My Year of Reading

I'm a dedicated reader as well as a writer. I don't feel comfrotable unless I have a book or two in my bag. About two years ago, I started writing reviews on Amazon for everything I read as well as movies I saw. They are available here. I had the idea that reviewing books would make me concentrate more as I read -- and also perhaps remember more. It partially succeeded but even with the reviews I find many of the books I spent time with did not linger very long in my mind unfortunately.

I thought I would review my overall reading for 2009.
It turns out I read 49 books during the year, of which 31 were fiction and 18 non-fiction.

I seems to have enjoyed the non-fiction more (or at least admired more of these books.) I gave nine non-fiction books the maximum five stars and two more four stars. Among the fiction books I read, only one got five stars while four received four stars. Perhaps I'm more critical when it comes to fiction. Or perhaps I should just choose better books.

Anyway, in case anyone is interested, here's the complete list together with their ratings:
FICTION
Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Halperin *
The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver ****
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ****
Rough Treatment: The 2nd Charles Resnick Mystery by John Harvey **
Personal Days by Ed Park **
City of Refuge by Tom Piazza ****
The Ghost Writer by John Harwood ****
In the Deep Midwinter by Robert Clark ****
My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey **
This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas ****
Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley ***
Flying by Erik Kraft **
A Dead Man in Barcelona by Michael Pearce
The Philosopher’s Apprentice by James Morrow *
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier ***
A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 by Mary Gentle **
We Can Still Be Friends by Kelly Cherry **
Frozen Sun by Stan Jones ****
The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig ***
The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta ***
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro **
Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe ***
The Fruit of Her Hands by Michelle Cameron *****
Legacy by Alan Judd ****
Flower Ney: A Red Princess Mystery by Lisa See ***
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro **
The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever **
A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev ***
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke ***
The Secret Fire by Martin Langfield ****
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostrova ***

NON-FICTION
Bomb Scare;The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons by Joseph Cirincione ***
The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath by Robert J. Samuelson **
You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen ****
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama *****
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptional by A.J Bacevich ***
Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries) by Jared Bernstein *****
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny *****
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins *****
Barack Obama’s America by John Kenneth White ***
The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War by Alexander Waugh ***
1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Armine Howarth *****
Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty Two Days that Decided World War II by David Downing ***
A Life in the Balance by Thomas B. Graboys ****
Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller *****
Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism) by Frank Schaeffer ***
The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez *****
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literary and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges ***
Resurrecting Hebrew by Ilan Stavans **

Whenever I have a spare half hour, I head for the piano. Recently, I've faced a tough choice: the English Suites or French Suites? Classical music mavens of course know I'm referring to keyboard music written almost 300 years ago by J.S. Bach.

There's nothing particularly English about the six English Suites. They got their name because of an unsubstantiated 19th century claim that they might have been composed for an English nobleman. The six French Suites got their name to distinguish them from the English ones.

Each suite is comprised of several movements based on dances from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. But their main attraction for me, apart from the lovely music, is that I can actually play them - mostly.

I'm not much of a pianist. On my best days, I'd class myself as "fair-to-middling amateur." I can manage some of the Beethoven and Mozart sonatas and bits of Schubert, Schubert and Mendelssohn, even the odd Brahms Intermezzo. Most of Chopin and all of Liszt are beyond me. But if I really practice, I can play the English and French Suites and sound half reasonable.

When I was a kid, I had a childish fantasy of being able to play fiendishly difficult pieces in front of an admiring audience. Nowadays, I know I'm not going to get any better -- but if I play regularly, I don't seem to be getting any worse and that's reward enough at this stage of the game.

The English Suites are the fancier of the two sets. They begin with flashy fast movements that allow me to show off to myself a bit. The French Suites are more intimate. I turn to them when I want to shut away the world.

Playing the piano isn't like any other pursuit I know. You have to concentrate fully on the fingering, the passage you're playing and one coming up next. Lose concentration and you mess up. Time passes quickly. A piece never sounds quite the same twice (at least not when I'm playing).

