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Martha - I avoided Rushdie simply because he was so famous..I hate read what everyone in the world is reading .

When I did finally begin to read him I fell in love. I expected him to be dry, for some reason, but he is fanciful, may in some ways belong to the genre of magical realism.

If you're still avoiding him, put him on your pending list. He's well worth the effort.

I may have another author for you soon.

Graypanther sent me a copy of Leon Uris’s Mila 18. (Thank you, Gray.) I particularly enjoyed the character-and-story sections. The history and battle areas were informative. All in all, I’m glad I read it. The only other Uris I’ve read was Exodus, and that was a long time ago. Right now The Haj, another Gray gift, is three books away on the unread shelf.

Did Mila 18 lead me to any additional insight on the current Israel-Palestine conflict? I don’t think so. To me the problem is so complex and there’s so much history that I’m having trouble wrapping around my mind around any of it. The holocaust was horrible. It’s also fascinating in a sick and twisted way. Thus I enjoy—for lack of a better word—reading about it. But now: has Israel turned into the cat, making the Palestinians the mice? I have no idea.

Anyway, back to Mila 18 and specifics:

1) The most terrifying events in the book: 1) The Germans agree to trade prisoners of war with the Jews at an unbelievable exchange rate of one German to five Jews. Of course the rate turns out to be believable when it becomes known that every returned Jew is an amputee. The scene of them walking back into Poland is heartbreaking. 2) Near the end of the book, Uris describes 36 hours a band of Jewish rebels survive in the Warsaw sewers. Graphically. Those two scenes will stay with me for a long time.

2) About a hospital: “In the makeshift maternity ward, infants sucked at empty breasts and screamed angrily at what life had dealt them in their few hours on earth.” (page 115) How’s that for summing up horror in one succinct sentence?

3) “Shrieker learned many lessons intuitively as a Nazi. One of the purists axioms was that intellectuals were weak men. They espoused noble ideas which he did not understand. They argued ideals, but they were not ready to die for them as he was for Nazism. Those so-called thinkers were exactly opposite of what they posed to be. They were all talk. They were cowards." (page 125) Must not make comparisons between Nazi Germany and the USA today. Must not. Must not.

4) “The Communists were being hounded by the Nazis even more unmercifully than the Jews. The Gestapo had a single order covering them: FIND THEM AND SHOOT THEM.” (page 145) I didn’t know that. But is it better or worse than: round them up, make their lives hell and then kill them?

5) “Nazi bureaucracy. You see, we have to put a hundred people to work making orders and then another hundred countermanding them. Another hundred sorting paper clips. That pays off our obligations to the party faithful. We shall rule the world in triplicate.” (page 155) Must not, must not. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

6) A journalist in the process of burning out says, “We sound the great trumpet and no one hears us. Free men with full bellies don’t want to believe that a black native in Ethiopia concerns them or that the bombing of an open city in Spain is the prelude to the bombing of London.” (page 180) Or that supporting a corrupt regime in the Middle East can make that country’s citizens hate us.

7) The Catholic Church appears frequently in Mila 18. Sometimes its priests are the good guys. “To (them) it was a simple basic rule that the saving of lives was the carrying out of Christ’s work.” (308)

8) And sometimes they’re not. Gabriela, a good Catholic, goes to ask a priest to help the Jews. He refuses but still holds out his hand for the respectful kiss. “She looked at his hand. ‘You are not the representative of Jesus Christ my father taught me of,’ she said, and walked from the room.” (page 311) You go, Gabby!

9) A Nazi explains that “In the concentration camps we reduce our political enemy until he takes the physical appearance of a subhuman. This makes us supermen by comparison.” (page 403) But of course. How clear cut. And logical.

10) A test to become a member of the SS involves having a sixteen-year-old boy train a dog. At the end of a year the boy is instructed to strangle the dog with his bare hands. Those who do so join the SS. “And this … is the supreme state of absolute obedience which we Germans have attained.” (page 404) Clearly, a goal worth achieving. Not!

Bottom line: Will I read more Uris? Sure. One more book, at least.

Martha, I read "Mila 18" years and years ago. Thanks for helping me remember it. Wasn't there a love story somewhere mixed into the events.

Was Mila 18 about the Warsaw Ghetto or was that another book? Getting old and forgetting good books sucks.

I read "The Haj" recently as did Mr. Bama. In fact Mr. Bama read it first. His comment was that in all the years since that book had been written nothing had changed in the Middle East. I read till almost the end and then sped read the ending. I found it heart breaking.

I've started the book "Riding the Bus With My Sister." I have just started it but already I know this young woman who is mentally challenged. In fact she works as a bagger at the Kroger's where I shop. Stephanie has become a good friend. We recently shared a sandwich at Schlotsy's. The group consisted of a man from Kenya who has a degree from UAH but for reasons unknown still works the kitchen there. Stephenie was out running errands. I had not known she had a driver's license. The three of us had a wonderful conversation while my tires were being rotated at the shop next door.

Currently reading:

Difficult for me to read, has some of the longest sentences in history. Some cover nearly a whole page. This is my book club selection for this month so I read a few pages every day, and at times I can get into the story, but it is a struggle.

The other one, almost as challenging is Thus Spak Zarathustra

Yes, Warsaw. And, yes for romances. Four or five of them.

Yesterday I finished James Lee Burke’s The Tin Roof Blowdown, and that catches me up in the Detective Dave Robicheaux series. Emma says a new one will be out this fall, which, I figure, means Swan Peak, advertised on the back of Tin Roof, will appear in paperback. So, I guess technically I’m only temporarily caught up. Good.

