About Time I Read It: The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

I’ve always been a sucker for books about books, libraries and librarians. After repeatedly spotting Josh Hanagarne’s The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family on the shelf at my small town public library I decided to give it a shot. My desire to read this book only intensified after Jean of the blog Howling Frog Books told me she once met the author at his library in Salt Lake City. After ignoring it for a week or so I pulled it out of the pile of library books by my reading chair and began reading it.

Perhaps our favorite memoirs are by individuals who’ve overcome some sort of major challenge or challenges in life. Hanagarne was born with moderate to severe Tourette’s, manifesting itself in a range of uncontrollable symptoms including facial ticks, nonsensical vocal outbursts and tongue and mouth biting. At times he even physically pummeled himself. Understandably so, this would present huge challenges throughout his life. It would take him 10 years to earn his undergrad degree. His LDS mission had to be cut short when his symptoms worsened. Employment tended to be spotty and, dating to say the least was difficult.

Cursed as he might have been with a troublesome case of Tourette’s, nevertheless Hanagarne was blessed with loving and supportive parents who stood by him every inch of the way. The same likewise could be said for his wife Janette, who easily accepted him for who he is. Even though by the end of the memoir he’s grown distant from the LDS faith of his childhood he speaks kindly and respectively of his former co-religionists and their beliefs, thanking them for the patience and goodwill they showed him over the course of his life.

This is a pretty good memoir, and is told with no shortage of humor. It’s an inspiring success story, and while Hanagarne might be the hero of the story, despite his abundance of physical strength he’s no superhero. But he’s an honest hero, one who’s not shy when it comes to recalling his shortcomings and the many mistakes he made along the way. Rumi once said a person who exhibits both positive and negative qualities, strengths and weaknesses is not flawed, but complete. This completeness makes him, like us mortal. And as a mortal we can related to him.

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.

Book Beginnings: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Not only does Gilion host the European Reading and TBR 22 in 22 on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, finally in 2022 I decided to 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

It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day—which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.

Last week I featured Josh Hanagarne 2013 The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family. Before that it was Husain Haqqani’s 2013 Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding. This week it’s Stieg Larsson’s 2008 global sensation The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

For well over a decade I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about this grandaddy of Nordic Noir. Back in 2020 I scored a copy from one of those little free libraries and have been trying to read it since. Needing something representing Sweden for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge I cracked it open last weekend. I’m happy to say so far it’s exceeded expectations. Here’s what Amazon has to say about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.

Book Beginnings: The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

Not only does Gilion host the European Reading and TBR 22 in 22 on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, finally in 2022 I decided to 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

Today the library was hot, humid, and smelly. It was like work-. ing inside a giant pair of glass underpants without any leg holes to escape through. The building moved. It breathed. It seethed with bodies and thoughts moving in and out of people’s heads. Mostly out.

Last week I featured Husain Haqqani ‘s 2013 Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding. Before that it was Aria Minu-Sepehr’s 2012 We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran. This week it’s Josh Hanagarne 2013 The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family. 

I’ve always been a sucker for books about books, libraries and librarians. After spotting this one on the shelf numerous times at my surprisingly well stocked small town public library I decided to give it a shot. My desire to read this book only intensified after I Iearned Jean of the blog Howling Frog Books once met the author at his library in Salt Lake City. Here’s what Amazon has to say about The World’s Strongest Librarian.

Josh Hanagarne couldn’t be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh was six years old and onstage in a school Thanksgiving play when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was twenty, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when—while serving on a mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints—his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels.

Today, Josh is a librarian in the main branch of Salt Lake City’s public library and founder of a popular blog about books and weight lifting—and the proud father of four-year-old Max, who has already started to show his own symptoms of Tourette’s.

Library Loot

Same old story. Out running errands yesterday, popped into the library for just a few moments and walked out more books. Even though I’m already up to my eyeballs with library books I couldn’t resist grabbing another small stack. Three of these are books I borrowed in the past yet never read. Who knows, maybe this time I finally will.

• The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah – Over a decade ago I read and reviewed her 2010 book The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years. I’m a sucker for a good migration story. 
• 1916: One Hundred Years of Irish Independence: From the Easter Rising to the Present by Tim Pat Coogan – Borrowed this one a few years ago and only read the first few pages. Hoping to read this one for Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge. 
• A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova – Another one I borrowed several years ago and ignored. If it all goes well after this one I’ll read Gorokhova’s follow-up Russian Tattoo. 
• The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World by Bernard-Henri Lévy – Just like 1916, I borrowed this back before the pandemic, read a few pages only to return it pretty much unread. A little something for Introverted Reader’s Books in Translation 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. 

