Barbara Ehrenreich - Dancing In The Streets (Granta, 2007) **

A nice and easy to read history book on "The History of Collective Joy", from ancient dances in Greece to today's rock festivals, and how celebrations have always been at the center of all cultural activities, often within the culture, but equally as part of a counter-culture and even strongly opposed by the official authorites and moral leaders.

Keep dancing!

Amos Oz - Judas (Chatto & Windus, 2016) **

Shmuel Ash is a jewish student in the Jerusalem of 1959, and although he was writing a university text on early christianity and the role of Judas, he drops out and becomes the assistant of an old man, to keep him company when the old man requires. Shmuel falls in love with the old man's 40-year old lively yet mysterious daughter-in-law, Atalia Abravanel. Her deceased father used to be one of Israel's traitors, a man who advocated for one single state under international control where jews and arabs could live together. As a vocal anti-zionist his named and reputation had been smeared. Like Judas, he was the traitor of his own heritage and culture.

The concept of the novel sounds good. Different layers are at work, past and present, myth and reality, personal lives and historic facts, with often differences in perspectives, including during the long discussions between Shmuel and the old man. The shifting perspectives on the concept of traitor of course also surface. Was Judas a traitor, or was he the one without whom the crucifixion and resurrection could not have taken place?

So far so good, but all this does not make the novel really a strong literary achievement. The characters are dull, with the exception of Atalia, the story is without inherent tension, and stylistically it is not very special. What remains is a novel of ideas. Strangely enough, the deep sense of anger caused by betrayal, the confusion it creates, the uncertainty about whether or not to go against the own group, the cowardice or courage are all very strong and deep emotions that deserved a better story than the one offered. But maybe that's just another layer. That the distant reporting by the uninteresting characters is in itself a betrayal of the deep personal human crisis that betrayal constitutes.

Christian Kracht - Imperium (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012) *

"In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nürenberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island of Kabakon. His goal: to establish a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919: he was forty-three years old", is the short description on the back cover of the book. And the man actually existed. He had even a degrees in physics and chemistry from Erlangen University, and he wrote a book "The Carefree Future"in 1898.

In this novel, Kracht reconstructs the life of the excentric man, telling his arrival in New Guinea, the creation of his plantation, his local servants on the island, his interactions with the authorities and other Germans on the main land. Somehow it fails to make the person really come to live. Kracht depicts his main character with a kind of detached superiority, instead of really trying to understand the man's motivations, actions and ensuing insanity. At times it made me think of that other bad novel "The Confederacy Of Dunces", for the simple reason that the main character is stupid, and you wonder the whole time why a novelist would spend time to ridicule his main character. Why?

Kracht's writing is not bad by itself, and sure, no doubt Engelhardt's vision on life and on diet were pretty narrow, one-sided and doomed to fail, and even the author did a lot to bring historical facts back to us, the condescending tone kills what could have been a strong book.

Howard Bloom - The Genius Of The Beast (Prometheus, 2011) ***

Howard Bloom is a kind of a unique author. He is well-read, and knows his way in many science areas, but he is not a scientist (even if he pretends to be astro-physicist, evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist - which he never formally studied). He used to be the PR guy for famous rock stars in the 70s and 80s for Prince, Billy Joël, Michael Jackson, Queen and pretends to have generated more than 28 billion USD by doing that. He is many things but he is not humble. His self-obsession in his books can be irritating and off-putting, but at the same time he has some great qualities.

Why I like him is because of his big picture thinking. He brings things together in a way that very few people can, creating links between mass behaviour theories with physics, history and paleontology. I like the way he tries to build grand theories about how abstract processes underly totally different phenomena. I like the way he writes, with passion, without dwelling too much on the details, but steadily dragging the reader on towards new insights and new parallels and new facts. He is strong at giving new perspectives on known realities.

In The Genius Of The Beast, he tries to look at the forces that drive us, our emotions and values to create innovations and a better world, or as the subtitle says : "a radical re-vision of capitalism".

Like a good marketeer, he gives names to his own inventions: he calls itthe "secular genesis machine", the "evolutionary search engine", and the two rules of science: the truth at any cost, including the cost of your life, and to look at what is right under your nose as if it is the first time you have seen it, then proceed from there. He describes how our deepest feelings of personal self-fullfilment combined with empathy will move the world forward, looking for improvements in the culture we create, failing oftentimes, yet moving forward, course-correcting and continuing on the new track. And why capitalism is important, because in the end the consumer will dictate where he or she wants to go, and go for those items that are giving pleasure, that surprise and that create fun. And if there are side-effects, the system will handle those and move forward.