When I was a teenager, I could lose myself in a book or listen to music with total focus -- but I lost the ability to concentrate with that kind of intensity years ago. Perhaps it's the Internet, or the way we communicate nowadays or multi-tasking or just aging - but it's just become harder to pay proper attention. Whatever I'm doing, there are always distractions and I'm always distracted.

Playing Bach comforts me in other ways as well. Reading the composer's biography, I learned that he was employed for a while as court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar. The Duke must have been an important man in his day - but who cares about him now? Later, Bach worked for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen, another bigwig in his day who is basically only remembered because he gave the great composer a job.

That helps put things into perspective. Today's headlines involve politicians, financiers, CEOs, sports heroes, pop stars and all manner of minor league celebs - or wannabe celebs. When I tried to write a tag for the bottom of this piece and typed in the word "Bach," the auto-prompt suggested Michelle Bachman, the Bachelorette and Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber). These are people we won't remember very long -- but Bach has lasted for centuries and he'll certainly endure for centuries more.

The sudden discovery that the United States has a major problem in Yemen reminded me of the brief trip to Sanaa that then-Secretary of State James Baker made on Thanksgiving Day in 1990.

Yemen at that time held a seat on the U.N. Security Council and Baker was trying to mobilize a majority for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq -- which four months earlier had invaded Kuwait. There seemed little chance of getting the Yemeni vote but Baker needed to be seen approaching every council member (except Cuba) -- and there was the outside possibility Yemen might abstain.

We flew in from Saudi Arabia and the day began with a walking tour of the old city. Many of the merchants in the market had posters of Saddam Hussein prominently displayed but the atmosphere was unthreatening. Still, Baker's security detail was on high alert. Many of the men milling around in the souk wore curved daggers stuck through their belts with richly decorated hilts made from rhinoceros horns or ivory.

In their meeting, Baker warned Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh he was risking $70 million in annual U.S. aid by refusing to cooperate with the United States in the Security Council. But in a press conference after the meeting, Saleh delivered a resounding no to the resolution. By late afternoon, we were on the plane heading back to Jeddah.

Later that month, when the resolution came up for a vote in New York, the Yemeni ambassador spoke first in the debate and vigorously attacked the United States and its allies. In his memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy Baker wrote the following: "I scribbled a quick note to Bob Kimmitt (a senior aide). 'Yemen's permanent rep. just enjoyed about $200 to $250 million worth of applause for that speech'." In a footnote, Baker explained that while Washington's aid amounted to around $70 million, other coalition partners and allies also had assistance programs which would now be affected.)

Looking back, the episode seems illustrative of a particular U.S. mindset during that heady period. The Cold War had just ended and we were the winners. The Soviet Union was collapsing, leaving the United States unchallenged as the sole remaining superpower. When the U.S. administration spoke, it expected to be listened to. A country like Yemen defied Washington at its own peril.

It's easy to criticize with hindsight and I don't mean to criticize the U.S. administration then for failing to foresee what might happen 20 years later. But it seems fair to say that its worldview at that time looked at international relations as something to be carried on primarily between leaders rather than between nations. If Yemen's leaders offended the United States by voting the wrong way in the Security Council, Washington could react by cutting off aid to its people. After all, those people could not possibly ever be a threat to us.

Twenty years ago on Christmas Day, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed after a summary trial. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, anyone can view the highlights of the proceedings on YouTube.

The Ceausescus had ruled Romania with an iron hand, presiding over what had become the most tyrannical regime in Europe. Under their rule, the economy was run into the ground and the country and its unfortunate citizens reduced to penury. Romanians were subjected to pervasive surveillance. Any and all signs of dissent were crushed.

That changed when brave Romanians, first in the western city of Timisoara and then in the capital of Bucharest, defied the regime's tanks and guns and poured into the streets to demand their freedom. (I describe these events in detail in my novel "Romance Language.") After trying in vain to rally the masses while simultaneously ordering the army to crush the revolt using all necessary force, the Ceausescus fled Bucharest by helicopter on December 22. Their first stop was the presidential retreat of Snagov not far from the capital where Ceausecu apparently made several phone calls, trying to assess his options.

