Kidzdoc Takes a New Approach in 2025, Part 1

Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you well in your reading plans in 2025. As for me, after several years of unsatisfactory efforts, whether due to reading a much smaller number of books than I had planned or not reading the books I genuinely wanted to, I decided late last year to try something different. I chose 25 books that sat in my personal library for years but have been left unread for assorted reasons, and I will read them preferentially this year. In addition, my idea of reading books from the Levant region was voted as one of the quarterly themes for the Reading Globally group, which will take place in the second quarter of 2025, and I have a large number of books in my library that qualify, not all of which I'll get to this year. I won't set a numerical goal for the year, as I value quality much more than quantity.

First, here are the books I've chosen to read preferentially this year, save for the books that fit the Levant region theme:

James Baldwin: Collected Essays by James Baldwin
Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time by Teju Cole
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Genomics and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver, & Traci Burch
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer
Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture by Ed Morales
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
My Struggle, Book 5 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté*
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith
Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science by Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD
Self-Care for Black Men: 100 Ways to Heal and Liberate by Jor-El Caraballo
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu*
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Tremor by Teju Cole*
W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis

*This book isn't in my personal library, so I'll borrow it from my local library.

Selected books from the Levant region from my library (I certainly won't get to all of them this year):

Egyptian Literature
     Alaa al Aswany: The Yacoubian Building
     Nawal El Saadawi: Memoirs of a Woman Doctor
     Bahaa Taher: Love in Exile

Israeli Literature
     David Grossman: More Than I Love My Life; To the End of the Land
     Amos Oz: Elsewhere, Perhaps; In the Land of Israel
     A.B. Yehoshua: The Extra; The Tunnel

Lebanese Literature:
     Elias Khoury: Children of the Ghetto trilogy (My Name is Adam✅️; Star of the Sea; ?)

Palestinian Literature:
     Liana Badr: Eye of the Mirror: A Modern Arabic Novel from Palestine
     Mahmoud Darwish: Journal of an Ordinary Grief
     Edward Said: Out of Place; Orientalism

Syrian Literature:
     Riad Sattouf: The Arab of the Future series*

Turkish Literature:
     Yasar Kemal: They Burn the Thistles
     Orhan Pamuk: My Name Is Red; Other Colors: Essays and a Story; Snow
     Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar: A Mind at Peace

*I'll borrow the books in this series from my local library.

As usual, and in keeping with my career as a pediatrician, I love to prominently display photos of children reading in the beginning of my threads.

Currently reading:

  

Life Embitters by Josep Pla
The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray

January:
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury
People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi
Beyond Every Wall: Becoming the 1st Black Female Transplant Surgeon by Velma P. Scantlebury M.D.

February:
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

This thread is open for business!

Just setting down my cushion Darryl.

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race is definitely on my list to be acquired and read next year. Will look at your other reading goals tomorrow Darryl.

I will be interested to hear what you think of Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time .
There are three other books by Teju Cole in your catalogue. Have you read those?

I was impressed by Tremor and look forward to read your opinion.

>5 Caroline_McElwee: Welcome, Caroline! I'll probably read The Code Breaker in the first quarter of the year, as the topic is of great interest to me.

>6 edwinbcn: Hi, Edwin! Apparently I've only read Open City, to my surprise. I'm glad that you liked Tremor; it won the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, which is how I heard about it.

Interested to read your thoughts on Dinaw Mengetsu. I've heard great things about his use of language - will probably explore his work later in the year as well - as your list of books from the Levant. I've always loved Darwish's poetry and Said's Orientalism, but I have a lot to learn from the literature in this part of the world.

Happy new thread and new year, Darryl. I've dropped a star here.

I have read 4 from your list in >1 kidzdoc: and really want to read the 2 you mentioned by Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk. Over the last year or so, I have done some online webinars with both of them and am interested in reading their work.

I will set up my new thread on January 1st unless I can get my act together and do it sooner.

Your plan to read more intentionally from what you already own is what I set out to do last year but failed, for a number of reasons. It will also be my number one goal this year and I hope to do better.

>8 DAGray08: I'm a fan of Dinaw Mengestu's work, Dwight, as I gave 4½ stars to each of his three previous books, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, How to Read the Air, and All Our Names. My local library system has copies of Someone Like Us, so I'll likely read it soon.

I enjoyed the poetry in Darwish's collection A River Dies of Thirst. Thanks for the reminder about Orientalism; I own a copy of it, so I'll add it to the list in >2 kidzdoc:. I might also write brief reviews of books from authors in the region that I've read and particularly liked, but my favorite authors off the top of my head are Amos Oz, David Grossman, and Elias Khoury.

>9 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley! I'll look for your first thread of 2025 and follow you as well. The Myth of Normal was recommended to me, and I discovered The Body Keeps the Score in one of my favorite local bookshops.

I did read a lot of good non-fiction books last year but I was generally disappointed by the novels I read, in large part because I focused on books nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize. My copy of The Covenant of Water was literally staring at me for months, as it was prominently on display on top of the half bookcase in our living room, so I'm glad that I finally started reading it this month.

I like your plan for your reading in the new year, Darryl. Looking forward to following along!

>11 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I have your 2024 thread starred, although I haven't commented much, and I'll continue to follow you in 2025.

I hope 2025 will be a good year for you Darryl. 2024 has been hard, but you have put a lot of work into trying to rebalance your health issues, with sound professional help, and I hope that really starts to pay off.

Happy New Year, Darryl. Popping in on my rounds dropping off my stars. Hope 2025 is a good one for you.

Hi- my suggestion after reading your book list for 2025. I would recommend Orhan Pamuk's book/ memoir IstanbulMemories and the City.

>13 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. The beginning of 2024 was quite difficult for my mother and then myself, but we've both been doing well since April, thank God. I pray this continues into 2025, although considering my mother's slowly worsening dementia I can't expect that will be the case.

>14 AlisonY: Thanks, Alison! I've starred your thread, and I look forward to your reading in 2025.

>15 torontoc: Thanks for that suggestion, Cyrel. Unfortunately Istanbul: Memories and the City isn't a book I own, and since I want to preferentially read the books I've selected in >1 kidzdoc: and >2 kidzdoc: I doubt that I'll get to it this year. I'll keep it in mind, though.

That's quite an impressive book list for '25, Daryl!

I just downloaded Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine from the library. Haven't started it yet, so it will be one of the first books of '25 for me.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year. Here's to good reading and good health!

Happy New Thread and Happiest of New Years!

Enjoy your black eyed peas and collard greens celebration of the new year!

I don't believe I've shared this link with you which is another epidemiology thread I follow here on LT. The last post will be especially interesting to you I think.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/361497#8708084

>17 tangledthread: Thanks, tangledthread! It may be no less ambitious than my reading plans from years past, but I'll be far more satisfied at year's end if I can read a clear majority of these books from my TBR collection, especially those in >1 kidzdoc:.

I look forward to your take on Legacy.

I also wish you a happy and productive New Year!

twenty-five is an appropriate number. Wish you happy reading. Your Levant list looks fantastic.

>18 streamsong: Happy New Year to you, Janet! Yes, I'll make Hoppin' John (for good luck) and collard greens (which represent money, e.g. dollar bills) again on New Year's Day. The one difference is that I'll use field peas (cowpeas) instead of black-eyed peas this year. Two of my friends and former partners, both African American women from South Carolina, have taught me that cowpeas are more authentic, as they were brought to the United States by slaves from West Africa and cultivated in coastal South Carolina. I was able to find dried field peas in my local garden farm market last week, so I'll start soaking them tonight and cook Hoppin' John and collard greens with a ham hock after breakfast tomorrow. What is even more authentic in Hoppin' John in the Lowcountry is the Sea Island red pea, which is also a cowpea that comes from West Africa. I didn't see any last week, and although Amazon does sell them dried it wouldn't be delivered until the second week of January. I bought a pan of cornbread (which represents gold) from my local supermarket, which traditionally goes with Hoppin' John and collard greens on New Year's Day, as I'll be busy enough cooking tomorrow and even though I have a great recipe for Southern buttermilk skillet cornbread I'm not sure anyone else will eat it, including my mother.

I'll post my meal in La Cucina 2025 tomorrow, and ask others if they make any special meals for New Year's Day. Many people in Pennsylvania will have pork and sauerkraut tomorrow, but I'll be curious what other traditions are, especially in this group with so many international members.

Thanks for that interesting and disturbing link. That is very sad indeed.

>20 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan! Given the long list of books from the Levant region I want to get to I'll start reading books from the list next month, starting with Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury.

Happy New Year, Darryl. I hope 2025 is good to you and yours.

Happy 2025, Darryl.

I thought I would come and seek you out dear friend. I will do my best to drop by more often in 2025.

Happy New Year, everyone! As it turns out I fell asleep shortly after 8 pm last night and only woke up once I heard fireworks in or close to our neighborhood, so I wouldn't have finished The Covenant of Water in 2024 even if I had wanted to. I woke up at half three and knocked out the last 60 pages, and the best thing I can say about this 700+ page novel is that it ended far too soon. This is now the third book by Dr Verghese that earns 5 stars from me, and I can only hope that he will write a sequel to this fabulous multigenerational epic novel.

Next up will be My Name is Adam, the first novel in Elias Khoury's Children of the Ghetto trilogy, a novel about a Palestinian family who was forced into exile and suffers many hardships after they were displaced following the Nakba in 1948. My list in >1 kidzdoc: is heavily tilted toward non-fiction, whereas my planned reads for the Levant region are mostly novels, so I'll get a head start on those books and post them here and just after I create the second quarter Levant region theme in the Reading Globally group.

>23 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul!

Happy New Year, Darryl. I'll be interested to see how you get on with reading with intent from your TBR shelves; I'm afraid that nothing would be more likely to send me off on an extended bookshop spree than declaring similar intentions. Anyway, I wish you well with it, particularly as you list a really interesting set of books.

>26 rachbxl: Thanks, Rachel. Now that I've moved back into my parents' house to care for my mother the number of books I buy each year had decreased sharply, thanks to the great collections in the local library systems I am a member of, and because I now only go to bookshops in Philadelphia on rare occasions, probably only once last year when I met Liz from Club Read for a half day when she was in town. It helps that I already own plenty of books that I would like to read at least as much if not more than any shiny new ones, and looking at them in our bookshelves is more tempting than going to bookshops, especially I'm currently unable to travel to London.

>19 kidzdoc: Thanks, Daryl.
I don't recall if you have commented on Percival Everett's James. Our book group will be discussing it on Friday and I found this interview with him from UC Santa Barbara which I found very thought provoking even if you haven't read the book: https://news.ucsb.edu/2024/021653/james-author-percival-everett-discusses-reimag...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Darryl! I hope 2025 is a great year for you.

>28 tangledthread: Thanks for that link, tangledthread. I've read James but I haven't reviewed it yet, as I had intended to reread Huckleberry Finn, for the first time since I was in high school over 45 years ago, then return to James and review both books then. Maybe I can do that this year, but I suspect not, given all of the books I'm already planning to read.

>29 SandDune: Happy New Year to you and your family, Rhian! Please give Alan my best wishes. I've starred your 2025 thread and I'll follow you closely, even though I may not comment that much.

I sincerely wish you a happy, healthy and fulfilling new year. May all your wishes come true. Happy reading 2025.

>31 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara!

Happy New Year Darryl.

>33 Oberon: Thanks, Erik! I've starred your 2025 thread, so I'll be following along.

>30 kidzdoc: James got so much buzz that I acquired the e-book, but I began Huckleberry Finn first, as I've actually never read it, and then I fizzled out. Hopefully this year.
Happy New Year!

>35 qebo: Thanks, Katherine! I hope that you do get to Huckleberry Finn and James this year.

Hopefully 2025's reading will be interesting and enjoyable, regardless of how much we read! Looking forward to seeing what you get to this year.

>37 mabith: Thanks, Meredith! Yes, I hope that both of us have a enjoyable and productive year of reading.

I was too distracted and dismayed by this morning's tragic terrorist attack in the French Quarter to make the traditional Southern New Year's Day meal of Hoppin' John and collard greens. New Orleans is a city that is dear to my heart, as I lived there for the better part of 3½ years and, anyone who grew up or moved there is by definition a New Orleanian. I'll make the meal tomorrow, as tradition states that meals prepared or consumed on January 2nd still confer good luck. BTW "Hoppin' John" prepared or eaten that day is known as "Skippin'Jenny."

Happy New year!

I am also trying to read more books that I own and have been on my shelf for a while.

Wishing you a happy new year. May is bring less challenges, good health and lots of joy.

Happy new year, Darryl! Your reading plan sounds like a good one, and I look forward to following your reading again this year. The Covenant of Water was phenomenal, wasn't it?

Happy New Year! I look forward to following your reading this year.

>40 figsfromthistle: Thanks, Anita! The year 2024 was a challenge for my mother and myself at the beginning, but the latter half was much better. I also wish you well in 2025.

>41 bell7: Happy New Year, Mary! Good luck on being chosen to be a foster parent this year; that's a great commitment. Yes, The Covenant of Water was outstanding, and it would have been my favorite novel of 2024 had I finished it on Tuesday. It's a great way to start 2025, though.

