Somewhere along the way these past couple of months my unintentional break turned into an intentional break. I began to realize that in the past year and a half (soon to be two) blogging managed to take the fun out of reading for me. I’ll admit I also got caught up in the race to be the “best” blogger. I just had to get that review up because other people managed to post reviews every single day. But this competition (that is probably entirely in my head) managed to override the enjoyment of reading for me. Instead of enjoying the books I was reading, I was constantly looking for some flaw. Instead of commenting on how these books made me feel and my reactions to them, I was focused on the technical and grammatical aspects of books.
Now that I’ve come back, though, I decided to start a new blog, a new slate so to say. Less pressure, more enjoyment. This blog won’t have a rating scale, has a strict no-ARC policy, has streamlined categories, and will be more about the joy in reading. I hope you’ll join me over there because while this blog will remain until I can decide what I want to do with it (delete it, make it private), I will only be blogging at Ardent Reader.
Title: Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction
Author: Michael J. Sodaro
Pages: 848
Published: 2008
Source: Half.Com (Required Reading)
“Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction presents a uniquely comprehensive approach to the study of politics in a variety of countries. Part I surveys the core topics of comparative politics and equips students with the concepts and analytical methods they need to understand the complexities of today’s political world. Part I enhances critical thinking skills by explaining in a step-by-step fashion how the basic techniques of the scientific method, such as qualitative hypothesis testing, can be used to understand political realities. Part II provides in-depth studies of many major countries, using the concepts and analytical techniques introduced in Part I. By combining rich conceptualization, analytical methods, and extensive coverage of a diversity of countries, this engaging text teaches introductory-level students how to think about politics for themselves, logically and systematically.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the entirely of this textbook as my Intro to Comparative Politics class focused solely on Britain, Germany, China, and Mexico. Therefore, I only read the chapters on these countries and a handful of others dealing with political economy, conditions for democracy, conditions for development, and the like.
Comparative Politics offers a fairly compact look at the political system of each country it delves into, and it’s fairly easy to get the “gist” of a country. However, I found that the book was pretty dry; it wasn’t boring, per say, but lacked a little pizazz to keep the reader interested. If you’re not interested in the country you’re reading about, Sodaro isn’t going to give you a reason to. And, personally, I found the journal articles my professor assigned to be much more interesting than the chapters of this textbook.
Rating: 2
Title: All But My Life
Author: Gerda Weissmann Klein
Pages: 261
Published: 1995
Source: Campus Bookstore (Required Reading)
At 9:10 a.m. Gerda Weissmann’s life ended; the Nazis invaded Poland and red, black, and white flags with swastikas hung from her neighbor’s windows. Uncertainty turns into upheaval first with the deportation of her brother and then with the loss of her family’s home. Her ill father becomes listless; her mother withdrawals into herself. And almost as quickly as it begins Gerda finds herself in the Bielitz ghetto where she separated from her father, then to a transit camp where she is separated from her mother, and then onto the labour camp, Bolkenhain. This is only the beginning of Klein’s story, a story that ends with the Nazis robbing her of all but her life.
This is the book that’s been missing from my course on the Holocaust. We’ve learned about Merin, a member of the Judenrat who lined his pockets; we’ve learned about the difference between labour camps and concentration camps. And according to our syllabus, in the coming weeks we’re going to learn about death marches. But as well as my professor is at telling stories for lectures instead of saying “these are the facts you need to know,” there is something you can only get by reading the memoir of a survivor. The “I” makes it personal; the “I” makes facts visible realities.
Even on the written side, All But My Life is one of the most, if not the most, well-written written memoirs I’ve ever read. It’s heart-wrenching, emotional, and personal when other Holocaust memoirs are distant. You relive Klein’s past, and I can understand why in the preface Klein says she is now, finally, emancipated from her burden.
It’s so personal, so powerful, and worth every tear I shed. And I would love to read The Hours After, a collection of letters between Klein and her husband, U.S. Army lieutenant Kurt Klein, who liberated her on May 7th, 1945, after the war.
Rating: 5
Title: Unholy Trinity
Author: Richard Peet
Pages: 287
Published: 2009 (Second Edition)
Source: Campus Bookstore (Required Reading)
“Who really runs the global economy? Who benefits most from it?
