I read too much.

It’s easy to be fascinated by Japanese culture if only because it is so different than our own.

I grew up going to sushi restaurants and knowing you’re supposed to take your shoes off before going into tatami rooms, but other aspects of Japanese society are something I, a non-Japanese person, could ever know.

Benedict’s work is obviously outdated, but as perhaps the first landmark English-language publication on its subject, she does an admirable job.  Writing during WWII and at the behest of the US government, it would have been the easy thing to portray the Japanese as the enemy, belittle them and otherwise condescend, but she doesn’t do this.

Instead, she compares some of their cultural norms to American/Occidental cultures, ad clearly explains that there are concepts which have no direct translation.

As, because of the war, Benedict couldn’t travel to Japan, there’s no depiction of the Japanese landscape and relatively little mentioned of the food, but the window into the mindset of another culture is fascinating.

And now I want some tako su and soba noodles.

(The Crysanthemum and the Sword:  Patterns of Japanese Culture, Ruth Benedict, Mariner Books, 9780618619597)

Me: I FINISHED THE BOOK THANNK YOU JAYSUS

Other Person: Congratulations.

Me: I mean it was long.

OP: So you said.  Was it worth it?

Me: I’m not sure.  I feel like, parts were, but lots of loose threads that never really get tied up.

***

The journey of Conor Larkin from farmboy to revolutionary is remarkable, but I don’t know how believable, and readers never get to meet the likes of O’Connell, Parnell, Conolly (erm, massive SP) or Collins, which is a shame, even though the first two of the names are mentioned quite a bit.

There’s this big do about the girl Conor loves, but she’s in it for maybe one part, and feels sort of like a late throw in and doesn’t really count.

On the other hand, the novel is startling evocative of Irish and especially Northern Irish life, and takes you from Derry to Belfast to Dublin to the west of Ireland and back again, and you get a sense of a people who have nothing to hold onto but hope, and so they hope, even if it’s a fool’s errand…

I’m not Irish, not even a little, but I spent a summer there, and I think I understood why the British were so quick to colonize:  you can’t not love Ireland and want to claim it for your own.

(Trinity:  A novel of Ireland by Leon Uris)

I go back and forth between enjoying this, and appreciating it for what it is, and finding the stilted translation hard to get through and the overt, almost cartoonish plot as amateurish.

Still, the descriptions of Finnish wilderness, saunas and a pre-NHL hockey are striking, as is the depiction, even if stereotypical, of Finnish women as being strong-willed characters (obviously, gender norms in 1870s Finland are not quite what they are now).

The Christianity on every other page might seem like a lot, but again, given the time and place of the novel, I’m not so sure how out-of-place it would seem to a contemporary reader.

The characterizations of the brothers are fairly one dimensional — and why are the really spiritual ones always named Simon or some variation of? — but this does help to avoid confusion as to which brother’s which, and given the almost play-like form of the novel, this is not a small benefit.

(Seven Brothers, Aleksis Kivi, Aspasia Books, 9780973716528)

Max Rodenbeck’s book is wonderfully written, squeezing in millennia of history as well as getting a feel for end-of-the 20th century Cairo, all within about 350 pages.

Here’s the problem:  Rodenbeck’s book isn’t just pre-Arab Spring, but it is also pre-9/11, and so in that vein it feels as though the history of the city is a chapter (okay, now, maybe two) short of where it should be (I have no idea if Rodenbeck has any plans for a second, updated edition, but I would certainly be curious to read it).  It’s kind of like if you took American history now, in 2011, and your history book ended after the Clinton administration. 

Still, the theme one takes from Rodenbeck’s work is one of fleeting impermanence — if, as a (sort-of, it’s complicated) New Yorker, I consider Paris and London to be old cities, what does that make Cairo?  After all, the Nile Delta flourished before Moses got the Torah, so even things we think are permanent aren’t really permanent, and Cairo itself has evolved and devolved and evolved again accordingly.

(Which, I think, makes the Pyramids all the more remarkable).

(Also it amazes me, although by now I can’t say it surprises me, to see how tolerant medieval Islam was of Judaism and Christianity.  So it wasn’t tolerance as we might imagine it, but it was certainly a better lot for the Jews than in most of medieval Europe.  Sometimes I wonder if society keeps getting less tolerant as opposed to more.  Which depresses me.)

(Cairo:  The City Victorious, Max Rodenbeck, Vintage, 9780679767275)

Oh you 19th century European colonialists and your fascination with the exotic, calling Algeria the “Orient” even though it’s further west than, like, half of Europe.  But hey it’s across that Mediterranean thing, so now it’s all exotic and stuffs.

I never realized that pre-independence Algeria had such a vibrant Jewish community, but it brings to mind the concept that Jews enjoyed better relationships with Muslims than they did Christians for a very long time — pretty much until the state of Israel was formed.  

Kinda weird how that happens.