>42 karspeak: Happy New Year to you, Karen! Thanks for visiting. I don't comment all that much but I do follow everyone in Club Read, so I look forward to your reading journeys this year.

>39 kidzdoc: i was worried about 2025 before we all woke up to that new years day news. Hugs Darryl. New Orleans is special.

>44 dchaikin: Right, Dan. There was enough to be fearful of before the terrorist attacks in New Orleans and, apparently, Las Vegas. The biggest queation I now have is whether the NOLA terrorist was inspired or directed by ISIS, and whether he acted alone, i.e. are we at risk for other terrorist attacks in major cities. I live far enough (less than 25 miles) away from Center City Philadelphia to be concerned for my own safety, but I shudder to think how Trump will react to any further terrorist attacks, or even this one.

>45 kidzdoc: yes, the worst president to handle this. Or…anything else, actually. I think the terrorist grew up in Houston. 🙁

>46 dchaikin: Exactly. CNN has reported that he claims to be from Beaumont; I don't know how close that is to Houston.

>47 kidzdoc: Beaumont is an hour east. It’s a distinct separate place.

>48 dchaikin: Ah. My knowledge of Texas is nearly zero, as I only spent one short weekend in Houston going on pediatric residency interviews in 1997. A close cousin of mine and his family and my mother's youngest sister all live in Pearland, so it's conceivable that I could visit them in the not too distant future if another cousin can stay with my mother while I'm gone.

Definitely let me know if you do (and have time to meet). It would be terrific to meet up again

>50 dchaikin: Will do!

Happy New Year, Darryl. I love how carefully you plan your year's reading. Mine remains as scattershot as ever.

>52 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay! There is nothing wrong with an unplanned approach, and we'll see how well my plan goes.

Best of luck reading your own books in 2025, Darryl. I hope to do more of that too as well as following up on your thread on a more consistent basis. Happy New Year!

>54 Familyhistorian: Happy New Year to you too, Meg!

Thanks for visiting my thread and Happy New Year, Darryl! I love your idea of a focused list of 25 books for the year. I'm not currently at home or I would make my own list--but I need proximity to my shelves.

>56 AnneDC: Happy New Year, Anne! That makes sense to wait until you're at home to create your own list. I came up with this idea late last year, so I had a head start going into 2025.

Happy New Year, Darryl! I like your reading plan—I have a small stack of preferential books in my head, but I'm guessing your system will work better. I hope this is a good year for you, whatever that looks like.

I am just now marking threads for 2025. I feel so behind. I am still unpacking boxes and moving things into the house from the carport. I need to move faster as the weather is going to get colder and there are things I need to get into the house. However, since I didn't pack some of the boxes I am having trouble finding things. I keep telling myself it is going to be Christmas all year because every time I open one of those big boxes it is going to be a surprise. Most of the time it is. Today I found my shoes. (my dress shoes - I brought 2 pairs of sneakers and my boots and insulated shoes with me.) It was exciting! They aren't all in the closet yet, but my tomorrow afternoon they will be.

I like to have a tea on New Year's Day, so this year I baked my 5th gingerbread cake and it was so good. I don't think I am done baking gingerbread cakes. I just am not tired of the taste yet. I invited my cousin's wife and she brought her sister with her. Together we had a nice small tea. I had a Simpson & Vail Holiday Tea (Figgy Pudding) and served the gingerbread cake. It was so nice and cozy and I enjoyed it very much.

>58 lisapeet: Thanks, Lisa! Happy New Year to you and your family.

>59 benitastrnad: Happy New Year, Benita! You may be behind, but it seems as though 2025 has started well for you.

>1 kidzdoc: Happy New Year! What a wonderful set of books you've listed out and I admire your bookshelf-clearing project. Looking forward to your thoughts on the Snyder book On Tyranny which I've been debating reading, as well as on Flood of Fire. Elias Khoury's Children of the Ghetto also looks very interesting. I hope the new year is full of happy, fulfilling things for you.

>61 rasdhar: Thanks, Rasdhar! I'm looking forward to tackling these lists, as most of these books are the ones that I've been very eager to read for years but keep putting off for one reason or another, such as Flood of Fire, as I loved the first two books in the Ibis Trilogy, Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke. Reading Our Malady late last year made me want to bump On Tyranny onto this list, and I've just started reading My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury, a writer whose previous books I've enjoyed.

Happy New Year, Darryl! I'm sorry to be arriving late. Your thread had so many posts, I knew it would take awhile to get through, and I kept passing over it until more time arrived. And of course it just kept getting longer!

I'm intrigued by your Levant list. I hope you read Nawal El Saadawi's book, it looks good. I read Woman at Point Zero two years ago, and it has stayed with me, unlike so much of what I read these days. Have you read any Pamuk yet? I loved My Name is Red, but struggled through Snow. I have at least two more of his books on my shelves that I might read for the RG theme read.

>63 labfs39: Hi, Lisa! No need to apologize; this thread has been especially busy, thanks to well wishes from my friends in Club Read and the 75 Books group.

I'm looking forward to the second quarter Levant region theme in Reading Globally, and I'm glad that my suggestion was chosen, especially since I own so many books that I would like to get to in the next few years. Unfortunately that list is heavily tilted toward male writers, and when I set up the thread I will look for women authors. I'll definitely read Memoirs of a Woman Doctor although I'll probably have to search for my copy of it, or borrow or purchase it if I can't find it. I've heard of Woman at Point Zero but I haven't read it and don't own it (I thought that I did).

I haven't read anything by Orhan Pamuk, even though I own several of his books. I'll almost certainly get to at least one of them for this theme, and My Name Is Red will likely be the first one I read.

I also have several books by Pamuk that I haven't read yet. I have read Snow and Istanbul and really liked the Istanbul book. It is more of a memoir and it was well done. Snow is about a controversial subject - headscarves - and how such topics become more than what they should be. At the time I read it, I had to admire Pamuk for his courage to take on such a subject. I doubt that in the Turkey of today such a book would even get published. Erdogan would simply not allow it. The book does illustrate how Turkey is becoming more conservative.

I have a copy of My Name Is Red somewhere in my boxes rather than on my shelves. I look forward to hearing what you have to say about Pamuk's work.

>64 kidzdoc: Just putting in another vote for My Name is Red - I really enjoyed it.

Happy new year, Darryl! Yours is such a fast-moving thread it's hard to keep up with, but it always is so interesting!

>64 kidzdoc: My Name is Red is also on my reading wish list.
Happy weekend, Darryl.

Happy New Year Darryl! I pray that it will be a good one for you and your mom. I look forward to following your progress through your chosen reading.

>65 benitastrnad: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Snow and Istanbul, Benita.

>66 rasdhar: Thanks, Rasdhar!

>67 Dilara86: Thanks and Happy New Year, Dilara!

>68 Ameise1: Sounds good. I hope you enjoy your weekend, Barbara. The temperatures here in the Delaware Valley (metropolitan Philadelphia) will be unusually cold and we may get a significant (for us) snowstorm on Monday, so I bought plenty of food yesterday in case we're stuck inside for a few days.

I saw my nutritionist in the Weight Loss Center I go to yesterday morning, and she was mildly alarmed by the amount of weight I lost over the holidays (I now weigh 178 lb (80.7 kg), down from 275 lb (124.7 kg) 15½ months ago; I weighed 185 lb when I saw her two weeks ago), and she wants me to increase my caloric intake (to 1700-1800 calories, up from 1200-1500 calories when I was in the weight loss phase), so that I don't lose any more weight (we agreed late last year that my target weight, based on my height, age and race should be 180 lb (81.6 kg)). Emily gave me some ideas for creating meals and snacks to boost my intake, so I'll review the printed information she gave me and work on that goal.

>69 Sakerfalcon: Happy New Year to you too, Claire! I wish you well in 2025. Give my best wishes to Karen.

Happy New Year, Darryl, and best wishes for you and your mother.

Happy New Year to you Darryl. Wishing you a successful year of reading after the disruptive time you've been having.
Congratulations on your weight loss, that's an amazing achievement.

>73 avatiakh: Thanks, Roni! Happy New Year to you, too.

>74 kidzdoc: Happy New Year, Kerry! 2024 was a tough year, especially the first few months, but 2025 has started off well so far.

The nearly 100 lb weight loss in less than 16 months was easily my greatest accomplishment of the year, and I'm still astonished in the change in my appearance, as is everyone who knows me well and sees me in person.

>74 kidzdoc: Congratulations on such a weight loss Darryl. I know how hard that is to achieve.

Good luck with the new approach to reading and congrats, again, on smashing the diet! I'm so sorry the new year started with tragedy in New Orleans, which I know you feel is home.

>75 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. This degree of weight loss would not have been possible without the Obesity Medicine physician and, especially, the nutritionist I see at the hospital based Weight Loss Center I go to. Emily, my nutritionist, designed a personalized plan, which included meal replacement packets, and a balanced high protein (90-110 gram) low carbohydrate (100-110 gram), 1200-1500 calorie balanced diet. Early on Emily used data from two devices to determine my resting and total energy expenditure and percentage body fat, and determined that, if I stayed true to this diet, I would lose weight. I did so, with the help of a free mobile app (Baritastic), which Emily could review alongside me via a personal account, and during our weekly sessions she could make recommendations and offer encouragement, as she tracked my weight in the office and my daily entries in the app. Now that I'm well within my ideal body weight range (174 to 188 lb) I've graduated to the weight maintenance phase, so I won't see Emily or my Obesity Medicine physician as often, and I'm down to only one meal replacement protein shake per day, which I'll probably stop in two weeks.

I mention this amount of detail because I know that many of us, past and present, have battled with being overweight. My female family members, friends and colleagues have complimented me on my progress, but it's become all too obvious to me that most men have a far easier time losing weight than women do.

>76 LolaWalser: Thanks, Lola. I'm 100% committed to sticking with this food lifestyle change, rather than a temporary diet, and even though my reading has gotten off to a slow start it's obviously early in the year, and I feel good about this plan.

I received what sounds like an interesting book as part of my subscription to Archipelago Books this afternoon, People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi from West Timor, which was translated into English by Lara Norgaard. Here's a synopsis of it:

July 1998. Men living on the border between West and East Timor are gathering at the police station to watch the World Cup. No one feels quite noble enough to sit next to the Javanese soldiers, or the Indonesian regime’s loyal fighter, Martin Kabiti, so most of the guys crowd on the floor. They train their eyes on Brazilian superstar Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, urging him to step it up and beat the French. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, political insurgents are in the process of invading the village, with plans to kill.

From there, Felix K. Nesi’s formidable debut novel cycles backward in time, to the independence movements against Portuguese rule in the 1970s, the period of Japanese occupation in the 1940s, and back again to the evening of the World Cup Final. People from Oetimu combines precise political recounting, stories adapted from articles in newspapers, and fables that Nesi overheard through Indonesia’s robust oral tradition. These elements lend themselves to a propulsive, all-consuming narrative power.

Nesi stays close to the characters he depicts. Each one lives and breathes, seeming to look out at you from the page. The pain of years of domination and violent conflict recurs. At the same time you will find yourself laughing at corrupt institutions, as Nesi flips the power structure on its head. Both a political inquiry into how to escape cycles of violence and an inventive story of people’s surprising interconnections, People from Oetimu is an intoxicating reading experience.

In addition to my reading plans I laid out in >1 kidzdoc:;and >2 kidzdoc: I would ideally like to read all of the Archipelago Books I receive this year.

>78 kidzdoc: Reading your Archipelago books as they arrive sounds like a wonderful plan. And very nice for me to see which ones I want to order based on your reviews.

Like everyone else, all I can say is "This thread moves way too quickly!" It doesn't help that I wait until 2025 to start reading the year's threads.

Congrats on the amazing weight loss. That should earn you a new fedora!

>79 RidgewayGirl: I'm reading an Archipelago book now, My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury, the first book in the Children of the Ghetto series. I'm waiting for the copy of Martyr! I requested from my local library two weeks ago, and then I'll probably read People from Oetimu.

>80 SassyLassy: Ha! The fact that your post came before I wrote my previous one is additional evidence that this thread moves too quickly! It should slow down soon, as most of the much appreciated New Year wishes from friends have been posted. Now it's time to get down to business and read books and write reviews.

Thanks re: the weight loss! I have enough fedoras, but this weight loss has meant that I've had to purchase an entirely new wardrobe. I do need to purchase more sport coats, so I'll go shopping later this month to determine what my new size is.

Darryl--Congrats on the weight loss! Hope you are enjoying the new wardrobe. ; ) I hope I can shed a few and get in better shape -- my next TKD test is in April and it's for Masters so there is a whole separate endurance/fitness aspect! Wishing you happiness, health and lots of books in 2025. : )

>83 Berly: Thanks, Kim! I wish you well in 2025.