Anyway, a couple general comments on Tin Roof. First, I keep comparing this series to Ed McBain’s 87th precinct novels—probably shouldn’t, but I do—and I’ve noticed Burke lacks McBain’s hardhearted edge. In the 87th precinct stories, characters die. Admittedly the body count hasn’t included any of the regular detectives, but he’s killed off enough one-book major characters so that when anyone’s threatened, I worry. In the last two Robicheaux books, however, the end has been Dave to the rescue. Will he make it in time? Is it “the end” for Molly and Alafair? Ah, shoot. He saved them before; I bet he will again. As a result, IMHO, the suspense doesn’t work. But I’ve invested a lot of emotion in these characters. Do I want them to die? I’m torn. I’m pretty sure Aristotle—and McBain—would advise killing them, but …. I don’t know. Still. Maybe sometimes the train has to run over the damsel or the villain loses his power to frighten.

Secondly, a large portion of Tin Roof disappointed me. The thing I’ve come to like best about Burke are his sentences or paragraphs where he says something about the human condition in a manner that takes my breath away. There weren’t many of those in the first two thirds of the book. But the last third? That’s another story.

Modifying the above, throughout the book Burke’s horror of what Katrina did—and what the government let happen—to New Orleans drives the story. That, in and of itself, makes Tin Roof worth reading.

Specifics:

1) “As Americans, we are a peculiar breed. We believe in law and order, but we also believe that real crimes are committed by a separate class of people, one that has nothing to do with our lives or the world of reasonable behavior and mutual respect to which we belong. As a consequence, many people, particularly in higher income brackets, think of police as urban maintenance personnel who should be treated politely but whose social importance is one step above gardeners.” (page 202) Yup. Seems to me that pretty much sums it up.

2) “… his mouth forming a smile that made of her think of earthworms constricting on a hand-rolled piece of pie dough.” (page 211) Dang! Wish I’d written that.

3) “Old black men knocked out ‘The Tin Roof Blues’ in Preservation Hall.” (page 260) Anyone know what “The Tin Roof Blues” were? Are?

4) A bad guy, Bledsoe, defines solipsism as “the belief that reality exists only in ourselves and our own perceptions.” (page 358) That triggered something in my mind, and a few pages later when a character says, “Bledsoe’s a psychopath. He’s incapable of accepting injury done to himself by others,” (page 364) it became clear what I had been reminded of. Substitute “great art” for “reality.” Gee, seems like it’s possible to run into virtual solipsists in cyberspace.

5) “I’m always amazed at how the greatest complexity as well as personal courage is always found in our most nondescript members. People who look as interesting as a mud wall have the personal histories of classical Greeks.” (page 450) Really? I’m going to have to start looking for that.

6) “Or was William Blake’s tiger much larger than we ever guessed, its time finally come round.” (page 455) I love literary references—maybe because I feel smart when I “get” them. There are two in that sentence, aren’t there?

7) “I felt a sense of peace, as though I’d been invited to a war but at the last moment had decided not to attend.” (page 465) Ahhh. Interesting concept, isn’t it?

8) “The reason why guys like BTK and John Wayne Gacy and the Green River guy, what’s-his-name, Gary Ridgeway, can kill people for decades is they’re protected. Their family members live in denial because they can’t accept the fact that they’re related to a monster, or that they’ve slept with him or had children with him. How would you like to find out your father is Norman Bates?” (page 469) My friend Tessa says one reason she never had kids was ‘cause she was scared of giving birth to a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. Or, even worse, IHHO, an Alex Keaton.

9) Dave is tracking down the background of a bad guy. “Then I used the most valuable and unlauded investigative resource in the United States, the lowly reference librarian.” (page 472) YES! She, of course, finds what he needs to know. (Never thought of the following before but a truism might be: never play Trivial Pursuit with a reference librarian.)

10) An overview of Burke’s view of New Orleans: “New Orleans was systematically destroyed and that destruction began in the 1980s with the deliberate reduction by half of federal funding to the city and the simultaneous introduction of crack cocaine into the welfare projects. The failure to repair the levies before Katrina and the abandonment of tens of thousands of people to their fate in the aftermath have causes that I’ll let others sort out. But in my view the irrevocable fact remains that we saw an American city turned into Baghdad on the southern rim of the United States. If we have a precedent in our history for what happened in New Orleans, it’s lost on me.” (493) Me, too. Can you think of one?

On that note, I’ll stop.

Mar, JLB's new book is called "Rain Gods" and it isn't a Robicheaux book. It brings back a sheriff named Hack Holland, who was in "Lay Down My Sword and Shield." It takes place on the Texas border, an area I'm pretty familiar with. Now that I'm in school, I won't likely read it until December.

I don't care so much for McBain's hardhearted edge, as you call it. I care a lot about Burke's soft side as it comes out, especially concerning Alafair. Can't imagine he would kill her off, since she's named after his real daughter. I do worry about Clete Purcell, though.

I think The Tin Roof Blowdown was Burke's best and most emotional, especially the way he dealt with his beloved south Lousiana.

Emma, I know you're pretty familiar with South Florida too. Have you read any of Carl Hiaasen's books? I read Skinnydip last year and Tourist Season while I was hospitalized. Not my regular genre but this was definitely a romp through the swamp, murder has never been this fun and funny!
"Wonderful...Lively...Fun" New York Times Book Review

For you, Greger, I prescribe "Double Whammy" by Hiassen. Bass tournaments will never be the same.

EmmaG