Reading The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic, a Croatian essayist now living in Amsterdam. One line struck me. After a description of ex-Yugoslavia as a place of ruin and brutalist kitsch, she says to imagine the best-known museums in Paris, London, and New York with all the art thrown out and replaced, "with all the blessings of the powers that be," by plastic pink flamingoes and garden gnomes. "The illiterate (it is they, for God's sake, who are everywhere ascendant!) are visiting their terror upon the literate (haven't the literate always been a minority, anyway?)" It would seem that the events of 1/6, and the movement of which it was an expression, were and are nothing unique to these disunited States. Actually it's the line about "the blessings of the powers that be" that is crucial here.
There is a certain strain--not a dominant one--of anti-trumpist thought that says we should have let the South go, and might welcome a Yugoslavian-style fracturing of the U.S. And, well, that didn't go too well for Yugoslavia. The trouble is, the divide, there and here, is not strictly regional, not when you've got Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, Croats in Serbia, Bosnian Muslims in Macedonia, progressive college towns in Montana and Arkansas.
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Posted by Julie808We of Little Faith I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too) By Kate Cohen.
Posted by dfrossI enjoyed "The Dictionary of Lost Words", a historical fiction about the creating of the Oxford-English Dictionary and the fight for women's suffrage in the UK.
Posted by ReignmondA highly biased selection.
Posted by ReignmondI read this back in 2018. Absolutely loved it. It is an oddly small sized book, so it is good to travel with. [amazon.com]
Posted by ReignmondI read this back in 2018. Absolutely loved it. It is an oddly small sized book, so it is good to travel with. [amazon.com]
Posted by ReignmondA short Sci-Fi that is quite good even though it will only take about an hour to read. It is also kinda cheap. [amazon.com]
Posted by ReignmondLooking again at this book reminds me that I wanted to re-listen to it again.
Posted by ReignmondThis freebie ebook from Gutenberg Press and by the Master Sci-Fi writer Philip.
Posted by ReignmondAt Home: a short history of private life by Bill Bryson. An enjoyable book about everyday things we don't even think about. [amazon.com]
Posted by ReignmondAt Home: a short history of private life by Bill Bryson. An enjoyable book about everyday things we don't even think about. [amazon.com]
Posted by ReignmondJust finished Bomber Mafia written by my genetic 4th cousin on both of our Fathers' side.
Posted by ReignmondI read this back in about 1983.
Posted by ReignmondVery good. I have noticed that 12 step programs are ineffective. [goodreads.com]
Posted by ReignmondActually read this some time ago (46 years) while trying to figure out why I simply could not believe in Jesus or God or anything else I was being told by Bible Thumpers.
Posted by ReignmondThis is one of my very most favorite books.
Posted by Julie808I'm currently reading "The Power Worshippers" by Katherine Stewart. Is anyone else reading this?