After several days of distractedly picking up and putting down several books I decided yesterday to focus all of my attention on My Name Is Adam, the first book in Elias Khoury's Children of the Ghetto trilogy. It begins with a foreword by the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, whose attractive young student from NYU gives him notebooks by a Palestinian falafel seller and failed novelist named Adam Dannoun, who has apparently died by suicide, despite Adam's instructions to burn these notebooks by whomever finds his corpse; the student was also a close friend, if not lover, of Adam. The first notebook is the story of Waddah al-Yaman, the national poet of Yemen, who was born in the 7th century AD during the Ummayyad Caliphate. Waddah was a strikingly handsome young man who specialized in writing poems about beautiful women and his own lovers that became popular songs, which earned him the ire of the family of first woman he truly loved, who married her off to an older man, with tragic results, and subsequently to the Caliph al-Walid I, which resulted in Waddah's own downfall after the Queen took him as her lover and kept him hidden in her chamber. The second part of the notebooks tells Adam's own story of growing up in the Palestinian city of Lydda, which was renamed Lod after it fell to the Israel Defense Force during the Nakba of 1948. Most Palestinians were either forcibly expelled or massacred, and the ones who remained were involuntary confined into the ghetto of this book's title.

I'm starting Adam's story, and this will certainly be a complex and multilayered novel told from different vantage points, but I'm enjoying it so far.

So, a little light reading then? ;)

Just learned we have a new independent bookstore in town. So stopped by yesterday and bought Orbital and Amy Tan's book on birds. I looked at Orhan Pamuk's new book....It is a very awkward size. I would need a book stand to read it.

>86 tangledthread: Right. I think the last "light" book I read was Frog and Toad Are Friends. 😎

Hooray for new indie bookshops. I need to pay a proper visit to the new bookshop that opened in the nearby riverside town where my mother's adult daycare center is located. What's the name of the new book by Orhan Pamuk?

And now for something different: I've decided to post one earworm on my thread, ideally every week, which are old mostly jazz favorites that probably aren't well known (except to Jerry) but are definitely worthy of exploration, especially the albums on which they appear.



First up is "King Cobra" by the legendary pianist Herbie Hancock, which comes from his second album My Point of View, which was recorded on March 19, 1963 and released on Blue Note Records later that year. My Point of View isn't as well known or as highly regarded as his debut album Takin' Off or his subsequent ones, but there are some gems on it, particularly this one. In addition to Hancock on piano the song features Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, Chuck Israels on bass, and Tony Williams on drums.

https://youtu.be/5HX8Kk36jMg?si=ito629rPT-wWjPdU

>88 kidzdoc: - Thanks for the link, Darryl! I enjoyed it. I don't know a lot about jazz, but I am trying to listen to more of it and figure out what I like. Wayne and I have been going to Dizzy's Club (part of Lincoln Center Jazz) for a few months, enjoying their "Songbook Sunday" series, which focuses on different lyricists. It's been a lot of fun, and I especially enjoy watching the musicians and how they play off of each other. It also doesn't hurt that it's a gorgeous venue, overlooking Columbus Circle and the SW corner of Central Park, and has excellent cocktails ;-)

I look forward to more of your "earworm" posts!

>85 kidzdoc: sounds fantastic. Noting. I’ve heard of Elias Khoury, but haven’t read him.

>87 kidzdoc: I got a Frog and Toad t-shirt from Hanukkah! ❤️

>88 kidzdoc: glad you’re sharing. Even if i’m jazz clueless

>89 katiekrug: You're welcome, Katie! I'm glad that you enjoyed "King Cobra." You're taking the right approach, listening to different styles and musicians and seeing live performances to see what you like best. I didn't appreciate several of my favorite musicians when I first heard them, especially John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Eric Dolphy, but I appreciated what they were doing with repeated exposures to them on different albums, although I'm still not fond of Trane's work in the last year or two before he died.

I would love to go to Dizzy's Club! I've seen images taken from it during live recordings from Lincoln Center on PBS. Wait a minute...what am I saying?! An old girlfriend and I saw a performance at Lincoln Center in 1989 or 1990, although I don't know if Dizzy's Club was there in its current format.

>90 dchaikin: Elias Khoury is a great writer, easily one of the best contemporary Arabic writers. Sadly he died before he could have won the Nobel Prize (and that also holds true for Amos Oz, IMO).

I got a Frog and Toad t-shirt from Hanukkah! ❤️

Nice!

glad you’re sharing. Even if i’m jazz clueless

That is nothing short of astonishing, given that you spent four years in college in New Orleans, Dan. Did you ever leave campus when you were there?! 😎

>91 kidzdoc: not if bars, occasionally with blues-influenced rock, count as part of campus. I knew there was jazz there, but it wasn’t part of my Tulane world.

>92 dchaikin: Okay. Fair enough. 😌

>91 kidzdoc: the current Dizzy's Club was built sometime between 2002-2006.

>94 ELiz_M: That makes sense. I'm sure my girlfriend and I didn't go to a venue as appealing as Dizzy's Club.

>87 kidzdoc: his new book is Memories of Distant Mountains

It's a pretty book, but has very odd dimensions

>96 tangledthread: Thanks! That book sounds very interesting, so I've added it to my library wish list.

>96 tangledthread: I'm interested in the new Pamuk—I always find illustrated journals wonderful to read, especially from writers who don't identify, at least professionally, as artists. Those can be such fresh, fascinating eyes. And I like the excerpts I've seen from the book.

>88 kidzdoc: Thanks for the music! It was very enjoyable and I look forward to regular links.

Way to go with your epic weight loss, Darryl! What an achievement and such a positive way to begin 2025.

The new Pamuk book reminds me of the cookbooks of Jacques Pepin. He is a famous chef but he is also an artist and a memoirist. He also kept journals and illustrated them. He has done some designing for dishes and table linens for some time for Sur La Table, but most people don't think of him as an artist. He doesn't think of himself as an artist. He says his art is just doodles, but it is very attractive and adds to his cookbooks. IMO

>98 lisapeet: I don't think I've read any illustrated books by known authors, so I'm even more eager to read it now.

>99 mabith: You're welcome, Meredith!

>100 AlisonY: Thanks, Alison! The next step, now that I'm within an ideal body weight range, is to get in better physical shape. Now that it's the new year I'll need to check my insurance company to see if I can get partially or fully reimbursed for gym memberships such as Planet Fitness or LA Fitness.

>101 benitastrnad: I had no idea that Jacques Pépin was an artist and memoirist! I follow him on Facebook and see his recipes practically every day. I'll have to check out his cookbooks.

>101 benitastrnad: I didn't know that about Pépin either. I don't think I have any of his cookbooks, but a quick look online shows some really charming chicken illustrations. Neat!

>103 lisapeet: Nice!

The West Timor book caught my eye. People keep mentioning Archipelago Books: I just had a look at their website and it looks enticing.

>105 Dilara86: Right, Dilara. Archipelago Books, a small Brooklyn based nonprofit publisher, releases 12-14 high quality books in translation every year, ones that may not have been released by other publishers in the US. I've had a subscription for several years, and for $150/year I get each of those books shipped for free, often several weeks in advance, and 25% off blacklisted backlisted works, also with free shipping.

ETA: Backlisted, not blacklisted! Dang autocorrect.

>77 kidzdoc: It's very heartening to read about your weight loss journey and I wish you all the best with maintenance. I'm on a similar path - and very close to my goal weight, and I completely understand what you're saying about this being a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet.

Excited to see what you make of Children of the Ghetto.

>88 kidzdoc: I enjoyed listening to King Cobra this morning. Thanks for sharing!

Two things . . .

First: >88 kidzdoc: Wow that album looks good. I don't know that one, though of course I love all the musicians on it. Hancock and Andrew Hill are my two favorite pianists on the Blue Note roster from those years.

Second: I'm always very excited to open the CR home page and see that there are only six new posts I haven't read yet! Normally it's around 25. :)

Hope you have a great weekend, reading and otherwise. OK, that's three things.

>107 rasdhar: Thanks. Rasdhar! Congratulations to you on your own progress. I've graduated to the weight maintenance phase but I'll still see Emily, my nutritionist, every two weeks for now and probably on a monthly basis by the spring if I continue to do well, to ensure that I don't lose or gain too much weight. Emily's suggestion of increasing my caloric intake did work, as I'm now up to a little over 182 lb (82.7 kg). That's slightly above my target weight of 180 lb (81.6 kg) but I'm still within my ideal body weight. This will still be a work in progress, as I continue to modify and diversify my diet.

Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam continues to be good, although challenging. This part, following the nearly 100 page story about the Yemeni poet Waddah al-Yaman, consists of discrete fragments that have little to do with each other, or the main theme of the author's childhood in Lydda after the Nakba.

>108 bell7: You're welcome, Mary! I'm glad that you enjoyed "King Cobra." The jazz albums I enjoy the most were recorded mainly from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, with very few exceptions.

>109 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry. I'm both pleased and surprised that you weren't familiar with "King Cobra" or My Point of View. I thought about it earlier this week when I replied to a Facebook thread I follow, which asked for albums by Herbie Hancock that are deserving of wider recognition. It's his second album, and both it and Inventions & Dimensions seem to be overlooked in favor of Herbie's debut album Takin' Off and his subsequent ones, Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage.

It's interesting that you mentioned Andrew Hill; my next earworm is probably going to be one of his selections that I can't get enough of.

Club Read has been exceptionally busy this month, similar to the 75 Books group, but things should slow down as the days progress.

I hope that you and Stephanie also have a great weekend.

I did a marathon cooking session today. I made another gingerbread cake and this one definitely tastes much different than normal. The local grocery store was out of the dark molasses I normally use, and so I used mild molasses. This allowed the spice mixture to really come to the fore. In fact, the spice is a bit on the aggressive side. I will frost it tomorrow and do an extra dose of sugar in the frosting. That should tame the spice down a bit, but it isn't going to be what people around here have come to expect from my gingerbread.

I also made a big batch of Tortilla Soup. This is also on the spicier side this time around. I didn't taste the jalapeno pepper and got a bit too much in. Jacques Pepin recommends that you smell the pepper and if a whiff is strong you should back off on the amount of pepper you use. I didn't think the pepper was all that strong smelling, but it sure is in the soup. I also had to use 4 cups of vegetable broth instead of all chicken broth. This gives the soup a different background taste than what I was looking for. I think that people will eat the soup, but it will also taste a little different from what they think it will be.

>112 benitastrnad: Well done, Benita!

>89 katiekrug: Although not of the same caliber as Dizzy's Club, when I was going to grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, I was a regular at Bear's Place Thursday night "jazz fables". There is nothing like a small venue to let you feel the jazz soak into your body. Bloomington was a great place for a student to enjoy affordable jazz (and opera).

>85 kidzdoc: I have an uneasy reading relationship with Elias Khoury. I've read two of his novels and wanted to like them much more than I did. Knowing that My Name is Adam is difficult, I may hold off on tackling it.

>78 kidzdoc: People from Oetimu, on the other hand, sounds very intriguing. I simply love Archipelago Press with their excellent titles, small book size, and tactile covers. I recently moved all of mine to a bookcase near my reading chair so that I am tempted to read those I haven't yet.

>114 labfs39: There is nothing like a small venue to let you feel the jazz soak into your body.

Absolutely, Lisa. Live jazz has an energy to it that is rarely duplicated in studio recordings.

I've read six books by Elias Khoury but only two stood out for me, Gate of the Sun and White Masks. Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam continues to be challenging, but it's starting to come together for me, and ow that I'm nearly halfway through I'm committed to finishing it (and, IIRC, Kay really liked it), along with the rest of the Children of the Ghetto trilogy. Star of the Sea, the second book, was published recently, but I haven't seen when the last book will come out.

I would also like to organize my Archipelago Books in the near future.

>115 kidzdoc: I don't like to think of myself as forcing anyone to finish a book, but I do think that it is a book worth reading.

In addition to Lisa's story about their customer service, you've convinced me to sign up for a subscription to Archipelago Books. Very excited about seeing what they send me.

>116 RidgewayGirl: Don’t forget that the subscription also means that you get a steep discount on their older books when you buy them from their site.

>115 kidzdoc: I loved White Masks. I bought Gate of the Sun, but it got lost in the move along with a lot of other books before I got around to it. There was a period where I was reading a lot of Mideast literature: Khoury, Kanafānī, Mahfouz, etc. I see that there's a thread over in Reading Globally on that area. I haven't perused it yet, but I'll give it a look and maybe return to that area.

>118 TadAD: Those are the two books by Khoury that I have read. I liked White Masks more than I remembered, writing in my review "I found it hard to put this book down, despite my usual avoidance of the murder mystery genre, and that is because the book is more about people caught in a vise of violence than it is about who killed Khalil...I would highly recommend White Masks as an introduction to the literature of Elias Khoury." I did not care for Gate of the Sun, however, finding the stream of conscious writing almost impenetrable at the beginning. I own Yalo, but have not yet read it, and from the description of the violence, I may not be up for it.

Edited to fix numbering

>116 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that you were coercing me to finish My Name Is Adam; rather, your positive review of it has encouraged me to keep going, even though I'm already committed to read the trilogy.

Bravo! I'm glad that you've decided to subscribe to Archipelago Books.

>117 AnnieMod: Right, Annie. I think it's a 25% discount, with free shipping.

