For (un)Official Use Only: book review

Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts

Monday, January 25, 2016

Weekly Reading: Leaping Lines, Revolutionary Baby Jesus, Repo Men at Sea and Great! Post Offices

I read a lot over the holidays so I am still catching up with my summaries of all my December reading.

Reading Is About the Lines That Leap Off the Pages
Much of what you read in the Times you read without giving a thought to who the author is. I couldn't make that mistake after reading this year-end gem by Dwight Garner, literary critic extraordinaire. In it he deftly leaps through about twenty different book recommendations, lifting delicious quotes from each of them.

The Christmas Revolution
Smart, well-written article on just how revolutionary Jesus was. "He saw the inestimable worth of human life, regardless of social status, wealth and worldly achievements, intelligence or national origin. So should we."

ISIS’ War on Christmas
Interesting and thoughtful article on how Salafists think about Christmas theologically. The author also draws parallels between Islamists' "origin' state and that of the far right en France.

MARITIME ‘REPO MEN’: A LAST RESORT FOR STOLEN SHIPS
Wow, fascinating report on the gritty underbelly of maritime repossessors. This has to get made into a movie.

What’s Your Favorite Poem?
A round table of authors discuss their favorite poems--what's not to like!

How I Escaped Vietnam
Incredible untold story of the flood of children that escaped Vietnam in the midst of escalating violence and mayhem.

In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved
Beautiful writing about the homes of Neruda in Chile. Essential reading for any Pablophile.

The Deported
I feel like it's all too easy for both sides of the immigration debate to make sweeping statements one way or the other. Articles like these should hopefully give one pause to consider the actual human lives behind whatever the policies enacted are.

Why the Post Office Makes America Great
Having lived overseas for more than two years in a third-world country I appreciate the author's sentiment. As Americans we take things like being able to send a letter that arrives where it is supposed to for granted.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

On Love, Loss and Forgetting in Junger's "War" or What Pablo Neruda has to do with the US in Afghanistan

Sebastian Junger's eye for detail is equal to his hunger for authenticity in his writing. Nowhere is this more evident than in his 2010 'memoir' WAR. Admittedly I am late to the game in reviewing Junger's story of the time he spent embedded in the violent and dangerous Korengal valley but it's not like the US will ever leaving Afghanistan right?

More importantly, Junger's book is not about Afghanistan or the Taliban--these are merely the backdrop for his penetrating examination of the men who go to war (in fact, the larger geo-political questions go (thankfully) unaddressed).

In dividing WAR into three books--fear, killing and love--Junger lays out his hypothesis that these three emotions (or actions) encompass war for the young men of the United States--or more precisely address the ultimate question of why young men fight and die in war.

The goal of this post, however, is not to give a traditional review of a book but instead show you a twitterfied book review. Below you will see screen captures of the comments that I posted on twitter throughout my reading of the story. Enjoy!

You can read my review of Marlantes' Matterhorn here.

Perhaps there's no better praise of Junger's skill than that as I read through the War's final lines, I was immediately reminded two lines from Pablo Neruda's sorrowful ode to the pain and incomprehensibility of lost love.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her

Love is so short, forgetting is so long

This tension (this war) between love, loss, self-deception and forgetting is ultimately what one walks away with reading Junger's masterful War.

Finally, it is worth noting that in considering Afghanistan and its bloody Korengal valley, another line from Neruda's poem rings equally true:

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Here's Neruda's poem in its entirety.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Monday, November 19, 2012

My Complete Notes on Hartley's "The Zanzibar Chest"

Notes on The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley

BONUS LINK: My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here.

I've embedded my complete notes below. Previously all of these notes had been spread out over 15 posts or so.

From time to time, God causes men to be born—and thou art one of them—who have a lust to go

abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news—today it may be of far-off things, tomorrow of

some hidden mountain, and the next day of some nearby men who have done a foolishness against

the state. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best.

-Kim

I love Hartley’s opening quote. If there were ever an engraving to be mounted on the wall of my
hypothetical office it would be this . Part of the path to achievement is often began just by the act
of writing your goal down: to be one of the ‘ten best’ FAOs, foreign policy experts, africanists.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This book has nothing to do with Africa.

This book has nothing to do with being a Foreign Area Officer.

This book has nothing to do with foreign affairs.

This is a book about journeys.
And about getting lost,
and being okay with it.

I could tell you that the book is about a precocious and gifted 9 year old whose father is killed in the twin towers on 9-11 and that boy's journey to find some meaning and respite in the midst of his grieving.

But perhaps most useful would be for me to describe the places I read this book.

Everywhere.

I read this while running on the treadmill in the bowels of the PGON at the gym there. After my run was finished I stood on the dormant treadmill for ten minutes engrossed.

I read this stepping off the green line metro at the U Street stop. I read it while walking up to the escalator and then while riding up it in the right lane. And then I took three steps off the metro and leaned against the outside of the Quiznos and finished the book's final pages.

I walked home with heavy boots.

And I was okay with that.

http://www.amazon.com/Extremely-Incredibly-Close-Jonathan-Safran/dp/0618329706

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