Snagov is the site of a beautiful monastery known as the burial place of Vlad Ţepeş, or Vlad the Impaler, a brutal 15th century Wallachian prince who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Dracula theme runs strangely through this narrative. Ceausescu regarded Vlad as a national hero, identified with him and marked the 500th anniversary of his death by issuing a commemorative postage stamp. (Interestingly, the United States issued its own 32 cent Dracula stamp in 1997 -- to honor Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian-born actor who portrayed the vampire on Broadway in in an iconic 1931 movie).

On the subject of tainted blood, it should be noted that one of Ceausescus' most invidious legacies to Romania was Europe's worst HIV/AIDS crisis, the leader having refused to accept the existence of the disease for many years and having banned the use of contraceptives.

To resume our story: after a brief stop at Snagov, the Ceausescus took to the air again until the helicopter pilot warned them they might be tracked by radar and shot down. Ceausescu ordered him to land and the aircraft came to ground in a field northwest of the capital.

In his book, "The Romanian Revolution," historian Peter Siani-Davies describes how the fugitives and their bodyguards next hijacked a car driven by a local doctor. When it ran out of gas, they commandeered a second vehicle which brought them to Târgovişte, fittingly Vlad's historical capital.
It was there they were finally detained and brought to an army barracks where they stayed the next two days in a strange limbo. Meanwhile violence continued to rage in Bucharest.

According to Siani-Davies, the decision to put the couple on trial was taken on the evening of December 24 by a small group of leaders worried that the security situation on Târgovişte was precarious and the Ceausescus might still be able to pose a threat.

The trial lasted for just under an hour. Watching film of the proceedings today, one is filled with a queasy sense of history at its rawest, stripped to brutal fundamentals. Here are two living people, once all powerful rulers of their country, now defenseless, about to become dead. How would it have been, one wonders, to see the show trials of King Louis XVI of France or Marie Antoinette or the trumped-up trial of Anne Boleyn? This comes pretty close.

The Ceausescus were charged with four counts including genocide. Nicolae Ceausescu refused to recognize the authority of the court and maintained that the revolution was organized by a gang of traitors backed by foreign interests. He seemed convinced to the end that the Romanian people still adored him.

Once sentence was pronounced, four soldiers approached the couple to tie their hands with a crude ball of twine. The intention was apparently to shoot them one at a time but they insisted on dying together. The footage takes on an unrefined, unedited quality far more dramatic than any Hollywood production.

Elena: "We have the right to die together. Together, together!"
Nicolae: "What kind of thing is this?" (Still apparently in disbelief that his last moments are approaching).
Elena: "Don't tie us up, don't offend us. Please don't touch me"
Nicolae: "I have the right to do what I want."
Elena: "Shame, shame on you. I brought you up as a mother. Stop it. You're breaking my arms. Let go of them. Let me go. Why are you doing this?"
A soldier: "No-one will help you now."
Elena: "We're powerless now."

They are led outside. The film records the bursts of gunfire and then zooms in on the two twisted bodies lying like broken dolls, blood streaming from their wounds. And then those famous final portraits of death that flashed around the world.

Twenty years later, those images have lost none of their power to shock.

MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT DJEMJANUK
The opening of the trial of the 89-year-old John Demjanjuk in Germany on Monday has evoked mixed responses. As the son of a Holocaust survivor and author of "The Nazi Hunter," a novel about bring former Nazis to justice, I instinctively feel that there should be no statute of limitations for perpetrators of genocide. On the other hand, seeing this old man brought into the courtroom lying on a gurney writhing and complaining of pain makes one wonder whether the whole exercise will make people pity him rather than the victims of his alleged crimes.

Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine and emigrated to the United States in 1952. Prosecutors say he was trained by the SS to become a Nazi guard in 1942 and then worked at the Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where some 200,000 people were murdered. Prosecutors allege that Demjanjuk led thousands of Jews to the gas chambers and charged him with 29,700 counts of being an accessory to murder.

This case has been going on for 32 years. The U.S. Justice Department first moved to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship in 1977 and he was extradited to Israel nine years later. At that time, he stood accused of being "Ivan the Terrible" - a particularly sadistic guard at Treblinka where some 850,000 people were murdered. In 1987, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1993 when new information emerged casting doubt on his identification as Ivan. He returned home but German authorities soon re-opened the case. A long legal battle ensued, culminating this week's trial.

