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antabanta posted:
GTAngler posted:

That's the same copy I have. For some reason when I re-read it, there were more details in this book than there were in the one I read as a child back in Guyana. Maybe that was an abridged version for younger readers? It's a very good book. If you like this one, try "The Wild Coast" also by Carew.

Black Midas is expensive - $20 on Amazon for a paperback. My wife got me a copy for Christmas and looks like a first edition that came from a library. I'm researching polypropylene bags for some of my collectibles.

Anta, I bought it in January for $14.95 & it was mailed from England. 
I used my daughter's - Prime - so no S&H.

FM

Finished reading THE PILLARS OF HERCULES by US novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux.
For 18 months in 1993-1994 Theroux travelled along the entire shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea. He began his journey from Gibraltar, regarded as one of the pillars of Hercules standing at the narrow Strait that links the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. He concluded it in the Moroccan city of Ceuta, the other Pillar of Hercules. He passed through the coastlines of Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Malta Greece, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt and Tunisia. As well as the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Cyprus. The journey was covered by land and sea, not by air.
In this book I followed Theroux's account with the help of Google maps, an effort that rewarded me tremendously.

FM

Finished reading THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY THE TURKS by Brazilian writer Jorge Amado. It was written in 1994 but not published in English until 2012. It is set in Brazil in the early years of the last century.
Jamil Bichara is a Syrian. Raduan Murad is a Lebanese. Syria and Lebanon are under Ottoman rule so Jamil and Raduan are called Turks. They arrive by ship in the eastern Brazilian state of Bahia, aiming for the conquest of wealth and women. They're in the right place at the right time. The local population is teeming with fornicators, womanizers, prostitutes, heavy drinkers and money grabbers, never mind the daily violence. Besides, virgin bush in southern Bahia is being transformed into an El Dorado promising more wealth from the cultivation and exportation of cacao. Jamil and Raduan waste no time sucking up all the opportunities.
This is a picaresque novella; I had much fun reading it.

FM
antabanta posted:

Read two Louis L'Amours - Passing Through and The Trail To Crazy Man. Typical L'Amours. Strong, taciturn hero, takes on the bad guys, saves the girl, gets the girl. Although predictable, great escape literature.

My favorite author. I have most of his books including the ones published after his death. if you haven't already, read "Last of the Breed" and "The Walking Drum".

GTAngler
GTAngler posted:
antabanta posted:

Read two Louis L'Amours - Passing Through and The Trail To Crazy Man. Typical L'Amours. Strong, taciturn hero, takes on the bad guys, saves the girl, gets the girl. Although predictable, great escape literature.

My favorite author. I have most of his books including the ones published after his death. if you haven't already, read "Last of the Breed" and "The Walking Drum".

Thanks. I read both. A few of my favorite L'Amours are Reilly's Luck, The Man Called Noon, Shalako, The Kilkenny trilogy, Heller With A Gun, and Flint.

A
antabanta posted:

The one problem I have with Louis L'Amour is all his characters are identical. All the heroes have the same characteristics as well as all his bad guys.

Not at all. There are a few that deviate from the norm although some do share the "lone gunman running from past, rides into town, sees girl, likes girl, ends up in range war, gets girl". Flint and Reilly's Luck, two of my favorites are very similar. Then you have ones like "Lonesome Gods", "Haunted Mesa", "The Proving Trail", "Walking Drum", "Last of the Breed" to name a few that have a completely different flavor.

 

GTAngler
GTAngler posted:
antabanta posted:

The one problem I have with Louis L'Amour is all his characters are identical. All the heroes have the same characteristics as well as all his bad guys.

Not at all. There are a few that deviate from the norm although some do share the "lone gunman running from past, rides into town, sees girl, likes girl, ends up in range war, gets girl". Flint and Reilly's Luck, two of my favorites are very similar. Then you have ones like "Lonesome Gods", "Haunted Mesa", "The Proving Trail", "Walking Drum", "Last of the Breed" to name a few that have a completely different flavor.

 

I don't mean the plots. I mean the characters themselves. Most of the heroes are broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted men, slow to anger, soft-spoken, slightly smaller than the master villain or one of the major villains who the hero will nevertheless beat in a fist fight, good with a gun. They all fit the typical hero description.

