many (color) illustrations, 4 maps, a table of chronology, suggestions for further reading and an extensive index. And one of its beauties is, that within its structure lots of ‘petites histoires’ are given of the many musicians, writers, poets, painters etc. of Russia’s past.

Strongly recommended!

44alcottacre
Feb 13, 2011, 7:37 am

#43: I already have that one in the BlackHole. One of these days I will get my hands on a copy!

45marieke54
Feb 15, 2011, 12:21 pm

No. 12 Maus : vertelling van een overlevende. Dl. 1: Mijn vader bloedt geschiedenis by Art Spiegelman



and

No. 13 Maus : vertelling van een overlevende. Dl. 2: En hier begon mijn ellende pas by Art Spiegelman



Terrific!

Especially book 2 with the many switches between the present and the past.
I didn’t know Art Spiegelman. Now I want to read everything by him I can lay my hands on.

46jolerie
Feb 15, 2011, 5:07 pm

Oh....I was wondering why Art Spiegleman's name was so familiar and then I realized I had read one of his books during my university years and the course was on the subject human suffering...not exactly a light subject matter..but his book was fantastic! :)

47marieke54
Edited: Feb 16, 2011, 2:41 am

Oh yes, the way he brings home to you those abominable things, sometimes even with humour, the directness of it is so ingenious. No lover of comics I missed him completeley in my student years, but will make up for this now: have got the Dutch edition of his In the shadow of no towers home from the library allready.

48alcottacre
Feb 16, 2011, 6:15 pm

I loved the two Maus books too, Marieke! I am glad you discovered them.

49marieke54
Edited: Feb 20, 2011, 8:46 am

No. 14; 02/14
De witte buldog : een provinciale roman by Boris Akunin



First of a series of three whodunnits circling around a very un-typical nun who resolutely unravels mystery after mystery in a story that breathes the atmosphere of late 19th century Russia as known from the books by Dostoyevsky and Gogol, but with a light touch. This one starts with the find of two beheaded bodies, a man's and a boy's, and the murder of a white bulldog very precious to its owner, a general’s widow living on an estate were the emotions are boiling.

Enjoyed it so much that I put the other two books on the list for Mystery March.

50alcottacre
Feb 20, 2011, 9:22 am

I enjoy the Akunin mysteries too, Marieke.

51marieke54
Feb 20, 2011, 9:32 am

Hi Stasia, also the Fandorin series?

52marieke54
Edited: Feb 20, 2011, 9:42 am

This message has been deleted by its author.

53marieke54
Feb 20, 2011, 9:48 am

No. 15; 02/17
Kleine landjes : berichten uit de Kaukasus by Jelle Brandt Corstius



The author is the maker of two in my country much appreciated documentary series about nowadays Russia. In this book he reports of his travels in the small countries of the North Caucasus (Chechen, Kalmykia, Abkhazia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Osetia), where he talks with a lot of people. By way of these always lively, sometimes hilarious stories you get an idea about what’s life like in this war ridden and wild area.
As I read the stories the one after the other, Brandt Corstius’ light touch became a little bit fatiguing, but all in all the book was a good introduction in an area in which (after Mystery March) I want to plunge in deeper with books by Thomas de Waal and Oliver Bullough that are already top of my pile now, together with Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat.

54alcottacre
Feb 21, 2011, 12:32 am

#51: Yes, I was referring to the Fandorin series.

55marieke54
Edited: Feb 26, 2011, 8:33 am

No. 16; 02/22
Sergej Diaghilev; een leven voor de kunst by Sjeng Scheijen



New biography of the founder and director of the “Ballets Russes”, a cultural Gargantua and centipede who worked with Nijinsky, Balanchine, Stravinsky, Prokofjev, Debussy, Ravel, Picasso, Matisse and Cocteau, to name only the known ones; persons you meet speaking as it were, reacting on one another, as the author frequently cites from letters, diaries, etc. (the book is based on elaborate research in archives). But Diaghilev did more. He organised important picture exhibitions and in the last years of his life builded a collection of old Russian books unrivalled outside Russia. And he was such a great traveller.
Being an illiterate in opera and ballet I enjoyed the book anyway, for its liveliness and the rich portrayal of an era.

And how nice that this rather unknown Dutch author with this biography which was originally a thesis, made it to the list of the New Yorkers’ reviewers’ favorites of 2010!
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2010/12/13/101213crbn_briefly...

56marieke54
Feb 26, 2011, 9:44 am

No. 17; 02/22
In de schaduw van geen torens by Art Spiegelman



Spiegelman‘s – he lived close to the Twin Towers - personal narrative of the unprecedented events of 9/11 and… of the equally unprecedented political abuse the “Powers that Were” made of these shocking events. How terrifying that day was for him, his family and all involved becomes perfectly clear.
Although (or: because) in the second aspect – the abuse - I agree completely with Spiegelman, I wasn’t so impressed by this album as I was by his Maus.

57marieke54
Feb 26, 2011, 10:56 am

No. 18; 02/26
The Hill of Kronos by Peter Levi



Wonderful report of a man’s love affair with Greece, “Greece has twisted itself in my skeleton like a climbing flower”(p. 203).

In an evocative way Levi (priest, poet, scholar) describes his journeys through and stays in the country from 1963 till 1978 - and in some ways for those who visited Greece this book is a real vacation. You see the light again, feel the heat, are refreshed by the sea, smell the scents, hear the sounds.

Levi also reports of his labour on Pausanias, he is the translator of Pausanias Guide to Greece for which he visited all the sites himself.
And he tells of his friendships with Seferis, Gatsos, Katsimbalis and others poets. How they all lived and some died during the terrible years of the regime of the Colonels.

