Books - Book Review - If the South Had Won the Civil War - MacKinlay Kantor

This was my first book for the Civil War Challenge. It was very short, because it was an article for Life magazine. 

I was able to borrow an older version from the library. I don't know whether the reissued version has the illustrations that the older one has.

I am not going to present all the of events that Kantor visualized but here are some that I thought were important:

1. Grant died, and Atlanta didn’t burn.
2. The Confederates won the Battle of Gettysburg.
3. Lincoln evacuated the White House in a wagon and spent time in a prison. He moved back to Illinois
4. The new capital of the United States was in Ohio; Columbus was renamed Columbia
5. Confederate States of America had 13 states.
6. Washington D.C. became Washington, District of Dixie.
7. Texas was a country for a long time.
8. The slaves in the south were freed in the 1880s, but it was a gradual process that there were no lynchings and discrimination.
9. Cuba became a state in the Confederacy and REL Stuart, Jeb Stuart’s son, was the hero of the Spanish American War, not Teddy Roosevelt.
10. Alaska remained a part of Russia .
11. Woodrow Wilson (CSA President) wanted the USA and Texas to be united, after they all fought in WWI. Teddy Roosevelt (US President) and Roy Smith ( Texas ) agreed but it didn’t become reality until the 1960. That’s when the Russians started its campaigns to take over the world. 
12. Washington became the capital of the new USA .

I enjoyed reading this book. One event, Grant's early death, could have really changed the course of history.

You do need some basic knowledge of American history to understand the implications of this alternate history, but you will enjoy reading what could have happened.

Books - Book Review - After Leaving Mr. Mackensie - Jean Rhys

This book counts for the 2011 International Book Challenge.

A young woman constantly asks old lovers for money. She goes to bars by herself, and the men keep asking her to go back to their apartments or hotel rooms with them. She looks for sugar daddies and her life style is scandalous to the family.

I had to look at the copyright year to find out why I wasn't really shocked; it was originally published in 1931, and proper young women didn't do these things!

Julia Martin lives in Paris. She is getting older; she is now in her 30s. She finds it harder to get money, she drinks too much, and she must find cheaper quarters as each year passes due to the drop of income.

After meeting another guy and deciding to go back home to London to see her family, she finds that her francs don't go far after the exchange rate. She tries to be a better daughter and sister but discovers that she just can't do it. Her sister has an idea of Julia does for a living and is jealous that Julia doesn't  seem to care too much about responsibility.

This novel is a bit dark and depressing.

But, it still applies today. Many women still want have the easy life, and they don't realize that youth won't last. There will always be someone younger!

(I gave the lady on the cover a bikini :})

Books - Book Review - Napoleon’s Buttons - How 17 Molecules Changed History - Penny LeCouteur and Jay Burreson

One of my classmates from graduate school recommended this book on the class forum.

Two chemists wrote another view of history: certain objects have shaped world events, and this is the first record of how it happened.

For example, they used Napoleon’s loss in Russia. Besides the rough winter, the Russians burning all the crops,  and a lack of supplies reaching the French troops, the authors believed that tin and quinine also caused the downfall of Napoleon on the Russian front.

First of all, tin, which was used in the uniforms as buttons. Tin crumbles when the temperatures drop. The soldiers couldn’t button their coats, and the cold penetrated them. 

Quinine, which fights malaria, was not available to the troops either. That portion of Russia has swamps, as do other cold places. Swamps don’t exist just in the Deep South and other tropical areas. So, possibly, malaria helped to wipe out the troops.

This book also examines the chemistry of the elements or compounds. If you don’t like reading about organic chemistry, you can skip this portion of the chapters.

However, you might miss some interesting facts. Caffeine (which I am addicted to in the form of coffee) and tea and cocoa (in chocolate) differ only by one CH3 group!

Check here for the table of contents. Other events that are covered include, the Salem Witch Hunts, the start of industrial dyeing, WWII events,development of anesthesia, contraception, and other topics. I look at some of the dates and can’t believe that if I had lived just less than 100 years ago, a lot of diseases could have done me in!

Books - Book Review - The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

This books counts for the International Book Challenge.

Munna, later known as Balram Halwai, was born somewhere in the interior portion of India. He did learn how to read, but he didn’t have much of a chance in life. He wasn’t even given a proper name; Munna means Boy.