A

Finished reading BEST INDIAN SHORT STORIES, Volume I. This collection contains 27 short stories. I never heard about the writers, except two: Kabir Bedi the movie star, and Mulk Raj Anand, known internationally for his novel "Coolie", that was adapted into a Bollywood movie.
The editor of this lovely anthology, Khushwant Singh, who died in 2015 at age 98, was a renowned journalist and author who wrote 90 books. He served as editor of "The Illustrated Weekly of India " and "Hindustan Times". He was a politician and diplomat too.

FM

Finished reading "THE OPEN ROAD: The Global Journeys of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama" by Pico Iyer. The author was born in Britain of Indian parents. His father was an Oxford philosopher and friend of the Dalai Lama. Pico became a journalist and travel writer. His articles and reports have appeared in TIME magazine, New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, etc.
In 1974, when Pico was 17 years old, his father introduced him to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the Tibetan exile community in north India near Jammu and Kashmir. Through the ensuing decades Pico would develop a close friendship with the Dalai Lama. He returned to Dharamsala often and traveled with the Dalai Lama around the world. "The Open Road" is a memoir of that friendship and those travels, plus a glimpse of the Buddhist leader's message of love, compassion, peace, understanding, etc. The book was published in 2008.

FM

Finished reading "THE LEOPARD" by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, an Italian writer. This novel was published in 1958, the year after its author's death. It is set in Sicily and Italy and begins in 1860. A rebel army led by Italian patriot General Giuseppe Garibaldi liberates the two colonies from French rule and unites them as the Kingdom of Italy. Garibaldi's military officers include the nephew of a Sicilian feudal lord, Prince Salina. The novel focuses on how Garibaldi's "revolution" affects the House of Salina for 50 years. The Prince is based on Lampedusa's own grandfather.

FM

Finished reading THE HOUSE OF TWENTY THOUSAND BOOKS by Sasha Abramsky. Published in 2014 this is a grandson's memoir, a labour of love, about his bibliophile grandfather Chimen Abramsky (1916-2010).
Born in Tsarist Russia, son of a renowned Rabbi, Chimen migrated to Britain, schooled himself in languages and history, and became Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of London. He was a voracious reader with photographic memory, and also a bookseller and collector.
Chimen Abramsky's London house contained one of England's most important private libraries. For a few decades it was one of leftwing London's great salons. Up to 1958 Chimen was a member of the British Communist Party. His extraordinary collection totalled about 20,000 volumes including rare books hundreds of years old.
Excluding kitchen and bathroom, every room was crammed with books from floor to ceiling. Books on tabletops too, and in closets, cupboards and wardrobes. It was a working library that Abramsky accessed for essays, articles and books that he wrote.

FM

Finished reading "CUBA DIARIES: An American Housewife in Havana" by Isadora Tattlin. From 1995 to 1998 a foreign energy consultant was assigned to Cuba. He was accompanied by his American wife and their two children. It was a period of economic austerity caused by the collapse of the Eastern European communist bloc that had subsidized Cuba for three decades. The author of this book kept diaries of her sojourn in Cuba.

FM

Finished reading "TRINIDAD NOIR: The Classics", an anthology of short stories and poems edited by Earl Lovelace. It features Trinidadian writers by birth, passport and domicile. CLR James, Sam Selvon, Eric Roach, VS Naipaul, Michael Anthony, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Derek Walcott, Lawrence Scott, Willi Chen, Robert Antoni, Ismith Khan, Elizabeth Nunez, Wayne Brown, Jennifer Rahim, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Barbara Jenkins, Sharon Millar and Shani Mootoo. There is a story written by Earl Lovelace too.

When I was 16 years old I read Earl Lovelace's first novel "While Gods Are Falling" that won the British Petroleum-sponsored Trinidad and Tobago Independence Literary Prize in 1962. Lovelace later won more literary prizes for his novels, poems and plays. He never emigrated from Trinidad and, at age 83, is still writing.

"Trinidad Noir: The Classics" was published in 2017.



