Book Beginnings: No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel

Not only does Gilion host the European Reading and TBR 23 in 23 on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, last year I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. This week I’m back with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Dear Chaya,

    I am sitting with you on my lap, by the window. There are ice crystals on the glass. If I put my ear close enough I can almost hear them cracking and growing. It’s not snowing now, but it has been all morning. Even though you have only been alive a few days, your story, our story, started a long time ago.

Last week I featured the 1998 memoir Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici. The week before it was the 2008 historical novel Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian.  This week it’s Ramona Ausubel’s 2012 historical novel No One is Here Except All of Us. As you might have seen in an earlier post, I recently grabbed this one from my small town public library with Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge and The Intrepid Reader’s Historical Fiction Reading Challenge in mind. Here’s what the novel’s Amazon page has to say.

In 1939, the families in a remote Jewish village in Romania feel the war close in on them. Their tribe has moved and escaped for thousands of years- across oceans, deserts, and mountains-but now, it seems, there is nowhere else to go. Danger is imminent in every direction, yet the territory of imagination and belief is limitless. At the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger who has washed up on the riverbank, the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch.

Library Loot

Just like last time I dropped by the public library for just a few minutes and walked out with four more books. Who cares if I already have a ton of library books by my bed needing to be read! I plan on applying this promising assortment  towards a number of reading challenges including The Intrepid Reader’s Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge and Introverted Reader’s Books in Translation Reading Challenge.  

• The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean (2012) – Back in 2011 I read Kean’s bestseller The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements and loved it. I’ve been wanting to read his follow-up book for over a decade. 
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years,Updated and Expanded by David Graeber (2021) – This updated version of Graeber’s 2011 book the London School of Economics trained anthropologist takes a revolutionary look at humanity’s 5,000 year history of credit, debit and exchange. The latest selection for my book club.
• No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel (2012) – Set in a remote part of Romania during World War II I’m hoping to apply this one towards  The Intrepid Reader’s Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, and Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge.
• Stolen Years by Sara Zyskind (1981) – I’ll be applying Zyskind’s memoir of surviving the Holocaust in occupied Poland towards not just Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge but also Introverted Reader’s Books in Translation Reading Challenge and Book’d Out’s Nonfiction Reader Challenge.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading to encourage bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write-up your post, steal the Library Loot icon and link your post using the Mr. Linky on Claire’s blog. 

Book Beginnings: Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici

Not only does Gilion host the European Reading and TBR 23 in 23 on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, last year I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. This week I’m back with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

On June 22, 1941 I saw my father for the last time. My parents had divorced a year before, and I had stayed with my mother. That day there was an air-raid alert in Vilnius, a previously announced “alert drill,” and the streets were empty of people. My father, a member of the civil air defense, was checking the quarter for which he was responsible. He was making sure that all the people had gone to the air-raid shelters and had blacked out their windows as required.

Last week I featured the 2008 historical novel Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. The week before it was the 2007 memoir My Name Is Iran by Davar Ardalan.  This week it’s the 1998 memoir Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici. Since books representing Lithuania for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge aren’t easy to find, I lucked out when I stumbled across this during one of my recent library visits. Sadly the book’s Amazon page lacks a formal description so here’s what Wikipedia has to say.

Described as “Particularly grim, even for a Holocaust memoir”, Thanks to My Mother was described by one reviewer as “one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read of the Holocaust”. The same reviewer writes that readers whose interest include Holocaust testimonies and are “mentally prepared for the harshness of Rabinovici’s experiences, will come away with renewed appreciation of the extraordinary fortitude required to survive those dire times”. The book gives a rare, detailed view of Jewish life in Vilnius, Lithuania during German occupation and contains gritty descriptions of life in the Vilnius Ghetto and the circumstances of those deported from the ghetto for slave labor in Germany.

Library Loot

Once again I dropped by the public library for only a few minutes and walked out with four more books. Who cares if I already have a ton of library books at home needing to be read! I plan on applying this promising assortment  towards a number of reading challenges including The Intrepid Reader’s Historical Fiction Reading Challenge Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge and Introverted Reader’s Books in Translation Reading Challenge.  

