To End All Wars

Synopsis
The First World War, with a focus on the pacifist movement in England.

My thoughts
Adam Hochschild explores World War I as not only the first total war but the first war with a sizable anti-war movement. This was the war that changed everything - the scale of warfare, the way war was conducted, and the way it was viewed back home.

I liked the organization of the book. Hochschild uses the Boer War to set the stage for World War I. That conflict involved some of the same people, from the military minds to the nascent pacifist movement. It's an effective way to introduce some of the major players and ideas. I particularly enjoyed the profiles of two women, Charlotte Despard and Emily Hobhouse, who courageously and selflessly spoke out against the war. Less sympathetic are the Pankhursts, who come across as opportunistic, manipulative, and fanatical.



I was struck repeatedly by how different things were a mere hundred years ago. Hochschild describes a battlefield where commanders couldn't tell what was going on right in front of them because they literally couldn't see what was happening through the haze of battle and lines of communication were unreliable (telephone wires were often casualties of the fighting). Contrast that to 2011, when the president of the United States monitored the raid on bin Laden's hideout halfway around the world in real time.



I can never get over the arrogance of the major powers. As in The Guns of August, To End All Wars depicts European powers that enthusiastically prepared for the outbreak of war yet did not recognize the significance of Franz Ferdinand's assassination when it happened. England, for example, was preoccupied by growing unrest in Ireland, so that scene in the first season of Downton Abbey where Carson mentions that the folks below stairs can think of nothing but the assassination of the Austrian archduke probably never happened in any English manor ever.

To End All Wars also underscores the horror of the senseless loss of life in World War I. The numbers are simply staggering, but even more appalling was the attitude of the military brass. They showed concern when their own losses were lower than expected because they estimated that meant that they'd killed fewer enemy troops. Hochshild does a good job describing the impossibilities of trench warfare, from the logistics of gaining ground to the struggle to stay clean, dry, and sane from day to day.

World War I was a hopeless, futile exercise and the terms of the armistice meant Europe was doomed to repeat it in only a few decades.


Bottom line
I'd recommend it, but not as an introduction to World War I.

Fine print
To End All Wars, by Adam Hochschild
Genre: history
Photo by Goodreads
I own this book

Big Book Challenge 2013

I'm trying something new. It's a Big Book Challenge over at Goodreads. The idea is to read books that are longer than 400 pages. I've set a goal of 10 books of 400+ pages for 2013. The folks doing this challenge are an eclectic bunch - you've got people who appreciate everything from thrillers to history to science fiction to literature.

Reading the boards at Goodreads is endlessly entertaining. That's where I picked up my favorite new term - "kitten squisher," used to describe any tome dense enough to crush your fluffy baby tabby.

Anna Karenina: Part II

I'm still plugging away at Anna Karenina. The movie is coming out on DVD tomorrow. At the rate I'm going, it will debut on network television before I'm finished reading.

Questions, once again, from Christine.

1. Kitty's health has deteriorated as a result of her heartbreak and so she travels to a health spa in Germany with her parents in hopes of reviving her health. It is here that Kitty befriends the young woman Varenka whose actions and beliefs Kitty admires tremendously. What is it about Varenka that has Kitty so enamored? At one point Kitty says she will never marry. Why do you think she says this?

Varenka represents everything Kitty isn't when they meet. She helps others while Kitty is dependent on others. Varenka helps Kitty see that you can help yourself by helping other people. Kitty starts to follow Varenka's example and, finally having a purpose in life, emerges from her depression. Varenka isn't married and instead devotes her life to others. I think Kitty feels she can live a full life without marriage based on Varenka's example.

2. Anna and Vronsky consummate their affair in this section. Do you think what they share is love? And if not, what do you think it is that they share? 

Anna and Vronsky don't think of love in the same way I do. In their culture and their time, marriage was more about partnership in a business sense than love in a romantic sense. Their world seems to be filled with superficial friendships and relationships. Marriage is not based on love. So I do think they love each other and their feelings are in many ways more true than any of the other relationships in the book.

3. Tolstoy writes to great length and detail about the steeplechase. Did you get the sense that these passages foreshadow events among the characters? If so, what?

Vronsky's horse, Frou Frou, is a magnificent horse and he is proud that she's his. But because of his mistake, she breaks her back during the steeplechase. Vronsky was overeager and overconfident and failed to take the race as seriously as he needed to. He's devastated, but I still don't think he'll change. This does not bode well for his relationship with Anna.

4. What are your overall impressions of the book after reading Part Two? Are you enjoying the story? Do you like Tolstoy's writing? 

The stakes have been raised significantly. The writing can be dense, but I am enjoying the story.

The Best American Travel Writing (2009)

Synopsis
A collection of 25 of the best pieces of American travel writing in 2009.