The zeal of the German authorities in pursuing this case is a terrible contrast to their attitude in the 1950s and 1960s when there were far more perpetrators to pursue and witnesses to testify against them. After the initial Nuremburg trials in 1945 and 1946, there were a further 12 trials of high-ranking German officials by an American military tribunal in which 97 defendants were convicted. Other countries also vigorously pursued Nazi war criminals. But by 1949, with the Cold War in full spate, the West lost interest and abdicated responsibility to West Germany where opposition to war crimes trials was overwhelming within the legal and political elite -- understandably so since many of their number were implicated.

Germany's performance through the 1950s and 1960s was lackluster at best. It was only in 1959 that authorities began investigating crimes committed at the extermination camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka where almost 1.6 million Jews and others were murdered. The trial of nine SS men who served at Belzec (where my own grandparents were among the half million victims) lasted only three days in August 1963 and ended in the acquittal of all but one. The defendants argued that they were only following orders and would have risked death if they had disobeyed. Moreover, they suggested that the genocide could not have been carried out without the aid of some of the Jews themselves who were forced to act as "kapos." Josef Oberhauser, who played a central role in operating the camp, was the only one convicted. He received a sentence of four-and-a-half years and released after serving only half his sentence

A trial of 12 SS men who served at Sobibor took place two years later with only slightly better results. One of the accused committed suicide, another got life imprisonment, four received sentences of three to eight years and six were acquitted. One defendant, Erich Fuchs, had helped in the construction of the gas chamber. He testified about setting up the engine that pumped poison gas into the gas chambers.

"Following this, a gassing experiment was carried out. If my memory serves me right, about 30to 40 women were gassed in one gas chamber. The Jewish women were forced to undress in an open place close to the gas chamber, and were driven into the gas chamber by the above mentioned SS members and the Ukrainian auxiliaries. When the women were shut up in the gas chamber I and Bolender set the motor in motion."

For this, he received a four-year sentence.

The most dramatic West German effort at justice was the so-called Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial of December 1963 to August 1965 of 22 mid to lower-officials -- out of an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 SS members thought to have been involved in the administration and operation of the camp. None of the defendants expressed any remorse or regret. Six received life imprisonment, 11 got sentences of 14 years or less and the rest were acquitted or released due to ill health.

While we may justly criticize Germany, the U.S. record with regard to Nazi perpetrators is nothing to be proud of either. This country allowed many suspected war criminals to immigrate during the 1950s and 1960s without checking their war records. As long as they were anti-Communist, they were deemed "kosher" by the authorities. It was only in 1979 that the Office of Special Investigations began operating within the Justice Department to detect, investigate and prosecute U.S. citizens who assisted or participated in Nazi crimes. By 2008, the office had successfully prosecuted 107 individuals. While this is praiseworthy, it was too little too late.

The Demjanjuk trial takes place against this shameful backdrop. Had the United States and its allies and the West Germans vigorously pursued justice in the years following World War Two, the present legal drama would have had little historical significance. Whatever the outcome of this case, it is indisputable that thousands upon thousands of Nazi war criminals successfully evaded justice.

How “Romance Novels” Take the Romance out of Romance
As author of a novel called Romance Language, I’m often asked if I’d written a “romance novel.” My instinctive answer was to say “no” -- but I hadn’t actually read any romance fiction for many years so I went to the library and borrowed a stack. I must admit, I was quite surprised at what I read. Here are some general conclusions from my not-very-scientific survey:

1) Most romance novels take place either in a relatively few “historical” periods and venues. The most common are Regency England, featuring clones of Mr. Darcy; medieval England featuring knights in armor; Scotland, with kilted gentlemen growling “aye lassie” at frequent intervals; or contemporary America, usually in rural areas of the South, New England or the Pacific Northwest or in New York and L.A. Not many of these books happen in Reformation Germany or ancient Rome or Brazil or North Dakota for some reason.
2) The female protagonist, who is young, feisty and gorgeous, has been damaged by a childhood trauma such as the tragic loss of her parents. All alone in the world, she is proudly independent but distrustful of others. She longs for love but is also afraid to love.
3) The male protagonist is normally older and full of self-confidence, a prototypical alpha male who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He’s hunky but haughty. For all his sexual experience, he’ll soon find himself way out of his depth when this chit of a girl awakens feelings he’s never known.
4) The two experience an immediate mutual attraction. But they can’t immediately hook up because of some perceived barrier -- usually based on a misunderstanding.
5) Despite their initial dislike, the two are usually exchanging fluids by around page 60. This involves detailed and highly explicit descriptions of kissing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and full penetration. Both parties experience mind-blowing orgasms, described in excruciating detail.
6) An evil character emerges to threaten the two protagonists and their relationship, through social scheming or actual violence.
7) The hero rescues the heroine (or vice versa) and they engaged in even more mind-blowing sex, resulting in even more cataclysmic climaxes. Marriage and children soon follow and they live happily ever after.

