More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Scourge of the Swastika – Nazi Horrors by Edward Russell

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The Scourge of the Swastika is a hard book to read and hard to review. Author Lord Russell of Liverpool served in the British war crimes trials held after WW2.

The theme of this book is that we can attribute the Nazi horrors directly to the “Master Race” theory, and further to National Socialism’s subsumption of individuals to the state. The Nazi regime treated harshly any Germans who stepped out of line; was it any wonder they treated people from “inferior races” or “subhumans” with no care whatsoever? People deported from occupied countries for slave labor were treated so as to extract maximum work at minimum expenditure, i.e., worked to death.

Lord Russell makes his point by starting from conditions in Germany, the totalitarians at the country, district, county and down to the city block level who ran everything, controlled everything, and restricted speech, property rights, religion. As Russel notes, “It is only when one recalls what was done in Germany between 1933 and 1939 that one can see…the crimes committed during the war in occupied territories.” Hitler used Germany as a test run for the rest of Europe.

From here Lord Russell shows the crimes against prisoners of war, naval crimes such as torpedoing neutral passenger-carrying ships. Until I read this I knew that Germans did not obey the Geneva convention with Russian POWs and had carried on unrestricted submarine warfare, but had not realized the extent of either. The German leadership ordered naval captains to not rescue any passengers or crew who escaped sinking vessels, and later to shoot helpless crew in lifeboats.

The next parts, covering the occupied countries, slave labor, concentration camps and Holocaust, are more familiar to any who have read about WW2. Russell shows the occupiers treated the people in the conquered countries as basically worthless, murdering entire villages, killing 10 or 100 random civilians in reprisals, starving the population. He makes it clear that the Germans knew that these actions were illegal and immoral – or would be viewed that way by impartial outsiders – because they took care to do many of the killings out of sight or to obfuscate the number of dead.

The book includes quotations from Hitler and others that clearly direct these horrors. Hans Franck in charge of Poland saw his duty as to turn Poland’s “economic, cultural and political structure into a heap of rubble”, and that Hitler would commend him if he “annihilated another 150,000 Poles.” Hitler wanted to free his people from “the humiliating restrictions imposed by the chimera of conscience and morality”, and it’s obvious that he succeeded with all too many, and those people found places in the SS and other units.

The British government tried to suppress The Scourge of the Swastika, to keep it from being published. I found comments that it was unbecoming for Lord Russell to make money from work he had done in while in service, but the more telling comments make it clear the British wanted to quell some of the anti-German feeling and re-incorporate West Germany into the European family. This was in 1954 when the Cold War was freezing over.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in how National Socialism operated inside and outside Germany or in totalitarian rule and how it descends into barbarism. If you wonder how a country so cultured as to bring us Beethoven can bring us Nazism, then read this. Read this but do not expect entertainment.

5 Stars

Locking Up Our Own – James Forman, Jr., Crime and Punishment in Black America

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Author James Forman, Jr., has written a fascinating book, Locking Up Our Own, describing the path we took to today’s situation where a very large number – 25% in some age cohorts – of black men are incarcerated.  He shows how many black leaders in the past pushed for strong justice, by supporting the war on drugs, for example, leading us step-by-step to the present.

We see drug use as a problem of crime, not as a health issue.  Forman asks how we might be better off if the first call were to a therapist/job program/rehab program rather than to the police.  This is an excellent question; yet Forman does not absolve the misbehaving individual of his own personal responsibility.  Forman’s point is that harsh prison sentences and lack of alternative punishments have a terrible effect on people, especially young people.  He asks whether alternative approaches might work better.

Forman makes some excellent points about racial disparate treatment, some chicken-and-egg problems.  Forman points out that poor and minority people are more likely to be hassled by police, which has been shown in several studies (although not more likely to be killed despite rhetoric to the contrary) and surely those communities behave differently towards police as a result, which causes the police to be tougher in response.

The author seemed surprised that black police were at least as hard as their white fellows when dealing with black suspects.  The officers are doing their duty, to their honor, and cannot turn a blind eye because of the suspect’s race.  Forman didn’t seem to think that they should take it easier on black people, but was nonetheless bemused that they are not.