>118 TadAD: I'll be leading the second quarter theme on the Levant region in the Reading Globally group, Tad. I've already chosen books from my library to read that quarter in >2 kidzdoc:, including Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam.

>119 labfs39: Yalo was one of the books by Khoury that I was lukewarm about, Lisa.

>120 kidzdoc: Second quarter ... that gives me time. This first quarter, I was planning to do some international reading with The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga because I'm going to Namibia and Zimbabwe in May and thought it might be nice to add some new entries to my "countries read" list with those two.

Happy new year, Darryl! I'm a bit late getting started this year. Congratulations on your stunning success with losing weight! I hope this year turns out very well in every way.

I've already taken a bullet with Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam, so thanks!

>121 TadAD: Great. I look forward to your take on both books, particularly Nervous Conditions, as I haven't read my copy of it yet.

>122 Jim53: Thanks, Jim! I hope that you also have a great year.

>123 kidzdoc: I liked Nervous Conditions, although I didn't think it was as strongly written as A Girl is a Body of Water. NC is the first in a trilogy. I haven't read the others.

>124 labfs39: Thanks for that reminder, Lisa. My LT library tells me that I also own This Mournable Body, the third book in the trilogy, but I haven't read it either.

I clearly need to stop buying books...

>125 kidzdoc: I clearly need to stop buying books...

Somehow, I have the feeling you've been saying that for a couple of decades, at least. :D

>126 TadAD: 😂

>125 kidzdoc: I clearly need to stop buying books...

Surely not! The publishing industry would collapse! I have the middle book in the Dangarembga trilogy, having very much enjoyed Nervous Conditions. I should pull it out today and lay it on the stack so that I'm reminded to read it.

>125 kidzdoc: I clearly need to stop buying books...

Now that is too extreme... Are you ok? Do we need to stage an intervention to get you back on track? :)

On reading the new books coming in:
I tend to start every year with the idea that this will be the year when I read all my new books as they are arriving (both ebooks and paper). I usually even keep all my new paper acquisitions on my living room table to remind myself of it. I don't remember a single year that this managed to last through January (maybe this one?). I have a few subscriptions going on which tend to supply me with books regularly (Archipelago and Crippen&Landru these days although there had a few more through the years) and a few publishers who do not provide the service but I tend to buy theirs as they come out. And because I know I will like them, I rarely get around to reading them... which I am trying to change this year. Which may or may not work... :) Too many temptations!

And of course there are the books of Abdulrazak Gurnah to add to your lists. Please don't forget to add his work to your lists.

>123 kidzdoc: >121 TadAD: you both need to read Nervous Conditions 🙂 It’s a remarkable book - story and telling. Magical and dark.

>128 RidgewayGirl: Ha! I have several reasons to continue sharply restricting the number of new books that come here: I already have hundreds of unread books that I brought from Atlanta; there is limited space to store books here, and I'll probably start culling the books I no longer wish to keep, read or unread (we've already donated a few hundred of my late father's books that I have no interest reading); I'm not working, so I shouldn't spend too much money on books; and I'm fortunate to have memberships to two great library systems, the one in the suburban county I live in and the Free Library of Philadelphia, which combined have practically all of the books I would like to read.

I can't envision getting to any of the books in the Nervous Conditions trilogy anytime soon, so I'll look for your thoughts about them.

>129 AnnieMod: Sorry! See my response to Kay above. I should have also mentioned that I'll receive 12-14 Archipelago Books every year as part of my subscription, and I usually receive a small number of gift books for Christmas from my brother and cousin.

Good luck on your plan to read new books this year!

>130 benitastrnad: I have 10 books by Abdulrazak Gurnah, seven of which I've already read, so I don't need any more at the moment.

ETA: The only book by Gurnah I don't own is his new novel Map Reading, which will be published here in March.

>131 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I'll try to get to Nervous Conditions next year.

>132 kidzdoc:
I am in much the same situation with books. I moved all of them to Kansas and as I have been taking them out of boxes and reshelving them I think I should have culled them before I moved. And I should have been ruthless. But, they are here now, and going back on my shelves.

I am also a user of my local public library. However, the collection does not have a wide selection. Before Christmas I placed two Inter-Library Loan requests and was surprised when it took two weeks to get the books. I am going to have to adjust my timelines as it is apparent that I am spoiled by the quick turn-around time I had at the University.

I plan on using the library as much as possible because I believe that libraries are a vital part of rural communities because they fill social, cultural, and educational functions for these smaller communities. While overflowing book shelves have their charms, I don't need to over-crowd my new home with books so, like you, I am cutting back on the numbers of books I purchase. I am trying to be more realistic in any purchases that I do make and have started to ask myself if I am going to read that book anytime soon before I make a purchase. But I get so tempted by all those wonderful books and amazing stories. I know that you read widely, as that is the goal of Club Read, so I sympathize with the problem of the ever-growing To-Be-Read list as well. However, there are some authors, who are under-read - IMO, whose praises I am very willing to sing to any and all who might hear. Gurnah is one of those. I have been enthralled by both books by him that I have read. I now have Pilgrims Way on my nightstand to start reading.

I think that many people are afraid to pick up books by International authors, or books that are translated, because they simply don't know which authors to try. That is one of the reasons why talking about the publishers, the authors, and the books, on these threads is very important. The discussion of the Nervous Conditions series above prompted me to add all three books to my gargantuan To-Be-Read list.

>133 benitastrnad: The Fulton County Library System, which serves most of the city of Atlanta and its immediate suburbs, has (or had) a far poorer selection of books than even the county public library system I use (a small portion of the city of Atlanta is in neighboring DeKalb County). So, when I started reading again after I finished residency in 2000 I almost always bought the books I wanted to read, even though a library branch was located a stone's throw away. And, even though I had the ability to borrow books from Emory University as an alumnus (postdoctoral graduates from university based medical residency programs receive diplomas and are considered to be alumni) it was far easier to buy the books I wanted to read.

I began reading international authors on my own in 2000, and I remember going to my local Borders bookshop and purchasing Blindness by José Saramago and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami that year, which began my foray into international literature. However, becoming a member of LibraryThing in 2006 and especially Club Read in 2009 has greatly expanded the breadth of international authors I read, thanks mainly to @avaland, @deebee1, @akeela, @lriley and especially @rebeccanyc, along with my visits to my three favorite US bookshops, Book Culture and Strand Book Store in NYC and especially City Lights in San Francisco, which has an entire section dedicated to translated literature, along with my travels abroad.

One of the main benefits of Club Read is that is has a sizable number of members from outside the United States, who discuss and review books from authors outside of North America. Many of us are also members of the Reading Globally group, which is also a great source of quality international literature.

This week's earworm is "Mr Walker" by the legendary guitarist Wes Montgomery, which comes from his outstanding album The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery that was recorded in late January 1960, and also features Tommy Flanagan on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Albert Heath on drums. The entire album is solid and is well worth listening to.

https://youtu.be/5ijEbM6uzEQ?si=5iXgekwZYqQmcSV0

ETA: I'm finally getting into Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam, and with 180 pages to go I should have no problem finishing it by this weekend.

>135 kidzdoc: A classic album, Darryl! Now I'm going to have to go pull mine LP version out! I'm glad you're able to get into My Name is Adam this week.

>135 kidzdoc: Oh looks great. Thanks for the recommendation. I will see at my store that sells vinyl if they have this. It would be cool to listen to a more authentic recording.

Happy mid week!

>136 rocketjk: Definitely, Jerry. Wes Montgomery put out several great albums, but The Incredible Jazz Guitar was his best, IMO. My late father preferred his last three albums, A Day in the Life, Down Here on the Ground, and Road Song.

>137 figsfromthistle: You're welcome, Anita. I hope that you're able to find The Incredible Jazz Guitar.

>135 kidzdoc: One of my best high school friends is a reasonably serious audiophile, the kind of person who says, "What do you mean that a pair of monoblock amplifiers at $15,000 apiece seems like overkill? Listen to the difference!!!!" He's built a truly monumental collection of jazz and classical albums. When WNCN closed down in NY (Were you still in the area then?), he picked up a lot of hard-to-find albums from them. For myself, I decided two house-moves ago that my days of vinyl were done. I gave away all my albums, invested in a high quality DAC, and searched out hi-resolution remasterings. Yes, there's a difference, but the convenience of several terabytes of .flac files is so much more than a wall of vinyl.

I'm spotty on jazz. I'll listen to Chet Baker's "Legendary Riverside Albums" and love them, or Oscar Peterson playing "Hymn to Freedom." But then other stuff will leave me cold. I mean, I still don't get Miles Davis ... and I know that's heresy. I guess I just haven't learned enough to appreciate.

Why am I saying all this? I dunno, just talking about music, I guess.

>139 TadAD: Yikes. "Reasonably serious" is a huge understatement, IMO, unless you're quite well off. Wikipedia says that WNCN was operational from 1957-1974 (I lived in the NYC metropolitan area from 1961 to 1974), and while it's entirely possible that my classical music loving paternal grandfather listened to it we mainly listened to jazz and R&B on the radio during those years, and my father had an extensive jazz album colllection, which is why I became a jazz lover literally from birth.

I haven't listened to any of Chet Baker's albums, although I've heard enough of his recordings on our local jazz station to be familiar with and enjoy his unique sound. I have Night Train by the Oscar Peterson Trio, and "Hymn of Freedom" is my favorite selection from that album.

https://youtu.be/Uy25C_s288g?si=kXEXRl7p-0rkw9Mn

What are your musical preferences, Tad?

Another great Wes Montgomery album is Full House, a live album featuring Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers. Do you like guitarist Pat Martino? He is one of my favorites, and he was mentored by Wes Montgomery. In fact, I got to do a long phone interview with Martino for a profile on him I did for the SF Chronicle. His story is incredible. In his late 20s or maybe his 30s he had an aneurysm and had to relearn the guitar. My favorite album of his is a Blue Note release from 2003 called Think Tank that features Joe Lovano. In 2006 he released a Wes Montgomery tribute album called Remember, also on Blue Note.

>141 rocketjk: I was going to mention Full House, Jerry, but I forgot to do so. That is my other favorite album by Wes Montgomery, and it's also solid from top ("Full House") to bottom ("Born to Be Blue"). Johnny Griffin plays an outstanding solo on the title track as well.

https://youtu.be/AFkQ0By8N1g?si=PNexorWHpUtzJtc0

I've heard of Pat Martino, as I know that he's a famous jazz musician, but that's as far as it goes. Do you have a link for the interview you did of him? I'll have to check out the albums you mentioned; thanks in advance!

>135 kidzdoc: I'm not as up on jazz guitar as I am on other instruments. The only Wes I have is a two-CD live album from Paris, which has its moments but doesn't excite me. I'll be sure to check out The Incredible Jazz Guitar.

>142 kidzdoc: The interview I did with Pat Martino is not online. This was for a print article for the SF Chronicle, not an interview for my radio show. I just recorded it on a cassette, transcribed it, and then used it as background for the article I wrote. I'll see if can find the transcription of the interview or the link to Chron article.

>140 kidzdoc: I wouldn't say he was particularly well off, just completely single-minded.

I'd say my own tastes are somewhat eclectic.

I love classical and it's kind of my go-to when I want to sit and just listen to music as a foreground activity. I love ’60s & ’70s rock and rock-adjacent. I like some international genres such as milonga from South America and muñeiras from Spain. Also nouveau flamenco such as Luis Villegas or Ottmar Liebert. What I think of as "chanson" because I'm not sure what the category is really called ... Edith Piaf or Lara Fabian type stuff. As nerdy as it might be, I really enjoy Irish instrumental (not the sung stuff as much), and I used to play regularly in sessions in NYC before we moved to the session-wasteland that is San Antonio. Specific jazz or blues albums: I put on Stevie Ray Vaughan or Keith Jarrett occasionally.

So, a bit of a mish-mash rather than a purist, I guess.

>142 kidzdoc: Hey Darryl, I was able to find the link to my 2005 Pat Martino article on the SF Chronicle website, but it's now behind a paywall. I can't even see it myself! However, I found both the transcription of the interview and the article itself on my hard drive (they're both simple Word docs). It's all particularly apropos of your original posts about Wes Montgomery, because the occasion for the article was a Wes Montgomery tribute concert that Martino was getting ready to perform at the great Oakland jazz club, Yoshi's. The article also includes quotes from Mimi Fox, a terrific Oakland-based guitarist who was also going to be performing a couple of nights of Montgomery tribute shows, so naturally I had interviewed her as well. So, the point it that a significant chunk of the Martino interview centers around Martino's relationship to Montgomery and his music. I am happy to email the files to you (and to anyone else interested). Just send me your email address in a private message here.

Also, it turns out the Martino story is even more dramatic than I was remembering. What happened was that after years of seizures, Martino finally got an MRI which showed the brain aneurysm. The resulting operation saved his life but left him with amnesia. He didn't remember anyone and his memories only gradually returned. I was right that he had to relearn the guitar.

>143 Jim53: Sounds good, Jim. I'm completely unfamiliar with the Wes Montgomery 2 CD set you own, so I can't comment on it.