In Athens “the cemetery became one of my favorite lurking places. The heroes of the war of independence lie here, in a wilderness of other monuments, and the first Greek aviator, and by now a number of my friends. The neoclassic marbles run riot, they reflower as rococo, they burst out into sunblasts of baroque. My favorite tomb is that of Makryiannis, the peasant general of 1821 whose memoirs, written with a purity and a force that has no parallel in Europe since the sixteenth century, are the foundation documents of whatever is best in Greece. They were recovered as wrapping paper from a butcher’s shop, and it was George Seferis who first pointed to their profundity and their value. During the 1939 war they circulated in typescript; the Germans put a price on the head of rebellious Makryiannis. Under the Colonels, people left red carnations at his monument. His face on the bronze plaque is consumed with rage and suffering; he has the face of a starved prophet. In his old age he wrote a long and bitter series of reproach to God. He was imprisoned, tortured, virtually starved to death, under the early monarchy. I am constantly moved to tears by his writings” (p. 138)

58marieke54
Mar 6, 2011, 3:50 am

Mystery March

As I don’t read as many detective-, mystery-, or espionage novels as I’d like to I joined this group read. A whole month of mystery reading! It gives me an excellent opportunity to finish some loose thread, or at least to make some advances.
I think of the Night Soldiers-novels by Alan Furst, the Berlin Noir novels by Philip Kerr (both ww ii), The Commissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon, the Commissario Montelbano series by Andrea Camilleri, and the Sister Pelagia mysteries by Boris Akunin. I also want to read some Dutch mysteries by woman writers, they are mighty popular in my country and I haven’t read none of them yet!
And then the interesting new ones I will encounter on the shelves of the public libraries, and for nostalgia’s sake, an Agatha Christie and a Simenon.

My Mystery March started on 02-26.

59marieke54
Edited: Mar 6, 2011, 4:36 am

No. 19; 03/01
Het kindermeisje by Petros Markaris



This book, the latest Charitos mystery, I took home from the library for my partner, who is a great fan of the Athenian Superintendent Kostas Charitos. She liked it so much that she urged me to read it. I’m glad I did.

The book is a ”Whydunnit”.
Charitos and his wife are vacationing on group travel in Istanbul, visiting the remnants of Byzantine and Greek life in the city. Via his Istanbul colleague he gets involved in the search of a serial killer, a very old Greek lady. The key to the murders lies in the Greek-Turkish past, the by war and politics screwed up social and personal relations.
Markaris who as always is great in marital disputes, elaborates in this mystery on the position of minorities in a society, not only on the Greeks in Turkey but also on the Turks in Germany, the country Charitos’ young colleague felt himself forced to emigrate from, to Istanbul.
Very much recommended!

60marieke54
Mar 6, 2011, 4:52 am

No. 20; 03/02
De zwarte monnik by Boris Akunin


Russia, late 19th / early 20th century.
In this story, which already began on the last page of its prequel, Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog we are brought the surroundings of an island where hermits live. Very ominous things are happening there. As a consequence of them some people – among them characters we know already from the White Bulldog- die or go crazy and Pelagia’s spiritual father the Metropolitan has a heart attack. But ingenious Pelagia herself survives the evil doings and brings all to a successful conclusion.
A very cheerful read!

61marieke54
Edited: Mar 6, 2011, 5:20 am

No. 21; 03/05
The World at Night by Alan Furst



In this stark and atmospheric story we witness the beginning and the first year of ww ii in France by the eyes of Jean Casson, a Parisian film director who tries to continue his live as good and as bad as is possible under these new circumstances. Slowly and reluctantly the agreeable womanizer is pulled in by the Résistance, but he also discovers his deep love for an old flame. After the disastrous consequences of an act of résistance he gets the opportunity to escape to England, which he only rejects already at sea. Will he see his love again? For that I have to read Red Gold; a novel.

Alan Furst is a Master of atmosphere and couleur locale!
A stark read.

62maggie1944
Mar 8, 2011, 9:38 pm

I truly love Alan Furst's writing!

63marieke54
Mar 13, 2011, 3:27 am

This is his next:

No. 22 Red gold by Alan Furst


Sequel of The world at night, story told more straightforward. After reentering his country Casson initially lives a hidden life in poverty, but he cannot prevent his getting involved by activities of the resistance, as he is “deployed” as a go-between between various resistance groups (the “Gaulle-groups”, communists) with the intention to launch a certain cooperation. Again a very well researched and atmospheric story, with an abrupt but open ending. I hope Furst will go on with the Casson character in his series.

64marieke54
Edited: Mar 13, 2011, 3:59 am

No. 23 Koude lente by Lieneke Dijkzeul



As I never before read something written by Dijkzeul, this book came as a great surprise to me.

In this breathtaking psychological thriller (and also a classical whodunit), which is the second in a series of four woven around the sympathetic widower inspector Paul Vegter who after his wife’s death tries to his life get back on track, and his three permanent colleagues, they are confronted with the find of a very young girl’s dead body in the town park.

No sensational happenings, just a great settlement of the murder investigation with such an eye for people and their “Sitz im Leben”, in such a well written and effective style.
I am going to read all Dijkzeul’s Paul Vegter books.

65marieke54
Mar 13, 2011, 4:11 am

No. 24 De geur van regen by Lieneke Dijkzeul



Third book in the Paul Vegter series, in which Vegter’s female colleague Renée on the threshold of her flat is attacked and partly scalped by a masked man. But there is logic in this madness: again a very fine settlement of the investigation and all the other things I said in my previous post. Also a beautiful development of characters. Still I prefer the previous book. Maybe because of the surprise of it? Both books are real page turners.

66marieke54
Mar 13, 2011, 4:45 am

No. 25 Ons soort verrader by John le Carré



A Russian mafia tycoon whose life is under severe threat wants to defect to Great Britain with his complete family. In order to reach this goal, he approaches and “cocoons” two young British lovers, bright and enthusiastic people vacationing on a Caribbean island. The British Secret Service is engaged, but will foreign (and financial) policy have an interest in such a defection?
Great meandering of very colorful characters in what is essentially a simple plot. Abrupt ending: our kind of traitor is a terrible traitor.

Although I learn a lot about the ”ways of the world’ from Le Carré, I read him mainly for the way he paints his characters. Again: great!

67gennyt
Mar 18, 2011, 4:10 pm

#56 I didn't know about Spiegelmann's book about 9/11. I found the Maus books really good too; shame that you think this is not so effective.

68marieke54
Mar 19, 2011, 2:17 pm

> 67 I was very impressed by the Maus books, so I guess my expectations about In the shadow of no towers were too high.

69marieke54
Edited: Mar 19, 2011, 3:12 pm

No. 26 Een stille vlam by Philip Kerr



Fifth in the Bernie Gunther series.
In 1950, together with many other fleeing Germans Gunther arrives in Perón’s Argentina, where a high policeman involves him in the cases of a murdered and a disappeared girl, the first case similar to some unsolved brutal murders in turbulent 1932 Berlin. The girls are of German parents, so Gunther finds himself in German circles. We learn a lot about Argentina’s German nazi's and their welcoming Argentine hosts, before the murder and the disappearance are solved together with the 1932 crimes.
Grim story based on research (a.o. Uki Goni ‘s The real Odessa).