My thoughts
I love all forms of traveling, from armchair to actual. I have a bunch of these travel anthologies and I'd actually read a few of the pieces in this one before I decided to take it on a trip with me and read it cover to cover. It includes one of my all-time favorite travel pieces, Seth Stevenson's hilarious "The Mecca of the Mouse." Stevenson has been featured in other editions of the Best American Travel Writing series, but this piece remains my favorite.

2008 must have been a particularly strong year for travel writing because this book is chock full of absorbing writing. Strangely, there's a lot of water in this anthology, from a long-distance swimmer flailing around in frigid polar waters to a daughter wading through the river that her father fictionalized in Deliverance, from luxury transoceanic cruises to a maddening trip down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft. There are also excellent pieces on areas of the world that are off the normal tourist's radar - Sudan, Lebanon, Nigeria - and two other stand-out pieces deal with emerging tourist markets - ecotourism in Honduras and safaris in Rwanda. One of the things I love about this series is that the editors make a point of including a diverse array of pieces about all parts of the world from a variety of publications.

My favorites are the ones that make me laugh, and there are some real laugh-out-loud pieces in this collection. "The Mecca of the Mouse" is one, but Chuck Klosterman's "Who is America?" packs a lot of giggles into just a few pages. He asked students at the University of Leipzig to write an essay about which 20th-century American they found the most interesting. "I used to think Richard Nixon and Ryan Adams had nothing in common, but I now realize I was wrong - they both share an equal potential to be randomly fascinating to Germans," Klosterman writes.

Calvin Trillin, superb as always, contributes a piece on the unknown Texas BBQ joint that came out of nowhere to take the top spot in Texas Monthly's coveted rankings. Not being a huge fan of BBQ, I was indifferent when I first started reading, but Trillin hooked me three paragraphs in with his assessment of exactly how hard this shook the world of Texas BBQ: "I felt like a People subscriber who had picked up the 'Sexiest Man Alive' issue and discovered that the sexiest man alive was Sheldon Ludnick, an insurance adjuster from Terre Haute, Indiana."

There were a few misses, though. One writer managed to use the word "dissemble" a record number of times in his retelling of a trip to his old neighborhood in Rome. The piece on James Bond might have been interesting if I had more than a passing interest in James Bond. And I could have done without the piece on airline terminals entirely.

Bottom line
There's something for everyone here.

Fine print
The Best American Travel Writing 2009, edited by Simon Winchester
Genre: travel
Photo by Goodreads
I bought this book

Joe College

Synopsis
A humorous account of the exploits of an Ivy League student from a blue collar background in the '80s.

My thoughts
I read Tom Perrotta's Little People a couple years ago and really enjoyed it right up until the end, a large part of which felt too contrived to me. He's written quite a few critically acclaimed books, including Election and The Abstinence Teacher, but I decided to read Joe College. One of my old college buddies recommended this to me shortly after we graduated. I wish I'd read it then; it would have been a whole lot funnier and I would have been able to relate more. It was still a fun read, but it's disappointing if you read it as anything but quick vacation filler.

Perrotta is at his finest when he's describing the everyday inanities of college dorm life. (One of my favorite scenes involves kids trying kim chee for the first time.) He's less successful when he tries to make his characters deal with issues straight from a teen soap opera. Jonathan Tropper is much better at this; his characters live in something that resembles real life, but he ramps up the absurdity and isn't so damn earnest.

That said, the characters are nicely fleshed out and flawed. Danny, the main character, is a Yale student who finds that his New Jersey working class background makes him a novelty among his privileged peers. But he's also a callow jerk, which made me kind of hate him. I wanted to reach through the pages and throttle him. And that's part of the beauty of the book - Danny is a typical selfish teenager who has mistaken his insulated collegiate bubble for the real world.

Final thoughts
Pass on this one, although Perrotta's worth reading. Little Children was better and I'll read some of his more recent novels someday.

Fine print
Joe College, by Tom Perrotta
Genre: contemporary fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Namesake

Synopsis
Gogol Ganguli, first generation Indian-American, struggles with his identity.

My thoughts
It's complicated enough being torn between two cultures, never mind being stuck with a nonsensical name that is from neither. But such is the life of Gogol Ganguli.

Gogol's very traditional parents do their best to stay connected to their Bengali roots while Gogol and his sister do their best to become American. Jhumpa Lahiri does an excellent job describing both sides. It's mostly Gogol's story, but his mother's side of the story is especially well rendered. What this book gets exactly right is its portrayal of a culture that most of its intended audience is not familiar with. Lahiri explains Bengali customs in a way that doesn't seem intrusive or overbearing.