>144 rocketjk: I should have remembered that the SF Chronicle's content is restricted to subscribers. That's absolutely understandable, and I have online subscriptions to several daily newspapers, along with my 7 day print subscription to the NYT.

>145 TadAD: Nice, Tad. Your tastes in music are decidedly broader than mine.

>146 rocketjk: Thanks for that summary, Jerry! Now that you mention it I do remember reading somewhere that Martino developed post-op amnesia and had to relearn how to play the guitar. I wonder if his sound and style changed after the operation.

ETA: I think I found your article: https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/guitarists-honor-wes-montgomery-272...

I've decided to call it quits after reading nearly 300 pages of Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury. It was simply too difficult to read, with innumerable diversions and tiny fragments that were impossible to piece into a coherent whole, and it became a very tedious and painful chore, especially when there are so many other books I'm eager to get to. I respect what Khoury was doing, and he did bring to light the horrors of the Nakba and the Lydda massacre, so I'll give this book 3 stars.

I'll resume reading The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray, and I'll start reading People from Oetimu by the West Timorean author Felix Nesi, the first title I've received from Archipelago Books this year.

>147 kidzdoc: Yes, that's it! I always forget that the Chron's online alter ego, SFGate, has much the same content without the paywall (but with plenty of ads). Can you imagine listening in to the conversation of Wes Montgomery, Les Paul, Grant Green, George Benson and Pat Martino hanging around on a street corner in Harlem in 1963 in the wee hours of the morning and then going out to breakfast together?

There's a lot more good stuff in the interview transcription itself, as those Chron articles were limited to 1,000 words each, basically the length of my LT reviews these days, and I had to include Mimi Fox in there as well. My joke about those stories in those days was that I'd write a 2,000 word article, then take out all the most interesting quotes, then submit the article. Anyway, the offer to send the transcription via email to anyone who'd like to see it still stands . Just let me know.

Sorry about your experience with Children of the Ghetto. I know you were very much looking forward to reading it. I might give it a go myself sometime soon.

>148 kidzdoc: - Good for you for not forcing yourself to finish! Reading should never be a chore (at least, once one is out of school) and making it one is a sure-fire way to induce a reading rut.

I look forward to your thoughts on The Omni-Americans. It's not one I've heard of, but sounds intriguing.

>149 rocketjk: I'm glad that I was able to find that article, Jerry. I simply entered Martino's full name and yours into a Google search bar, and that SFGate article was the first result. Yes, if that wasn't the full transcription I would like to read it, so I'll send you a PM with my email address shortly; TYIA.

The more I think about it I was clearly having a senior moment when I claimed to be unfamiliar with Pat Martino. As you know he's from Philadelphia, and even though I don't have any of his albums I've heard his recordings over the years on WRTI, Temple University's jazz station, which features artists from the City. I also knew that he died recently (in November 2021), but I was briefly back in Atlanta at that point and that was only a few weeks before my father's sudden illness that claimed his life in early December of that year. I'll certainly have to go back and check out his recordings; which ones would you recommend?

My Name Is Adam was an important but painful read, both in terms of its content and the concentration it required to follow its disparate fragments. It didn't help that I started reading it after an outstanding novel, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, and that it didn't live up to my high expectations for it.

>150 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie. I gave My Name Is Adam a good effort, but it took me nearly two weeks to read 300 pages, and early this morning I decided that I had had enough.

I'll get back to The Omni-Americans today. It's the first book in the Library of America edition Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs, which consists of six books and assorted essays. South to a Very Old Place, which Mary and I will likely read together next month, is the second book.

>151 kidzdoc: "which ones would you recommend?"

As mentioned above, of his later albums I love Think Tank. Also the live at Yoshi's album as well as Wes Montgomery tribute release, Remember. Of his earlier albums, pre-aneurysm, the one that comes to mind is called Pat Martino/Live! from 1967 that features a blazing version of the pop song, Sunny. There's one other I particularly love but I can't think of the name right now (and my LPs are still a disordered mess on their shelves, post-move).

>152 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry. I'll definitely check out those albums. His rendition of "Sunny" is outstanding! His guitar must have been smoking at the end of his solo.

I started reading People from Oetimu early this afternoon, and it's a very intoxicating read so far. It concerns the often brutal history of the divided island of Timor, starting from a battle in the city of Oetimu in West Timor, adjacent to the border with East Timor, in 1998, and going backward in time when West Timor was a Dutch colony and East Timor was under the control of the Estado Novo fascist government of Portugal. I'm already a quarter of the way through it, and I'll almost certainly finish it this weekend.

>153 kidzdoc: I can see you are going to be a tease with these Archipelago books. I went only to buy a copy of People from Oetimu, but it's not released yet. :-)

>153 kidzdoc: Sorry, Darryl, I can't resist throwing one more log on the Pat Martino/Sunny fire. How about Pat Martino and John Scofield trading solos on the song, with Joey Defrancesco thrown in just for fun on keyboards, plus a killer drummer I wasn't familiar with named Byron Landham. This is from the 2002 Umbria Jazz Festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q742ZgZC28

>154 labfs39: I'm not surprised, Lisa. Archipelago Books sends their new titles to subscribers weeks before the actual publication date.

>155 rocketjk: Wow! That's an incredible live rendition of "Sunny." Thanks, Jerry!

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese



My rating:

The Covenant of Water is the second novel by Dr Verghese, a highly respected professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, which follows his highly successful 2009 fictional debut Cutting for Stone, a New York Times best selling book for two years and probably the best novel I read that year. The Covenant of Water is set mainly in the current state of Kerala, located on the Malabar Coast of southern India next to the Arabian Sea, during the years 1900 to 1977. It is an epic novel centered on one family, in which one member of the family in three successive generations dies by drowning, due to a mysterious malady they refer to as the Condition.

The story begins as a 12 year old newly orphaned girl is sent by her unscrupulous paternal uncle to the town of Travancore in order to marry a widowed man of means who is more than twice her age, to the financial benefit of the uncle. The marriage is ultimately a successful one, and the girl, later known as Big Ammachi, becomes an essential partner to her husband and their growing estate. Due to the Condition and several untimely deaths the family is beset by tragedy over the years, but perseveres due to their strong bonds to each other.

The story is told at different times in the 20th century in a nonlinear fashion, and includes a couple of key non-Indian characters, especially one Scottish surgeon who enlists in the Indian Medical Service to serve European and indigenous patients in colonial India. Perhaps the most important character is a young woman who decides to become a physician, studies at the Madras Medical College, which ironically is where Dr Verghese received his degree, and ultimately discovers the cause of the Condition.

The Covenant of Water is an utterly captivating novel, filled with unforgettable and vivid characters, many of whom I grew to respect, love, and praise or criticize for their life choices. My hardback copy ended at page 715, and I was disappointed that the book ended there, which is probably the best thing I can say about this fantastic novel.

Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies

  

My rating:

My Name Is Adam is the first instillation of the Children of the Ghetto trilogy, which is narrated by Adam Dannoun, who was born in the occupied town of Lydda shortly after the 1948 Nakba (“the Catastrophe”) that claimed the lives of thousands of his fellow Palestinians by members of the Israeli Defense Force who forced residents of that city to evacuate their homes and participate in a brutal march that resulted in the deaths of thousands of lives. Those who remained were forced into an enclosed area covered with barbed wire, with little water and no food, under the constant threat of being shot to death by bloodthirsty IDF officers. Adam was the first baby born in what IDF officers called the “Lydda Ghetto,” as it vaguely resembled the “Warsaw Ghetto” that the Nazis forced Jews to live in during World War II.

As the novel begins, Adam has moved to New York to become a falafel seller, and he initially attempts to write a novel about Waddah al-Yaman, the national poet of Yemen, who was born during the Umayyad Caliphate during the 7th century and was known for writing erotic and romantic poems, particularly to two women that he loved. Al-Yaman was caught hiding in a trunk in the chamber of the wife of Caliph al-Walad, who ordered him to be buried alive. Al-Yaman stayed silent, and this silence served as a metaphor for the citizens of Lydda, who for the most part endured their brutal treatment at the hands of the Israelis with minimal protest. Adam decides that his writing is not good enough to publish as a novel, though.

Adam dies by suicide, and leaves behind two notebooks of his writings that he requests be destroyed in his suicide note. He is befriended by an attractive Asian student at NYU, who decides to show these notebooks to Elias Khoury, a professor at the university she is close to, even though Adam despises Khoury. After reading the notebooks Professor Khoury decides to publish them as Adam has written them, without making any changes to the text.

The second portion of the notebooks is a very disjointed narrative by Adam, as he tells of his fateful meeting with Blind Ma’moun, a man who lived with his mother (who is not really is mother) and his stepfather when Adam was a youth. Ma’moun recalls the early days of the Lydda Ghetto, and “sees” several key events despite his handicap that he shares with Adam.

Eventually Adam writes about the occupation, while injecting texts from Palestinian and Jewish writers, accounts and characters that may or may not be accurate, and frequent diversions that proved to be more of an unpleasant distraction to this reader than an addition to the story, and after reading 300 pages I decided to put the novel aside, for at least the time being. I’ll give it 3 stars for now, and leave open the possibility of returning to it after and if I decide to read the second book in the trilogy, Star of the Sea.

>157 kidzdoc: Congratulations on a five star. What a wonderful review. I was amazed at the number of pages in the English edition. The German edition has 894 pages.

>157 kidzdoc: I still have to read Cutting for Stone, which my nephew, the one in medical school, has been nagging me about. Definitely this year, though.

>158 kidzdoc: It's so interesting how the same book will enrapture one person and leave the other cold. I was going to grab the other Children of the Ghetto book with my new discount but have decided that I need to read at least the first few books arriving with my subscription first before loading up on others. I'm excited about this new book about the island of Timor.

>160 RidgewayGirl: - Cutting For Stone, on audiobook, read by Sunil Malhotra, is a wonderful experience. He is a terrific narrator, mastering the accents of the various dialects perfectly, so nuanced. That's how I read it and I would look to see if maybe he narrated The Covenant of Water.

Just googled. I see it's read by Verghese. Perhaps as good as Malhotra...

>161 jessibud2: Verghese does an amazing job narrating Covenant of Water. I really enjoyed it. He too does the accents well having lived in all the countries his characters do.

>157 kidzdoc: enjoyed your review. I’ve seen this title everywhere, but didn’t know what it was about

>158 kidzdoc: huh. Interesting. Sorry it stopped working for you at some point.

>159 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. I always feel that my reviews are lacking in quality, due mainly to my poor background in studying English literature in college; I didn't take any classes, as I was initially a chemical engineering major as an undergraduate and took Technical Writing and Public Speaking as my English requirements. I've noticed that there can be a significant difference in the number of pages in US and UK editions of books I buy (I often bought books when I vacationed in London and Edinburgh), which is why I made note of this being the US edition of the book.

>160 RidgewayGirl: You have a treat ahead of you in Cutting for Stone, Kay. I gave both books 5 stars, and for that matter each of the four books by Verghese I've read have earned 5 stars from me.

It probably hurt that I started My Name Is Adam immediately after I finished The Covenant of Water, both because I was ready to dive into another good novel and because I had a hard time keeping its characters and the story straight; that was intentional, as far as I can tell, which is why I'll leave open the possibility of returning to it after I read Star of the Sea, which I'm guessing is a continuation of Adam's story.

Hooray for becoming a fellow subscriber to Archipelago Books! I hope that you enjoy their books as much as I have so far. People from Oetimu continues to be very good, and I should finish it no later than Monday.

>161 jessibud2: I don't read audiobooks, but I might have to make an exception if I decide to reread Cutting for Stone.

>162 labfs39: Nice! Knowing that Dr Verghese read his own book would be a compelling reason to listen to The Covenant of Water if I decide to reread it.

>163 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I simply cannot understand why The Covenant of Water hasn't been nominated for any major literary awards, unless it was published too late to be eligible for last year's prizes.

There wasn't a single reason that made me give up on My Name Is Adam; it was more like a series of frustrations with Adam's disjointed narrative, coupled with a desire to move on to something else after spending two very unsatisfying weeks trying to read it. I'll have to answer the most recent Question for the Avid Reader, but I was also frustrated with Wolf Hall in my first two attempts at reading it, but it finally clicked for me the third time around, and after that I absolutely loved it.

>164 kidzdoc: I immediately jumped into reading People from Oetimu and I look forward to discussing it with you.

>164 kidzdoc: Darryl, I love your reviews. The point is to write down our own thoughts on a book, not to write a literary treatise. As a non-English speaker, I feel like I understand what you're trying to say and that's what counts for me. If we had to do this differently in LT, then I wouldn't be allowed to write anything in English and that would be frustrating.
Re page numbers: I was surprised to read that the US and UK editions are different. Then I thought that it could also be due to the book format. One is longer in height than the other. Then the font size certainly makes a difference too. But I was surprised that the German edition needed 25% more pages.
In any case, I will read this almost 900-page tome once.

>165 RidgewayGirl: That's great, Kay! I'm on page 225 of 303, which includes the translator's afterword, so there is a good chance that I'll finish People from Oetimu today.

ETA: I'll wait to write my review until you've finished it, to avoid any potential spoiler comments.