The title itself – “Locking Up Own” – bothers me as it implies that there are “Us” and “Them” and that “we” should not be so tough on “Us”.  Forman comments that drug use rates are fairly constant among races and that the reason white folks don’t get arrested is because they can patronize safer venues to purchase.  It would be interesting to see whether that holds true if you look at poor neighborhoods in general.  For example, do poorer white folks and poorer black folks patronize the same dealers?  Are they both equally likely to get arrested or hassled by police?  In other words, is there something about a person’s race, or more likely, the person’s general attitudes, skills, background, experiences that make one more or less likely to offend and more or less likely to be arrested?

The book offers a few suggestions:

  • Decriminalizing some drug use.  Forman doesn’t advocate making drugs completely legal, but treating some violations as misdemeanors, especially related to marijuana.
  • Give addicts more than one or two chances to get clean and stay clean.
  • Offer mercy.  He ends the book on an eloquent story about a young mugger who had never been in trouble before.  Forman visited the victim and asked him to request mercy and for the young man to go to a job program.  The victim kindly agreed and the young mugger has stayed out of trouble.
  • Placing young offenders in job programs.
  • Thinking through the consequences, with an eye to racial imbalances.
  • Employers to not immediately fire someone on probationary status for an arrest.

One of the last sections covers some of the semi-deceptive pretexts that police use to search vehicles, such as claiming the windows are too dark, then using those searches to find a gun or small packets of marijuana.  The driver should not have had the drug in the first place, but the deception and trickery used is a problem.  The racial imbalance comes because the pretextual search program described in Washington D.C. deliberately excluded a city section that was low crime.  Unfortunately one could blame the the search program as racist when in fact it was designed to be efficient.

Forman did not mention any of the problems that growing up without a father are known to exacerbate, nor did he talk about how to change behaviors so fewer people use drugs, sell drugs, get into fights, join gangs, hang around on street corners.  He referenced an “all of the above” type of general solution, including jobs, welfare, health care, without looking at the problems that even these well-meaning solutions can bring.

Overall Locking Up Our Own is well-written and the author uses anecdotes from his public defender career and historical research to make his point.  It is not polemic or shrill, doesn’t deny the need for policing, doesn’t sugar coat the violence.  It is easy to read and thought provoking without being academic, in fact I read it on the beach on vacation.

4 Stars

Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World by Mitch Prinstein

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Did you ever wonder why some people seem to have it made, to always have a wide circle of friends, to be able to say things that people listen to?  While others struggle just to be seen?  Mitch Prinstein brings research findings on how people act, how they talk about others, how their brains work, to this topic and uses anecdotes to share his findings.  Popular is easy to read, accessible to us non-specialists, and full of interesting – and helpful – information.

Prinstein divides “popularity” into two types, one is basically status and the other is likability.  He points out that the status type tends to make people miserable over the long haul as people either burn out from being treated as objects or seek foolish aims.  Think about anyone you might know who was high-status in middle or high school but who ended up not very successful as an adult.  Or celebrities who both lust after fame then despise how it works in practice.

Prinstein sees likability as very important and worthwhile.  He shows how most likable people genuinely care about others, are kind, follow the rules, help people in groups and one-on-one.  As he puts it, the most likable people actually live in a different world than most of us, a world where things tend to go very, very well.

He talked some about people who are the opposite of likable, those who are disliked.  These people tend to be bad at picking up social cues or don’t respond to others in ways that are comfortable to be around.  He points out that most of the little gaffes are truly tiny, but add up to a personality that others avoid.

One item I found especially fascinating is how disliked people react .  Most bring some level of aggression while others tend to step back and fade out.  Some put their heads down and just work, but most get snarky or unpleasant, some backbite and gossip.  It was interesting to think back where some of these scenarios played out.  Of course it’s always easier to see things from the perspective of distance!

Prinstein has some advice for parents who want their children to be popular and for those of us who would like that for ourselves.  First, he cautions against seeking the status type of popularity.  It’s the type we all think of but it doesn’t do us much good and we tend to blur our thinking about status and likability too much .

Second, he suggests that parents give kids opportunities to play with others, that they help kids by playing with them, by talking through social situations, especially younger children.  Kids that are too shy or too aggressive are disadvantaged here but a wise parent can possibly help.