FM

So far this year I finished reading 44 books. Here are some of them:
(1) "Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy" by Nicholas Reynolds.
(2) "Back to the Law" by Max Brand.
(3) "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh.
(4) "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.
(5) *Alcatraz" by Max Brand.
(6) "The Romans" by Grace Cole.
(7) "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
(8) "The White Album: Essays" by Joan Didion.
(9) "Rabindranath Tagore: His Life and Work" by Edward John Thompson
(10) "Tibetan Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction" by Matthew T Kapstein
(11) "Bill Moyers Journal" by Bill Moyers.
(12) "The Tree Where Man Was Born" by Peter Matthiessen..
(13) "Profiles in Courage" by John F Kennedy.
(14) "Invitation to Sociology" by Peter L Berger.
(15) "Notes on the Death of Culture" by Mario Vargas Llosa.

(16) "Almayer's Folly" by Joseph Conrad.

FM
Gilbakka posted:

So far this year I finished reading 44 books. Here are some of them:
(1) "Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy" by Nicholas Reynolds.
(2) "Back to the Law" by Max Brand.
(3) "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh.
(4) "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.
(5) *Alcatraz" by Max Brand.
(6) "The Romans" by Grace Cole.
(7) "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
(8) "The White Album: Essays" by Joan Didion.
(9) "Rabindranath Tagore: His Life and Work" by Edward John Thompson
(10) "Tibetan Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction" by Matthew T Kapstein
(11) "Bill Moyers Journal" by Bill Moyers.
(12) "The Tree Where Man Was Born" by Peter Matthiessen..
(13) "Profiles in Courage" by John F Kennedy.
(14) "Invitation to Sociology" by Peter L Berger.
(15) "Notes on the Death of Culture" by Mario Vargas Llosa.

(16) "Almayer's Folly" by Joseph Conrad.

After reading so many books, how come you haven't written one?

S
seignet posted:
Gilbakka posted:

So far this year I finished reading 44 books. Here are some of them:
(1) "Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy" by Nicholas Reynolds.
(2) "Back to the Law" by Max Brand.
(3) "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh.
(4) "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.
(5) *Alcatraz" by Max Brand.
(6) "The Romans" by Grace Cole.
(7) "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
(8) "The White Album: Essays" by Joan Didion.
(9) "Rabindranath Tagore: His Life and Work" by Edward John Thompson
(10) "Tibetan Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction" by Matthew T Kapstein
(11) "Bill Moyers Journal" by Bill Moyers.
(12) "The Tree Where Man Was Born" by Peter Matthiessen..
(13) "Profiles in Courage" by John F Kennedy.
(14) "Invitation to Sociology" by Peter L Berger.
(15) "Notes on the Death of Culture" by Mario Vargas Llosa.

(16) "Almayer's Folly" by Joseph Conrad.

After reading so many books, how come you haven't written one?

In all honesty, what else can a lowly gilbakka add to all the books that have been published? 

FM
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

S
Gilbakka posted:
seignet posted:
Gilbakka posted:

So far this year I finished reading 44 books. Here are some of them:
(1) "Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy" by Nicholas Reynolds.
(2) "Back to the Law" by Max Brand.
(3) "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh.
(4) "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.
(5) *Alcatraz" by Max Brand.
(6) "The Romans" by Grace Cole.
(7) "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
(8) "The White Album: Essays" by Joan Didion.
(9) "Rabindranath Tagore: His Life and Work" by Edward John Thompson
(10) "Tibetan Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction" by Matthew T Kapstein
(11) "Bill Moyers Journal" by Bill Moyers.
(12) "The Tree Where Man Was Born" by Peter Matthiessen..
(13) "Profiles in Courage" by John F Kennedy.
(14) "Invitation to Sociology" by Peter L Berger.
(15) "Notes on the Death of Culture" by Mario Vargas Llosa.

(16) "Almayer's Folly" by Joseph Conrad.

After reading so many books, how come you haven't written one?

In all honesty, what else can a lowly gilbakka add to all the books that have been published? 

yuh never know, unless yuh put a word after a word after a word, the thought, a scheme, a character, a book.