I have nothing against such escapist fiction in principle. But I simply don’t find these books romantic. Let’s compare them for a moment to the grand-mommy of all romantic fiction, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In that wonderful book, the two leading characters share a strong physical attraction – but it is scarcely overwhelming or determinative. The real romance takes place in their heads as they change and grow and shape themselves for each other. It is only when Elizabeth Bennett perceives the true moral character of Mr. Darcy that she allows herself to love him. It is only when Darcy understands that he must win Elizabeth through his actions rather than just relying on his social rank that the relationship becomes possible.

I should note here that I don’t do explicit sex in my books. That’s not because I’m squeamish or repressed. Partly, it’s because it’s so easy to write bad sex scenes and so difficult to write good ones. In romance novels, these scenes are pretty much all alike, relying on strained metaphors while indulging in graphic anatomical detail. But mostly, it’s because I’m interested in love rather than in sex – and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all the other challenges presented by life.

In the romance novels I have read, love is expressed through sex and only through sex. The fact that the hero and the heroine can provide each other with tremendous orgasms becomes proof positive of their undeniable love. If the sex is that good, the love must be real. As for the historic settings for these books, they are usually little more than an excuse to dress the characters in period dress that can then be lovingly discarded in the sex scenes.

The true disservice that the “romance” genre does is that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. It sets up expectations and lays down rules of what “romance” should be. Publishers expect writers to follow these rules. So do readers. Anyone trying to write a “real” love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.

I thought it might be interesting to explore the thought process that goes into creating a novel using as an example my latest book, Romance Language. The novel mostly takes place in Romania, partly in 1989 and partly in 2007. It tells the story of Elizabeth Graham, an American magazine writer assigned to write an exposé of the situation in Romania under Communism early in 1989. She falls in love with a dissident poet, Stefan Petrescu. Their history, climaxing with the revolution of December 1989, is interspersed with the adventures of Elizabeth’s 17-year-old daughter, Petra, who shows up in Bucharest hoping to find the father she has never known.
I use this story as a framework to explore two central themes – the power but also the limitations of love and language. The book portrays and contrasts many different varieties of love. They include: love at first sight; mature love and puppy love; sexual passion and casual sex; maternal and paternal love; love of country and love of an idea; love of religion and love of self. The second theme I wanted to explore had to do with language – hence the title, which itself is a play on words. (Romanian is known as a “romance language” – one of the family of languages descended from ancient Latin that also includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.) The book meditates on some of the uses and misuses of language. The main characters, who are both professional writers, live through language and believe in the power of words. But at crucial moments, they find that language fails them and they are forced to resort to other means of communication.
Free speech is a basic human life, but under Communism and other forms of tyranny, as George Orwell observed, language is perverted to become a tool of the regime. This happened in Romania and I explore some of the false slogans and lies employed by the state to oppress its citizens. I decided to include many different forms of language in the book. So I wrote some chapters using first person narrative and others employing third person narrative; there’s prose but also poetry (I wrote four poems for the book and I also have the characters discuss and analyze two Shakespeare sonnets); there are also letters and emails – and two entire chapters that consist only of dialogue.
Of course, one can read this book purely to enjoy the story without being concerned with, or even aware of, these themes. But I believe as an author that they add a level of complexity and interest that deepens the story and the characters. None of us, after all, lives in a vacuum. We all experience our personal stories against the background of the time and place in which we find ourselves. For me, as for my characters, love is important but so are ideas and so is language. To this extent, I believe Romance Language is a case of art imitating art.