Also, while we tend to get a level of popularity/likability as children that stays with us for our lifetime, we can adjust our behaviors to increase our likability.  There’s a risk here that someone can try too hard, become unauthentic, but all of us can strive to be kinder, more thoughtful, pay attention when others talk, not interrupt.  It is possible to make ourselves at least somewhat more liked by our actions.

Popular is a fascinating book on an interesting subject, well-written and easy to follow.  Author Prinstein avoids being preachy or too prescriptive and makes his point by illustrating it with his research subjects.  Overall excellent.

4+ Stars

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, Edited by Christopher Hibbert

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Boswell’s Life of Johnson has been on my must-eventually-read-this list forever and finally I finished it this evening.  Boswell writes well, using anecdotes and quotes to show his revered Samuel Johnson, and his circle of eminent friends.  Johnson lived in the 1700s, dying in 1784, and was a man of words, written and spoken.  Johnson viewed conversation and wit as great arts and took great pride in his skill talking about almost anything and winning discussions on any topic.

Johnson saw nothing whatsoever to love about Scotland or America, yet his great friend Boswell is Scottish and he willingly would discourse with Americans when they were polite and showed him reverence.  Boswell was obsequious; what we would call brown nosing, Boswell felt was simply showing the immense respect that Johnson deserved.

Today we don’t read much of Johnson’s writings, although we still use some of his sayings, e.g.,  “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully”.  Boswell wrote travel books but his only enduring success is this, the Life of Johnson.

Boswell writes well and uses anecdotes and remembered conversations to show us himself, Johnson, and 1700s London.  Editor Christopher Hibbert noted that his edits removed direct excerpts from Johnson’s writings.

I doubt I’ll ever read anything by Johnson or Boswell but this was interesting and I’m glad to have finally read it.

The First Global Collapse: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) by Eric Cline is both readable and scholarly, a difficult combination for any author.  Cline looks at the 300-500 years before 1177 BC and shows how ancient peoples interacted before several kingdoms mysteriously faded or collapsed around 1177 BC.

For example, he has an interesting chart showing the different individuals that Pharaohs and ancient rulers communicated with – based on actual letters kept in royal archives.  It is eye-opening to see Egyptians talking to Mitanni (northern Mesopotamia) and Cretans and Mycenaean (Greece) and Hittites (Turkey) and Canaanites (Israel, Syrian).  The different rulers addressed each other as “brother” if they were about the same rank, or as “father” or “son” if unequal.  It is fascinating to see who equated themselves with whom!

Rulers were not the only ones who communicated.  Traders sent vessels from the Ageaen to Egypt with luxury goods and even food and prosaic items, and used land routes to get tin from the Afghan mountains for bronze, the essential metal in these cultures.  Archaeology shows Egyptian walls painted with Cretan frescoes; finds Mycenaean beakers in the Near East; unearths Cypriot trading goods across the arc stretching from eastern Italy to the Babylonian cities.

I especially enjoyed Cline’s coverage of this Late Bronze Age culture that occurred about 1500 to 1200 BC.  He used this to show the backdrop for the collapse that occurred sometime around 1177 BC, the year the Egyptian pharaoh writes of the Sea People incursion.  Cline offers several theories for the fall of this interconnected civilization – after first showing that it was indeed a fall – and suggests that the barbarians were not the only cause.  He doesn’t land on any one reason and stresses that it is unreasonable to think Sea People invaders would be responsible equally for wrecking civilizations far inland such as the Kassite empire in Babylonia as for ruining Mycenaea and Ugarit (Syrian coast).

Climate change, drought, famine occurred around this time, but kingdoms had recovered from those before.  Invaders came before, but people had recovered.  Earthquakes happened before but people had recovered.  Yet something happened that caused about a dozen civilizations to contract and some even to collapse over a 10-30 year period.  Cline examines each possible reason for the collapse and rules each of them out as the sole cause.

Instead he posits that the sheer interconnectedness – the early globalization – of the late Bronze Age was part of its downfall.  Once one or two states fell into disarray then trade routes were hurt, possibly even cut completely, and the occasional drought and famine were exacerbated.  It is an interesting idea and one that implies we today need to be careful as we are even more globalized.

I highly recommend that you read the physical book and not the E version so you can flip between text and maps.

