Book Review - When Now Begins by Elisabeth Asbrink

Elisabeth Åsbrink’s 1947 begins appropriately, in January. At the start of that year in the Palestinian village of Arab al-Zubayd, a 16-year-old girl is one of several children captivated by an itinerant entertainer’s tales and magic box pictures.

In the White House, President Harry S Truman writes in his diary and thinks about his predecessors, some of whom are “controlling heaven and governing hell”.

In New York, Eleanor Roosevelt convenes the first meeting of the first session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Thousands of Nazi fugitives stream into Denmark and Sweden, and then escape to South America.

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The Communists win a landslide victory in Poland’s elections. And in a rural town outside Cairo, a clockmaker’s son yearns to “turn time towards Islam”.

At the end of the book, and by the end of the year, the world has changed dramatically. The Cold War has heated up and Truman has created the CIA. Nazis continue to flee Europe but so too do Jews in search of their promised land.

The clockmaker’s son, Hasan al-Banna, has instructed his Muslim Brotherhood to prepare for jihad. Over the coming months the UN General Assembly will recognise genocide as an international crime, and the Palestinian village will be razed. The man with the magic box will not be back, Åsbrink explains: “there is nothing to come back to”.

The book’s subtitle is When Now Begins. Åsbrink – a journalist and author from Sweden – posits the argument that 1947 was not just a turbulent year to file and forget but a pivotal year marked by critical turning points which have shaped, or disfigured, our modern world.

Rather than cleave to convention and divide the book into chapters relating to specific upheavals – social, cultural, political, economic – Åsbrink has taken the original approach of proceeding through the year month by month and covering all areas in short, concise sections.

The sections come with a geographical heading and range from two-line summaries to eight-page reports; condensed vignettes to fact-filled episodes. This snapshot-type structure, together with the lively, lyrical and consistently fascinating content, makes for a unique history lesson.

Åsbrink’s main strands are not passing events but unfolding crises, whose developments and ramifications she monitors on a monthly basis. Most of them concern the rise and fall of nations and the clash between East and West. A UN committee is tasked with finding a solution to the problem of Palestine in four months.

A British lawyer is given five weeks – “no more, no less” – to draw borders separating India from Pakistan. The exploits of Swedish Fascist Per Engdahl and those of his other European counterparts are indicative of a resurgence in the Far Right (“a pendulum about to strike back”). And piece by piece, the mighty edifice of the British Empire starts to crumble.

Åsbrink impresses with her astute portrayal of post-war uncertainty and confusion, and her searing depiction of violence and mayhem – in particular the bloodbath of Partition and massacres in Palestine.

But her book doesn’t only follow attempts to divide and misrule, or cases of political ignorance and expedience. Åsbrink also tracks a number of significant steps and stages: the first computer bug is discovered, and production begins on the Kalashnikov; at his Paris “dream factory” Christian Dior creates the New Look, while on the Scottish isle of Jura, George Orwell works non-stop – “chain-writing, chain-smoking, chain-coughing” – on his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Åsbrink shows world history as it happened seventy years ago, and history in the making.

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Original review on: www.thenational.ae

Book Review: Star Wars: Canto Bight

This casino city is the latest stop on the Journey to "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

"Star Wars: Canto Bight" consists of four very different novellas set in the Las Vegas of a galaxy far, far away, on the desert planet Cantonica, ahead of the city's first on-screen appearance in Episode VIII.

The first of these, "Rules of the Game" by Saladin Ahmed, focuses on Kedpin Shoklop, a seemingly guileless Wermal who has won a trip to Canto Bight.

However, his dream vacation gradually turns nightmarish as he runs into various con artists before his encounter with Anglang Lehet, a Caskadag assassin who decides to use Kedpin in his mission.

Ahmed employs a straightforward, clear writing style, but he manages to craft a nice introductory tale. Since Kedpin is an outsider, the reader learns about Canto Bight with him.

Additionally, the contrast between Kedpin's cheery naivete and Anglang's hardened cynicism creates a fun tonal shift as we jump between their points of view.

Mira Grant's "The Wine in Dreams" is a less typical tale.

Derla Pidys, a sommelier, is trying to purchase a legendary vintage from the mysterious Grammus sisters, who claim to be from a dimension beyond hyperspace. 

The sale is complicated when ruthless nightclub owner Ubialla Gerald tries to procure the wine for her superior.

Grant's writing is quite poetic, but needlessly long descriptive passages and flowery dialogue (mostly from the sisters) slow things down too much. The pace picks up towards the end, but it's hard not to get bored during the buildup to the deal.