>166 Ameise1: Thank you for those very encouraging comments, Barbara. I think my reviews will improve once I start writing them on a regular basis, and hopefully 2025 is the year that I finally do that.

>157 kidzdoc: That looks so interesting! Not sure I'm up for a 715 page book though.

Well, earworms. Love the plan >88 kidzdoc: >135 kidzdoc:. Ok, I am going to listen to some of your choices Darryl (downloaded both albums). I used to play a lot of jazz at one time, but listen less to music generally at the moment. Wes will be new to me.

>168 qebo: I love epic novels and tomes, so reading a 715 page book isn't the least bit intimidating to me, as long as I'm enjoying the book. I always carried a weighty book whenever I took transatlantic flights or long cross country European train trips, as I did my best reading while traveling long distances. One book I'll start very soon for the first quarter Reading Globally theme is Life Embitters by the Catalan author Josep Pla, another Archipelago book, which the author describes as a "book of narrative literature." It has exactly 600 pages of text divided into 24 unrelated parts, which will make it easy to read one portion at a time. As I indicated in my review The Covenant of Water wasn't too long IMO, and I would have been happy if it was a few hundred pages longer.

>169 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. I have plenty of earworms that I could and will post in the coming weeks, which will be mainly but not exclusively be jazz recordings, some relatively well known, but many definitely not.

>164 kidzdoc: FWIW, I have not found your reviews to be lacking at all. Once I get through my first-quarter crunch, I will definitely try one or both of Verghese's books.

>171 Jim53: Thanks. Jim!

BTW, have you had any snow yet? I'm in Lower Bucks County, PA, about 6 miles N of the border with NE Philadelphia, and we've only had the tiniest amount of flurries, with no accumulation. There's no accumulation so far at the Linc, either.

I rarely tackle "family saga" type novels (although I devoured plenty in my teens, go figure), but I enjoyed reading your reviews.

>172 kidzdoc: In SW Chester county, we had some light flurries late this morning, then a break, then some sleet (yuck), and now we're finally getting the heavier snow that we were promised. In our 55+ neighborhood, we watch to see that we've exceeded the minimum required for the maintenance company to shovel our driveways (about three inches), which we have.

>161 jessibud2:, >162 labfs39: your recommendations come at the perfect time as I need to use up my Audible credits so that I can end my subscription, and I haven't known what to spend them on!

>164 kidzdoc: Darryl, I think you have read and thought deeply about many more books than most people who took English literature in college! I think your reviews are deep and heartfelt, and I am always interested in what you have to say.

>173 LolaWalser: Hmm. I'll not sure if I've enjoyed other "family sagas" or not. The two I've read by Abraham Verghese have both been excellent.

I'm glad that you liked my reviews!

>174 Jim53: I just looked outside, just before 7 pm. It's only lightly snowing, and I'll guess that we've had roughly two inches of snow, far less than was forecast this morning. Looking at the radar map it doesn't seem that we'll get much more.

What's crazy is that New Orleans may get more snow starting tomorrow night than we will!

>175 wandering_star: Great! I'm glad that I could give you a book recommendation or two. BTW I finished People from Oetimu this afternoon and I've rated it 4 stars.

>176 wandering_star: Thanks for that heartfelt compliment. I greatly appreciate all the positive feedback, which has encouraged me to write reviews more promptly and more often.

Excited to see that Abraham Verghese gets a lot of love here because I have Cutting for Stone on my shelves, given by my father in law whose tastes don't always align with mine, and the blurbs at the back didn't look enticing to me... I'm feeling quite hopeful now :-)

>178 Dilara86: That's great, Dilara. I failed to review it, but I loved Cutting for Stone as much as The Covenant of Water.

People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi, translated from the Indonesian by Lara Norgaard



My rating:

This novel opens in 1998 in a town on the border between West Timor, the former Dutch Timor that became part of Indonesia after the Indonesian National Revolution which ended in 1949, and East Timor, which had struggled to gain its independence from Indonesia and the brutal reign of President Suharto (1967-1998) since the Portuguese divested its overseas colonies in 1974 following the Carnation Revolution and the end of the fascist Estado Novo regime there. Most of the men in town have been invited to the home of Ipi, the local police sergeant, to watch the World Cup final between their beloved Portugal national football club and France. From the first sentence there is clearly danger lurking, but exactly what that is isn’t disclosed until the book’s end.

The narrative moves back in time to 1974, and the violence that ensues as the Timorese engage in a bloody conflict between Suharto, who wishes to control the entire island of Timor, and student activists and separatists who are opposed to the ruthless president and want the eastern half of the island to become an independent nation. One key character of the novel, Am Siki, was a near mythical survivor of the brutal campaign during World War II when Japan controlled the entire island from 1942 to 1945 until it surrendered to the Allies and the country halves were returned to their prior colonial overseers, and he returns to Oetimu in 1974 and proves to play a key role in developments there.

In an interview with Lara Norgaard, the book’s narrator, Felix Nesi describes the history of Timorese literature, which he described as “boring,” and in this book he aimed to recreate the tradition of storytelling in this novel, which Norgaard captures effectively despite the challenges of having to translate the multiple languages spoken by the Timorese people.

People from Oetimu is a very readable and captivating book, filled with vivid characters, and although it isn’t a historical novel it does recall the often corrupt, violent and tragic history of that troubled and still divided island, which apparently has only regained a sense of stability within the past few years.

>180 kidzdoc: Skipping this review for now. I'll be back when I'm finished the book, which I am enjoying very much. Very hard to be a woman in that place though.

>181 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I was hoping that you would wait to read my review until you had finished it. I tried to avoid any potential spoiler comments for you and anyone else interested in reading it.

>180 kidzdoc: Adding to my wishlist. Kindle version is coming out in mid-February.

>183 arubabookwoman: Sounds good, Deborah!

This week's earworm is "September Song" by the great vocalist Sarah Vaughan, which comes from her album of the same name, which was reissued many years later as Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown. The album was recorded on December 18, 1954 and also features Clifford Brown on trumpet, Herbie Mann on trumpet, Paul Quinichette on tenor saxophone, Jimmy Jones on piano, Joe Benjamin on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums. The entire album is solid and is a great introduction to both Sarah Vaughan and Clifford Brown, a very talented and rising musician who sadly died as a result of an auto accident at the tender age of 25.

https://youtu.be/nyC_x0_yXG8?si=jikvx4XJZ3XyvXq7

>185 kidzdoc: Great one!

I finished reading Pilgrims Way by Abdulrazak Gurnah this morning. It is very different than the previous novels I have read by this author. The novel was first published in the UK in 1988 and it is Gurnah's second published novel. It has the same flowing atmospheric style as the later novels of his that I have read and it is very very character driven. Gurnah's command of the English language is remarkable and creates moods and contextual atmosphere like few other authors. The novel is set in the UK in some unnamed city but refers often to events in the not-to-distant-past of the main character. The plot is driven by what happened in Tanzania when that country got its independence from Britain. The main character in the novel is driven by his ghost filled traumatic past experience and his loneliness and homesickness in the present, which has turned to bitterness and resentment. The entire novel is about his journey out of his trauma. I think that now the popular term would be that the main character suffers from PTSD.

As always with Gurnah, race is a big part of the novel. It is about how unthinking people can be so very hurtful, but it is also about how fear, loneliness, and trauma can block any attempts by others to reach the traumatized person.

The novel is full of symbolism and references to great works of literature. It took me a long time figure out where the novel was set geographically and it wasn't until very late in the novel that the author names the country. It is clear that the racism in the country isn't limited to Blacks but includes Indians as well, so it is about racism against all people of color.

This novel is a slow burn and needs lots of time to develop, but the entire novel is 232 pages in length so the reader isn't kept waiting that long for the major developments. This is a novel that makes a reader take a long hard look at themselves to see if they are one of those unthinking persons.

This novel coupled with my recent reading of Catfish and Mandala has caused me to take a long hard look at my own speech and writing patterns. As Salman Rushdie says in his recent book Knife words are powerful because they are so full of meaning and experiences.

I would recommend this novel, but would also tell potential readers that it, like all authors, Gurnah evolves, and his later novels are a bit different.

>186 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry!

>187 benitastrnad: Nice review of Pilgrims Way, Benita. It seems to be one of two novels by Gurnah that I haven't read yet, along with Dottie. If I don't get to them this year I'll do so next year.
______________________________

My brother bought me a copy of Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude, and a Surgeon's Fight for Health Justice by Ala Stanford, M.D. for Christmas, as it was a book that was on my Amazon wish list. Dr Stanford grew up in North Philadelphia and is a rare quantity, a Black female surgeon. I looked at the inner cover this morning and remembered that Dr. Velma Scantlebury, the first Black female transplant surgeon in the world, had written a book not long ago. Dr Scantlebury was one of the most revered physicians at my medical school, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pitt Med), and on those rare occasions we saw her in the U of Pittsburgh Medical Center we greeted her warmly. I checked Amazon, and the Kindle version of her book Beyond Every Wall: Becoming the 1st Black Female Transplant Surgeon was available, so I purchased it and started reading it. It's a YA book of only 200 pages, so I'll finish it in the next day or two and resume reading my two other books.

>180 kidzdoc: how interesting! Fantastic review. Timur - huh.

>187 benitastrnad: i love Gurnah and love your review. I want to read more by him.

>189 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. Yes, Timor! I love reading Archipelago books, which expose me to literature from non-Western countries. I knew nothing about that divided island, and even though People from Oetimu is not a historical novel I now have much more familiarity with it.

Abdulrazak Gurnah's new novel Theft will be published in March, and I'll undoubtedly buy it.

>135 kidzdoc: Enjoyed the mellow tones of Wes last night Darryl.

>185 kidzdoc: Love Sarah Vaughan's voice. Will enjoy a revisit, it's been a while.

Do you like Don Byas btw? i need to get back to him, played a lot, along with DizzyG, in my yoof.

>185 kidzdoc: I first heard Sarah Vaughan on the album Four by Four, featuring her, Ella, Billie Holliday, and Dinah Washington.

>191 Caroline_McElwee: I'm glad that you liked those selections, Caroline.

I've heard of Don Byas, but that's as far as it goes. Apparently he spent most of his career in Europe, and that may have meant that his albums weren't released by the major American record companies such as Blue Note, Columbia and Prestige, which could have greatly limited his exposure in the US.

>192 labfs39: I haven't heard of that album, Lisa, so I'll look for it. I have a subscription to Spotify, which is great for looking up unfamiliar songs and albums.

Hey, Darryl! I hope you don't mind my sharing this on your thread, but I just saw a NY Times column by Jon Pareles listing 12 new songs being released by a variety of artists, and one of them is the first single from an album coming in April by the great Irma Thomas (The Soul Queen of New Orleans) backed by Galactic. The song is called Lady Liberty. Check out this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtNnUZAj7F4

then there is Jon Batiste from NOLA who I discovered as the leader of the Late Night band, went solo and thats all he wrote. I currently have been listening to his 'Beethoven Blues' which feeds my love of classical and blues. delightful

>194 rocketjk: Thanks for posting that great and timely video, Jerry!

>195 cindydavid4: Sounds good, Cindy. I'll check that out.

>195 cindydavid4: He's amazing. I have his album We Are

>197 labfs39: Sounds good. I'll check out that album, Lisa.

Spotify recommended a group that was new to me, the Malian desert blues group Songhoy Blues, which recently released a new album titled 'Héritage.' I particularly liked the first song, 'Toukambela,' and I'll plan on buying the CD. Unfortunately my favorite jazz record shop in Center City Philadelphia closed several years ago, so I'll have to find out where else to purchase it, either in or outside of the city.

https://youtu.be/jElCeilVldc?si=hl8ZRuzUn3f4JWfK

I'm not commenting much (stress is getting to me a bit), but I'm enjoying listening to your jazz selections.

I also value your reviews.

Covenant of Water has been on my radar as I really liked Cutting for Stone.

People from Oetimu sounds fascinating. I haven't read anything from Timor, so I've added it to my wish list after its release, since I doubt it will be available at my library.

>199 streamsong: Hi, Janet. I'm sorry that you've been under stress lately; I haven't commented much about it here but I can definitely sympathize with you.

I liked The Covenant of Water as much as I did Cutting for Stone, so I hope that you get to it soon.

Like you I hadn't read anything from Timor, East or West, before People from Oetimu, and I probably wouldn't have except for my subscription to Archipelago Books.

>198 kidzdoc: If you like Malian music, are you familiar with Amadou and Maryam? I love their music!

>201 Sakerfalcon: Hi, Claire! I haven't heard of Amadou & Maryam, so I'll have to check out their music. My favorite Malian musicians are Ali Farka Touré and his son Vieux Farka Touré, Salif Keita, and Toumani Diabaté. I've seen Ali Farka Touré and Salif Keita perform in concert many years ago. I also love Baaba Maal, but he's from the neighboring country of Senegal.

I was also going to mention the Farka Toure. Great stuff.

Not from Mali, rather from Capo Verde, have you heard of Cesaria Evora? I have 3 cds by her. All in Portuguese, of course, which I don't understand but her voice is great, gritty. Her style is called Fado.