5 Stars

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Juliet’s Answer – Contemporary Memoir of Love and Loss by Glenn Dixon

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Juliet’s Answer weaves three stories into one memoir by a Canadian English teacher who answers letters posted to Juliet in Verona.  The letters speak of love, loss, questions, heartbreak and loneliness and most writers only want someone to listen.  The ladies (and one man, our author) who answer the letters don’t try to solve problems or cure misery, they simply acknowledge the writer’s heartfelt cry.

Three Stories

Glenn Dixon volunteers in Verona because he too has a decision to make, whether to continue to hope that the woman he loved for many years will finally turn to him as more than a friend or look elsewhere.  Dixon tells this first story in small vingettes scattered through the book.

Dixon teaches Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to high school students to capture their attention and get them to think.  He believes that the characters’ ages – so close to those of his students – will help them see the play as real, not as yet another boring book to read in class and then forget.  Dixon explores Verona while there and visits the sites where the real people behind Shakespeare’s story lived and died and are buried.  He puzzles why Juliet’s story so resonates that even today people write her letters of grief and want.  That is the second story.

The third story is Dixon’s students.   As Glenn teaches his students the play he too learns about love and loss and his students are perceptive enough to realize this.  Others get interested in the play (despite their aversion to classical literature) and are fascinated by the two young lovers.

One student, a 16 year old Moslem girl, cries quietly in class.  Dixon worries about her – she is an excellent student who wants to go to college – and discovers her father is pressuring her to marry a much older man, drop out of school and forego her plans for college.  Glenn and the other teachers are a bit flummoxed as they simultaneously want to respect her family’s culture yet protect the girl and help her realize her dreams, not her father’s dream.  They tactfully help and the girl is able to resolve the problem with her father.

Writing Style

Juliet’s Answer is subtitled “One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak” and it is a biography/memoir.   Author Dixon writes of extremely personal matters, his feelings for the woman he wants, his despair because she sees him only as a friend, his uncertainty answering some of the letters, his drive to teach and educate his students, to help them grow up.  I don’t know whether any of the characters are masked or are included under their real names.

Dixon writes in an easy, unaffected manner.  This is hard to do with such a personal, emotionally difficult topic!  Had this been a YA fiction we would have had drama and heartburn, not Dixon’s quiet misery and sense of loss.  Juliet’s Answer was a far better book with its adult style and realistic sense of intimacy.  (I would like some of the breathless, over-the-top YA authors to read this and see how to treat love and loneliness so we can feel right along with the characters.)

Overall

I enjoyed Juliet’s Answer, especially the sections where Dixon is teaching his students.  I was never a big fan of the Romeo and Juliet story but Dixon made it lively and helped his students understand how Shakespeare wrote such that we still read him 400 years later.

The book could have been painful to read with its self-revelations; we could have felt as though we were tromping through Dixon’s life and heart, but he did a very good job maintaining a sense of privacy even when sharing personal feelings.

The ending seemed a bit out of character and not as satisfying as the rest of the stories but it still worked and brought the book to its conclusion.

4 Stars

I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church

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Author Peter J. Leithart is passionate about ending the divisions within Christianity and wrote The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church to show how divisions hurt all of us, to give his vision of a possible end point for a united church, and to suggest steps to reach unity.  His passion is both positive and not so.

He does not see Protestants returning to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches and emphatically rejects Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation, the papacy, Immaculate Conception, Mary’s assumption, redemption, the use of any revelations or inspirations other than the Bible.  He envisions “Reformational Catholicity” as the end point of reunion, a high church with plenty of stained glass and hymns, with fixed (or semi-fixed) liturgy, with doctrine stripped of everything that we Catholics believe today that Protestants do not.

I am no expert of Protestant beliefs or worship services, thus am guessing based on simplified doctrine, but the Presbyterian confessions and doctrinal statements stated on their web page were similar to Leithart’s envisioned dogma.

The best points of Leithart’s book were his diagnoses of the evils brought forth by the endless splitting and re-splitting of churches into denominations.  He points out that:

  • Much like no-fault divorce, when it’s easy for disagreeing factions to simply separate than to honestly search for reconciliation and agreement, we will see continuing divisions and splits.
  • Multiple denominations, many with similar beliefs but different worship or leadership structures, foster church shopping, where would-be worshipers flit from church to church, looking for just the perfect place that doesn’t upset or challenge.
  • The agreement to play nice, get along, be respectful and agree tod isagree means never confronting error or sin between churches
  • We dilute the force of Christ’s message by being soft, too nice, water down the beliefs and soon forget to call sin, sin.  We become secularized.
  • Disunity is bad for us spiritually and bad for our country.  (He focuses on American Christianity.)
  • Disunity grieves God.