70marieke54
Mar 19, 2011, 3:05 pm

No. 27 About face by Donna Leon



During a dinner party Brunetti meets a kindred spirit, a young woman who had a mysterious (drastic) facelift. He also gets involved in the (mafia) business of illegal (waste) transports.
The two threads turn out to be interwoven, all is “about face”.

A warm bath, this Brunetti mystery.

71marieke54
Mar 20, 2011, 6:01 am

No. 28 De geur van de nacht (The smell of the night by Andrea Camilleri



Crispy Commissario Montalbano story, in which M., ever struggling with his superiors and his long time fiancée Livia, has to solve the mystery of the vanished director of the invest business “King Midas”. And not only the director has vanished, but also the deposits of a great number of (mostly elderly) Sicilians.
What a refreshing read this was!

72marieke54
Mar 26, 2011, 4:51 am

No. 29 Maffia by Petra Reski



Nonfiction. Very informative update about the Italian mafia, that tells how it has completely recovered from the blows handed out to it in the nineties and presently is expanding its area in Europe, stronger than ever. Within the frame of a short trip to Sicily where she meets her photographer friends Letitzia Battaglia and daughter Shobha, Reski discusses a range of persons (+organizations) and events with a keen eye for the role of the Church, individual priests and women (within the mafia women are the keepers of the flame).The reason for writing this book was the brutal murder in a pizzeria in Germany (Duisburg, 2006), result of a feud between two ‘ndrangheta families.

73marieke54
Mar 26, 2011, 5:32 am

No. 30 Als de doden niet herrijzen by Philip Kerr



Sixth Bernie Gunther mystery. As the fifth, a story that begins in the Hitler era (1934) and, in this case, continues in pré-Castro Cuba (1954). The story’s main line is about mob-infiltration in the tenders for the construction of sport facilities at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The main culprit is met again in Cuba. The final end didn’t come as a surprise to me.

74marieke54
Mar 26, 2011, 6:02 am

No. 31 Schaduw over Berlijn by Volker Kutscher



Kutscher’s protagonist, detective Gereon Rath, operates in the years of the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic, when a lot of Russians have arrived in Berlin, Revolution’s refugees, but also conflicting branches of communism. Synchronously German communists and SA-men are threatening the social-democratic Republic. In this context ambitious Gideon Rath from the Berlin vice squad when confronted with the find of a tortured Russian’s body in the river, tries to get himself transferred to the murder squad.
Although I had some difficulty in the middle of the book (length!) I was pleasantly surprised by this story and certainly will read Kutscher’s two other books about Gereon Rath.

75marieke54
Mar 26, 2011, 7:17 am

No. 32 Wrede schoonheid by Mieke de Loof



Some horrible serial killings take place in 1914 Vienna. The victims, very young girls and later a dissident priest, are photographed in a way that refers to (paintings of) Egon Schiele.
We have arrived in Vienna’s beau monde on the eve of ww i. Sleuth in this world of solidified officialdom is the Jesuit psychiatrist Ksaveri Ignatz von Oszietsky, who is assisted by his clever friend Elizabeth von Thurn. The story is very stylishly and sophistically told in beautiful language and yet I was somewhat disappointed. A bit too much doom & gloom to my liking (paedophilia, pornographia, psychopathia) - but very ingeniously done. With this book the Belgian author won the Diamanten Kogel 2010 (Diamant Bullitt), a yearly prize for the best, most thrilling and originally in Dutch written mystery.

76marieke54
Mar 30, 2011, 9:55 am

No. 33 Eye of the red tsar by Sam Eastland



Doubtful handling of historical characters (tsar Nicholas II, Stalin) in a thrilling enough story. I liked (the atmosphere of) the first chapters.

77marieke54
Edited: Mar 31, 2011, 6:14 am

No. 34 De hond van terracotta by Andrea Camilleri.



While working on a case of mafia arms smuggling, Montelbano finds in a closed room in cave filled with weaponry the two entangled and mummified bodies of a man and a woman, guarded by a life-size terra cotta dog. Both crimes are solved; for the second one Montelbano has to delve deep in the past.
I love these Montelbano stories.

78gennyt
Apr 1, 2011, 7:27 pm

I've got the first Montalbano book - must get round to it soon. I'm glad you are enjoying them.

79alcottacre
Apr 2, 2011, 2:06 am

I have been off LT for a bit now, Marieke, but I hope to keep up with you from here on out :)

80marieke54
Apr 2, 2011, 4:14 am

> 79 Stasia I'm so glad you are back! I hope you are feeling better and in circumstances to enjoy and keep up with the spring. All our reading so easyily prevents us to see all those small things openinge themselves up around us. A miracle.

> 78 Genny, I am sure you will enjoy the Montelbano books. Such humoristic/sarcastic and still warm depiction of people and situations. Also: great books when you are in a black mood :)

81alcottacre
Edited: Apr 2, 2011, 6:52 am

#80: Thanks! I am glad to be back.

82marieke54
Edited: Apr 8, 2011, 10:56 am

No. 35 De kraai by Kader Abdolah



Very poetically told partly autobiographical story of a political refugee’s escape from Iran via Turkey to Europe where he ends up in Amsterdam, finding himself in remarkably stable existence as a coffee trader, trying to combine this job with his destiny which is being a writer. As he has become a writer in the Dutch language, his story is full of references to Dutch (historical) literature.

The book was this year’s gift during last month’s annual Week of the Book.

83alcottacre
Apr 8, 2011, 9:35 pm

#82: I do not see that the book has been translated as of yet. Too bad.

84marieke54
Apr 9, 2011, 2:20 am

I fear it won't Stasia. But his The House of the Mosque is, a very good book.

85alcottacre
Apr 9, 2011, 2:22 am

#84: I have heard of his The House of the Mosque. Unfortunately my local library does not have it yet.

86marieke54
Apr 9, 2011, 2:25 am

No. 36 Bloedlanden: Europa tussen Hitler en Stalin by Timothy Snyder (Dutch translation of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin)



In Bloodlands Snyder gives the history of a part of Central Europe between the years of the Holodomor and the Holocaust (1932- 1945).

The bloodlands are: Latvia, Estonia. Lithuania , Eastern Poland, Belarus, Western Russia and the Ukraine). They are called this way because in those years the people in this countries suffered more than one time a terrible fate. They were successively part or occupied by the sovjets, the nazi’s, the sovjets again or vice-versa. And both regimes were extremely murderous; the sovjets mostly in “peace time”, the nazi’s mostly during the war. Snyder goes deep into the motives and methods of both regimes.