Luckily, "Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing" by Rae Carson more than makes up for it.

This novella introduces us to Lexo Sooger, a Dor-Namthian masseuse, and Lula, his human adopted daughter who works in indentured servitude. The pair appear to lead quiet lives until Lexo finds himself caught up on a power struggle between the elites of Canto Bight — something he has tried desperately to avoid.

Carson's story is the strongest of the four. It's fast-paced and thrilling, with an excellent main character. Lexo is easy to empathize with and he becomes increasingly fascinating as we learn more about him.

This tale also reveals the most about the hierarchy of Canto Bight, from its glamorous elites to those struggling to survive in its dark underbelly.

"The Ride," by John Jackson Miller, is the most fun of the four stories.

Here, we are introduced to Kaljach (Kal) Sonmi, a Heptooinian career card player with a debt and a tight time limit. He follows a system until he loses it all to the Lucky Three, brothers who make wild bets and win big.

Kal's seesawing luck and the Lucky Three's happy-go-luck attitudes make this an unpredictable ride. 

Gambling stories often hinge on the readers' understanding of games, but Miller — also known for 2014's "A New Dawn" — does a nice job of explaining the rules.

This collection's authors and editors also deserve credit for the subtle links between the four stories. 

These give us a satisfying sense of the Canto Bight community and some nice narrative threads for readers, but never to the detriment of the story being told.

It's unlikely that the events of this book will have a major impact on "The Last Jedi," but it will enrich one of the movie's locations and create some nice Easter eggs for fans who want to know about the background characters.

"Canto Bight" doesn't change the galaxy, but those who love all the small details and quirky characters of the "Star Wars" universe will enjoy at least three of the stories in this collection.

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Original Review on: http://www.nydailynews.com

Book Review - Coco: A Story About Music, Shoes, and Family by Diana Lopez

Pixar's Coco is delighting audiences this holiday season with a touching story about family... and music and shoes.

For young readers who would prefer to know the story before seeing the film, or for those who want to relive this story anytime, comes a hardcover junior novelization with some beautiful theming. Coco: A Story About Music, Shoes, and Family can now be yours to read anytime your heart desires.

Judging a book by its cover and overall design esthetic, I love the way the designers took the film's prologue, told through papel picado (paper banners), and applied that not only to the cover, but the book's pages as well.

There's a fun color coding system that allows readers to quickly see how much of the story takes place in our world and how much of it is set in the land of the dead. Pages that take place in our world have marigold yellow borders, while those that take place in the afterlife are navy blue.

Each chapter begins with a papel picado which features Dante if the chapter takes place in the mortal world, Miguel in skeletal makeup if it's on the other side. The first and last pages feature Miguel's family tree, which changes by the end of the story and readers are encouraged to not read the one in the back of the book until they have finished the story, lest they want to ruin a major spoiler.

Author Diana Lopez has done a fantastic job adapting the film into written form, allowing the reader to get inside Miguel's head and also pointing out some of the more subtle connecting tissue in the film that may have been lost on younger viewers.

Since it's told in the third person, readers gain some perspective on a few other characters as well. Like the dialogue in the film, the book also swaps English words for some commonly known Spanish ones.

This is to the great benefit of any bilingual readers or any who have taken Spanish classes before, but might make it a bit challenging for anyone with no context for the language in written form. Musical moments are highlighted in the book and I recommend that readers have the soundtrack handy as well so they can hear the songs as they arrive at those moments in the story.

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Original review on: www.laughingplace.com

Book Review - Malacqua by Nicola Pugliese

Nicola Pugliese was an Italian journalist born in Milan, but who lived and worked for most of his life in the city of Naples. In 1977 his first and only novel, Malacqua, was published – by literary heavyweight Italo Calvino, no less.

It was an immediate hit, selling out in a matter of days, but Pugliese – for reasons apparently unknown – demanded that it wasn’t reprinted, so, despite its initial impressive success, the novel thereafter remained out of print, until Pugliese’s death five years ago in 2012.

As such, this new edition, gracefully translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside, is the first English language version, introducing new readers to a strikingly elegiac novel that will surely soon be hailed as a lost Italian classic.

A plot precis is somewhat unnecessary since the novel’s own rather lengthy subtitle tells us everything we need to know: “Four days of rain in the city of Naples waiting for the occurrence of an extraordinary event.”

At about 3am on October 23 – the year isn’t given, but we assume it’s some time in the ’70s – it starts to rain. It pours from the sky in “violent spates”, thus, as the first light of the day breaks over the city, “a greyish dawn, sometimes violet in tone, resolutely pallid and funereal,” the inhabitants of Naples wake to “a harsh and predetermined rancor, an irreversible obstinacy”.