• Napoleon’s Last Island by Thomas Keneally (2016) – A little something by the author of Schinder’s List for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.  
• In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa (2014) – I have a weakness for fiction by authors from the Middle East. 
• My Name Is Iran by Davar Ardalan (2007) – As you all know I cannot resist a good Iranian memoir. 
• Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici (1998) – A first hand account of the Holocaust in German-occupied Lithuania for the European Reading Challenge. 

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading to encourage bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write-up your post, steal the Library Loot icon and link your post using the Mr. Linky on Claire’s blog. 

2022 European Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

Well, another year of Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge has come to a close. Each year I try to read as many books as possible set in, or about different European countries, or by different European authors. With one country per book and each book by a different author, I found myself moving from book to book across Europe, like some post-modern armchair version of a Bella Époque grand tour of the Continent.

Last year I read and reviewed  just 10 books. This year I’m happy to report I doubled my output with 20. Just like in past years, there’s a variety of countries represented, ranging from large counties like Russia and Germany to tiny ones like Vatican City. 

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Sweden) 
2. True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy by Kati Marton (Hungary) 
3. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island by Lawrence Durrell (Cyprus) 
4. The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine (Greece) 
5. The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (Portugal) 
6. The Sacrament by Ólafur Ólafsson (Iceland) 
7. The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples by David Gilmour (Italy) 
8. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 by Adam Hochschild (Spain) 
9. Rather Die Fighting: A Memoir of World War II by Frank Blaichman (Poland) 
10. Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi (Albania) 
11. I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys (Romania) 
12. God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavelic by Karlheinz Deschner (Vatican City) 
13. The Son and Heir by Alexander Münninghoff (The Netherlands)
14. The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach (Belarus) 
15. A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen (Russia) 
16. Dancing Fish and Ammonites by Penelope Lively (United Kingdom) 
17. On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe (Belgium) 
18. A Hero of France by Alan Furst (France) 
19. Here in Berlin by Cristina García (Germany) 
20. Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine) 

Just like last year it was a 50-50 mix of fiction and nonfiction. Five of these are translated works. Two were originally published in Dutch, and one each from German, Russian and Swedish. A number of these books also made my 2022 Favorite Nonfiction or 2022 Favorite Fiction lists. 

As you can guess, I’m a huge fan of this challenge. I encourage all you book bloggers to sign up and read your way across Europe. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Nonfiction November Week 2: Book Pairings

Last week Katie from the blog Doing Dewey kicked off Nonfiction November. This week Rennie at What’s Nonfiction has agreed to host. She invites participants to share their favorite book pairings, and takes a pretty inclusive approach. It could be a pairing of nonfiction books with fiction, podcasts, documentaries, movies or even additional works of nonfiction.

In past years I’ve been straight-forward, just pairing up nonfiction books with works of fiction. However, last year I did something new and featured Michael David Lukas’s 2018 novel The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, pairing it with a half-dozen books about the ancient Cairo Geniza and Egypt’s Jewish community. This year I thought I’d return to my old ways. I’ll be looking back at what I read in 2022, both nonfiction and fiction and select 15 books. For every work of nonfiction I’ll suggest a piece of fiction and visa versa.

• The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
• I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet

• A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande
• The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

• The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples by David Gilmour
• Not All Bastards Are from Vienna by Andrea Molesini

• God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavelic by Karlheinz Deschner
• Warburg in Rome by James Carroll

• King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

• Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 by Adam Hochschild
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

• I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
• The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution by Andrei Codrescu

• Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
• The Fall of Stone City by Ismail Kadare

• The Attack by Yasmina Khadra
• Literature and War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers by Runo Isakson

• Not Our Kind by Kitty Zeldis
• “The Rest of Us”: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews by Stephen Birmingham

• The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon
• Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick

• A Hero of France by Alan Furst
• Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris by David King

• Here in Berlin by Cristina García
• Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

• A Terrible County by Keith Gessen
• The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

• Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev by Andrey Kurkov
• Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Considering my reading tastes it’s no surprise I’ve included lots of history and international politics kind of stuff. For the first time doing these pairings I’ve featured books by two siblings (Masha and Keith Gessen), a pair of books by the same author (Andrey Kurkov) and two works of nonfiction by the same author (Adam Hochschild). In other firsts, close to half were translated into English from another language, with three quarters of these books written by either immigrants, expats, refugees or children of immigrants. I hope you enjoyed my post and I look forward to reading all the others from Nonfiction November.