The answer is a triad of ‘global governance institutions’: the IMF, World Bank and WTO. The power of these institutions, which drastically affect the livelihoods of people across the world, has grown massively as a result of globalization. Yet they operate undemocratically, aggressively promoting a particular kind of neoliberal capitalism that seeks to end poverty by increasing inequality.
This new edition of Unholy Trinity, completely updated and revised, argues that neoliberal global capitalism has now entered a period of crisis so severe that governance will become impossible. Huge incomes for the small number of super-rich have produced an unstable global economy, rife with speculation and structurally prone to crises. The IMF is in disgrace, the WTO can hardly meet anyone and the World Bank survives as a global philanthropist. Is this the end for the Unholy Trinity?”
The first edition of Unholy Trinity was co-written and titled by students who took the same class I’m currently taking. This edition, though, is definitely all Professor Peet.While it’s not nearly as confusing as Geography of Power, this book goes off on tangent after tangent.
Unholy Trinity delves into what Peet considers to be undemocratic, American-dominated organizations that operates more as corporations than organizations committed to every member country’s interest. Peet does a good job of introducing the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization both in historical context and their current form, but the third member of this unholy triad, the World Bank, is virtually ignored by Peet as it’s given the least amount of attention.
The problem is, though, that Peet takes the long road to his point, and while he chases his tangents, I either lose focus on what he’s saying or I zero in on his tangent instead of his point. I hate how he refers to himself in the Royal ‘We’, and I wish he would write his books the way he talks — simple, straightforward. Instead, Peet writes confusing things like:
“These diverse articulations, between the global and the local, can be described using a set of geopolitical terms that combine the political-discursive-rational dimension with the geographical-organizational-power dimension.” (pg. 23)
No wonder so many people come to discussion group scratching their heads.
Regardless, if you can get past the confusing language, Unholy Trinity is a pretty good introduction to reasons to the anit-IMF, World Bank, and WTO camp. However, the greatest downfall of this book is the fact that there is very little discussion of the other side, of why there are some who are pro-IMF, World Bank, and WTO. He’s offers some pieces of pro-opinion in order to critique it, but ultimately replies upon critiques of his tangent topics to carry his argument.
Rating: 2
Title: Digging to America
Author: Anne Tyler
Pages: 292
Published: 2007
Source: Campus library’s used book sale
“Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport, each anticipating the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. Brad and Bitsy Donaldson, all-American suburbanites, and their gift-laden clan resemble a gigantic baby shower with their flotilla of silvery balloons and pink ribbons. Iranian-born matriarch Maryam Yazdan stands unobtrusively in the back of the waiting area with her fully assimilated son, Sami, and his attractive Iranian American wife, Ziba. When Bitsy invites the Yazdans to an “arrival” party at the Donaldson home, an improbable friendship begins, and the occasion evolves into an annual tradition. Over the years, as the parents, children, and grandparents become more deeply entwined, cultures clash, values are challenged, and the American way is seen from the beguiling perspectives of both those who are born here and those who are struggling to fit in.”
The title arises from a child’s simple question: if American children are digging to China, are Chinese children digging to America?
Interesting, no?
The questions continue: what does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be a foreigner? And what does it mean to be a family? These are the questions I thought Digging to America was going to ask, and in the beginning, Tyler’s seventeenth novel set out looking for answers. It’s when the Donaldsons and Yazdans celebrate the fourth arrival party that the novel began to flounder as it shifts its focus from these questions and these daughters to a relationship between Susan Yazdan’s grandmother and Jin-Ho Donaldon’s grandfather.
The Donaldsons, an “American-American” family, and the Yazdans, second-generation Iranian-Americans, meet at the Baltimore airport while waiting for the arrival of their respective Korean daughters. Both families have decided to adopt after years of trying; both are anxious to bring their child home. What’s interesting, though, is the difference between each family’s parenting styles and the subsequent relationships they form with their daughters. The Donaldsons decide to keep Jin-Ho’s Korean first name; the Yazdans teach their daughter to speak Farsi and cook Iranian cuisine.
The first three-fourths of this novel are thought-provoking and interesting, but, as I said above, the last quarter was tedious. It was as though Tyler ran out of problems for the families to face and the only remaining thing to do was to complicate their friendship by having Maryam and Dave date. The ending, therefore, is quite sappy and predictable, but the first three-fourths are still enough to win high praise from me.
Rating: 4
Balance of Opinion: The Armenian Odar Reads, Reading Matters, A Striped Armchair