>203 jessibud2: Yes, I am familiar with Cesária Évora, the Cape Verdean singer who is known as the Queen of Morna, a musical style which bears great similarity to fado, the national music of Portugal, as Cape Verde was a colony of Portugal for hundreds of years. IIRC @deebee1 introduced me to her music when I visited Lisbon and met up with her in 2018.

Another Cesária Évora fan, here. Beautiful singer, beautiful musical style.

>195 cindydavid4: Batiste is one insanely talented artist. He attended Juilliard for jazz studies. I saw a video on you tube with him and trumpet player Wynton Marsalis. Just amazing!

>202 kidzdoc: Salif Keita long a favourite of mine, and I too have seen him live Darryl.

>203 jessibud2: just been listening to Cesaria Evora, oh shes wonderful! thanks for the MB (as apposed to a BB :)

I was wondering about Fado, there is a folk dance by that name and I wondered how it connected to the song 'fado, the national music of Portugal' ok that makes sense

>205 rocketjk: Definitely, Jerry.

>206 figsfromthistle: Nice! I'll have to look for that video.

>207 Caroline_McElwee: I haven't listened to Salif Keita for some time, so I'll have to rectify that.

>208 cindydavid4: I don't know anything about a fado folk dance. Fado is most commonly performed in intimate small clubs in Lisbon, as the members of the audience sit at small tables and on chairs while listening to the singer and (usually) her small band perform. The audience is expected to be quiet during the perfomance, with no conversations, clinking of glasses, and certainly no dancing. I saw three fado performances when I was in Lisbon in 2018, and there was no dancing in any of them.

I picked up two books from my local library this morning, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, by Mosab Abu Toha, a recent collection which describes the difficulties Palestinians face under occupation and constant lockdown, and New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement by Juan Williams, the noted journalist whose 1987 book Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 formed the basis of an award winning PBS documentary of the same name. This book begins with the racist right wing reaction that followed Barack Obama's election as President of the United States, and the fight for equal treatment by Blacks, other racial and religious minorities, and women and gender minorities that resulted from the election of Republican federal and state officials. Geoff Bennett interviewed Juan Williams on a segment for the PBS NewsHour last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this book amongst the new books in my local library, as it was only released two weeks ago.

>210 kidzdoc: Lois has read the Abu Toha book & liked it.

She also liked Forest of Noise by him.

>211 dukedom_enough:, >212 dukedom_enough: I saw that Lois liked Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear earlier this afternoon, as I was trying to determine who referred this collection, and Forest of Noise to me. I don't think it was Lois, or Lola, so I''m still not sure.

Darryl, Henry Louis Gates Jr has a new series on pbs, starting tonight, right after his regular Finding Your Roots. The new one (maybe it's just tonight and not a series, I can't remember), is called The Great Migration and looks excellent. That's where I'll be for the rest of the evening!

>208 cindydavid4: - You're welcome. She came onto my radar many years ago after performing here in Toronto. I had not heard of her before and so, didn't see her show but they talked about it on the radio the next day and played a piece and I was hooked. She died a few years ago so sadly, I never did get to see her perform.

>214 jessibud2: I saw that too, Shelley; I normally watch the PBS NewsHour from 6-7 pm, followed by BBC America News from 7-7:30 pm. I won't watch "Great Migrations" tonight, though, as my mother woke me up from deep sleeps three times from midnight to 6:30 am today, so I'm wiped out, and frazzled by her strange behaviors during and after dinner tonight. I subscribe to my local PBS station which allows me to use PBS Passport to stream content free of charge, so I'll watch it once I'm rested and in a better frame of mind.

>214 jessibud2: Thanks for mentioning this. I watch Finding Your Roots regularly, but through PBS Passport, not TV, so I might've not noticed for awhile.

>213 kidzdoc: Darryl, I mentioned Forest of noise on my thread this month and posted a short poem, so you might have seen if there.

>209 kidzdoc: ok, I know that I dance Fado with my dance group
"Fado has two distinct traditions: Lisbon Fado and Coimbra Fado. Lisbon Fado, recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, has its origins in bohemian Lisbon, while Coimbra Fado, although not recognized by UNESCO, is a unique expression of the academic soul of this historic city.May 2, 2024"

I suppose it means both form of entertainment can have the same name! but not necessarily related to each other

>218 markon: Thanks, Arlene. You're absolutely right.

>219 cindydavid4: That's interesting, Cindy. Fado music and fado dance appear to be two types of fado, as fado music from Lisbon was traditionally sung by women mourning their beloved sailors or fishermen who are away or died at sea, or the poor in the city who mourned their own losses or circumstances. Needless to say these songs wouldn't lend themselves to dancing. I skipped over Coimbra when I was in Portugal and went directly to Porto, so I didn't see the different style of fado performed there. On the first day that @deebee1 gave me a tour of Lisbon we saw a group of adorable teen schoolgirls performing fado in an upbeat manner sporting 1000 watt smiles, probably in response to our beaming smiles. I'll look for that photo in one of my Facebook albums.

This is a classic recording of traditional fado by Amália Rodrigues, the Queen of Fado:

https://youtu.be/ARS7Zi-Zpkw?si=FyaWmROAgb7xJE9x

This is a much more recent song by Mariza, one of the most renowned contemporary fadistas:

https://youtu.be/S2Ip-uUhaoI?si=o_7Dc2Smm6xw1Ygf

Just caught a clip of the 1970s documentary of Woodstock, during an interview with its editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and there was a clip of Jimi Hendrix, what a talent that man was. Will revisit him at the weekend. Thelma has worked with Scorcesi most of her adult life, she is now in her 80s.

>220 kidzdoc: thank you for those links, I think our dance group would be interested in hearing them

>221 Caroline_McElwee: Sounds good, Caroline.

>222 cindydavid4: You're welcome, Cindy.

With all of the disturbing (Trump cabinet nominee hearings) and tragic (airplane disaster) events in Washington this week I nearly forgot to post my Earworm of the Week, namely "Shirl" by the Horace Silver Quintet, which comes from his album 6 Pieces of Silver that was recorded on November 10, 1956 and features Silver on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums.



https://youtu.be/oc-r8ZY1rUU?si=K168bdcdbn6SVCOz

>180 kidzdoc: I'm finally able to come back and read your comments on People from Oetimu. I was pleased to read a novel set in a place I'd never read about before and of which I have only the memory of reading about unrest in East Timor as it gained its independence, but more than that, I enjoyed reading this book. I'll have to think for a bit before writing up my own thoughts, but I do agree with you that the translator notes at the end were helpful in understanding the novel.

>225 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad that you enjoyed People from Oetimu, Kay. I look forward to seeing your review of it.

>180 kidzdoc: Fascinating, and I'm going to try and read People from Oetimu this year, as I'm focusing on Southeast Asia. Enjoyed your review.

I'm listening to Sarah Vaughan this morning, thanks a reminder via your thread.

>227 rasdhar: Thanks, Rashdar. I'm glad that you enjoyed my review of People from Oetimu.

Which album by Sarah Vaughan are you listening to?

Belated thanks on posting music links this year. I'm listening to a link at night when I'm winding down.

>229 markon: My pleasure!

Beyond Every Wall: Becoming the 1st Black Female Transplant Surgeon by Velma P. Scantlebury, MD

  

My rating:

When I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the mid 1990s one of the most revered faculty members was Dr Velma Scantlebury, as we all knew that she was the world’s first Black female transplant surgeon and worked at the world’s premiere organ transplant center under the tutelage of Pitt’s legendary transplant surgeon Dr Thomas Starzl, who was known as “the father of modern transplantation.” My brother gave me a copy of the book Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude and a Surgeon’s Fight for Health Justice by the African-American female surgeon Dr Ala Stanford for Christmas, which reminded me that Dr Scantlebury had written a memoir, and I downloaded the e-book edition of it.

Beyond Every Wall is Dr Scantlebury’s improbable and inspiring memoir and account of her long journey to success, starting from her modest childhood in Barbados. Her parents valued education and saw it as a pathway to success for Velma and her siblings, and she did extremely well in school there, which continued after the family moved to Brooklyn to gain a better life. Her teachers and guidance counselors discouraged her from pursuing a college degree, but she was driven by the untimely and tragic death of one of her sisters to pursue a career in medicine.

Velma graduated from Long Island University and Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. While in medical school she loved her rotation in Surgery, and wanted to pursue a residency in that field, an area where women were not welcomed, nonetheless a Black woman. Thanks in large part to an influential female surgeon at Harlem Hospital in New York she was able to gain a spot in its residency program, where she did well, despite the obstacles she continued to face. While there she decided to pursue a career as a transplant surgeon, which was an even bigger hurdle as she would become the first Black woman to achieve that honor. She was not accepted into any fellowship programs, despite her stellar performance in residency, but the head of Surgery at Harlem Hospital convinced Dr Starzl at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to sponsor her as a research assistant. She did well, and Dr Starzl accepted her as a fellow there.

She openly described the grueling hours and intense challenges she faced throughout her fellowship and, later, as a faculty member at Pitt, and the difficulty of combining her medical career with her life as a wife and mother of two daughters, initially in Pittsburgh and then at other institutions, before returning to Pitt.

Beyond Every Wall was a superb YA book that deserves to be widely read by young women and children of color as a testament that hard work and personal dedication can overcome even the most improbable and unlikely dreams. As someone who also overcame seemingly impossible odds to become a physician I could relate to Dr Scantlebury’s journey, and I have even more respect for her now that I did when I was a wide eyed medical student at Pitt and viewed her with the utmost admiration.

>231 kidzdoc: Great review, Daryl!

>232 tangledthread: Thanks, tangledthread!

>231 kidzdoc: Very interesting, Darryl. I read the sample on the author's website. You say it is young adult?

>234 labfs39: She mentions on the book's home page that "her story highlights possibilities for young girls whose dreams can become realities," which I took to mean that this group was its intended audience. I also read somewhere else that it was a YA book for ages 11 to 18, and to me it reads like a book that is more suitable for that age group.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha



My rating:

Mosab Abu Toha (1992-) is a young Palestinian poet who spent most of his life in Gaza before leaving, along with his young family, to become a Visiting Fellow in the Scholars at Risk program at Harvard in 2022, then pursuing an MFA at Syracuse University. While in Gaza he and his biological family experienced personal trauma and loss, due to regular attacks on Hamas terrorists and civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, and he was injured and nearly killed by an IDF attack at the age of 16 as he went to a local market. He was a good student, particularly in the English language, and he graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza despite additional IDF attacks that destroyed much of the campus. As a student he was inspired by the great English poets along with ancient and modern Arabic poets, and although he decided to become a teacher to support his family his great love was poetry, which allowed him to express his personal feelings and experiences living under siege and hardship in an oppressed society.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is Toha’s first published collection of poems, which won or was a finalist for several poetry awards. The poems are very evocative, and provide the reader with the beauty of Gaza, the destruction inflicted by Israeli attacks, and the near constant fear of its residents, who know that their lives can be altered or taken at any time. The poem that is taken from the title of the book was published by the Poetry Foundation in its March 2021 edition:

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD

i

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.

When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

ii

The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my small ear canal of them all.

Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours,
my doctor, day and night.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is an outstanding poetry collection, and a superb account of life under occupation in Gaza. His newest collection is Forest of Noise: Poems, and I will buy and read it soon.

>231 kidzdoc: >236 kidzdoc: excellent reviews Darryl

>236 kidzdoc: Lois/avaland was reading Forest of Noise when I last visited. The author seemed interesting then, but after reading your review, I can see I need to prioritize him.

I love that poem!

Regarding Palestine, last night I went with some friends to see an excellent, infuriating and absolutely heartbreaking documentary, No Other Land, about the extremely cruel, long-term destruction of a West Bank village in order to, supposedly, make way for an Israeli tank training grounds. Here is the trailer. A note that even this preview is hard to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pI2IXKtlew&t=131s

I don't know if the movie is streaming, yet.

>237 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I've reviewed all five books I've read so far, which was one of my goals for 2025.

>238 labfs39: I saw that she gave Forest of Noise 5 stars, which is one more reason to read it this year.

>239 wandering_star: I'm glad that you liked that poem, Margaret. Most of the other ones in the books are just as good.

I should have mentioned that the book ends with an enlightening interview of the author by the Jewish American poet and scholar Ammiel Alcalay, which provides a superb context to the book.

>239 wandering_star: Thanks for mentioning that documentary and posting that trailer, Jerry. I'll wait to watch it until I'm in a better frame of mind, as I'm still deeply upset by the horrific loss of life of innocent civilians in Gaza, which is compounded by the lack of sensitivity to the plight of Palestinians by some of my Jewish friends. Of course October 7th was an atrocious and tragic attack on innocent Israelis, and I obviously don't support terrorist organizations that wish to eradicate Israelis, but that doesn't mean I can ignore the excessive and immoral response by the Netanyahu government and the IDF.

Although I've limited my comments on social media, especially over the past year, I seem to have lost a formerly dear friend whose name I won't mention, presumably because I'm not an unapologetic supporter of Israel.