S
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

You think the atrocities committed should be ignored?

cain
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

Siggy, Anta is not attacking white people. He is merely giving a synopsis of a book that he has read. He is in order.

FM
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

  learning about whitey's atrocities is too inconvenient for your adulation

A
Gilbakka posted:
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

Siggy, Anta is not attacking white people. He is merely giving a synopsis of a book that he has read. He is in order.

Your response might be a waste of time . Nothing can make him see reality.

A
Last edited by antabanta
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

A similar book is THE INCONVENIENT INDIAN by Thomas King. I plan to read it in the new year.

FM
Gilbakka posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

A similar book is THE INCONVENIENT INDIAN by Thomas King. I plan to read it in the new year.

Thanks. I'll add it to my list.

A

Finished reading THE ONE-CENT MAGENTA by James Barron.
In 1873 a white British Guiana schoolboy Louis Vernon Vaughan found a locally printed dark red postage stamp on an old newspaper wrapper in his uncle's abandoned house. What later became renowned as the One-Cent Magenta and the world's rarest stamp was first issued by the British Guiana Post Office in 1856.
Vaughan, a stamp collector, was not impressed with the condition of that particular stamp but kept it in his album until one in better shape turned up. Five years passed and, needing money to buy an attractive set of stamps, Vaughan sold the One-Cent Magenta to a much older philatelist for 6 shillings or BG$1.44. The buyer was Neil Ross McKinnon, first Mayor of New Amsterdam.
A few months later McKinnon sold the One-Cent Magenta to a Scottish stamp dealer named Thomas Ridpath for ÂĢ120, ie 400 times the amount he had paid for it.
Over the years that little piece of paper from Guyana increased exponentially in value and became the Holy Grail for serious philatelists and rich investors. At its last auction 5 years ago the One-Cent Magenta was acquired for US$9.5 million by American shoes designer Stuart Weitzman.
This book about the continuing odyssey of that 163-year-old British Guiana postage stamp gripped my attention from beginning to end.

FM
cain posted:
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

You think the atrocities committed should be ignored?

There is a time to move on. Vengeance is Mine said the The Lord. The Jews said, never again will they edure another holocaust, yet they create sufferings for the residents of Palestine. We have the Liberals in Canada who plays lip services to Native Issues, it is a white government that neglects and natives kill themselves. It is dying, by ones own actions or a conflict. There are no solutions for man as pertains to man being his brother's keeper. "Treat your neighbour as you would have him treat you", not going to happen until Christ come back.

S
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West, Dee Brown. A damning indictment of the atrocities committed against native Indians to satisfy greed and economic expansion, with complete lack of concern for their welfare, humanity, and lives.

There we go, attacking white ppl again. And you benefit from their atrocities.

  learning about whitey's atrocities is too inconvenient for your adulation

Bro, I know dey is the baddest ppl from personal observations since me ketch sense some 75 years ago, five years after me born. My fore-fathers bare their wrath in India for hundreds of years, likewise, wherever their boats took them. Vasco Da Gama, upon his arrival off the coast of malabar, his first act was the slaughter of the envoy sent to meet him by the King of Cochin. He was setting an example for his tryanny. In the Spice Islands of the East Indies, the Dutch upon arrival killed all the Headmen, once again is terror. Dem bad no azz, can we escape dem, hell no. Do we like dem lifestyles, sure we do. Can they enslave ppl again and invade other countries, hell yes. Who can stop dem. I prefer dem to black, chiny or Indo rule.

Great ppl wid culture, music and decency.

S
seignet posted:

Bro, I know dey is the baddest ppl from personal observations since me ketch sense some 75 years ago, five years after me born. My fore-fathers bare their wrath in India for hundreds of years, likewise, wherever their boats took them. Vasco Da Gama, upon his arrival off the coast of malabar, his first act was the slaughter of the envoy sent to meet him by the King of Cochin. He was setting an example for his tryanny. In the Spice Islands of the East Indies, the Dutch upon arrival killed all the Headmen, once again is terror. Dem bad no azz, can we escape dem, hell no. Do we like dem lifestyles, sure we do. Can they enslave ppl again and invade other countries, hell yes. Who can stop dem. I prefer dem to black, chiny or Indo rule.