I was interested in his sections describing “Reformational Catholicism” and was glad that I was reading on a Kindle to look up some of his words and names.  The book prompted me to read and research some of the mainline churches and their backgrounds and doctrines.

Leithart is convinced that the Catholic church is in serious error on many fronts.  For example he does not believe that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine, the doctrine we Catholics call transubstantiation.  He rejects this as unnecessary and as non-scriptural.  Yet he is offended, angered and appalled that our Catholic church reserves the Eucharist to members, to those who share our belief that we are receiving Christ himself, not merely a spiritual facsimile.  He insisted that the answer to denominations was not to return to Rome or to collapse into any existing church but to synthesize a new church, which carried forth the truths from the Reformation into a universal (i.e., catholic) church.

Leithart gives only a few steps to reach unity.  Mostly he recommends forging local ecumenical groups, where the focus is on the common beliefs and actions in the town, less so on the overall denominational leadership.

Overall the book was challenging, with interesting ideas and for me, some new insights into Protestant thought.  However Leithart’s fervor was tiring.  He wrote as though preaching, loud supplications, as though to drown out disagreements by the sheer number of words and repetition.  I almost quit reading but felt I owed it to see why he believed so strongly and what he proposed doing to solve the problem.  While he didn’t have many solutions, the overall discussion was well worth reading.

3-4 Stars (3 for the lack of solutions and sheer volume, 4 for the ideas.)

I received this from NetGalley in expectation of a review.

Billion Dollar Painter – Thomas Kinkade the Person and the Business

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Perhaps you’ve seen ads for little trinkets by Thomas Kinkade, “the painter of light”, or maybe you’ve visited one of the Thomas Kinkade galleries selling reproductions of his paintings in soft light and a rich, home-like setting.  I was vaguely aware of him from inserts in the Sunday paper that showed little cute cottages but didn’t realize he actually was a painter nor the breadth of his business empire until reading Billion Dollar Painter by Kinkade’s associate Eric Kuskey.

Billion Dollar Painter has two main themes:  Thomas Kinkade the man and his business empire, and art as a business.

Thomas Kinkade and His Company

Kincaid died of alcohol poisoning, leaving behind a mess.  He had partnered with ambitious, unscrupulous people in a company to first, reproduce his paintings to reach more customers, second, to license his images for everything from mugs to odd plastic snowmen with cottages inside, and third, to sell his reproductions for large sums through dedicated galleries.

Kuskey described how Kinkade and his partners created an image of a Godly man that combined with his appealing scenes to reach over 20 million customers and eventually over $4 billion in sales.  Unfortunately the company’s push for volume at all costs eventually was its undoing.

Kuskey tried to portray Kinkade as a gentle person, a dedicated artist who truly believed he was called by God to spread joy through his art, but he gave enough hints about Kinkade and his associates (including himself) to show the man was so hungry for acclaim and money that he became a fraud.

Example:  The company portrayed the Kinkade galleries as a no-brainer investment to hundreds of middle-aged couples who were eager to be part of the Thomas Kinkade mystique.  Gallery owners had to set up showrooms with expensive fittings, buy a minimum amount of inventory every year and were forbidden to discount.   Hundreds of couples lost everything when the company over saturated the market.

Example:  Kinkade developed the technique to mass produce reproductions of his paintings onto art canvas, then have someone add a few highlights by hand and sign mechanically using a tiny bit of his blood  in the ink to prove provenance via DNA.  The company made enormous editions – shipping them by the truckload – yet marketed them as collectible, almost original, at very high prices.  While one could purchase a small paper print for $100, the hand-highlighted canvas giclees were over $10,000.

Example:  Kinkade loved to drink and gamble.  Kuskie describes several incidents where Kinkade got sloppy drunk and urinated out the hotel window or in the elevator.  He mentioned one evening where they played poker and drank and talked about football, baseball and girls.  (I wondered whether it was “locker room banter”.)   The man could never drink enough or own enough things.  He even bought a house out from underneath his supposed best friend, and purchased cars and boats and more houses.  Kuskie didn’t mention Kinkade helping anyone learn to paint (as he had been helped) or charitable giving, just desperate consumption.