It doesn’t take long for the city’s infrastructure to start to break down under the deluge. Sinkholes appear, like great mouths yawning open in the ground, swallowing buildings, cars and people. Streetlights are blown and can’t be repaired as long as the water pours down in such quantities.

The city sewers begin to swell and overflow, and even the seawater starts to rise, “its pressure mounting, and the waves swelled to smash against the moorings, and you would also have to say that on the second day it became clear, or rather people began to understand: perhaps this wasn’t the rain of other years, other months, perhaps this rain here was coming from a long way away”.

It’s a downpour of nothing less than Biblical proportions. Is the city experiencing a religious apocalypse? “Something major is happening here,” thinks a grocer as he watches buildings subsiding into streets gushing with “raging torrent[s]”.

So too, the narrative slips with a watery fluidity between various of the city’s residents – a journalist, a policeman, a fireman, a woman in the early days of a new romance, one who sells cigarettes for a living, to name but a few – each of them trapped within their own experience, the point of view cascading between the individual and collective with an ease reminiscent of the stream of consciousness technique demonstrated by writers in the early years of the 20th century.

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Read original review on: www.thenational.ae

Book Review - Beyond The Green Line by Marc Goldberg

In the interests of transparency and full disclosure, I first met Marc Goldberg, the author of “Beyond the Green Line,” when we both emigrated from London to live at a Jerusalem residential Hebrew-language course back in 2001.

It was crystal clear to everyone that Goldberg’s primary and overwhelming motivation in immigrating to Israel (way beyond attending Hebrew classes!) was to join an elite unit of the IDF. 

Beyond the Green Line is his memoir consisting of vignettes describing his experiences during his military service as a British Jewish immigrant.

Indeed, the person I knew after his IDF service was a different person to the rather gung-ho and glory-seeking individual who went in with such commitment to the cause of defending Israelis from the terrorism that was destroying lives during the so-called Second Intifada. 

Goldberg’s book offers a personalized and very honest insight into how the IDF, and the intense experiences he went through, changed him.

Too many commentators and media have already relegated the Second Intifada to the history books, which is premature. 

For any Israelis who lived through those dark times, it is the terror war on the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere that remains seared in the Israeli consciousness when compromises with the Palestinians come up for discussion. 

While books have been written about that period, barely any have focused on personal accounts from regular Israelis who lived through it, whether as ordinary civilians or soldiers.

If you are looking for geopolitical analysis of the IDF operations that took place to arrest Palestinian terrorists and prevent suicide bombings, you won’t find it here. 

What you will find are the honest and vivid thoughts of an Israeli soldier serving his new country while seeking meaning and self-identity.

Goldberg doesn’t make grand judgments when he finds himself in situations that raise legitimate moral questions over how to deal with the Palestinian civilian population while fighting terror. He doesn’t need to. 

Incidents involving the military takeover of Palestinian civilian family homes in the dead of night or dealing with stone-throwing Palestinian children feature in Goldberg’s musings, offering a human and personal side to the conflict while allowing the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

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Read original review on: http://honestreporting.com

Book Review - Doomsday Clock' #1 is a Stunning Accomplishment

Building on the foundation of DC’s greatest masterpiece, Doomsday Clock has the beginnings of a classic in and of itself — and there is something exciting about that.

Later this week, DC will publish Doomsday Clock #1, the first canonical sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s classic Watchmen, and the start of a story that will put the antiheroes of that series on a collision course with Superman, Batman, and other DC characters.

Subtracting the Watchmen of it all, if Doomsday Clock #1 were the first issue of a new comics event from writer Geoff Johns, artist Gary Frank, and colorist Brad Anderson, fans would likely be over the moon. It is a technically excellent comic book; it is a well-written, well-conceived, gorgeously-illustrated book that definitely deserves your attention.

It also accomplishes arguably the most important thing: it manages to follow up "The Citizen Kane of comics" without embarrassing itself, its creators, or DC; and without diminishing what came before. 

As faint as that praise might sound, it is not: Doomsday Clock roars to life in arguably the most captivating single-issue superhero comic since DC Universe: Rebirth #1.

There is a heart, and humor, to Doomsday Clock which cuts through the bleakness of the world in which it is set and the apocalyptic stakes -- "The End is Here," the cover reads -- that the characters face from the first page. 

These characteristics are born both of Watchmen and of Johns; there was more humor in Moore's work than many probably recall, and more soul to (most of) his characters, too. Johns, for his part, manages to speak with a voice clearly his own, which is no mean feat while also striving to channel Moore (and mostly succeeding).