The book gave me a much better understanding of the recent history of Central Europe than I had so far. It also kicked down some ideas I realized I had of the Holocaust, more or less put on the wrong track by way of pictures and stories of the emaciated victims made by (western) liberators, and by the many reports of (western) survivors (survivors!). It was not in the concentration camps that most were murdered. And in the case of nazi rule not even in the death camps. It was by bullet beside holes mostly dug by themselves and in trucks or train wagons by way of carbon monoxide or another gas, that the great majority of the Jews died, in the most eastern part of German-occupied territory, where no Western liberator set foot.

We in the West know a lot about nazi rule. The book also gives a clear picture of the horror rule of the sovjets in those territories: the Holomodor, the great purges, the ethnic cleansing, the Gulag. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the murder of the Polish officers, the sovjet anti-semitism.

With the motives and methods lots of numbers are given. As are the difficulties, that go with the counting. The struggle for the memory that came after the war - what about the Jewish victim that lived in an area that was first Polish, than German, than Russian. All parties killer party included claimed him.

At the end of his book Snyder summons scientists not only to detect the numbers but to put them in perspective, and summons us to transform them back to humans. For if we cannot do than, than Hitler and Stalin not only shaped our world but also our humanity.

I found this book a hard but also an indispensable read. I think while reading on Central Europe and the Baltics I will repeatedly fall back on it.

87alcottacre
Apr 9, 2011, 2:32 am

#86: That book looks interesting to me. I will check the local library for it. I am glad to see it has been translated.

88marieke54
Apr 17, 2011, 3:11 am

No. 37 Baltische zielen : lotgevallen in Estland, Letland en Litouwen by Jan Brokken




15 bio’s of known and unknown Baltics that reflect the turbulent history of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the 20th century (the known: Eisenstein, Romain Gary, Lipchitz, Hannah Arendt, Mark Rothko, Arvo Pärt).
For this region this book adds flesh and bones to my latest read, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands.
The consequences of the successive regimes of nazi’s and soviets (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) are made identifiable in the lives of these people.
Brokken traveled these countries many times, visiting birthplaces and other significant locations, interviewing and speaking with people. His descriptions not only give an idea of the complexities of life there, but also of the beauty of these countries of which we know so little.

89marieke54
Edited: Apr 17, 2011, 12:01 pm

No. 38 Op de loop : een Letse familiekroniek by Modris Eksteins




Canadian historian Modris Eksteins was born in 1941 in Latvia and after his parents escaped that country, lived his early years as one of the millions of Displaced Persons that populated Europe after ww ii. In 1949 the family succeeded in reaching Canada where they could start a life.
In this book Eksteins mixes the history of his family with the history of Latvia, suffering (with Estonia and Lithuania) continuous abuse because of its location between Russia and Germany.
Starting point is the beautiful servant Griethe, his great-grandmother, married to an Estonian servant by the Baltic-German baron who made her pregnant. The story goes on to the nineties.
In it the complicated situation of the years between ww i and ww ii is given ample attention. But the story's real hinge is the year 1945: “Stunde Null”. All the other “paragraphs”, forward ànd backward lead up to the situation of absolute destruction of “Stunde Null”. No linear chronology in this book.
If by this method Eksteins intended to emphasize and pass on the centrality of the experience of the destruction he succeeded completely.

90marieke54
Edited: Apr 23, 2011, 10:55 am

No. 39 Luchtfietsen (Treading Air) byJaan Kross



Historical novel by Estonian writer Jaan Kross about the generation he grew up with. He himself was arrested by the Germans (1944, six months) and by the Russians (1946-1954), who deported him to the Gulag.

Protagonist is Ullo Paerand, a sensitive and intelligent man with a fantastic memory. Most of the story is told by his lifelong friend Jaak Sirkel who wants to write a book about Paerand. After the boys meet at Tallinn’s Wikman Gymnasium we follow Ullo’s life. His youth is a happy one with travels and vacations at home and abroad, the family being very well-off.
Then his father leaves his mother (and him) for a new love; a younger copy of his mother, Ullo observes. He feels as terribly betrayed as his mother.
Hard times follow for both of them during which Ullo, gifted with an enterprising spirit, by taking all kinds of jobs supports his mother morally and financially. They even start a laundry business. After some studying and a job with a sport journal, his career gains momentum and he finds himself professionally engaged in the Prime Minister’s office.

Then all changes. First by the invasion of the Germans and later by the occupation of the Russians.

Ullo, who has married meanwhile, and did all kinds of small and not so small things against the oppressor, succeeds in surviving. When he and his wife after the war take their chances to escape Estonia where the Russians are taking over, they suddenly realize that most people and certainly the newborn an unborn children cannot do such a thing.
Then they turn their bicycles and bike home.

This decision determines the rest of his life. Some forty years of making and spraying suitcases in a factory follow. And a premature death because of an illness contracted by this work.

Although this is a sad story, Ullo certainly isn’t a sad man. He is a lively, enterprising and principled character. A nice man.

Fine novel.

91marieke54
Apr 23, 2011, 9:50 am

No. 40 Parels van Rome: een reisverhaal by Rosita Steenbeek



This lovely little book was a gift in the so called Week of the Classics (last 13-24 April, we have lots of special weeks and months in Dutch book business). In it Rosita Steenbeek travels to the “Pearls of Rome”, the small Italian islands Ponza and Capri and remembers her visit to another one, Ventotene. They were called so because of their position in antiquity when the rich and mighty vacationed there, or were sent there in exile.
As in her other travel books Steenbeek is an entertaining raconteur with a lot of knowledge of her subject and very interesting friends (here: Valentina, a chief-cook who in her leisure time is a fiumarola, a lady who scours the Tiber for antique treasures, mostly those persons are men. Steenbeek wrote beautifully about them in Schimmenrijk).

Reading Steenbeek one immediately wishes to take long dives in books about Roman and Greek history, preferably up on the Mediterranean spot.