Questions of Art and Business

I was unfamiliar with Kinkade’s work and looked at his paintings online.  The cottages and homes are lovely, pretty homes with a welcoming walk to a front door all set in verdant lawns or trees or snow-covered shrubs.  They look 3-dimensional and are appealing, I wanted to walk up that path and open that door.  At least that was the first house and the first cottage.  The second house and cottage were almost identical to the first.  Same building, different setting.  Third, ditto.  Fourth, fifth, so on, all were essentially the same.

All were warm and welcoming, some place that a frazzled young couple could imagine living, where the baby doesn’t have colic and the bills never pile up.  He painted an imaginary life filled with peace and happiness.

The paintings appealed to many people, especially folks that had not bought art before.  The pictures were safe, easy to display, pretty, impressively framed and non-controversial.  According to Kuskie, Kinkade wanted to “envelop his audience in a memory, a feeling, a world that held a sacred, safe place for them”.   Kuskie made the point that Kinkade’s work “questioned the modern art mandate that art has to be inaccessible, cerebral, or negative in order to be legitimate”.

There is some truth to Kuskie’s comment.  I have seen the same sort of slotting in art, where pieces that are frankly ugly, but make a political point or use impressive techniques or have symbolic meaning have won acclaim.  Some sophisticates seem to feel that good art is always challenging, that common people won’t understand or appreciate it, and that by definition, if common folks do like something then it cannot be any good.

I wouldn’t consider Kinkade’s endless series of cottages or houses as particularly great art, but not because middle class folks like them. I like the fact they convey peace and the viewer’s emotional response becomes part of the art.  But there isn’t anything after that initial welcome feeling.  We don’t see the inside, just the inviting exterior, and the lighthouses and gazebos look artificial, not at all appealing.  (Kinkade did plein air paintings that were quite good but they weren’t part of the company’s marketing engine.)

Kuskie contrasts the dynamic in fine art, where the balance between demand and supply needs careful attention to maintain its limited nature.  Artists create reproductions to reach a wider audience and increase over all sales and income and must be careful to keep edition sizes low as otherwise the art print has limited value.  By contrast, the licensing business thrives on volume, the more trinkets and calendars the better.

I am interested in business and art and found Kuskie’s insights about marketing and building a consistent product backed by on-message promotion and placement and with a price point just high enough to be a bit of a stretch but not too high that it was unaffordable.  Kuskie was more comfortable talking about business than talking about his friend Thomas.

Writing

Kuskie has interesting stories and ideas and I enjoyed reading Billion Dollar Painter, but he is not a good writer.  There is repetition and filler and he jumps around in time too much.  A good editor would have cut it by a third.

Kuskie describes Kinkade as fun-loving and a great friend to be with, but the man he shows with his examples is someone I would never want to be around.  Many other company leaders also come across as obnoxious, greedy and not all that good at running a profitable company or behaving fairly with customers.  Kuskie sees himself as a good guy, only peripherally involved with the company, not responsible for its results.  He sees himself as Thomas Kinkade’s good friend, yet he seems to have enabled the drinking binges, always willing to go out with Kinkade to a dive.  It didn’t ring true.

The selection of colored plates is weak.  Kuskie has many photos of Kinkade with his business associates, but no pictures of his paintings and only one picture of a licensed trinket.   Kuskie contrasts Kinkade with other successful artists, none of whom I was familiar with, and a plate or two of each one’s work would have been interesting.  I ended up finding them online.

Overall

Read Billion Dollar Painter if you are interested in art or business, or want to see how someone managed to pull tragedy out of success.  Don’t expect great writing or deep insights about the man Thomas Kinkade.  It’s a fast read and worth the time.

4 Stars

Ancient Egyptian Jewelry by Carol Andrews – Fascinating Text and Photos

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If you browse art museums’ gift catalogs this Christmas you’ll notice many necklaces and bracelets that are inspired by Egyptian jewelry.  The style is distinctive with eads in blue, green and red, golden drops and spacers, simple color combinations.  Dave has given me three Egyptian-styled necklaces from the art museums, which I love wearing but knew nothing about the meaning of the stones or colors.

