Currently Reading

It has been several weeks since I posted here for a variety of reasons, but life will be settling into a more regular (if still quite challenging) rhythm here pretty soon. So I’m dusting off the keyboard with a quick run-down of the books I’m currently reading and all that is good about them.

Republic of Fear, by Kanan Makiya

This is an detailed academic account of the nature, tools, rise, and strength of the Iraqi Ba’ath party, most particularly as it pertains to the Ba’ath under Saddam.

I’ve actually been reading this one in bits and pieces for a while, but I’m nearing the end, and while it can get a mite tedious and dense at times, I highly recommend it. Iraqi history is one of my all-time favorite topics of study. What is particularly chilling about ‘Saddam’s Iraq’ is that so many of the things we see as signs of modernization and progress–less emphasis on tribal relations, universal education, sharp increase in literacy–were the exact tools the Ba’ath used to indoctrinate the society. The more the traditional family could be broken down, the more the children could be got hold of and taught state education, the more each individual felt allegiance to the state over and above family, tribe, religion, or any other traditional ties.

You also see how the various revolutionary governments, once they were in power and even stable in that power, would use all the various scapegoats, and any number of massacres, to stir the population to both loyalty and dread. The scapegoats were usually the Assyrian Christians and the Jews. But they also found it easy to dub anything they didn’t approve of or want as “imperialist.” It was an easy slur to throw at your opponents to claim they were ‘for the west.’

Anyhow, for anyone remotely interested in modern Iraqi history, it’s a must-read.

In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson

I did not mean to be reading two books about the rise and nature of tyrannous regimes, but here we are. This book is about the U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 1933. It is non-fiction and very thoroughly researched, but is written in a narrative style, kind of like The Zookeeper’s Wife.

1933: Hitler had already come to power, Jews were already being persecuted, laws against them were proliferating, and the U.S. was largely uninterested in any of these developments. The Ambassador, Dodd, and his daughter Martha initially range between “neutral” about the dangers of Nazism (that would be Dodd), to enthusiastically in favor of Nazism (Martha, at first). You get a disturbing glimpse at anti-semitism in the U.S. as well. There’s this attitude of “Well, I don’t want anyone to be persecuted, but they did sort of bring it on themselves.”

So, parts of it will surely turn your stomach: but it is a very good read so far.

Pensees, by Blaise Pascal

Pascal’s scattered thoughts on God, faith, human nature, and so on.

Yes, I’ve been reading this one for a while too, bit by bit, but that’s not a bad way to take this book, since it is essentially a collection of snippets patched together to form…well…general ‘thoughts’ on topics. Definitely recommended, but worth reading at your own pace, pen in hand.

(If your one of those who marks in books as I do. I know some consider it sacrilege…but I do it all the time.)

Persuasion, by Jane Austen

I’ve read this one before, but it is my favorite Austen, and I was craving it. It is just as good as I remember.

The thing I love about Persuasion is it’s maturity. Anne and Wentworth are older and wiser than most of Austen’s other protagonists. They’ve loved and lost. They’ve moved on (ish).

I adore Anne’s forbearance, her quiet resolution, her resignation even. Her resignation is not that of a weakling, or someone who gives up, but is in fact the sign of a remarkably strong character. She is thrown into the company of a man she loved and rejected, and has to deal daily with his coldness toward her. She is conscious of her failings, chooses not to dwell on anyone else’s failings, and though in some emotional pain, she has grace for everyone around her. She makes a choice to act kindly and sensibly during emotionally fraught situations. And it is not easy. She doesn’t vie for place, or engage in jealousy, or bitterness.

This may sound like she’s too perfect, but she’s not. She battles within herself, but she wins.

And the TENSION in this book, oh my goodness, the tension. Subtle, excellent, beautiful romantic tension. It is this book which confirms my personal view that less is usually more in romance.

And that’s all that I’m reading right now, but I’ve got quite a few things I’m really excited about, including doing a few beloved comfort reads, like Weight of Glory and Mara Daughter of the Nile. I’m much in need of comfort reads right now.