92marieke54
Edited: Apr 23, 2011, 11:04 am

No. 41 Nero en Seneca: de despoot en de denker by Anton van Hooff



In this book classicist Anton van Hooff tells how Nero became the paranoid and cruel Roman emperor we know, despised by the Roman elite but (because of the entertainments he supplied) loved by the people, even after his death; and how his teacher and adviser Seneca whose ambition completely ruled his integrity gave in to him again and again, only to recover in the last hours of his life when he succeeded more or less in directing the “suicide on him”.
While giving a fine history of these intertwining lives and the times they lived in, the author ponders a bit on the role of tyrants and intellectuals in society and takes small trips to other times, places and persons.

93marieke54
Edited: May 10, 2011, 1:52 pm

No. 42 Kameraad Baron: een reis door de verdwijnende wereld van de Transsylvaanse aristocratie by Jaap Scholten



This is a book about Transylvanian nobility, about its life before ww ii, about its destruction by Romania’s Communist rulers and about what its children come across, at least the ones who after the fall of the Ceausescu regime turned up again or trickled in from abroad.

The titles of the three parts of the book are: “They were weighed”, “They were torn to pieces”, “They were found wanting”. In using these titles the author relates to Miklos Banffy and his Transylvanian Trilogy. Before he became a writer, Miklos Banffy who is called the Transylvanian Tolstoy was an important politician. The fate of his family is also part of the book.

The author who with his young family presently lives in the country, came to this subject by way of falling in love with a descendent of one of those families that had ended up in Holland. His method is: travelling the country searching for stories. Oral history. En passant (and to my great joy!) he describes the beauties of Transylvanian nature.

The center of the book is its second part: as Romania was an agrarian country, the main aim of Romania’s Communist party after ww ii was: to create a working class. They did this by collectivizing agriculture, by destroying the social fabric of the villages, the traditions, the local elites, the libraries etc. etc. In the night of 03-03-1949 all persons of nobility were deported from their homes. They became persons with DO (Domicilio Obligatoriu), came to live in dumps and cellars in certain cities with the obligation to report permanently to the authorities, also obliged to earn their living by hand or machine, their children couldn’t get any further education than primary school where they were designated as “enemies of the people”. A lot of them disappeared in hard labor camps, a very small number of them was successful in escaping the country, others had fled before the night of the deportation.

The first part of the book is about the lives they lived before, on their estates. I am planning to read further on this, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Between the woods and the water about it, and maybe the above mentioned books by Miklos Banffy.

The last part of the book tells of the children who now are trying to get back the (ruins of) the old manors and some of the estates, which with great difficulty they are restoring and renovating. About their contact with the locals. It also tells of the “new nobility” of nouveaux riches, offspring of Communist nomenclature’s second rate that had managed to put away the resources of the party.
The book includes a lot of pictures, a list of geographical names in Hungarian, Romanian and German, relevant maps, a bibliography, and a list of small bio’s of persons. It is published in 2010 and not (yet?) translated.

I found this a moving and a fascinating book.

94marieke54
May 9, 2011, 11:05 am

No. 43 Tussen wouden en water / Between the woods and the water by Patrick Leigh Fermor



Second volume of the description of a walk across Europe to Constantinople that Leigh Fermor began in 1933.

Leigh Fermor is a favorite author of mine, I wanted to reread his encounters with the Transylvanian nobility, the warm welcome he found and his prolonged stays with them because, in short, I wanted to sniff up some of the atmosphere mentioned in the first part of my no. 42: Kameraad Baron. This time I read the Dutch translation. (Only three of his books have been translated in Dutch.)

The opening of the book finds “Paddy” crossing the Danube. A visit to Prague is followed by a trip downriver to Budapest, passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania: remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies and a variety of sects and after that the Iron Gates, the division between the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans, where the story ends.
A glorious report!

A 2008 article by William Dalrymple about Leigh Fermor:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3559958/Patrick-Leigh-Fermor-The-man-wh...

95alcottacre
May 9, 2011, 7:56 pm

I am behind on threads again, Marieke, but catching up. I hate when you read books that have not been translated yet. Op de Loop looks like one I would enjoy!

96marieke54
May 10, 2011, 1:13 pm

Op de Loop ís translated, Stasia: Walking Since Daybreak: a Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century.

97marieke54
May 10, 2011, 1:37 pm

No. 44 The Transylvanian Trilogy, book one: They were counted by Miklos Banffy



A wonderful book and a real page turner, this first volume of the Transylvanian Trilogy.

By following the lives of the very different friends and cousins Balint Abády and László Gyeröffy we get a comprehensive portrait of pre ww i Hungarian-Transylvanian aristocracy and its world within the decaying Dual Monarchy with its many minorities. For the story and a review I gave a link (to the New Statesman). For Miklós Bánffy, keen psychologist, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikl%C3%B3s_B%C3%A1nffy .

These books too, were recommended by Jaap Scholten in his Kameraad Baron (see no. 42). This first one I read from the library, and since it is the only one they have I ordered the complete trilogy which is still available and I am eagerly awaiting now.
Foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

98alcottacre
Edited: May 10, 2011, 9:58 pm

#96: Thanks for letting me know, Marieke! I will look and see if my local library has it.

#97: That one looks very good. I will see if the library has that one too.

99marieke54
May 20, 2011, 10:30 am

No. 45 De behouden tong : geschiedenis van een jeugd by Elias Canetti



In this first volume of his autobiography Canetti looks back on the first twenty years of his life (1901-1921). Splendidly he evokes the atmosphere of his younger self in times and places (Rutschuk, Manchester, Vienna, Zürich), gives an idea of the mighty influences of both his parents on his life, traces the beginnings of his attitude against death, his terrible jealousy, his cosmopolitanism. Later this year I hope to read the two next volumes.

100marieke54
May 20, 2011, 11:08 am

No. 46 Heer & meester: berichten uit de voormalige Dubbelmonarchie by Jaap Scholten



I read this book because I enjoyed the author’s Kameraad Baron (no. 42) so much and wanted to know a bit more of his personal involvement in Hungary and Transylvania. It comprises about 70 small pieces that were published earlier in a newspaper (NRC). In those pieces Jaap Scholten tells about his travels to Central Europe, his falling in love with an Hungarian woman whom he marries, his choice to live with wife and children in Hungary, first in Budapest, later in a small village in the country, his daily life and encounters with people, his thoughts about the regions past, present and future, etc. Some pieces are small preludes to his excellent Kameraad Baron.