20 Books of Summer: Grand Hotel Abyss by Stuart Jeffries

Late one Sunday morning at the public library, a year or so before COVID hit I spotted a copy of Stuart Jeffries’s Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Standing upright with its cover prominently displayed to all, I sensed it was some librarian’s official or unofficial recommendation. Knowing little about the Frankfort School, I had some vague recollection of its influence on mid-20th century leftist thought. So I made a mental note to someday read Jeffries’s book only later to forget.
Fast forward to earlier this summer, when, after telling one of my professor buddies who’s deep into the Frankfort School about the book he ran out and bought a copy. The next thing I knew he’d read the first two chapters and invited me to discuss Grand Hotel Abyss with him over wine at a local winery. Accepting his kind invitation I borrowed a Kindle edition of Jeffries’s 2016 book through Overdrive and went to work reading.

In the early 1920s a group of German Jewish intellectuals of the Marxist persuasion found themselves in a bit of a quandary. Within their ranks it had been a tenet of faith that when the time came for the working class to finally revolt against their capitalist masters it would begin in Germany. Lo and behold, much to their surprise when the revolution did break out it happened not in Germany, the birthplace of Karl Marx but in Russia. (On top of that, when Lenin and company did seize power it was more like a coup and not a workers’ uprising.) Adding insult to injury, in the following years the nation’s working class began showing its reactionary side, preferring to support conservative politicians and causes. Instead of embracing the communists or even the more moderate socialists many backed the Nazis.

With seed money from a wealthy grain merchant (no pun intended) the group founded an independent research agency in Frankfort to understand why capitalism, at least outside of Russia, survived even in the face of German hyperinflation and worldwide economic depression. Operating outside established academia, the organization’s highly-educated Marxist scholars (influenced as well by Freud, Proust and Weber) began their critique of not just capitalism but society as a whole. At first their influence, even in the rarefied realm of academia was minimal. Unable and unwilling to engage with members of the working class many saw them as nothing more than a high-minded talking club. György Lukács, the great Hungarian Marxist philosopher and historian called them “a hotel on the edge of the abyss”, voyeurs perched upon high watching the world slip into fascism.

Staffed by Jewish Marxists, the institute was firmly in the Nazi’s crosshairs when they seized power in 1933. With the unfortunate exception of Walter Benjamin, (who committed suicide after being denied entry into neutral Spain) members found sanctuary in either Britain or America, with several following their countrymen to Los Angeles. No strangers to academia, many landed positions at universities. During the Second World War several even went to work for the OSS as intelligence analysts thanks to their understanding of German society.

In latter years Frankfort School alumni and their disciples would shift their attention from fascist Europe to the capitalist West. Ironically, some adherents now saw unbridled American consumerism as dehumanizing as Nazism. Others helped inspire a new generation of radicals like Angela Davis, those committed to overthrowing oppression and ushering in a more egalitarian order.

This is a meaty book of considerable depth. True to the book’s subtitle much of it’s a biography of the individual Frankfort School thinkers, in addition to their ideas and the greater political and social contexts from which they sprung forth. Few can deny some of their more arcane criticisms, especially of jazz, movies and consumerism in general come across as downright loopy. But their ideas, or perhaps more importantly their questions have influenced countless individuals over the decades as they labored to understand, and ultimately change the dominant sociopolitical order. Please consider Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School highly recommended.

Library Loot

With a tall stack of library books by my bed I should be content with what I’ve got and not borrow more. Therefore, I didn’t get carried away the other day at the public library and only grabbed two. One of them, Imre Kertész’s semi-autobiographical novel Fatelessness I hope to apply to both Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge and Introverted Reader’s Books in Translation Reading Challenge. Interestingly enough, both books are by former residents of Hungary. 

• True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy by Kati Marton – I’ve been thinking about reading this one for awhile. From the moment I picked it off the shelf I just liked the way it felt in my hand. Not until I got home and carefully looked at it did I realize it’s by the same author who wrote The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World.
• Fatelessness by Imre Kertész – This one I’ve been wanting to read for over 10 years. A little something representing Hungary for the European Reading Challenge. 

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading to encourage bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write-up your post, steal the Library Loot icon and link your post using the Mr. Linky on Sharlene’s blog.  

Sunday Salon

For over a month I’ve been taking part in The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance at Readerbuzz. So far it’s been a huge success and I’m striving to make it a regular feature. So here’s another post. 