Great ppl wid culture, music and decency.

So your adulation is based on fear and you want the rest of us people of color to be as fearful and subservient as you. Their legacy is theft, brutality, genocide, enslavement, and exploitation. They have no decency. There is nothing great about such people. Overcome your fear and you might see the truth.

A
Last edited by antabanta
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

Bro, I know dey is the baddest ppl from personal observations since me ketch sense some 75 years ago, five years after me born. My fore-fathers bare their wrath in India for hundreds of years, likewise, wherever their boats took them. Vasco Da Gama, upon his arrival off the coast of malabar, his first act was the slaughter of the envoy sent to meet him by the King of Cochin. He was setting an example for his tryanny. In the Spice Islands of the East Indies, the Dutch upon arrival killed all the Headmen, once again is terror. Dem bad no azz, can we escape dem, hell no. Do we like dem lifestyles, sure we do. Can they enslave ppl again and invade other countries, hell yes. Who can stop dem. I prefer dem to black, chiny or Indo rule.

Great ppl wid culture, music and decency.

So your adulation is based on fear and you want the rest of us people of color to be as fearful and subservient as you. Their legacy is theft, brutality, genocide, enslavement, and exploitation. They have no decency. There is nothing great about such people. Overcome your fear and you might see the truth.

I should quality my comments. I do not believe all white people in general are brutal. I believe the lower echelons are manipulated to satisfy the greed of the elite as they have always been. My comments are about those people who lose their humanity in pursuit of wealth.

A

Finished reading IMPERISHABLE MEMORIES by Seegobin Ragbeer. This memoir was published in 2011. Seegobin Ragbeer was born in De Hoop Mahaica in 1934. He didn't attend high school. After gaining his school-leaving certificate from De Hoop Primary School he became a pupil teacher, sat and passed the pupil teacher examinations, attended and graduated from the Teachers' Training College, earned a Professional Certificate in Education and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of the West Indies, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto. He worked as a school teacher in Guyana and Canada.

Seegobin Ragbeer is the brother of Mohan Ragbeer who wrote a two-volume memoir titled THE INDELIBLE RED STAIN. Dr Mohan Ragbeer was Deen of the Faculty of Medicine in UWI.

FM

I have started reading "THE DAWN WATCH: Joseph Conrad in a Global World" by Maya Jasanoff. I like Conrad's writing, having read his "Lord Jim", "Heart of Darkness", "Almayer's Folly" and some of his shorter works. Next year hopefully I shall read him more.

"The Dawn Watch" is my 48th and last book this year. Without doubt, reading is keeping me alive. I live to read more than I live to eat. My rib cage shows on my body, and my shoulder and neck bones too. I weigh 105 pounds at age 68. Not bothered at all because I am still heavier than Mahatma Gandhi. He had weighed only 102 pounds at age 70. 😀

FM
Gilbakka posted:

I have started reading "THE DAWN WATCH: Joseph Conrad in a Global World" by Maya Jasanoff. I like Conrad's writing, having read his "Lord Jim", "Heart of Darkness", "Almayer's Folly" and some of his shorter works. Next year hopefully I shall read him more.

Apocalypse Now is based on Heart Of Darkness. Both are compelling stories. I'm big into Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard.

A

Finished reading THE DAWN WATCH. Started MIRROR OF THE SEA by Joseph Conrad. This is a collection of essays and articles Conrad, an experienced seaman before becoming an author, wrote about sail & steam ships, seafaring etc. This will be my last book for 2019. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all GNI book readers.

FM

Some books I finished reading recently: 1) THE ODESSA FILE by Frederick Forsyth 2) THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU by Leo Tolstoy 3) GANDHI'S PASSION by Stanley Wolpert 4) TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA by John Steinbeck 5) THE LIFE OF YOGANANDA by Philip Goldberg 6) THE FEAST OF THE GOAT by Mario Vargas Llosa 7) THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford 8) ASHENDEN by W Somerset Maugham 9) THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER by Aleksander Pushkin

FM

Finished reading "NEHRU: A Contemporary's Estimate" by Walter Crocker. Jawaharlal Nehru was India's Prime Minister from 1947 to 1964. During that period Crocker served two nonconsecutive terms as Australian Ambassador to India. In this book he describes his many interactions with Nehru and expresses his views on the freedom fighter, the politician, the intellectual, and the personality.

