The Next Best Book Club discussion

I haven't done this since November and it seems to have disappeared, so I'm just going to put down the books I've read in December. The entire list is in My Books anyway.

December
96 Touch Wood, the True Confessions of an Accidental Porn Director (Humour, Business, Sex) 5-star read.

Excellent book, not particularly well-written but it was hilarious and really rang true. It was very far from erotic and the sex was shocking only in that such freaky scenes were treated as commonplace, all part of the day's work.

97 Oro Plata, Costumes of Light by Daniele Carbonel. (Art, photography, bull-fighting) 5-star read

This book, in either the small format or the extra large (I got both!) is a real treat. A proper coffee table book to ooh and ahh over both the fabulous costumes of the matadors and picadors and the photography that brings out the beauty but adds both the drama and violence of the bullfighting culture.

98 Backyard Giants, the Passionate, Heartbreaking and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Susan Warren (Popculture, gardening) 5-star read

Wonderful book of a group of mostly men (although the world champion is currently a twenty-something woman) who spend half the year expending vast sums of money and effort on growing pumpkins that they hope will reach 1500lb. Beautifully-written book, with photographs Cinderella's coach-size pumpkins. Enlightening, entertaining and a warm look at American culture.

99 Shattered Dreams My Life as a Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer (Religion, women) 5-star read

I've read a few books on Fundamental Mormonism, but this is definitely the best. The attention to detail, the explaining of the men's attitude - a deeply religious one (most of the time!) and the non-demonisation of the men made it very believable. Its hard for me to accept that a man who has achieved a 'quorum of wives' (7) and the resultant 50+ children - the women are advised to have a baby every year to provide a body for all the souls looking to come to Earth - will be a god and rule his own planet in the next life. Its hard for me to accept that the women are doomed to unremitting hard labour and poverty to support all these children. The author had 13 and lived in conditions that only the extremely poor do in the 20th century. Often no electricity or running water with bare concrete (or dirt) floors. I felt for her and I was glad when she finally left.

100 Playing the Enemy Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin (Politics, South Africa, Rugby, Inspirational) 10-star read

Nelson Mandela is my hero. Rugby is my game (I'm from the South Wales valleys, 'nuff said).

This is the hundredth book, the book that completes the challenge for me to read 100 books in 2009 and quite simply the best book I've read all year. It was absolutely awesome. Mandela's methods, developed over 27 years and six months of imprisonment, for disarming and charming all he met, the hard work he put into it - it certainly wasn't by force of personality alone - are absolutely inspirational

I've just been silently, sneakily chucked out from a private group 'Back in Skinny Jeans' on Goodreads where some member/s don't like non-Americans, non-Republicans, non-Christians and perhaps non-Whites and really wanted me to know their views. I fit it into all those groups, so did Mandala. He would have disarmed them and made them think again, he had a way of bringing out the most decent parts of even despicable people. I may never have his charisma, but following the lessons he developed transforming himself from an advocate of violence to one of peace and reconciliation, I may become just a bit of a better person. That's my aim for 2010.

I urge anyone with any interest in the genius of Mandela, or politics, or rugby, or just fancy a really good read, to get hold of this book. Its one to buy not borrow, you will want to keep it forever.

You always read such great books...every time I check out your post I end up adding to my TBR list!!

Stephanie wrote: "You always read such great books...every time I check out your post I end up adding to my TBR list!!"

Thank you :-) Wow, what a compliment! December was a particularly good month - every book I've read was at least a 5-star.

Petra: Thank you for posting your books - I'm like Stephanie above -I always want to read the books you post about. You certainly read faster than I do, so whenever I want something to read I know I can rely on books you've mentioned... thanks....

Brenda wrote: "Petra: Thank you for posting your books - I'm like Stephanie above -I always want to read the books you post about. You certainly read faster than I do, so whenever I want something to read I kno..."

Thanks Brenda. :-)


101 Khayelitsha by Stephen Otter (South Africa, townships, lads' culture)

I had my hopes stacked up high for this book. I'd waited ages for the paperback to come out, had been a fervent ANC supporter and have been to Khayelitsha. I think I was expecting too much.

This is a shallow book by a journalist who moved to Khayelitsha because it offered cheap accommodation and possibly a chance to really 'be' African in the black African sense. It could have been wonderful. What emerged was a story of a camaraderie between men playing pool and drinking a lot. Not much else. There appeared to be no intellectual life, no work (outside of shebeens, stores selling food or second-hand furniture or running a taxi), no education, just drinking and eating, promiscuity and AIDS and crime. Still, it fulfilled the author who felt more truly African there than anywhere else.

I can't say I know Khayelitsha well, but when I was there I saw a lot of very enterprising people with small businesses - one man was making flowers from tin cans that sold in Liberty's in London - another was carving exquisite furniture, a woman was running a breakfast-and-lunch box kitchen for school children. There were schools, clinics, intellectual and musical societies and sports clubs, in short, all the elements of a society that was doing its best to move on up.

I don't know what the word or phrase for it is, but the opposite is when someone black moves entirely into white culture and abandons their own and are then generally sneered at by whites and despised by blacks. (A phenomenon I am not unfamiliar with living as I do in the Caribbean).That's what the author seems to have done in reverse and seems to take his greatest pleasure in being called black 'inside'. It isn't non-racism, its an expression of it that is benign but still, to me, suspect.

