First Lines: January 2022 edition

Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in January. 

 

Book 1

Good-bye to Forty-eighth Street

Turtle Bay, November 12, 1957

For some weeks now I have engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone.  It is not a simple matter.  I am impressed by the reluctance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world. 

 

Book 2

Soviet Union – 1942

The priest presiding over my wedding was half-starved, half-frozen and wearing rags, but he was resourceful; he’d blessed a chunk of moldy bread from breakfast to serve as a communion wafer.

  

 

Book 3

Democracy’s Failing Light

While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart?  Is there life after democracy?  What sort of life will it be?  By “democracy” I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration.  I mean the working model:  Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

 

 

Book 4

From: Lisa Brown <l.brown@cachingliteraryagency.com>

To: Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt <margotcross@northpole.com>

Sent: Thu, 9 December

Subject:  Meeting Tomorrow at Romance House (!)

Book 5

Agatha Raisin arrived at Heathrow Airport with a tan outside and a blush of shame inside. 

 

Book 6

ALL TOO HUMAN:

Introduction to a Life

Too soon.  Too angry.

Too smart.  Too stupid.

Too honest.  Too snobbish.

Too Jewish.  Not Jewish enough.

Too loving, too hateful,

Too manlike, not manlike enough.

 

The titles and authors revealed:

 

 

Book 1

Essays of E.B. White, by E.B. White, published 1977 (essays were first published in various publications from 1934 through 1977).   346 pages.

Excellent writing.  Some prescient observations. 

 

Book 2

The Things We Cannot Say, by Kelly Rimmer.  Published 2019.  467 pages.  

A WWII/holocaust story that is told from the perspective of two women: Alina, a young woman in Poland on the cusp of WWII, and Alice, a woman with a detached husband, an intellectually curious child, and a child with autism.  I read it for book club.  Most of the characters have some impediment to saying what needs to be said.  Some of the group had trouble reading the book, mostly because of the subject matter being too harsh to read.  

 

Book 3

Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, by Arundhati Roy.  Published 2009.  209 pages.

I speed-read this.  Arundhati Roy is a brave writer, speaking out against many wrongs in her country, India.  The title refers to grasshoppers as a bad omen, their arrival indicating horrible events to come.  The current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, was at the time of these essays the Chief Minister in Gujarat state.  Roy accuses him and the BJP Party of carrying out a genocide against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.  It seems things have gone downhill for democracy in India, and elsewhere, since then.  This book of twelve essays feels dated.  I am only slightly familiar with events and politicians in India in the past 20 years, so it was not easy to see lessons for our own situation. 

 

Roy notes that there have been several genocides carried out by the United States (and its predecessor colonies), in her view.  The first: the decimation of the Native Americans by colonials, via smallpox.  The second: the millions of deaths that occurred during the slave trade.  The third: the bombing of Japan in WWII.  The fourth:  the invasion of Vietnam.

 

 

Book 4

The Matzah Ball, by Jean Metzger.  Published 2021.  416 pages.

A fun, light-hearted romance.  Repetitive, as romance novels usually are.  The characters repeat to themselves, and the reader, that he/she just has to have/do X, or else.  But the plot and characters were still amusing.

 

Book 5

Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet. By M.C. Beaton. First published 1993.  224 pages.  Audio book, narrated by Diana Bishop.

I needed an audio book to listen to, while recovering from having my eyes dilated.  When I read the first book in this lengthy series, the story was fine but there were some atrocious typos in the printed version.  I thought an audio version might work better for the next one in the series. This version I borrowed from the library claims to be 5 hours listening time.  That’s about right – I was able to finish it in two days.  But I did fall asleep at certain points, not because it was a boring book, but because that’s what I do when listening to the spoken word while prone and keeping my (dilated) eyes closed. I liked the narrator’s voice and the plot was fine.  The main character is a bit obnoxious.  There is a funny scene in a bathroom. 

  

 

Book 6

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth, by Ken Krimstein.  A graphic biography. Published 2018.  233 pages.

Hannah Arendt is known for delving into the causes of totalitarianism. I have always been fascinated by her observation that evil is banal, but have never studied that thought, her other thoughts, or her life.

 

This book is an overview of Arendt’s life, which includes a dizzying pantheon of famous thinkers, artists, and smart folks – mostly men.  The artist highlights Arendt in the drawings with a green shading, a good choice.  

[Spoiler alert, but not a big spoiler]

As the Nazis came to power, Arendt escaped from Germany to France, then endured the round-up of Jews at the Vel d’Hiv in Paris, escaped from an internment camp in France, and eventually came to the U.S.  

Here are a few quotes from the book, which is written in first person from Hannah Arendt’s point of view:

 

[Hannah, talking to herself] 

-   Hannah, this is just normal human behavior.

No, Hannah, this is a new kind of human.

-   How so?

This is a person who is put into concentration camps… by their foes… and into internment camps… by their friends.

-   You make a good point. 

– p. 108

 

[After World War II is over.]

Yes, the war is won.  But for me, it’s still raging.  I can’t ignore the shattering of tradition.  I must understand.  I must find the answer.  There is something at work in the world that causes people to cannibalize their own freedom, and in so doing, turn other people into landfill.   What is it?  How does it work?  Why? 

 – p. 163

 

[Arendt observes the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann]

As hard as I try, I cannot see a monster in the glass booth.  I see a bore, a careerist former vacuum cleaner salesman spouting empty sales pitches.  He’s ordinary, which makes his crimes even more horrible than a Frankenstein fantasy.   If we turn Eichmann into a demonic monster, we somehow absolve him of his crime, and all of us of our potential crime, the crime of not thinking things through.  The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

– p. 220.

 

 

A book I didn’t finish:  

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices, compiled by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington.  Published 2021.  465 pages.

This is a collection of short stories riffing on the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table.  Some of the stories I really enjoyed.  The ones I wasn’t enjoying I (gasp) skipped.