FM
@Former Member posted:

Finished reading "NEHRU: A Contemporary's Estimate" by Walter Crocker. Jawaharlal Nehru was India's Prime Minister from 1947 to 1964. During that period Crocker served two nonconsecutive terms as Australian Ambassador to India. In this book he describes his many interactions with Nehru and expresses his views on the freedom fighter, the politician, the intellectual, and the personality.

Nice to see you back on your favorite topic...

FM

Finished reading "A PLACE WITHIN: Rediscovering India" by M. G. Vassanji, an award winning Tanzania-born Canadian writer. His great grandparents had migrated from Gujarat, India, to East Africa. They established themselves as merchants in colonial Kenya and Tanganyika.

This book is Vassanji's memoir of a series of journeys he made to India between 1993 and 2007. He travelled from Shimla in the north to the southern tip of the subcontinent. And Gujarat, of course. He provides a millennium of historical background to the places he visited.

FM

Finished reading UNTOUCHABLE by Mulk Raj Anand. Written in 1933, this novel focuses on India's untouchables or outcasts in the lowest and most oppressed stratum of its age-old caste system. Today they are called Dalits.

When this book was written untouchables could not access schools, hospitals, clean water and other amenities that their upper-caste countrymen enjoyed in varying degrees.

Mahatma Gandhi called untouchability an iniquity and a blot on Hinduism. He fought to uplift the status of untouchables and also to remove the social stigma against them. Mulk Raj Anand credited Gandhi for inspiring the writing of this novel.

FM

Finished reading BOMBAY STORIES by Saadat Hasan Manto. It consists of 15 short stories originally written in the Urdu language. This English language translation was done by Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad. Saadat Hasan Manto was born in 1912 in British colonial India. After independence and partition he migrated to Pakistan in 1948. He died there in 1955.

FM

Finished reading STRONGMEN, a collection of long essays, edited by Vijay Prashad. The essays feature five world leaders who share an authoritarian mindset. Donald Trump (USA), Narendra Modi (India), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), Vladimir Putin (Russia), and Rodrigo Roa Duterte (Philippines). STRONGMEN was published in 2018.

FM

Finished reading THE ULTIMATE ERNEST HEMINGWAY, a collection of 61 short stories by the Nobel prize-winning American writer. Themes include fishing and hunting in the United States, hunting in East Africa, bullfighting and civil war in Spain, world war in Europe. My favourite stories in this book are "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", "Big Two-hearted River", "A Clean, Well-lighted Place", "The Butterfly and the Tank", and "The Last Good Country".

FM
@Former Member posted:

Finished reading "THE GREAT DERANGEMENT: Climate Change and the Unthinkable" by Amitav Ghosh. It's an assessment of the state of global warming caused chiefly by unrelenting human polluting activities. The steady increase and devastating power of cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes etc. The failure of governments and environmental movements alike to curb the trend. A thought-provoking read. This book was published in 2016. Amitav Ghosh is an award-winning Indian writer and academic.

9780226526812

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FM

Finished reading GERMINAL by Emile Zola, a prolific 19th century French writer. This novel is Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French language. First published in 1885, GERMINAL is a harsh and realistic portrayal of coalminers' appalling working and living conditions in northern France in the 1860s. The miners' struggles against their exploiting bosses climaxed with a protracted strike and destruction of one mine through sabotage. The rebellion was suppressed violently.

Zola

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FM

Finished reading CHESS, a novella by Stefan Zweig. The author was born in Austria. In the late 1930s, after Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Zweig fled from his homeland, lived briefly in the United Kingdom and United States, and finally settled in Brazil where he died in 1942 at age 60. CHESS was published later that year in Argentina. The action takes place in a passenger steamship sailing from New York to Buenos Aires with a stop in Rio de Janeiro. Reigning world chess champion is travelling. Some passengers request a chess match with him. He agrees condescendingly and demands a fee. He wins easily. His opponents request another match during which they get unexpected help from a stranger who happens to be passing by. The stranger helps them to win against the champion. It turns out that the stranger, Dr B, has left his native Austria after being severely persecuted by pro-Nazi forces and is on the verge of mental insanity.

chess.jpeg

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FM

Finished reading "WORDS TO LIVE BY: Daily Inspiration for Spiritual Living", compiled by Eknath Easwaran. It consists of 365 passages from various religions traditions and from the writings of literary and scientific figures, with commentary by Easwaran.