101marieke54
May 20, 2011, 11:38 am

No. 47 Knossos and the prophets of modernism by Cathy Gere



In this book Cathy Gere “attempts to understand the temple builders of the age of concrete – the archaeologists, architects, artists, classicists, writers and poets of the twentieth century A.D. who reconstructed Minoan Crete in modernist materials”. She “chronicles how Europe’s traumatic experience of modern warfare produced its false memory of a peaceful Cretan childhood (..) From the Franco-Prussian War to the Cold War, all conflicts required a different Bronze Age to serve as its prehistory or its antithesis”.

A very erudite embroidery on the theme “every reconstruction is a construction”, seasoned with lots of interesting and agreeable stories about all those “temple builders of the age of concrete”.

102pbadeer
May 20, 2011, 12:16 pm

>>97 marieke54: - I just did a day trip with my daughter to Budapest last month, and I have been looking for some literature to give me more of their history. This sounds right up my alley. Thanks for the review!

103alcottacre
May 20, 2011, 11:05 pm

#101: I have to look for that one!

104marieke54
Edited: May 23, 2011, 11:26 am

This message has been deleted by its author.

105marieke54
May 23, 2011, 11:25 am

No. 48 Dronken van het leven : A. den Doolaard, zwerver, schrijver, journalist by Hans Olink




Biography of a known Dutch author whose books in my youth many liked to read for literature lists at High school. Den Doolaard (1901-1994), a clergyman’s son and a born vitalist, lived a full, passionate and adventurous life in which he climbed mountains and travelled a lot and was both a journalist and a novelist. The country of his soul was former Yugoslavia and his most popular novels are situated in that area. Earlier than most other people in my country he saw the rising anti-Semitism and the dangers of popular fascism in Europe, was in fact refused admittance to quite a number of countries because in his articles he wrote what he saw; when the Nazi’s overran Europe he escaped to London were he became the voice of Radio Oranje, broadcasting to occupied Holland. Later in life he was for some years vice-chairman of PEN International. He kept travelling and writing, became a fierce opponent of nuclear armament and, after a long trip to India, an admirer of Buddhism.

Since in a single but important matter the author Hans Olink used one of Den Doolaard’s novels as a source, I expect some controversy about this fine biography.



Den Doolaard in the twenties



In the seventies

106alcottacre
May 23, 2011, 9:12 pm

#105: It does not look as though that one has been translated into English. Rats.

107marieke54
May 24, 2011, 6:37 am

Alas, no Stasia, but is just published. Sofar I am the only person in LT who owns a copy. I’ve been waiting for this biography which’s publication date was postponed quite a few times. As soon as it was in the bookshop I had it.

But some of Den Doolaard’s books are translated:
Novels: Express to the East; The land behind God's back; Roll Back the Sea, a Novel.

Travel (quite “ancient”, the fifties): This is Yugoslavia (Contact photo books of the world); This Is Greece: I: The Mainland (Contact Photo Books of the World), This is Greece, II : The Islands, This is Venice.

108alcottacre
May 24, 2011, 2:13 pm

#107: Unfortunately I am still out of luck as my local library has none of Doolaard's books. Thanks for letting me know about the translated ones though!

109marieke54
Jun 5, 2011, 2:42 am

No. 49 Ich bin kein Berliner: Ein Reiseführer für faule Touristen by Wladimir Kaminer





Very entertaining small stories about Berlin and Berliners by a by now famous Russian immigrant. As I plan to read more German this year, this was an excellent book to start with. Kaminer’s use of the language is very straightforward.

110marieke54
Edited: Jun 5, 2011, 3:01 am

No. 50 Neem het niet! by Stéphane Hessel



Dutch translation of Indignez vous, a pamphlet in which an elderly Frenchman, concentration camp survivor and ex-diplomat, summons his compatriots and especially French youth to drop apathy and to revolt nonviolently. He asserts that indifference is the worst of attitudes. He speaks of his experience among the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exhorts young people to look around for topics of indignation. He then presents his own principal indignation at present, the strife in Palestine, the Gaza strip and the West Bank. He ends the tract by calling for non-violent action and for a peaceful uprising against the powers of finance capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Hessel

English translation: Time for Outrage



111marieke54
Jun 5, 2011, 2:56 am

No. 51 A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888/1889 by Frederic Morton



In this impressionistic book in which we not only follow crown prince Rudolf in his last year but also the daily struggles of some known Wieners (Staruss jr, Bruckner, Freud etc.) Morton gives his explanation of the suicide of Rudolf, together with Marie Vetsera.

I agree with this review: “The book is one of the most painless ways to understand both the Fall of the Hapsburgs and the causes of World War I. And Morton gives one of the most balanced accounts of the Mayerling tragedy and the events leading up to it. There are no villains here (with the possible exception of the obnoxious boor Kaiser Wilhelm) and no way-out conspiracy theory is endorsed to explain why a gifted young prince like Rudolf - the hope of European liberals - should have taken his own life and why a popular and ambitious teenager like Mary Vetsera would have agreed to a suicide pact with him. Dismissing the various "murder plot" theories as well as the "tragic romance" theories (Rudolph did, after all, spend the night before his suicide in another mistress’ bed!), Morton gives his own, far more plausible explanation for both the famous double suicide and the scores of other seemingly inexplicable suicides during the course of that remarkable year.”
http://www.peers.org/revnerv.html

112alcottacre
Jun 5, 2011, 4:06 am

Congratulations on passing 50 books for the year, Marieke!

I will look for the Morton book. Thanks for the recommendation.

113marieke54
Jun 6, 2011, 1:43 am

Thank you Stasia!

No. 52 Onweer in de Schemering: Wenen 1913-1914 by Frederic Morton



Central to this story are the events leading up to ww i.
Following the same process Morton in this later book leads us to 1913/14 Vienna, focusing on the Hapsburg family (elegant Emperor Franz Joseph, his heir the archduke Franz Ferdinand, that peace loving bully) and surrounding government clique, but also tracing the lives of some significant others who lived in the city at that time in history (Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Freud).

Seemingly inescapable tragedy develops to war. “Greek tragedy”?
Morton gives enough clues to make one wonder…

I liked this book even more than the previous (no. 51).

114alcottacre
Jun 12, 2011, 5:40 am

#113: My local library has A Nervous Splendor but not that one. Rats.

115marieke54
Jun 27, 2011, 1:23 pm

Having been on holyday I'm quite behind schedule now with the reading reports, so these days I will try to catch up.

No. 53 De erfenis van de Tempeliers by Steve Berry



A good holiday book, part of it was read during a long train journey. The book's suspense is of the putdownable kind, picking it up later you are at once back in the story which is about a quest for the material and spiritual legacy of the Templars.
Very entertaining read.

116marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 8:27 am

I am eight books behind. This weekend I wil try to catch up.

117alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 8:38 am

I hope you had a wonderful holiday, Marieke! It sounds like you got lots of reading done, if nothing else :)

How is your partner doing these days? Has she recovered fully?

118marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 8:40 am

No. 54 De boekendief by Markus Zusak



Moving war story for children and grown-ups. At first I wasn’t so impressed with the figure Mr. Death (speaking), but when I realized this anti-war story is also meant for children it was okay with me.
All the other characters were very convincing. Zusak did a great job by writing this book based on the war experiences of his family.

119alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 8:41 am

#118: I like that one a lot too!

120marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 8:52 am

> Hi Stasia,

Yes, our holiday was very nice. Half of it we spent in a very sunny Berlin where we saw a lot of beautiful things. The other half was spent at home, with visits to family and friends, and yes also doing some reading. Happily my partner recovered fully and is back to work from which she will retire next month (65 years). The "retirement festivities" are in full swing.

121alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 9:00 am

It sounds like the retirement festivities are off to a fine start! I am glad to hear the she is doing better.

122marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 9:10 am

No. 55 Berlin … Endstation by Edgar Hilsenrath



A somewhat bitter story about a Jewish writer who as a boy escaped Hitler, as a man returned from the USA to Berlin because he wanted to live in his native tongue. There his books become bestsellers but he himself in the end is mauled to a fatal stroke by a bunch of neo-nazi’s. Hilsenrath has a characteristic dry and ruthless style, that I like very much.

123marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 9:12 am

> Are you yourself fully recovered again Stasia?

124alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 9:22 am

#123: Yeah, I am fine. Thanks for checking.

125marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 9:33 am

No. 56 De vreesmachine; thriller over de bouwfraude by Ashe Stil



I know Stil as an author of beautifully researched historical detectives situated in 17th century Amsterdam, so in his recent whodunit that deals with fraud in the world of contemporary construction he strikes a new path. Successfully, the book is a real page turner and the characters are convincing.
Some of its action takes place on places I know well, a thing that added to my reading pleasure.

126alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 9:34 am

#125: Well, rats. It does not appear as though that one has been translated.

127marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 9:57 am

Alas, no. He deserves so to be translated in English! But some of his books are translated in German.

128marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 9:59 am

No. 57 De Wittgensteins : geschiedenis van een excentrieke familie by Alexander Waugh



Biography of a very gifted, complicated and quarreling family. Most of Waughs attention goes to brother Paul who lost his right arm in ww i and later managed to have a career as a left handed concerto pianist. He had composers (Britten, Hindemith, Strauss) writing pieces for him. Although the author gives a lot of interesting enough context the book disappointed me a bit, I think because I didn’t like its protagonists enough (with the exception of Ludwig. One day I will read Monk's biography of him).

129marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 10:18 am


No. 58 This Body of Death (Inspector Lynley Mysteries) by Elizabeth George



Because of its fatness a real holiday book, this thriller with its variety of story lines that eventually come together in a grim final end. Very good story in which child abuse and its consequences play a pivotal role. It’s because of her Havers character and the way she has children acting in her thrillers that I will always keep reading Elizabeth George. But as we aren’t always vacationing I wouldn’t mind if her next books will have some less pages.

130marieke54
Edited: Jul 15, 2011, 10:49 am

No. 59 De noodkreet in de fles by Jussi Adler-Olsen



This was my first Adler-Olsen thriller. Police-sergeant Mock runs a bureau that investigates cold cases. He is presented a long neglected bottle with a mostly unreadable small text in it, that turns out to be a cry for help. The story that unfolds is about child abductions and maltreatment of children, extortion, sects of believers, murder. But also of friendship and good fellowship in hard times. Mock is a very humane character. A page turner.

131marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 10:52 am

No. 60 Amsterdam voor vijf duiten per dag by Maarten Hell



A travel guide of 17th century Amsterdam in the tradition of the Lonely Planet Guides. Beautifully done! A must have for people who enjoy Dutch history.

132marieke54
Jul 15, 2011, 11:07 am


No. 61 Spoorloos by Harlan Coben



Didn’t like this clever and thrilling enough whodunit. Maybe because I couldn’t sympathize with the protagonist. Such a goodie, that young man who bends but does not crack under the blows that life deals him again and again and again. Character for a victor in a violent computer game. Unconvincing.

133alcottacre
Jul 15, 2011, 5:02 pm

#129: I am also an Elizabeth George fan. I am glad to see you enjoy her books as well.

134marieke54
Aug 6, 2011, 3:41 am

No. 62 Hitlers Edeljude: das Leben des Armenarztes Eduard Bloch by Brigitte Hamann



Not only the life story of the doctor and his family, but also the story of Austria and of Linz in the first half of the twentieth century. Anti-Semitism everywhere. Bloch is a modest and very hard working man and a pious Jew. As he is the physician who assists Hitler’s mother in her last, fatal disease we learn something of him and his family too. Bloch quite liked the boy Hitler, and later never understood how he came to be “Hitler”. And Hitler never forgot what Bloch did for his mother, a fact that enabled the Bloch family to leave for America at a moment when such a thing was no longer possible for other Jews. The book, which is very rich in description and detail also reminded me more than once of the novel Het lot van de familie Meijer / Melniz.
Last year I read Brigitte Hamann’s biography of Winnifred Wagner, this book I liked even more
Highly recommended.

135marieke54
Aug 6, 2011, 3:42 am

No. 63 Doodskap by Arnaldur Indriðason



A page turner. Iceland just before the financial crisis. Although I liked the beautiful names everyone has in this thriller I wasn’t so impressed by the story itself, straightforward and simple.

136marieke54
Aug 6, 2011, 3:49 am

No. 64 The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan: A Novel of New Amsterdam
by Bill Greer



A nice historical novel about the milieu of the 17th century settlers and their dealings with the indigenous people in which a candid Dutch lady migrant confronts Peter Stuyvesant and saves Manhattan a massacre.

137alcottacre
Aug 6, 2011, 3:49 am

#134: Too bad that one has not been translated. It looks right up my alley!

138marieke54
Edited: Aug 6, 2011, 4:05 am

No. 65 Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, (Einbändige Ausgabe) Teil 1: August 1967 – Dezember 1967 by Uwe Johnson



First part of a more than 1700 p. novel I have set my teeth in and that I hope to finish this year. Later more. (I hope.)