Johns, of course, currently works with the DC Films division and you could put a mirror up to some of Doomsday Clock's character-driven humor and reflect the best moments of this week's Justice League film. Unlike Wonder Woman, Johns did not have a hand in writing Justice League, but it seems to reflect his "humor, heart, and heroics" ethic more than almost any of DC's previous movies.

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Read original review on: http://comicbook.com

Book Review - A SIMPLE MAN by Ronnie Kasrils

In its pre-publicity for former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils’s book, the publisher promised journalists that it would be hard to put it down as his writing style is racy and the subject matter is explored by an insider with unique knowledge.

Many publishers oversell their products. But A Simple Man was hard to put down — especially in SA’s highly charged political environment, in which President Jacob Zuma is the prominent character in the tragic tale of state capture and corruption. 

The book reads like a spy novel. But it is not a work of fiction, as it deals with issues in which Kasrils was one of the central players, spanning several decades predating democratic SA.

The photograph on the cover must have been taken donkey’s years ago, when Kasrils and Zuma were close friends in the liberation struggle.

Kasrils rose through the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe after it was formed in 1962, becoming a commander and a head of its intelligence structure. Zuma also rose through the ranks of the ANC in exile, eventually achieving the position of head of intelligence of the liberation movement in exile.

The two fought side by side to liberate SA, but — after reading A Simple Man — it appears it would now be a miracle if they had a coffee together.

Kasrils paints a picture of Zuma’s complex character — or rather his affinity for wearing a mask as a simple rural man while in reality he is hiding his rather calculated politics, which he often uses to get ahead of his rivals within the ANC.

He attempts to demystify the demeanour that Zuma fashioned for himself, that of a simple man from the rural areas who comrades tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent from becoming the president of the ANC.

Zuma would have SA believe that prior to the Polokwane conference in 2007, when he was accused of raping Fezekile Kuzwayo — the daughter of one of his comrades — his rivals jumped on the incident to kill his ambition to become president of the ANC and the country.

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Read original article on: https://www.businesslive.co.za

The Crown by Robert Lacey - Book Review

We know her mostly for her trademark hats, because she rarely talks about herself. She is the only person allowed to drive in the UK without a license. She loves horse riding and football, and has a sense of humor. 

During a low-key trip in Scotland, American tourists asked her where she lived. She said she had a house nearby, and when they asked if she had ever met the queen, she pointed at her policeman and said: “No, but he has.”

Queen Elizabeth II, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, is the subject of historical drama “The Crown,” which takes place from 1947 until 1955. Based on meticulous factual research, this book is primarily meant to entertain. 

Robert Lacey enlivens the narrative with tangy details that pique our interest and raise our adrenaline. The story focuses on Elizabeth Windsor and Philip Mountbatten, their marriage and their life together until 1955.

Despite his title, Philip Prince of Greece had no Greek blood. “I’m part Danish, part German and part Russian. I can go to practically any country in Europe, and there’s a relation there I stay with,” he told his close friend Mike Parker, who became his private secretary.

His aristocratic genes gave him a self-assurance that Princess Elizabeth noticed during their first meeting in 1939 at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. She was only 13-years-old at the time, but according to Sir John Wheeler-Bennet, who wrote the official biography of King George VI, Princess Elizabeth had been in love with her cousin from the first time she saw him.

He mother was not sure she was making the right choice, but nothing could stop her. Prince Philip proposed in the summer of 1946 and was accepted. The marriage was planned for the following year at Westminster Abbey. 

A day before the wedding, King George VI conferred the title “duke of Edinburgh” upon his future son-in-law and authorized the use of the prefix “his royal highness.”

The wedding was a moment of joy shared by the whole nation, as was the birth of Prince Charles a year later. But as the king’s health worsened, it became clear that she would have to replace her parents on the long royal tour to Kenya, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand.

Princess Elizabeth and her husband arrived in February 1952 at the legendary Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park in Kenya. She was writing a letter to her father when her husband informed her of his death.

According to Martin Charteris, her private secretary: “She was sitting erect, fully accepting her destiny.” He was struck by the composure of the new queen, who insisted on personally drafting the telegrams of apology to those expecting her on the now-canceled tour.

Read the original article on: http://www.arabnews.com

The San Francisco Fallacy by Jonathan Siegel - Book Review

The San Francisco Fallacy: The Ten Fallacies That Make Founders Fail • by Jonathan Siegel • Lioncrest Publishing • ISBN-13: 978-1619616325 • 130 pages • £13.15/$16.99

Other cities are cheaper than San Francisco and have better infrastructure and more talented people who aren't already in good jobs. So why do the tech companies who like to think of themselves as disruptive outsiders flock together somewhere so inconvenient? 

