#ReadTheWorld2025
In May and June I added 5 books to @GatheringBooks challenge. I covered the following countries: #Palestine #Suriname #Brazil #Nigeria #Israel
pickCindy sent me this book. Forty stories about people who were attacked by Hamas on October 7 2023.
Some survived, some not or have been taken captive. Their stories are told by their family.
It‘s horrible what happened on that day, it‘s very hard to read. People dancing on a festival one minute and entering a nightmare the next one. The stories do feel a bit too propaganda for me though.⬇️
#ReadTheWorld2025 book 19 #Israel
The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve. Any interference from the outside world is immediately castigated as naïve at best or anti-Semitic at worst.
pickI expected more of a travel rather than a political book but perhaps it is impossible to write about Israel without focusing on politics. It‘s shocking how current To Jerusalem and back is: left wing antisemitism was the same 50 years ago, so was the accusation that Israelis are colonialists, also Israel was and still is held to a higher moral standard than any other country and no other nation‘s right to exist is questioned. The book is outdated
^^hustler‘s relief after a score. Pulp fiction / existentialist mashup, kinda Kerouac. Vulnerable tough guy selling “love.”
61 “they begin to speak in sharp high voices that have no love, no despair, only a kind of miserable wisdom that prevents them from doing reckless things.”
63 “the sea released me from all thought and feeling, the way alcohol releases other people.”
121 “The man returned with his dog, a boxer. Both of them look like cheats.”
pickPolish novella set in 1950s Tel Aviv. Two con men bum around Israeli beach resorts, fleecing rich widows & divorcees. Jacob seduces his marks in an almost offhanded way, directionless and depressed. Dark but breezy humor, pratfalls, bratty kid. Then—boom—long passage on war atrocities witnessed in Warsaw, revealing what these grifters are escaping. Memorable tone, desperation, beach breezes soothing trauma. Cover design all wrong. 1965, tr. 2014.
pickI‘m glad I finished the book because the last novella (I think we have 3 novellas here rather than a novel) brings Nevo‘s thoughts & themes to the fore and there were a few ‘a-ha now I get it‘ moments. Overall, the first & second story are a bit forced & the sex scenes range from despicable to weird. The last story‘s familial conflicts were what I could relate to most & also found most interesting. Overall, this is not a great but an ok book.
pickI‘m glad I read this after The Hundred Years‘ War on Palestine. Chomsky & Pappe provide the understanding that I felt that Khalidi‘s book did not. However, without reading Khalidi first I would‘ve been lost throughout much of On Palestine.
I now feel that I can justly have an opinion. & while I choose to not voice that here, the one thing I will say is that the United States has exacerbated this war from nearly the beginning & it NEEDS to stop.