This book, like some of his other books, reads like an endless rant, without clear structure but written with passion. I'm not sure whether you have to take what he writes seriously, clearly he jumps from one subject to the next, finding big analogies between the way molecules work, or beehives, or tribes or complex societies, without any evidence that there is a natural link. Bloom is not a scientist, despite his own claims, but he creates wonderful collages of related and unrelated facts.

If you have a good sense of criticism, some of his ideas may be of interest, and surely challenging some of the thoughts you currently hold, making you think about the topics he writes about. That by itself is already a good result, even if you won't find any conclusive answers.

Maylis de Kerangal - Réparer Les Vivants (Gallimard, 2014) ****

A young man dies. A woman needs a heart. This is the incredibly moving story of a heart transplant. Simon dies during a surfing accident. It is the story of his parents, who rush to the hospital. It is the story of the surgeon who wants to do a good job. It is the story of the young nurse with her own problems. It is the story of the young doctor who has to ask the parents to decide then and there to donate the boy's organs, while his body is kept on an artificial breathing machine. It is the story of Claire, who receives the heart.

It is all one story. One day. With a full description of all the medical processes and procedures, in detail. It is factual and cold. It is even without emotion, like a job that needs to be done, a product that needs to be produced by a machine. Hanging around this medical trajectory of the heart from one body to the other body, there is the deep emotional description of the different protagonists's lives, all of them presented by the omnicient narrator as if they all are the lead character. The contrast is fascinating, the writing is subtle and sensitive.

De Kerangal writes with an uncanny precision both to describe the actions of the humans who go their way, as their emotions and thoughts. She does not offer answers. She offers choices. Terrifying choices.

Giles Milton - Nathaniel's Nutmeg (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1999) ****

Wow, how I loved reading this book. It's a historical account of the nutmeg wars in the late 16th and early 17th century between the European powers: England, The Netherlands and Portugal. Nutmeg was an incredibly expensive spice, that was available from a few tiny islands in the Pacific. The profit was 3200%. It was costlier than gold.

In its incredibly detailed account, Giles Milton actually recreates the entire history directly based from source material from that time: log books, letters, correspondence between the owners and investors in the East-Indian Companies. The real account of how people treated each other is shocking to modern eyes, not only - and obviously - when you were the enemy, but also among fellow countrymen. A person's life was worth nothing. Boats expected many sailors to die while sailing across the globe. Sailors were sometimes only informed about the destination after they left the harbour. It is the story of how the British and the Dutch waged wars around the island of Run and the Banda Islands, mobilising the local people to choose sides.

In retrospect, the whole endeavour seems absurd, yet of high historical significance. In the final deal, the Dutch came to a deal with the British, and they obtained the rights for the island of Run (3km by 1 km) in exchange for New Amsterdam on the East Coast of the United States, now better known as Manhattan, which came into the hands of the British.

If you're interested in history or in the stupidity of mankind (and how we have luckily evolved over time), this book comes highly recommended.

Boualem Sansal - 2084 - La Fin Du Monde (Gallimard, 2015) *

As much as I liked "Rue Darwin", the novel by French Algerian author Boualem Sansal, as much I never got into this one, called "2084  La Fin Du Monde", with reference obviously to George Orwell's "1984". 

This time, the depicted world is called Abistan, where all inhabitants follow the rule of the prophet, and where only one culture, religion and history exists. Thanks to an abstract "Enemy", the people live united and in full submission without any room for personal thoughts or questions. Ati, the main character starts finding cracks in the system, finding evidence that there is another world somewhere, and that other civilisations once existed. But trying to uncover the forbidden truth is an act of rebellion with the severest punishment. 

The dystopia is cruel. It's a horrifying thought about what would happen if the entire world was ruled by one oppressive religion. Like "1984", it is a frightening prospect. And like "1984" as frightening as the projected future world is, as shallow is the plot. A significant amount of space is used to describe the world in the book, with the religion as the main character, more than Ati himself.

Reading this book was not fun. And even if that may not have been its main purpose, it also did give any new insights or new perspectives or even delight in the style or the composition. Somehow, the novel left me totally indifferent. 

