Eva Hnizdo's Blog, page 9

If there was rating for a reader, I would get 1 star

Wagnerism : Art and Politics in the shadow of Music by Alex Ross

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I only just started this, I gave it to one of my sons for his birthday, but when he said he won't read it till he's finished another book, I kept it for now. I bought it because my son loved "The rest is noise" and because of a review in the Economist .
To start with, I really liked it despite the difficult subject.
But then I failed. Life interfered, and my brain started hurting. I don't know enough about Wagner's music or about various philosophers- Nietsche, Schopenhauer, others, and it started to feel like work.

Maybe I will try again, maybe after lockdown. Right now, with work on my new book and preparation of my old book for launch in September, I just couldn't concentrate on Wagner. It is my failure, not the book's. The book is good, I am just not good enough for the book.
So I will leave the rating, but there should be a rating for me, the reader, Which would be 1 star only.



View all my reviews

Adding books

I have been adding some books to my Goodreads, but I think I will stop. Although it reminded me of some of them, which was nice. But it is a bit of a waste of time, so I will now only add books I am reading now.

books

It's hard, I have read and liked so many books in my life, and so my reviews are chaotic. Someone reminds me of a book, so I write a review. I will also comment on my current reading, but writing about all books that were important for me would be a full time job.
So sorry, my beloved books that I missed !

The reason I am happy and looking forward to 2021

2021 will be a year of containing the pandemic and a new US president but for me the year when my book will get published

Yes, I just signed a publishing contract. It is exciting. Of course, there will be plenty of work- editing, proofreading of typeset, choosing cover, helping with marketing. But I can’t wait. ( Of course I will have to wait.)

But you know what I mean, right?

This is my happy face.

Be good to refugees, it could be you…

It looks there is a big chance for my book Why Didn’t They Leave? to be published in 2021.

It will be a strange year. Hopefully, the year we will start winning the battle with Covid-19.

The main theme of my novel, emigration, is as important as ever.

I know from my family history that people can find themselves in a situation where their home is not longer safe. Suddenly, they don’t belong. Their identity somehow changes.

My family members felt Prague was their home, their identity was Czechoslovak, and only secondary also Jewish.

However, identity depends also on how other people see us. In 1939, the identity of my family was Jewish, all else became non important. They have lived there for more than  400 years, but that was no longer important.

Some emigrated, most didn’t. Some , including my parents survived the war, most didn’t. Emigration saved the ones who emigrated, but they were not always welcome.

One of my relatives who emigrated from Prague to Brooklyn, NYC  in 1938 as a 12-y old girl still hates the word “ refugee”.

She is now  94, still living in New York, but she still gets upset talking about it.

“ Bloody refugee, that was what everybody called me at school.”

I emigrated from communist Czechoslovakia in 1986. I was lucky, the Cold War was still on, getting political asylum was easy for me, I was also European, white, a doctor. I felt welcome in the UK.

There are millions of people running away from famine, wars, discrimination. Most of them are not white, they are poor, sometimes not educated. They need us.

It is my strong feeling that we should welcome them, if not for altruistic, human reasons, then because we might get into the situation when we might become refugees, too.

Yet, some people who themselves used to be refugees for some bizarre reason don’t want to welcome refugees in our country,

Britain’s home secretary Pritti Patel, daughter of refugees is trying to introduce a system that would make immigration into the UK harder.

I met Jewish people who also don’t want influx of refugees. In my opinion, these people, and Pritti Patel should know better.

My point:

When you see a refugee, not speaking your language, trying to get in, don’t judge them It could be you!

to look before I start blogging here

This is my wordpress blog . Before I start adding posts here.

https://wordpress.com/view/evahnizdow...

Racism, only small steps to make it disappear.

I am thinking about racism, and how the Europeans very often pretend to themselves that it is just an American and South African problem. I read this article. It surprised me, I knew about racism the West Indian immigrants encountered in the UK in the sixties. But I never realised that it wasn’t just racist landlords with their ” No dogs, no blacks” on the door. There had to be a change of law, and men like Paul Stephenson fought to change it. And I am thinking about some Jewish people I know who talk about antisemitism, only to then make some racist remarks about black or Indian people. And I feel that we should all know better. Know that people are equal, and not so different. My novel, which I still don’t have an agent is not just another Holocaust book. It deals with this, too. I don’t want my grandchildren grow up in a racist society. There was progress, but look at the # BLM movement. The battle with racism is not won.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/01/paul-stephenson-the-hero-who-refused-to-leave-a-pub-and-helped-desegregate-britain

Will anybody publish my book?

My book is ready for publishing. The question is, are the agents or publishers ready for my book? Sending submissions seems to be a full time job. Every agent wants something else. First 30 pages, first 50 pages, synopsis, some as attachment some in the body of the email.And allegedly the agents have about 7 minutes to decide whether they want to even read the manuscript attachments.I need a secretary!It would be so great if an agent would bite my bait…I feel that I would like to read a book like mine.

It’s not just another Holocaust book, although Holocaust affects life of most of the characters.

It is mainly about emigration, how people are all very similar, we are all human.

This is the ending of my novel:

“I am not Jewish enough for the Jews or black enough for the Grenadians, or Czech enough for the Czechs. What am I, Mum?”

I told him what Hilda, my great aunt, wrote in a hospital questionnaire in America years before anybody realised the extent of her dementia. Under RACE she filled in HUMAN.

Adam smiled and said: “Not so demented after all then.” 

                                    THE END

I have been thinking about Stolpersteine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein

It is such a marvellous idea. We are going to pay for these being installed n the pavement in front of the house in Prague where my family lived before deportation to Theresienstadt in 1943. The stones will have names of my grandfather and my mother’s brother. Now we were asked if we want to get the stones made also for my grandmother and my mother, who, unlike the two men , survived. I was surprised, but I thought, yes, they were also victims of the Holocaust. They came back, but they suffered, and of course lost so many close relatives.It left a big mark on my grandmother’s and mother’s lives. So I am thinking about it. Should we put my mother’s and grandmother’s names out there? Would they have liked it? I am just not sure.

[image error]Star of David. Vector illustration. Eps 10

Getting the book published seems harder than writing it

I have participated in webinars, courses, read the https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Getting-Your-Published/dp/076116085X

Still, it is daunting.

what’s the problem? The brevity. I am a woman of many words, Writing the whole summary of my family saga in 250 words seems impossible.

So I am editing my pitch, cutting, changing, but it seems so hard.

Will any agent bite into my hook? I have never been good at fishing for anything, even for compliments, so wish me luck.

At least, due to the lock-down, I have plenty of time.