Jesus Christ, Lord Krishna, the Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna, Saint Augustine, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas ÃĄ Kempis, Jalaluddin Rumi, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Albert Einstein etc.

For the past year I've started my day reading and meditating on a passage in this book.

eknath

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FM

Finished reading "BOOK ROW" by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador. Book Row refers to a stretch of Fourth Avenue and intersecting streets in Manhattan NY USA. From the 1890s to the 1980s there was a proliferation of used bookshops in Book Row, from 14th Street in the north to Astor Place in the south and from Third Avenue in the east to Broadway in the west. Those bookshops sold secondhand books, rare first edition books, antiquarian books, manuscripts etc. Their customers consisted of book lovers and collectors, students and teachers and college professors, researchers, general readers etc. The booksellers also built and replenished university libraries, public libraries, as well as the personal libraries of millionaires and influential people like JP Morgan, Franklin D Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy and Steven Spielberg. From the 1950s to the 1980s Book Row shrank one shop at a time until only one giant was left standing, the Strand Bookshop. Rising rent, aging booksellers, higher operating costs and redevelopment caused the demise of Book Row.

20200806_203257

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@cain posted:

Now reading With or without God by Gretta Vosper, a Minister of the West Hill United Church. Her critics called for her removal from the church because of not believing in a traditional God, to her God is a verb eg: Love, caring etc.

Right up my alley.

I still reading this one since last July an I still cyan done it.

cain
@cain posted:

I still reading this one since last July an I still cyan done it.

I have a huge stack ordered from Amazon over the years: Shameful Flight (the last years of the British Empire in India) by Stanley Wolpert; New Homelands (Hindu communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa) by Paul Younger; etc. Maybe I'll start reading next week. 

FM
@Former Member posted:

I have a huge stack ordered from Amazon over the years: Shameful Flight (the last years of the British Empire in India) by Stanley Wolpert; New Homelands (Hindu communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa) by Paul Younger; etc. Maybe I'll start reading next week.

You wanna race me and see who finishes their book last?

cain

Gunman's Reckoning, Max Brand. One of those tales I could not stop reading. Excellent story line, great dialog, well written with fascinating characters that drive the story. Railroad tramp and feared combatant, Donnegan, abandons his mysterious quest and transforms himself in a few days, acquiring the means in the most intriguing manner to best serve the young lady who has entered his life. Hiding his innermost thoughts and emotions with superior competence, Donnegan seems well-equipped to master both the environment and people around him, and sets out to do just so.

A
Last edited by antabanta

The Untamed, Max Brand. An intriguing story pitting the supernatural strength and resilience of untamed Whistling Dan Barry against the vicious outlaws led by Jim Silent. Both Dan's naivete and superhuman strength and senses depict him as other-worldly. Moreso, his lack of interest in material possessions, his unconcern for consequences, and his fearlessness in the face of danger. An excellent novel, concluding the sixth and final story in Classic Westerns.

A

Bacchanal, Veronica G. Henry. I picked up this novel because of the name which is popular in Guyana and the Caribbean for referring to a party, fair, or carnival. I was delighted to discover a character named Obeah in the beginning, although his presence was short-lived, because obeah is also prominent in Guyana as the English term for voodoo. An intriguing story, relating the ancient superstitions and mystical beliefs of Africa. The story line, dialog, and narrative are fairly well-written. I enjoyed it.

A

Song of the Forever Rains, E.J. Mellow. A fantasy tale that incorporates enough of the ordinary to tell an excellent story of love, hate, and greed for power. While Larkyra and her sisters enjoy their magic, they also employ it in service of good, helping those in need. She soon discovers her magic does not make her immune to normal human emotions.

A

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