Carol Andrews, author of Ancient Egyptian Jewelry, shows and describes many pieces from over 4000 years of Egyptian culture and includes details about the tomb where found or the original owner.  She uses a numerical index on photos that correspond to small numbers in the margin by the description, a big benefit because the photos are often separated by many pages from the description.

I got the book expecting to be dazzled by photos but in fact the text was more interesting.  My favorite chapters covered the materials and techniques.  Ms. Andrew does a wonderful job describing what materials the Egyptians used, how they varied over time and where the artisans sourced the stones.  She vividly brings the jewelry workshops to life by showing tomb paintings, some that include workers’ conversations, and explaining what the pictures meant.

A few things that fascinated me were:

  • All Egyptians wore jewelry all the time.  Lower class people wore less costly strung beads while richer folks indulged in gold and highly crafted inlaid or multi-string pieces.
  • Jewelry was adornment yes, but also highly symbolic.
  • Jewelry styles did not change all that much over 4000 years.  The Egyptians favored the same colors and the same motifs – falcons, scarab beetles, cobras, favorite divinities – all through the dynastic era.
  • Techniques and materials changed and some elements waned and waxed in popularity.  For example, amethyst was popular in the Middle Kingdom but wasn’t used much at all after that.  She noted the purple color wouldn’t have gone well in the inlay styles favored in the New Kingdom.
  • Egyptians used a lot of common-as-dirt materials!  They viewed lapis lazuli as the primo gem, green turquoise and carnelian as also precious.  But they were happy to use limestone or jasper, or even colored cement underneath quartz.
  • They used gold and silver and the alloy electrum and viewed gold as the divine metal.
  • Much of the jewelry buried with mummies was made on purpose for the tomb.  They were often more skimpy, not really wearable, and used inferior materials.  For instance in order to wear one of the big, heavy pectorals, the piece had to have a counterweight that lay on one’s back.  Funerary jewelry lacked the counterweights.
  • Egyptians wore white linen and used the jewelry for color.

Overall I recommend Ancient Egyptian Jewelry if you are interested in ancient history, jewelry in general, or want a lively and engaging look at 4000 years of high culture.

5 Stars

 

Review: UnClobber by Colby Martin

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NetGalley offered Unclobber with the subtitle “Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality” and the blurb promised author Colby Martin would examine “what the Bible says (and does not say) about homosexuality in such a way that breathes fresh life into outdated and inaccurate assumptions and interpretations.”

Martin was an assistant pastor at a large evangelical church in Arizona who was fired for his beliefs on homosexuality.  He gives his story of his several years-long quest to reconcile his beliefs in God with his equally strong belief that homosexuals should be included, not excluded in the church and reinterprets certain Biblical verses that condemn homosexual activities.

I was surprised that one of his evangelical denomination’s beliefs was that homosexuals could not become church members.  I always thought the church is for sinners – all types of sinners – and it is counterproductive to eliminate one certain type of sinner, to declare certain behaviors render a person ineligible for the grace of God.  (We Catholics know everyone in the room is a sinner of one sort or another.)

Author Martin was interesting and believable in the beginning when he recounts his earliest steps towards what he calls an inclusive, affirmin,g progressive Christianity, but as the book progressed I got very tired of the excessive back patting.  He sounds smug.

Colby reinterprets the Biblical passages in the Old Testament and in Paul’s letters to show that the Bible does not condemn the person who is attracted to the same sex.  He believes that Paul condemns same-sex acts that are in fact prostitution, sexual slavery, rape, and not all homosexual behavior, inferring that Paul was not speaking of long term, committed same-sex relationships.

Colby structured the book to alternate chapters about his search for a church that believes as he does with his interpretation of key Biblical passages (what he calls the Clobber verses) that speak to homosexual behaviors.  This structure made it a bit confusing, especially since he didn’t follow a linear timeline in the search chapters.

He is enthusiastic and fervent and passionate to share what he sees as the truth with everyone.  He shared two beliefs:  1)  There is no blanket condemnation of people attracted to the same sex and 2) the Bible does not condemn all sexual activities between people of the same sex and in fact these are moral and right when the two people are committed to each other.  He is quite convincing on the first but not so on the second.

Overall 3 Stars.