His father is a rickshaw driver, his mother is dead, and the grandmother is a true matriarch. He and his brother survive the best they can by working in tea shops and other minor jobs. He has to practically bribe someone to teach him how to drive; the tutor is so horrible to Balram, telling him he will never drive, because he is of the sweetmaker caste and doesn’t have the brains to learn such a difficult task. He does master the car.

The ruling family comes back to the home village of Balram, and he is employed by them to be the driver.

The novel is set up in an unusual manner; Balram is writing a LOOOONG letter to Wen Jiaboa, a Chinese Premier, who is coming to visit India. Balram’s is a memoir, an essay of the defects of Indian society that prevents its advance, and a reflection of what attributes India needs to adopt to have the economic prosperity of China.

Some of the facts of India not progressing are known to me: corrupt government, disdain for anyone living in the provinces, crazy traffic, high pollution levels, beggars, and discrimination according to caste, even though it’s been outlawed. However, Balram shows us the people who work just a tad better off than the squatters. He has to sleep in a dormitory with the other servants, he has a filthy bed with a net to keep out the roaches and other vermin, he shares a communal bathroom to keep clean, he works 7 days a week, and other indignities. He notices workers who are constructing skyscrapers live in tents next to the building, and there are no sanitary facilities for them.

The one thing that I didn’t like and other reviewers have commented on is that Balram reveals a murder that he commits too early on, in one of the letters to Premier Jiaboa.

Despite this being a bit depressing, I found it hard to put down this novel. I wanted to know what Balram would do next in the big city.

I also liked learning about some little things:

• Empty Johnny Walker bottles can be sold; they make great containers
• Regular working people don’t have time to do yoga or to meditate
• Used, dusty books from the UK and the USA are sold for a fortune in markets
• Chauffeurs and maids can’t go into shopping malls; a guard keeps them out.

Caveat: you need a strong stomach to read this novel. Don’t read anything after a big meal.

2011 Reading Challenges

My reading really dropped during my first semester in grad school,so I am hoping to read some of the books that I didn't read in 2010.

Check out A Novel Challenge for more reading challenges.

Dewey Decimal Challenge

Master Level - 3 Books

1. Enigma - The Battle for the Code - Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
2. A book about the Arctic (saving this for the summer)
3. New Orleans Architecture - Vol. III - The Cemeteries - Leonard Huber, Peggy McDowell, and Mary Christovich (just looked at the pictures :} )

War Through the Generations Reading Challenges - U.S. Civil War

Dip Level - 3 to 5 Books

1. March - Geraldine Brooks
2. Redemption Falls - Joseph O'Connor
3. If the South Had Won the Civil War - MacKinlay Kantor

2011 Read 'n Review Challenge

I will read most of the books on my TBR stacks that I either started and never finished, or the ones that I never even cracked open.

1. Microscripts - Robert Walser (I won this novel in July 2010, looked at it, but haven't started it yet ;{)
2. Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck
3. The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck
4. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
5. New Voices - A Collection of Soviet Short Stories - Raduga Publications - Moscow
6. Shorter Fiction - Oscar Wilde
7. Lady Susan - Jane Austen
8. Martin Sloan - Michael Redhill
9. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Daily Lit - still need to read a few more emails)
10. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
11. We - Evgeny Zamyatin
12. William - An Englishman - Cicely Hamilton
13. The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
14. People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
15. The Law of Eternity - Nodar Dumbadze

Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2011

Sheep Man - 3 Books

1. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - A Memoir
2. and .3 - still deciding

International Book Challenge

Marco Polo - 10 books or more

This is an easy one for me: I am a member of the International Fiction Book Group of New Orleans.

1. After Leaving Mr. McKenzie - Jean Rhys (London and Paris) COMPLETED
2. The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga (India) COMPLETED
3. Through Black Spruce – Joseph Boyden (Canada)
4. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
5. Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky (France)
6. Purge - Sofi Oksanen (Estonia and Germany)
7. After the Fire, a Still Small Voice - Evie Wyld (Australia, Viet Nam, Belgium)
8. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute  
9. By Night in Chile Roberto Bolaño
10. The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills (Northern England)