I didn't not enjoy the book, but I kept hoping the next chapter would produce the depth and insight into a culture mostly foreign to me, but no, it was another shebeen, another shack, another victory at the pool table, so in the end, I was glad to finish the book.

Pitcairn Paradise Lost by Kathy Marks (Sexual abuse, isolated communities)

I was watching a documentary the other day that contrasted the male-dominated chimps with the matriarchal bonobos and I was struck by just how chimp-like Pitcairn society was.

The physically-strongest men dominate every single thing on the island. Male bonding is very tight. There is universal acknowledgement of the self-appointed leader (often very grudgingly given) and there seems to be an agreement not to express violence towards each other which stops the society from becoming murderous and allows the males to do exactly as they please.

As with chimps, all the females rank below the lowest male. They cannot physically do the male tasks of running the longboats in treacherous seas out to the passing ships to obtain food, mail and all manufactured goods and on- and offload people and this is what life on Pitcairn depends on. This lack of ability to provide for themselves gives the women no choice but to accept their lowly status and all the problems that having no personal power brings including almost ubiquitous domestic violence and sexual attacks.

This book is concerned with the culture of accepted incest, paedophilism, molestation and rape of girls as young as 3, but generally from age 9 from which the mothers, often victims in their own time, are powerless to either prevent or stop for fear that they and their family be ostracised and on an island of less than 50 people, that matters.

The investigation and subsequent trials took 7 years and many millions of pounds. A whole legal apparatus had to be set up on the island. Against that, there were online campaigns to stop the men being convicted saying everything from the girls tempted the men, that they were sexually advanced for their years, that it was island culture and nothing wrong with it to the fact that if the men were imprisoned the island would die as there would be no one to run the longboats and heavy physical work. People all over the world who are generally disgusted with paedophilia and rape felt that an exception should be made for these men, 'romantic' descendants of Fletcher Christian, chief mutineer on the Bounty.

Alongside this the women who had been encouraged to finally report the sexual attacks on them when they were children faced enormous and often exceedingly nasty and spiteful pressure from their families to refuse to give evidence and to drop their charges and most did. Those that didn't, that bravely gave evidence and saw their attackers convicted now have to live with the fact that after all no one really cared about them, not the British who had been shamed into paying attention to this deserted colonial outpost, not their families, some of whom would never speak to them again, not the media who saw them as bringing low the Utopian paradise of a tiny, isolated tropical island, not any one at all.

If they had cared, the men, some charged with multiple gang rapes of prepubescent girls, wouldn't have been given community service, imprisonment within the home or a couple of years behind "bars" only being let out 3 or 4 times a week and to be able to have family parties behind the fence (no bars here) once a week.

The book made me sick. The author did a good job of exposing why everyone should be moved off the island, dispersed into other communities and their wicked, brutish idea of civilization allowed to pass into history with the certainty of no more child abuse. But no, in this day and age of PC concerns, millions upon millions are being spent on this island to bring it up into the 21st century, although it wasn't poor before. But its still being run by the convicted rapists, the women still have no power and I am not convinced that there is any way young girls can be protected in Pitcairn.

January 2010
1. The Geese of Beaver Bog by Heinrich Bernd. (Animals, nature) 5-star

I've always liked books on animal behaviour, especially if they lean towards the scientific as much as the anecdotal and exclude all pc chat about environmentalism which might be important but makes boring reading. This book is a carefully observed account of several Canada geese and rather a lot of songbirds plus some quite interesting beavers over a period of some years.

It wasn't in the class of the despicable Konrad Lorenz's King Solomon's Ring or Here Am I--Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose both wonderful books I read years ago. But it did explain why Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi who was fully behind - indeed helped develop - the appalling racial policies that led to the murder of millions of Jews, half a million Serbs and up to two million Gypsies - all of whom were considered untermensch, subhuman polluters of the white Aryan nation of Germany and its allies.

It all came about because many geese can interbreed with others - Canada geese can certainly interbreed with snow geese and greylag geese. Lorenz felt that an animal's behaviour was not only a function of learning but also of its evolutionary descent and adaption to environment. He felt that man's changing of the environment and domestication of animals mean that these hybrids that would otherwise be pruned out in the wild would thrive and might gain a reproductive advantage over the wild species and would exhibit non-species specific behaviour that would degrade the wild species to an inferior, 'mongrelised' one. Therefore, adhering to Nazi principles, placing the species above the individual, he felt that purity of race would only be preserved by rigorously exterminating the 'hybrids'.

He rejected empirical evidence that his theory simply wasn't true and extrapolated it to humans: Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, homosexuals etc would degrade and make inferior the wonderful 'pure, white, Christian' Aryan nation and should therefore unsentimentally be exterminated. At one stage he was himself administering tests of 'worthiness' on people and those who failed went to concentration camps where they were subsequently murdered.

Although Lorenz later tried to worm out of much of his collaboration with the Nazis, a direct quote from him shows his culpability and despicability: "Just as with cancer-suffering [for which:] mankind cannot give any other advice than to recognise the evil as soon as possible and then eradicate it, so racial hygiene defense against elements afflicted with defects is likewise restricted to employ the same primitive measures."

For elucidating the connection between Lorenz's scientific studies on the greylag goose and his promulgation of the Holocaust on racial grounds, I upgraded this book from a 3.5 star to a 5 star. Its a very readable, well-written book, very gentle, nicely illustrated and apart from a page or two, totally non-political. A good read.