Lahiri's writing is meticulous and her characters are beautifully drawn. The narration is almost photographic; Lahiri describes things that most people don't notice in their own lives. But this hypersensitivity adds an element of unreality. I couldn't tell you how many glasses are in my cupboard and how many are in my dishwasher right now. I'm not even sure what dishwasher detergent I have under the sink - and I just opened a new container yesterday. Lahiri goes on at length about these types of details and while it's beautifully done, it does clog the narrative and puts a barrier between the reader and the characters. This started to get to me around the time Gogol got a girlfriend. Which was about a third of the way into the book. This level of detail was one of the things I loved about Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, and I think it's better suited for shorter pieces.

And I don't know quite what to make of the ending. On the one hand, I don't think every book needs to have some sort of huge crisis to resolve and I like that there's no manufactured hullabaloo for Gogol to overcome; instead, he has a quiet epiphany and gets on with his life. But on the other hand, the book just kind of ... ends.

Bottom line
It is a wonderful, lyrical book that somehow wasn't for me.

Fine print
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book

Anna Karenina: Part I

I could have seen this coming. I just finished Part I of Anna Karenina today. I thought I'd have plenty of time to read because I've taken two trips and spend a lot of time in transit. It turns out that it's really hard to read a monstrous paperback when there's a squirming infant in your lap. Also, I got waylaid by The Hunger Games trilogy (review coming ... someday).

Anyway, I'm taking the discussion questions from Christine at The Happily Ever After.

1.) "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

First of all, this is Russian literature. Are there any happy families? It's chilling to juxtapose this opening sentence with the six simple words on the opposing page of my copy: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." This cannot bode well.

I agree that there are many more ways to be dysfunctional than there are to be functional. However, different things make different people (and therefore different families) happy. I agree with Christine's assessment that Tolstoy overgeneralizes too much here. It does make for a memorable opening line, though.

2.) The story opens with the Oblonsky household in complete disarray as Dolly has discovered her husband, Prince Stepan "Stiva" Oblonsky had been having an affair with their young French governess. What are your first impressions of Stiva and Dolly? What do you think of the couple's quick reconciliation? Do you think Stiva got off the hook too easily?

Oh, Stiva. He's kind of lovably shallow. I wouldn't mind having a meal with him, but I certainly wouldn't want to be married to him. Dolly ... I had issues with how quickly she forgave him for his dalliance with the governess. I wanted to sit down with her with a nice cup of tea and give her a pep talk, tell her she was justifiably angry with him, encourage her to show some spine. (I guess it's good to be a 21st-century woman instead of a 19th-century woman.) But instead she chatted with Anna and she and Stiva experienced an inexplicably uncomplicated reconciliation. Stiva absolutely got off the hook too easily. Sure, he was genuinely remorseful, but he still had an affair. I was thoroughly puzzled by his attitude. It was like he hadn't given any thought to the consequences of pursuing the governess and so he was blindsided when the affair blew up in his face.

3.) Meanwhile, Oblonsky's childhood friend, the shy and awkward Konstantin Levin, "Kostya," arrives in Moscow from his country estate to propose to Dolly's youngest sister, Princess Katerina, "Kitty." What is your first impression of Levin and his friendship with Oblonsky?

Levin is my favorite character so far. Out of everyone we've met so far, he's the one I'd most want to be friends with myself. He seems like a genuinely good guy. He loves Kitty for who she is; he's certainly not playing with her like Vronsky. He has a complicated family life, but he's trying to mend his relationship with his estranged brother Nikolai. Oblonsky seems to approach his friendship with Levin the way he approaches everything else - casually, without recognizing the full significance of it. I do like that he appreciates Levin's love for his sister-in-law and genuinely wishes him the best.

4.) Princess Katerina is being courted by both Levin and Count Vronsky. What do you think of Kitty's decisions regarding these two men?

Kitty made the wrong decision and she knew it. She liked both Levin and Vronsky, but Vronsky was more charming and more infatuating. Plus he's a count. And her mother (who is totally Mrs. Bennett transported to Russia) was pressuring her to turn down Levin in favor of Vronsky. Levin is clearly the man to keep around for the long term. He'd make a faithful and devoted husband; Vronsky is a cad. Kitty only realizes the extent of her mistake when she sees Vronsky with Anna.

5.) What is your first impression of the title character, Anna Karenina? There is a strong magnetism between Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky from the first moment they meet. What is your first impression of these two characters?

I wanted to like Anna, and things started out well. She was nice to Vronsky's elderly mother on the train. She helped Stepan and Dolly mend their relationship. She was good with her nieces and nephews and obviously missed her little boy. But my stronger impression was her connection with Vronsky. Tolstoy writes of their encounter at the ball from Kitty's perspective, which had a lot to do with my negative reaction to it. I did feel like she swooped in and stole Vronsky from Kitty, even though he had no intention of asking her to marry him anyway. I feel sorry for Anna's husband. From the brief glimpse we got of him, he loves her but he's bland and dorky and utterly un-Jude-Law-ish. 

6.) What is your overall impression of the novel so far?

I'm enjoying it. It's interesting to read about imperial Russia right before the revolution, but I'm also interested in the characters.