In the past week I've watched two interviews of Peter Beinart, in which he discusses his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. It looks very interesting, and I'll probably borrow or buy it in the near future.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/02/world/video/gps0202-peter-beinart-on-being-jewish...

>240 rocketjk: No Other Land is not only not streaming, it hasn't even been able to find a distributor willing to release the film theatrically in the US. They have managed to arrange brief theatrical runs on single screens in New York (it began last Friday) and Los Angeles (beginning on the 7th), but I don't know how long those will last.

>243 KeithChaffee: I'm not surprised they can't get distribution. It's a very difficult movie to watch, although very skillfully made. You can't come away from it unchanged, and many people don't want to have their preconceived notions challenged. I got to see No Other Land at the Film Forum independent movie theater in Greenwich Village.

>242 kidzdoc: I haven't read the book or even checked out the interview, but I do have an issue with the title of that book: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: a Reckoning. One of the problems that American Jews face now, both within our community and outside of it, is that we're expected to consider Israel and its behavior central to our identity as Jews. My sense of my Jewishness, though, is not defined by what Israel does. So I don't feel I need to come to a reckoning about "being Jewish." Now, if the title of the book were Being a Supporter of Israel After the Destruction of Gaza: a Reckoning, or even Supporting Israel After the Destruction of Gaza: a Reckoning for American (or Worldwide) Jews, that would be a different story. Because I have had to come to a reckoning about my onetime support of Israel. This support was based on the misinformation I was fed as a child, but also based on my lack of delving into the real facts of the matter over the first decades of my adulthood. I hold myself entirely accountable for the latter. But, again, I don't need to have a reckoning about being Jewish. For one thing, I have too much respect and love for my forebears & ancestors for that, as well as for centuries of Jewish philosophy and history. I hope that makes sense. And, of course, there are plenty of Jews in the U.S. (and elsewhere I assume) who do consider support for Israel to be central to their identities as Jews. Nevertheless the blanket assumption inherent in Beinart's book title sits poorly with me. None of this means that I assume that Beinart's book is not well written, thoughtful and valuable. It very well may be all of those things, and I'll be very interested to know what you think of it once you've read it. But I do think the title is unfortunate, because I think it unnecessarily feeds a misconception.

>244 rocketjk: One of the problems that American Jews face now, both within our community and outside of it, is that we're expected to consider Israel and its behavior central to our identity as Jews. My sense of my Jewishness, though, is not defined by what Israel does. So I don't feel I need to come to a reckoning about "being Jewish."

Mmm. I see where you're coming from, Jerry. That makes complete sense. I was probably guilty of expecting my Jewish American friends to express their extreme disapproval of the Netanyahu/IDF response to October 7th, and I was shocked and extremely disappointed when some of they seemed to value Jewish and Israeli lives much more than Palestinian and Arab lives, something which recalls how Southern Whites viewed Blacks during and before the Civil Rights era and is completely opposed to my view as a Christian that all people are equal in the eyes of God. Several of my dearest Jewish friends from my past reached out to me personally to express the extreme personal pain they were experiencing, being torn between the innocent Israelis that were injured, killed or kidnapped, and the images of suffering Gazans, especially children. As a pediatrician seeing any child suffer is deeply upsetting to me, especially since I cared for dozens of kids who were severely injured as a result of child abuse and I became intensely upset and angry whenever I watched the news coverage from Gaza.

>245 kidzdoc: "I see where you're coming from, Jerry."

Hi Darryl, and thanks for your understanding. I hope you don't mind if I expand a bit more, as this is something of a hot button topic for me:

"Several of my dearest Jewish friends from my past reached out to me personally to express the extreme personal pain they were experiencing, being torn between the innocent Israelis that were injured, killed or kidnapped, and the images of suffering Gazans, especially children."

And I feel the same way. So what I'm trying to say is that I sincerely doubt that these friends of yours were having a "reckoning" about "being Jewish." Whatever I or any other Jew might think of what's going on in Israel/Palestine, that would create a need for a reckoning about our individual relationships with Israel. Definitely. But it would not cause me to have a reckoning about my "being Jewish." I am a Jew. I don't have to have a reckoning about that. The two aren't the same.

"something which recalls how Southern Whites viewed Blacks during and before the Civil Rights era and is completely opposed to my view as a Christian that all people are equal in the eyes of God."

Sure, absolutely. So then what would you have thought of a book titled "Being Christian During Jim Crow: a Reckoning." Would you welcome the idea that all Christians were to have "a reckoning" about their Christianity because other Christians supported Jim Crow? Were the Christians who continued to live their Christian faith of brotherhood and equality by definition complicit in how other Christians were acting?

Maybe a slightly better comparison is whether you would expect your Moslem friends to have a reckoning about "being Moslem" when they read about Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Anyway, apologies if these points were all already clear to you from my first post. Also, I want to be absolutely clear that I offer all of this as food for thought, in the spirit of openness and respect. Peace, my friend!

Darryl and Jerry, thank you for your conversation here.

>247 rocketjk: Thank you for those insightful comments, Jerry. As you said I'm sure that my friends did not question who they were as Jews based on what is happening in Gaza, or what has happened in Palestine in the past.

And, as you correctly stated, I don't question my personal religious beliefs based on what people have done in the name of Christianity for centuries, including the support of evangelical Christians for Donald Trump and other extreme right wing politicians here.

I can't honestly say what my Muslim friends feel about their faith after the Taliban corrupted it for its own means. However, my three closest friends who come to mind are all female physicians, and I'm all but completely certain they would be in strong opposition to that organization.

Thank you for this open and enlightening conversation!

>249 RidgewayGirl: You're welcome, Kay.

>250 kidzdoc: And thank you, Darryl, for accepting my comments in the spirit in which they were intended.

>242 kidzdoc:, >244 rocketjk:, >245 kidzdoc:, >247 rocketjk:
I saw one of those interviews with Peter Beinart on TV, and am interested in the book (which doesn't necessarily mean I'll get around to it soon). Regarding the title, he may not have chosen it, and your proposed alternatives are not so succinct and catchy, and are probably too nuanced for the general public. It's partly a question of terminology. I'm ethnically WASP for example, so there's a component of religion to my heritage but personally I'm an atheist; there's a clear distinction between what I am, and what I believe. I know any number of Jewish atheists, and Unitarian atheists, and Quaker atheists, but Christian atheist is not a thing. Some years ago I attended a class at a Reconstructionist Jewish synagogue (I'd gone there initially for a meet-and-greet with a political candidate, and the class was open to the public), and one topic of discussion was Israel, relationship to, stance toward, etc. presented with an accompanying sigh to indicate it's problematic but unavoidable. I'm certainly not saying you're stuck with it! More that YMMV wrt identity. There is ample literature by Christians and Muslims aiming to separate themselves and the religion that is meaningful to them, from the fundamentalist / terrorist faction that goes by the same label, in order to define a set of values, and convey them to outsiders who are getting a distorted impression from prominent voices. Book titles may be not as explicit as your examples, but that exact element is there.

>251 rocketjk: You're welcome, Jerry.

>252 qebo: Interesting comments, Katherine.

Okay, it's time for a new thread.

>252 qebo: "Regarding the title, he may not have chosen it, and your proposed alternatives are not so succinct and catchy, and are probably too nuanced for the general public. It's partly a question of terminology."

Well, of course it's a question of terminology. It's pretty much entirely that. "Succinct and catchy" in my view should not be the be-all and end-all, particularly if the route to "succinct and catchy" feeds a common misconception and articulates a fallacy, and a dangerous one for Jews at that. I'm aware that Beinart might not have chosen the title, and as I said above, for all I know I might find the book itself to be excellent. But whoever did choose it, chose poorly. If "succinct and catchy" is desired, then the goal should be "succinct and catchy" that does not create a false impression. Being Jewish, I don't need it explained to me that a frequent topic of discussion in synagogue classes is "Israel, relationship to, stance toward, etc. presented with an accompanying sigh to indicate it's problematic but unavoidable." That, in fact, is exactly my point. The "reckoning" is "Israel, relationship to, stance toward . . . " No Jew taking those classes was there to have "a reckoning" about "being Jewish," as Beinart's title would have it. Let me see if I can put it another way: The people in that class you attended might have cared about Israel because they were Jewish, but they weren't Jewish because of Israel. Their Judaism, religious or otherwise, is drawn from a much deeper well than that.

The problem with legitimizing the idea that Jews should now be having "a reckoning" about "being Jewish" is that it feeds into the misconception that being Jewish automatically equates with being Zionist. We saw this on the Columbia University campus, among others, during the protests last year (which, to be clear, I generally supported), where some Jewish students were disinvited from campus groups and activities because they were "probably Zionists," and the offices of Jewish staff members were vandalized because of things like a mezuzah on a doorpost. The clear implication was that being Jewish automatically put people on the wrong side of the virtue line, groups like Not in Our Name notwithstanding. "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning" feeds that exact stereotype. That title is just wrong.

I mean, good grief, I recently read a book titled Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life. Not a catchy title (or a particularly good book in my view), but it does accurately convey the author's thesis, and the publishers didn't seem to find the lack of catchiness problematic. The book got reviewed in several prominent publications, which is what brought me to read it.

"I know any number of Jewish atheists,"

And now you know one more. But I'm sincerely perplexed about why you bring it up. Judaism is a religion and a culture and a history. Jews mix and match those elements in the ways that fit them best. We refer to ourselves, generally, as the Jewish People, a fairly broad catch-all that works well. When I was a kid, the country club in the New Jersey suburb I lived in didn't allow Jews to join. The question was not whether you kept kosher or went to temple or wore a yarmulke. Only whether you were a Jew.* In high school I worked in the supermarket in town. Some of my coworkers from the next town over--where they wouldn't have known any Jews--didn't care that I was Jewish, and some stopped talking to me when they found out. None of the latter had their minds changed about that when they saw me eating a ham sandwich. I was only threatened once, and all in all it was a good education for me. The point being in all this that unless one is sequestered in an Orthodox Jewish community somewhere, the relationship that most Jews have with the rest of society depends very little on religious belief.

When I go to synagogue, which is rarely, I go because services for me serve as a cultural touchstone rather than as a religious one. That's also why I fast on Yom Kippur and light Hanukah candles. None of that has changed in the slightest because I've now finally grown horrified and disgusted with the criminals and murderers running what has been turned fully into an apartheid state. Israel was meant to serve as a refuge for all Jews, from atheist to orthodox. So the relationship that each Jew has with Israel is not dependent on religious belief, but on cultural identity. The reason my parents didn't move the family from New Jersey to Israel in 1950, was that they didn't want to be Israelis. They wanted to be Americans. And that's what I am, an American Jew. It felt good when I thought Israel was a place I could legitimately feel a sense of identity with and see as a refuge should things turn bad in America for Jews. It feels bad now to understand that it's been based, to a significant extent, on lies from the beginning. And having lost that, I am still an American Jew. I have had a reckoning about my relationship to Israel, but I have not had a reckoning about being a Jew.

* Not that it ever occurred to me to care about membership in that club. It's just an example of what I'm talking about. Also, a note that I recently attended my 50th high school reunion at that exact same country club. I didn't ask, but I'm guessing the membership is open to all now. Times do change!

Apologies for extending the conversation, Darryl.

>254 rocketjk: So... I am an excruciatingly slow writer with a full time job, and perhaps I should not have tried to participate in a conversation mid day. I wasn't trying to start a fight and I seem to have made you angry. I'm too upset about the world in general right now to sort through your response. Maybe tomorrow I'll try, but behind the scenes so this thread can end.

Judaism is a religion and a culture and a history.
I kinda thought that's what I was saying. In contrast to other words that can have more emphasis on one or the other.

>228 kidzdoc: I was listening to Send in the Clowns, which is a 1981 album she did with the Count Basie Orchestra. Really suiting my mood at the moment!

>231 kidzdoc: Fascinating, and how wonderful that you actually had her on your faculty.

>236 kidzdoc: This is so sad and beautiful, thank you for sharing.

>244 rocketjk: and other

I just want to second the point Jerry is making. It's really important as there has been for decades a great pressure from Israel and American conservatives to conflate Jewishness and Zionism. The idea is to generate a no questions asked support for Israel. This recent documentary I saw may help illuminate that topic, it's free to view on Vice magazine's channel on YouTube:

Israelism: How Young American Jews’ Views of Israel Are Shifting

>254 rocketjk: No need to apologize, Jerry, not one bit. I appreciated and learned a lot from your reply to >252 qebo:.

>256 rasdhar: I'll have to listen to that album, Rasdhar.

Dr Scantlebury was an inspiration to many people, particularly women and African Americans who decided to become transplant surgeons in medical centers across the country.

I'm glad that you liked my review of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear. This takes new meaning after yesterday's shocking and infuriating joint announcement by Presidents Trump and Netanyahu that the United States would take over the restoration of Gaza after Netanyahu and the IDF reduced much of it uninhabitable. I watched the coverage of the announcement on MSNBC last night, and I was both in complete disbelief and intensely angry by it.

>257 LolaWalser: Thanks for posting a link to that documentary, Lola; I'll look at it later this week.