About Time I Read It: The Removers by Andrew Meredith

One of the four books I picked up at the library the other day was Andrew Meredith’s 2014 memoir The Removers. A short book of just over 175 pages made it hard to resist, but I’d like to think there were other reasons I grabbed it. A memoir by a former “remover” entrusted with picking up deceased individuals and transporting them to funeral homes for embalming or cremation appealed to me. To risk coming off as a morbid, in the past I’ve enjoyed smart, well-written books about death and dying like Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory and Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster. But I was also drawn to The Removers because of its author. A young man who managed to flunk out of not one but two colleges over the course of several years, who, out of a combination of desperation and lack of imagination follows his dad’s footsteps and retrieves corpses for a living sounds like the makings of an entertaining memoir. That’s because I have a fondness for individuals, even fictional ones who manage to succeed inspite of themselves. Mark Richard’s memoir House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer’s Journey Home and Thomas Glavinic’s novel Pull Yourself Together being just two examples. 

One afternoon 15 year old Meredith returns home from school and is surprised to see his dad, an English professor at Philadelphia’s La Salle, home early from work. Over the next few days he learns he’s been fired due to some vaguely-acknowledged impropriety involving a female student. Even though his father would go on to find employment a short time later at a local community college the family never fully recovered. His parents’ loving marriage begins to slowly unravel as his mother and father grow increasingly distant towards each other. Taking advantage of a promise of free tuition as part of dad’s negotiated severance deal he enrolled in La Salle but after a year or so of floundering he drops out. Flunking out again, this time at nearby Temple University he’s left broke, living at home and directionless in life. In the meantime his dad has taken a part-time job as a remover for a local funeral home. With no career goals, or even vague sense of purpose he asks his dad if there’s any openings. Before he knows it he’s wearing a low-key but presentable suit and traveling across town collecting corpses. 

Just like any job this one comes with its own set of occupational hazards. Collecting the newly deceased from hospitals can be surprisingly routine. But extracting the remains of some elderly loner from his/her former residence who’s been dead for a week or two requires both determination and a strong stomach to battle the horrors of bodily decomposition, especially its overpowering stench. Challenging configurations like narrow corridors, endless flights of stairs and tiny bedrooms can bedevil even the most competent of removers. Worse still are the corpses of the severely obese. One Friday evening, when most Philadelphians were starting their weekend festivities Meredith’s father was forced to call his son and two additional removers to assist him during a hospital pick-up after he discovered the body in question weighed over 500 pounds.

The Removers is not just one man’s testimony of bodily death but also the death of his own family. The mysterious firing of his father under scandalous circumstances hangs like a curse over the Meredith family, poisoning his parents’ marriage and sowing the seeds for both his, and his sister’s later struggles in life. But we also see his hometown of Philadelphia, like other Rust Belt towns experience a decline in livability as factories close, good-paying jobs evaporate and hopelessness and violent crime fill the void. Meredith and his friends during a game of pick-up basketball watch a middle age motorist almost beaten to death by a tire iron wielding young hot-head in the throes of road rage. Later, one of his friends would be shot dead by a perfect stranger over a noise complaint. Another friend would end up killing himself. 

Even though it won’t make my year-end list of Favorite Nonfiction, The Removers ain’t a half-bad memoir and well worth a read.

Library Loot

Same old story. Out running errands yesterday, dropped by the library to return a book. And walked out the door with four more. Even though I’m already up to my eyeballs with library books I couldn’t resist grabbing more reading material. Will I ever learn? No, of course not. 

• The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo by Robert B. Edgerton – Been wanting to read up on Africa. Why not start with this 2002 book. 
• Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey by Mikhal Dekel – Second time I’ve borrowed this book. Maybe this time I’ll finally read it. 
• The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne – I love quirky memoirs by librarians. 
• The Removers by Andrew Meredith – This memoir looks twisted- in a good way! 

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.  

About Time I Read It: Haben by Haben Girma

I don’t think anyone can resist a memoir by the first deafblind woman to graduate from Harvard Law School. Even though I was up to my eyeballs in library books I didn’t resist it either, grabbing a copy of Haben Girma’s 2019 Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law during one of my weekend library visits. A light read but far from a piece of fluff, I whipped through it quickly. I walked away from Haben with both an admiration for its author, but also a new perspective on what it’s like to live with different abilities. 

As one might guess from the book’s subtitle Girma is a pretty remarkable person. The American-born daughter of Eritrean immigrants she was born legally blind and deaf. As a child she might walk into a room and see a person sitting on a couch as a shadowy blur. But by the time she was a young adult her sense of sight had deteriorated to the point “walking into a room is like stepping into an abstract painting of fuzzy formations and colorful smashes.” Born with low frequency hearing but not high, over the years she would lose even that modest ability. But to her credit she bravely battled on, refusing to let those sensory restrictions prevent her from living an accomplished life. 

And what an accomplished life so far. In high school, Girma successfully lobbied her parents to let her to spend a summer in the African nation of Mali doing relief work. Later, instead of sticking safely close to home in the Bay Area with premier colleges Stanford and UC Berkeley in her own backyard she opted to attend Lewis and Clark in my former town of Portland, Oregon. (It’s fun to imagine I might have passed her on the street during one of her forays off campus.) Later, after graduating from Harvard Law School she would go on to serve as a disability rights lawyer and play an instrumental role in winning a landmark ADA-related case. For her successful efforts as an attorney and disabilities advocate she earned a trip to the White House to be honored by both Vice President Biden and President Obama.