***

For some reason, I’ve found 19th century French lit to usually be pretty easy to read.  I think this has to do with the translations — because there are some Dumas translations I can’t stand, while others I absolutely love — and Fromentin here is not much different. 

He’s a painter, and you can tell he has the necessary eye for detail with his overwhelming descriptions.

(Between Sea and Sahara, Eugene Fromentin, TPP, 1850434042)

Unlike A Secret for Julia, which only hints at Argentina, this is a full-on Afghan experience, with non-fiction and fiction, recipes, history, humor… a little bit of everything.

What emerges is a portrait — a dated portrait, to be sure — of a society that is much more diverse than we usually think of when we think of Afghanistan.

The problems I have with this one are typical of my problems reading a miscellany cover-to-cover, in that sme of the pieces are much easier to read and much more interesting than others.  For example, I loved the opening piece from Morag Murray about her adventures as a Scotswoman marrying an Afghan, while the story of the boy taken in by the magicians couldn’t really hold my attention.

(Afghan Caravan, Ed. Safia Shah, Octagon Press, 0863040594)

This novel — which feels much more like a memoir, with details that would be impossible to replicate if someone was not there — is haunting.

The terror is not in what happens, but the after — as in, it’s not Mercedes original imprisonment and torture that makes the reader queasy, but how she’s forced to confront the past she’d hoped she ran away from.

I read this novel as part of my “around the world in books” plan (I’ll write a post on that at some point when I’m not hopped up on cold meds), for the country of Argentina, but unlike Broken April, where you’re hit over the head with the Albanian Kunan, the references to Argentina here are fleeting:  a street name here, a mention of maté there.  Still, Argentina’s “Dirty War” was a very real thing, so real, in fact, you think that Patricia Sagastizabal experienced it first hand…

(A Secret for Julia, Patricia Sagastizabal, WW Norton, 0393050440)

I have to remind myself that this novel is set in the (early) 20th century, in a real place, and involves a code - the Kanun - that the Albanian highlanders followed much like an Orthodox Jew follows the Torah.  The difference is that the Torah doesn’t call for an endless blood feud, while a Kanun blood feud can last until every male member of a family is wiped out.

There’s not a whole ton of action here — most if it takes place at the beginning and the end while the middle is chock full of exposition (and one of the chapters about a tertiary character we never really get to see again feels a bit unnecessary), but there is a very real portrait here of what is at heart a very medieval society.

I don’t know how much Albania has changed since the early 20th century, but it’s easy to imagine that in the most remote regions, those that were least touched by communism (if such a thing exists) might still consider the Kanun their law.

Far be it from me to impugn on the legal system of another, but let me just say I’m glad that in American society the Hatfields and the McCoys are (supposedly) a thing of the past.

(Broken April by Ismail Kadare, New Amsterdam Books, 9781561310654)

There’s some really interesting things here — I particularly enjoyed the desert, high seas and high altitude chapters.  Kamler is a doctor, and his medical knowledge is on full display as he explains the physiological changes that occur in the human body in environmental extremes (the mountain and desert will kill you, the ocean can if you can’t figure out how to fish or find water; on the other hand, food is plentiful in the jungle, it’s just a matter of trying to avoid everything else that wants to kill you).  

The big problems I had with the book, however, were twofold:

1) When talking about Amazon natives, Nepalese Sherpas or the Tuareg, I couldn’t help but get the whole ‘noble savage’ vibe.  He speaks with admiration about these people and yet at at the same time does so in a tone that comes off as a distinctly privileged, almost colonialist mindset.  Part of this might simply be that he’s a scientist and trying too hard to remain objective, but it still left me feeling uneasy.

2) The second is the sheer load of accomplishments he seems to have accomplished:  twice coming close to scaling everest, a certified scuba diver, spending time in Antarctica AND doing Amazon research, all while maintaining a medical practice in New York City?  Okay, yes, it’s certainly possible, but I mean.  The most exotic place I’ve ever been to is Portugal and I’m relatively well travelled. (okay, so maybe it’s petty jealousy on my part, but my favorite chapters in the book, aside from the High Altitude one, are the ones where he is not personally involved.)

(Surviving the Extremes:  What Happens to the Body and Mind at the Limits of Human Endurance, Kenneth Kamler, M.D., Penguin, 9780143034513)

Don’t get cancer.

No, really, don’t get cancer.  It’s not fun, and they basically gotta pump you full of poison to get rid of it.

(Some cancers are way worse than others, of course cancer research has self-harming politics, one dude thought it’d be cool to swallow a beaker full of H. Pylori, and Marie Curie’s letters are too dangerous to handle because of radiation.)

***

Mukherjee is at his best describing history and patient stories, and honestly, if I get cancer at some point in my life I want to make damn sure he’s my oncologist.  

Seriously, though, he took an incredibly complex and frightening topic and turned it into a book I read in three days.  The praise is not unwarranted.

(The Emerperor of All Maladies:  A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Scribner, 9781439170915)