Petra X's comments

Petra X's comments from the Reading from the Best Books group.

Note: Petra X is no longer a member of this group.

thread

List 10 favorite candies

1. Skittles
2. Love hearts
3. Peanut M&Ms
4. Chocolate raisins
5. U-No Bar
6. Dove Bar
7. 99 flake

recited

rather

Only coffee.

The person below me likes to dance around the house when they are alone.

10 classics.

Would you rather go on a summer vacation or a winter one?

Laura wrote: "Wow. I haven't been into this thread since June. I was sorry to hear about your mom, Petra, and I hope you're doing okay..." Thanks Laura :-)

September 2009

72 Ye Yslands of Enchantment - Norwell Harrigan & Pearl Varlack (Caribbean, history)
73 Style Style Style - Andy Warhol (Art, humour)
74 The Bamboo, Grass & Palm Specialist - David Squire (Plants)
75 Life Doesn't Frighten Me - Maya Angelou & Jean-Michel Basquiat (art, poety)
76 Julia and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Memoir, cookery, blog)
77 Coals of Fire by Verna Penn Moll (Technology, Caribbean, Cooking, Anthropology)
78 Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent by David Henry Sterry Goodreads Author(Memoir, sex)
79 The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community by Edna Fernandes, (History, religion, anthropology)

80 What We Did On Our Holidays by Geoff Nicholson (Fiction, humour) 5-star read.

If you are the sort of person who appreciates the unnecessarily graphic sex and excessive violence that one might experience on a caravan holiday at the English seaside, then you are going to love this black comedy. It makes you want to laugh in a hurhurhur sort of way and snork your coffee through your nose. Dear dear, middleage is a terrible thing!

(Its a mystery to me that anyone could give this book less than 5-stars, but perhaps they have read Diary of a Nobody which apparently spoils this book somewhat if you have.)

September 2009


72 Ye Yslands of Enchantment - Norwell Harrigan & Pearl Varlack (Caribbean, history)
73 Style Style Style - Andy Warhol (Art, humour)
74 The Bamboo, Grass & Palm Specialist - David Squire (Plants)
75 Life Doesn't Frighten Me - Maya Angelou & Jean-Michel Basquiat (art, poety)
76 Julia and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Memoir, cookery, blog)
77 Coals of Fire by Verna Penn Moll (Technology, Caribbean, Cooking, Anthropology)
78 Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent by David Henry Sterry Goodreads Author (Memoir, sex)

79 The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community by Edna Fernandes, (History, religion, anthropology)

I thought that this subject would have benefited by having a non-Jewish author to document the end of a people who had a much-different world experience than any other of these dispersed people. It didn't and obviously her editor wasn't Jewish either. Silly factual errors really rather do spoil a book that has obviously been quite deeply researched.

The premise of the book is that of the several Jewish communities in India, some of which have been there since the time of King Solomon and are documented in the bible, and who have lived entirely peacefully and as equal Indian citizens for thousands of years, are now disappearing because of the racism by the white Jews towards the older community of black Jews in two particular communities - the Jews who live in the state of Kerala.

This part of the book is very interesting. The history of Haile Selassie's visit, the story of the 'kingship' and lands awarded to the Jews, the building of the town by a Rajah, where equidistant from his central palace there were holy buildings of the four religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism and the peace with which all four religions coexisted from time immemorial to this day. Apart, that is, from the hiccup when the Portuguese came and conquered Goa after the Inquisition and foisted their particular anti-semitism on the local Jews (including the ones who had fled from the Inquisition) and then the Moors, whose brand of Islam was not the same as the Indian one, and they too were anti-semitic.

The main part of the book concerns the European Jews who fled the Inquisition and settled in India and then rewrote history declaring themselves the original community and that their whiteness proved their religious purity. Religious purity to Hindu India is the be-all and end-all of mortal and immortal life. These Jews tried for five centuries to get rabbis from different countries to lend their stance legitimacy, but failed but still persisted with their devise and revisionist stance. In the end though, they came to see the error of their ways, but by then it was too late. This is all very interesting.

But the whole premise fails because the Jews in these communities are dying and leaving their synagogues as tourist attractions because of the migration to Israel and also by migration to the cities by the young, not for any other reason. It happened in my own community - growing up in the South Wales valleys there were many tiny communities but one by one they have all gone or are dying as the children, myself included, left for the metropolises and Israel. Only the cities have vibrant communities now, in Wales and in India.