Much like it’s author, this memoir is direct, passionate and a much needed challenge to our long-held assumptions of people with different abilties. 

Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas

About a year ago political scientist and writer Brian Klaas began making the rounds on my favorite podcasts The Bulwark, Deep State Radio and The New Abnormal promoting his recently published book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. As he answered questions related to the long-purported belief that power corrupts and what, if anything can be done to keep corruptible individuals away from the levers of power I couldn’t get enough. That’s because several years ago I experienced first hand what it’s like to suffer at the hands of a tyrannical leader. I couldn’t wait to read Klaas’s book and promptly checked out his cool podcast.

Before long I used Overdrive to borrow a copy for my Kindle and eagerly went to work reading it. Employing a Malcom Gladwell-esque style Klass recalls his interviews with a wide array of individuals ranging from an African dictator to a retired American general tasked with running the occupation of Iraq to countless subject matter experts. By the end of the book Klaas showed us not only corrupt leaders looks like but how they’re able to rise to power. He also weighed in on what possible strategies we can employ to make sure they don’t always seize power and if they do, how we might reign them in.

According to Klaas, the worst tyrants, be they CEOs, third-world despots or even some out of control head of an HOA posses in varying degrees what he calls the “dark triad” of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellism.

Narcissists feel they’re naturally entitled to positions of authority and are willing to engage in risky behavior like breaking laws, regulations and norms because they see themselves as too clever to suffer the consequences. Typically, most dictators are eventually dethroned because their reckless misrule ends up pissing off enough, or at least the wrong people. Many a CEO lost his/her job by making heedless decisions that brought shame upon the company name .

Psychopaths, immune from experiencing empathy, are able to abuse others to pursue their agendas. An unscrupulous potentate will happily jail and torture dissidents while a toxic executive won’t hesitate to humiliate a subordinate during a meeting for a perceived shortcoming, especially if he/she is seen a potential rival or attempts to speak truth to power.

Lastly, aspiring Machiavellis will hijack whatever resources that come with their positions to further advance themselves. A power-crazed HOA president will target residents he doesn’t like with endless parades of citations. One East African strongman appointed a surprisingly number of women to his rubber stamp parliament, not because he shared their feminist values but because he wanted to send Western nations and NGOs the message he was a progressive ruler and therefore deserved of larger aid packages. Larger aid packages he could line his own pockets with.

One way to reduce the number of bad leaders is to ensure less corruptible individuals wind up in positions of authority. Applicant pools need to be widened as to attract as many capable individuals as possible, not just those with a pathological desire to control and abuse others. Hoping to attract a more kindler, gentler candidate pool a municipality in New Zealand produced a light-hearted recruitment video in which two police officers, played by women of color, pursue a purse snatcher. During their on foot pursuit they even stop for a moment to help an elderly woman cross the street. At the end when they finally apprehend the thief it’s revealed he’s just a dog. The goal is to attract helpful sorts, not Rambos or Dirty Harrys.

In the starkest of contrasts, thanks to minuscule applicant pools the demand for law enforcement officials in rural Alaska is so great police departments are resorting to drastically lowering standards and hiring convicted felons. Even those who’ve committed assaults, rapes and attempted kidnappings have been hired by short-staffed departments desperate to fill their ranks. (Despite the offenders having committed those crimes in the very communities they’re now entrusted to protect.)

Lastly, we must find ways to keep the high and mighty in line. Corporate America spends billions to closely monitor even its most loyal of low level employees through surveillance cameras, recorded phone lines and computer software to log keyboard strokes and website usage. But little, if anything is done to ensure high level executives follow the law, act responsibly or refrain from using their authority to pursue personal vendettas. With a disturbing percentage of CEOs psychopaths, and in all likelihood members of the dark triad, ways must be found to hold them as accountable as their lowest rung employees.

For all the reasons I’ve already outlined this outstanding book should be required reading for anyone who interacts with the powerful in any sector be it private or public. Please consider Corruptible highly recommended.

Library Loot

Even though I’m making my way through several books right now I could not resist grabbing another sizable stack of reading material when I stopped by the public library yesterday while running errands. My modest small town library never ceases to surprise me with its impressive array of great books. Never underestimate your local public library! 

• We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran by Aria Minu-Sepehr  – I borrowed this one a little over a year ago and never started it. This time I’m gonna try extra hard to read it.
• Cairo by André Raymond – Another book I’ve borrowed in the past and want another crack at. 
• Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks – I’ve heard nothing but good things about this memoir. Been a fan of his for years. 
• Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean by Philip Mansel – Another book for my Mediterranean/Adriatic/Balkan/Eastern European reading project. 
• Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire by Tim Harper – I need to read Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia. But until I do, I’ll read Harper’s book. Looks like a great take on anti-colonialist struggles.
• The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele and David Perry – I have a soft spot for medieval history. This one looks like a lot of fun. 

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.