First two parts are translated in English, see http://www.amazon.com/Anniversaries-Gesine-Cresspahl-Uwe-Johnson/dp/0156011662/r... .
Also up to your alley I think, Stasia!

139marieke54
Aug 6, 2011, 3:56 am

> 137

Good chance it will be translated, some of her other books are: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&fi...

140alcottacre
Aug 6, 2011, 4:06 am

#138: Cool beans! Thanks for the link, Marieke.

#139: I will check that out too.

142gennyt
Aug 20, 2011, 4:07 pm

Marieke, hello, it's far too long since I visited your thread - and what a strange thing: I came across a review of They were counted on rebeccanyc's thread just a couple of days ago - she has just read it, and that was the first time I'd heard anyone mention the book in this group. But now I see that you read it about 3 months ago, so you are really the first.

I have had a copy for about a year: a friend was raving about it and sent me the book, but I have not yet tried to read it. I also have a copy of Between the Woods and the Water, but as I have not yet read the first book in that sequence by Leigh Fermor, I am holding off on that one. But it's good to know that the books complement each other well, and that you enjoyed them both so much: I must put them higher up on the list to be read!

143edwinbcn
Sep 17, 2011, 10:08 pm

Ik had je draad al gebookmarked (sterretje) maar er komt niks meer bij (?). "Back to work syndrome", I suppose.

Ja, blijkbaar hebbeb veel Nederlanders een draad hier. Sinds 3 jaar lees ik veel meer, enerzijds gestimuleerd door LibraryThing, en anderzijds reis ik sinds ongeveer 3 jaar veel meer met het openbaar vervoer, zodat ik dagelijks 3 tot 4 uur in de bus/metro/trein zit ... te lezen. En dat bovenop mijn oorspronkelijk leesgedrag zet zoden aan de dijk.

Any new books read in September?

144marieke54
Oct 25, 2011, 6:21 am

> 142

Hi Genny,

Sorry for the long delay. By these books you will not be disappointed!

The Banffy books are part of a trilogy, the other ones are: They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided, I will read them in due course.

145marieke54
Oct 25, 2011, 6:58 am

143

Hi Edwin,

My reading since august:

66. De Patagonische haas : memoires by Claude Lanzmann. Autobiographical selections of his life. I read this book because I saw his film Shoah twice.

67. Over het doppen van bonen by Wieslaw Mysliwski. Impressive novel, long monologue, postwar Poland.

68. Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World by James Mather. Europeans in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean. I read better books on this subject.

69. Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken: Roman by Edgar Hilsenrath. Novel about the Armenian genocide.

70. Napoli! by Jan Paul Hinrichs. Travel. Different visitors on Naples.

71. Het Pauperparadijs: een familiegeschiedenis by Suzanna Jansen. Family history. Big welfare project in 19th century Northern Netherlands.

72. Dorsvloer vol confetti by Franca Treur. Novel about a very strict protestant youth.

73. Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Historical novel (Alatriste series).

74. 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire by Giusto Traina A round of travel through the world of late antiquity. Great notes and bibliography for serious students of these times.

75. De utopie van de vrije markt by Hans Achterhuis. Great book on the utopian aspects of capitalism.

76. De ingewijden by Hella Haasse. Novel in which six different but sometimes connected persons meet a crises in their lives on postwar Crete.

77. Zwanen schieten by Hella S. Haasse. Autobiographical book.

78. Jeruzalem: de biografie by Simon Sebag Montefiore. So well done!

79. The Penelopiad by Matgaret Atwood. Penelope’s side of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Refreshing! And clever.

Zoals je ziet ben ik gewoon door blijven lezen. Ik had het alleen even gehad met het verslag doen op deze draad, een soort draad-moeheid denk ik. Maar ik pak het nu weer op.
Mijn leesgewoonten zijn ook behoorlijk veranderd: sinds twee jaar lees ik weer boeken helemaal uit, sta er zelfs structureel 1,5 uur vroeger voor op.
Mee eens, het openbaar vervoer is geweldige leesplek. Maar heb jij nu jouw Nederlandstalige draad verlaten?

146mene
Oct 25, 2011, 8:41 am

Amsterdam voor vijf duiten per dag sounds interesting! Is it still "usable" in Amsterdam now?
The Penelopiad sounds interesting! The Odysseia is one of my favourite stories so I'm quite curious about this book. In which style is it written? Prose or the poetry-form?

sinds twee jaar lees ik weer boeken helemaal uit
Las je eerst van alle boeken een beetje?

147marieke54
Oct 25, 2011, 9:59 am

> 146 mene

I like to do city walking. And then it is very usable, for instance together with 2 other small books on Amsterdam: Historische gids van Amsterdam. Dl. 2: De 17de-eeuwse stadsuitleg and Een kleine stadsgids: wandelingen door het Amsterdam van Geert Mak.

The Penelopiad is mostly written in (rhythmical) prose, but there is also poetry in it. Penelope’s monologues, in which she looks back on her life, are alternated with the songs of the Chorus consisting of “the Twelve Hanged Maids”, you know, the slave girls who were ordered to clean the mess after the slaughtering party and then were killed themselves by Odysseus, a thing Penelope never forgave him.

We are talking about an immortal story. If you enjoyed The Odyssey, you will certainly enjoy Margaret Atwood’s book.
Did you also see the “marathon performance” of “Odysseus” by the theatergroup “De Appel”? http://www.8weekly.nl/artikel/5952/toneelgroep-de-appel-odysseus-monstervoorstel...

Ik was een ‘book dipper’. Dat wordt je heel makkelijk met twee goede bibliotheken in de buurt. Ik verlang er wel weer eens naar, zo’n weekendje met een paar rugzakken boeken.

148mene
Oct 25, 2011, 11:38 am

I'll try finding the Penelopiad :)

No, I haven't seen that performance. This is the first time I heard of it. I always look(ed) at the performance posters of the theatre in Nieuwegein and the Stadsschouwburg in Utrecht, but I don't remember any Odysseus performance by Theatergroep De Appel (might be that I missed it though).

149gennyt
Oct 25, 2011, 1:13 pm

I saw the Penelopiad performed as a play in Newcastle a few years ago - very good!

Glad to see you posting again about your reading - you seem to have got over your 'draad-moeheid' (which I suppose is a thread-funk rather than a book-funk?).

Enjoying the mix of Dutch and English!