The last part of the book concerns the success or otherwise of some of the Kerali Jews who emigrated to Israel. It wasn't well-written, the stories were recited in a somewhat maudlin' fashion and there were factual errors (again!) about the religion. A better editor could have helped Fernandez to write a really cracking book and so perhaps its more the fault of the publishing house than of the author that the book was so flawed. Great cover though, and great cover art is always a plus to me.

What we did on our Holidays by Geoff Nicholson.

The book starts off in a very gently English way. A father, going through the existential angst of middle-age, is taking his wife and two teenaged children for their last joint family holiday. They are going to a caravan park and the talk is of motor insurance, car sickness, country walks and the like. It reads like its going to be a modern comedy of manners until he sitting in the happy silence of couples who know each other very well and his wife pipes up, "I'd really like to be shafted from behind by an Arab with a big tool, who really knows how to use it." Oh!

Shoshanapnw wrote: "Indeed, but these days higher education treats the syllabus as a contract and all grading criteria must be set out in advance.

Back in my day, the professor would say "Read Beowulf and Sir Gawain ..."

I would so have enjoyed that.

grated

Shoshanapnw wrote: "Oy! At some point I'm expected to write syllabi and teach!"
Can't you just let them get on with some reading and set essay questions later? :-)

Shoshanapnw wrote: "119. Lev Grossman: The Magicians"

119! You'll have read 150+ by the end of the year.

rewrite

Donna wrote: "I do. Not only is it my b-day but the colors are just wonderful."

**** Happy Birthday Donna ****
Yes, once in a while.
The person below me uses a proper bookmark.

September 2009

72 Ye Yslands of Enchantment - Norwell Harrigan & Pearl Varlack (Caribbean, history)
73 Style Style Style - Andy Warhol (Art, humour)
74 The Bamboo, Grass & Palm Specialist - David Squire (Plants)
75 Life Doesn't Frighten Me - Maya Angelou & Jean-Michel Basquiat (art, poety)
76 Julia and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Memoir, cookery, blog)
77 Coals of Fire by Verna Penn Moll (Technology, Caribbean, Cooking, Anthropology)

78 Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent by David Henry Sterry Goodreads Author (Memoir, sex)

The writing of this book is original and sparkles. Its the only book I've read by a worker in the sex industry that got me inside their head. Its not titillating but doesn't shy away from graphic descriptions. What truly lifts the book is the author's empathy for his clients and the descriptions of some of the most bizarre characters you will ever read about.

I am surprised no one has made a film of it - the story of a middle-class boy, abandoned by his family, at a Catholic college as a heterosexual prostitute who roars around town on a Harley and is rescued, almost, by the love of a good woman is just made for the movies.

Brilliant book. Really a five-star read.

September 2009

72 Ye Yslands of Enchantment - Norwell Harrigan & Pearl Varlack (Caribbean, history)
73 Style Style Style - Andy Warhol (Art, humour)
74 The Bamboo, Grass & Palm Specialist - David Squire (Plants)
75 Life Doesn't Frighten Me - Maya Angelou & Jean-Michel Basquiat (art, poety)
76 Julia and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Memoir, cookery, blog)

77 Coals of Fire by Verna Penn Moll (Technology, Caribbean, Cooking, Anthropology)

This is a wonderful book described the technology of fireplaces for cooking from Siboney Indian times through to present day folk-cooking. Although everyone in the Caribbean now cooks on gas or electric, the few people lucky enough to have a traditional bread oven in the garden do produce superlative bread and cakes. At Carnival time though, out come the coalpots, the kerosene drum barbeques and the latest - cast-off wheels of cars and trucks turned into ovens! The pen and ink illustrations by Joseph Hodge are spot-on. Just the write amount of detail and no romanticised coconut trees waving in the backgrounds. An excellent and informative read.

skated

List 10 people you admire (famous or otherwise)

1. Nelson Mandela
2. Anne Boleyn
3. Stephen Poliakoff
4. Jerry Lewis
5. Virginia Woolf
6. Em Schofield, wall-climber extraordinaire

My favourite authors (today) are:

Irv Yalom (existential psychotherapy told as tales-from-the-couch)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (fiction, magical realism)
Emile Zola (gritty late 19th C French fiction from an author who put his money - and his life - where his mouth was)
Felipe Fernández-Armesto (history from a different perspective)
Michael Rosen (English children's poet who writes easy-to-identify with hilarious stuff)

I might have different favourites tomorrow.