I finished Frank Blaichman’s Rather Die Fighting: A Memoir of World War II   as well as Adam Hochschild’s Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. I read both books for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge. 

Late last week I started David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples. So far it’s shaping up to be an excellent book and perfect for the European Reading Challenge. I’ve also resumed reading Stuart Jeffries’s Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. 

Listening. With so many things going on in the world there’s been no shortage of material for my favorite podcasts. Despite this extensive list I feel I should be listening to much more. 

• Fresh Air – “Inside A Powerful MAGA Messaging Force“, “How the Mexican Revolution Shaped the U.S” and “Life In a Sex Cult” 
• Friendly Atheist – “Who’s the Real Hate-Preacher?” 
• Fever Dreams – “Alt Right Reservoir Dogs Feat and Matt Ford” 
• The Bulwark- “David Jolly: DeSantis Has the Hottest Hand in Politics Right Now“, “Michael Steele: Fighting the GOP Crazification” and “Adam Kinzinger: We’re Going to Prove What Trump Knew during Those 187 Minutes“
• The New Yorker: Politics and More – “How White Christian Nationalists Seek to Transform America” and “What Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next?” 
• MindShift – “Thy Kingdom Come: Exploring Christian Internationalism with Dr Melani McAlister“
• The New Abnormal – “Republicans Now Have an Incentive to Be Terrible” and “The REALLY Shocking Moment From the Jan. 6 Hearing” 
• The Daily – “On Abortion Laws, It All Goes Back to 2010“, “How Sri Lanka’s Economy Collapsed” and “A View of the Beginning of Time” 
• The Weeds – “What the hell is up with SCOTUS?” 

Watching. Mr. Robot continues to entertain with its crazy plot twists, great writing and superb acting. I also caught a few episodes of Stranger Things. On Thursday after watching the January 6 Hearings I followed it up with an entertaining and informative episode of the Lincoln Project’s The Breakdown.    

Everything else. Yesterday my professor buddy and I had some great wine as we took in the amazing view at our favorite local winery. The weather at my place has been nice of late so I’ve been reading on my porch.  While I’ve been drinking coffee in the mornings, in the evenings with my book I’ve been known to enjoy an adult beverage or two.

 

 

20 Books of Summer: Rather Die Fighting by Frank Blaichman

Needing something representing Poland for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge I happily helped myself to a copy of Frank Blaichman’s 2009 memoir Rather Die Fighting: A Memoir of World War II when I came across it during at the public library. I knew a little bit about Poland’s wartime Jewish partisans thanks to Matthew Brzezinski’s excellent 2012 book Isaac’s Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland and figured Rather Die Fighting would present me with a great opportunity to learn more.

Frank Blaichman was 16 years old when Germany invaded his native Poland in 1939. After witnessing the Nazis rounding up his fellow Jews for “resettlement” he fled into the forests and soon joined a band of Jewish partisans. Like so many teens across war-torn Europe he was forced to grow up quickly, electing to fight the Germans and their collaborators. Committed, intelligent, and wise beyond his years it wasn’t long before his commanders made him an officer.

Hard enough Blaichman and his fellow Jewish partisans had to fight the Germans but they also had to contend with a complicated array of rival armed groups, some with hostile intentions. While the Polish AK partisans also fought the Germans they were avidly anti-Semitic, and thus usually impossible to trust. Even worse were the German-allied, anti-Polish Ukrainian militias, as well as assorted Polish fascist groups. Even more cooperative partisan forces like the Polish AL or Russians had their own military and political agendas and weren’t entirely free of anti-Semitism. (It wasn’t uncommon for leaders of such groups to order hopelessly outnumbered and out-gunned Jewish fighters to attack advancing German tank columns.)

Eventually, the tide of battle turned , the Red Army drove the Germans from Poland and Blaichman was absorbed into the Soviet-sponsored Polish regular army. However, not long after Germany’s surrender the former partisan and his young wife sought to leave Poland. With virtually his entire extended family dead, anti-Semitism on the rise and the prospects of living under communist rule unappealing Blaichman and his wife made their way westward and eventually settled in America.

Few Jewish fighters survived the Second World War. Fewer still went on to write about their experiences. With that mind, rare memoirs like Rather Die Fighting are a rare commodity and should be treasured.