Jonathan Siegel, who has founded, closed and sold a number of technology companies, wants to dissect that herd instinct and some other fallacies that are common to startups wherever they are, based on his own failures and assumptions -- and the times his startups did succeed.

The core lesson of The San Francisco Fallacy is there from the very first story: it's not all about the technology. That lesson is very true, but the conclusion Siegel draws from his own experience is still not wide enough. 

His story of setting up a BBS to redistribute adult images but not being able to make it profitable shows mainly that the marketing and payment systems are as important as understanding customer needs. 

A note about copyright and maybe asking your parents for permission before running a business out of your bedroom might be useful here, although that doesn't fit with the usual break-the-rules startup attitude typical of Uber, Facebook and any number of other Silicon Valley companies.

What Siegel calls the 'fallacy of democracy' is more like mistaking democracy for having no management and no HR team. There's probably a sweet spot somewhere between having the one true visionary founder and needing to have someone to break the deadlock when everyone disagrees.

As Uber has found out very publicly recently, and other startups have discovered over the years, investment is a double-edged sword because it gives investors so much say in what your business can do. 

By contrast, Snapchat's approach of non-voting shares give the company so much control that institutional investors are avoiding it. Siegel's startup doesn't reach those heights, but his investment fallacy -- that getting investment isn't always good news -- is the other side of the issues playing out at Uber about founders and control, as well as a lesson about not letting someone force you to pivot to do something you don't love.

If there's anything that really drives startups, it's passion. However, the lesson of The San Francisco Fallacy is Siegel's journey to understanding that passion isn't enough, and can get in the way of startups becoming businesses.

If it baffles you that Siegel would much rather spend hours writing the code to create an online posting service than print and post his own invoices, then you're not a startup founder. This particular fallacy is about it being OK to fail -- and you may indeed be expecting failure when Siegel reveals that he spent $500 on Google ads for every customer who signed up to pay $5 a month for the service.

This time there's no long drawn-out struggle, just the realization that next time he could run the ads to find out what people will pay before writing the code for the service they'll be paying for. That's a shortcut for the startup, but possibly a less appealing prospect for customers. 

On the other hand, customers very much want startups to learn the lesson of how to fail as early and with as little fallout as possible.

Read the original article on: http://www.zdnet.com

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter

The most burning question surrounding Krysten Ritter’s literary debut isn’t whether there will be any interest in her efforts. She’s already got legions of fans from her starring role in Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix and her memorable turn in AMC’s Breaking Bad.

So, yes, it’s a given that Ritter will have an enthusiastic audience waiting for an autographed copy of Bonfire (Crown Archetype, 276 pp., ★★½ out of four) when the actress/producer/former model/now author kicks off her book tour this month.

The question isn’t even whether Ritter is a capable writer. (She is.) The question is whether readers will really even care or notice that Bonfire isn’t so much a psychological thriller as it is a steady march of go-to tropes.

The story’s protagonist, Abby Williams, has so much in common with the anti-hero superhero/hot mess Ritter frequently plays on screen — which both works as an advantage and disadvantage in Bonfire — you feel you already know her.

Abby is returning to her rural hometown of Barrens, Indiana, a place she has spent every day of the past 10 years (post-high school graduation) trying to forget and literally scrub away. But now her work, and her past, are calling her back.

“Barrens has its roots in me,” Abby tells us. “If I want it gone forever, I’ll have to cut them out myself.” (And, in case you forget, Abby will tell you again and again in a narrative style that seems like it should always be preceded by the words “Dear Diary.”)

Abby is an environmental lawyer in Chicago. She’s a success but she’s not happy. She’s still haunted by the mean girls who tormented her, the boy whose kiss may or may not have been real, the death of her mom, her abusive dad, and every kind of dysfunctional side effect suffocating small-town life has to offer. (“All I know is that Barrens broke something inside of me,” Abby explains. “It warped the needles on my compass and turned the south to north and lies to truth and vice versa.”)

But more than anything else, Abby is fixated on what happened to her close friend Kaycee Mitchell, the bad girl (or was she just troubled?) who disappeared in the wake of a major scandal.

As expected with the turn of each page of Bonfire, it turns out there may be a connection between what became of Kaycee and what’s going on with Optimal Plastics, the big, bad company that more or less owns Barrens.

Read the original article on: https://www.usatoday.com