Paul B. Wignall - The Worst Of Times (Princeton University Press, 2015) ****

Life on earth has existed for approx. 3.5 billion years, and it took a 1 billion years after the creation of the earth to start happening in a chance reaction of molecules. This book gives an overview of the major extinctions of life during the Permian, Triassic and Jurassic period some 260 to 200 million years ago, which has known no less than 6 major catastrophes that almost wiped out all life on earth. And if you're interested, there have been many, many more global scale calamities of the same nature, but few with the same power. Volcanoes, igneous rocks created a global warming that killed nearly every known animal, reptiles, early mammals and crustaceans, by not only heating up the atmosphere but also by desoxygenation the oceans. Interestingly enough, this unprecedented massacre of life, paved the way for the famous dinosaurs to emerge, who survived the cataclysm (together with the crocodiles).

Wignall writes for a broad audience, but with a level of detail and explanation of his scientific methodology which may go beyond the average educated non-geologist readers capacity such as mine. At the same time, it gives a wonderful account of what the mysterious world so long ago might have looked like. You can only wonder how little we know, and probably what more mysteries will be unveiled in the coming years now that new technology allows us to recreate the world of the past.

John Banville - The Blue Guitar (Viking, 2015) *

I forced myself to read till page 30. Then I decided that time was too precious to keep reading. The narrator is a kind of loser, complaining in a self-mockery kind of tone about his fate, which is of course due to his own fault. Is he interesting? No. Did anything special happen? No. Is it funny? No. Is it well written? No, because the narrator is too self-contained, too pleased with his own wit and choice of words. So I stopped.

But please read his other novels. Read The Book of Evidence, or The Sea. He is an excellent writer, only not everything can be a success.

Dave Eggers - Heroes Of The Frontier (Penguin, 2016) *

What is wrong with Dave Eggers? He is one of those authors whose quality of writing decreases with the years, as if he has nothing more to say, both in terms of content and stylistically. If you have read "You Shall Know Our Velocity" and "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", you will have been thrilled by the fresh approach to writing, to the wonderful characters and stories in the books. Then somehow he started to lose his power and freshness, and he thought it was a good moment to start changing the world by adding societal messages in his literature, which is not a good idea unless you are a truly great writer. "What Is The What", brought the interesting story of an Sudanese refugee in the US. "Zeitoun" brought the story of Syrian building contractor in the wake of hurricane Katrina who gets incarcerated. These books are still palpable by his accusation of injustice in the world, and even if I fully agree with his viewpoints, that does not make great literature. 

"Heroes of the Frontier" brings the story of a mother who flees to Canada with her two children, away from a malpractice lawsuit as a dentist, away from her husband, away from the life as she had known it, on the run for life itself so it seems. The only problem is: nothing happens. The people she meets are friendly, her kids understand the situation and don't rebel. They meet people, and deal with every circumstances of finding a place for their van, or a place to eat. There are no male predators on the lose, no bears lurking in the bushes, no criminals intent on stealing her stuff, and even the kids can wander around without any risk. There is no tension, no conflict, no anticipation, no expectation. There is no cynicism, no humour, nothing absurd, nothing bizarre. There are no deep insights, no changes of character, no entertaining dialogues, no stylistic wizardry. There is nothing that fuels the reader's mind to keep reading. I did finish the novel though, and I wonder why in retrospect.

Michael Cunningham - A Wild Swan (4th Estate, 2015) *****

What a delight! Michael Cunningham re-writes fairy tales as modern style short stories, and modern times stories, and all that in a mesmerising, poetic and lyrical style, full of rhythm and the fluency of a real narrative, stories as they ought to be, told to you directly, full of wonder and amazement, full of knowledge about how it's going to end, and building up the tension, playing the ignorance of the attentive listeners changing into emotional identification and anticipation about what's coming next. And the takes the reader along on the spells and curses of the mighty and the beautiful, because "who wouldn't want to fuck these people up?"

Cunningham does it beautifully, graciously, and don't be afraid, these are not just blunt 're-tellings' of know stories. He gives them his own twist, he tells us what came before the known tale, or after.

And as the tales themselves, what Cunningham does is magic. And if the only criteria for good literature is that you can't wait to read it again, then these writings reach the top.

The book is short, elevent stories only, beautifully illustrated by the drawings of Yuko Shimizo.

Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days (Harper Perennial, 2006) ***

Mmm ... A strange novel, this one. Three short stories with the same (?) characters but set in three different times, all joined by the verses of Walt Whitman and the relationship between 12-year olds and adults.

"In The Machine", the first story takes place in the 19th century, when a young boy starts working in the factory, at the very machine that killed his older brother, as the only possibility to earn a living. He falls in love with his dead brother's adult girl friend. He is a great fan of Walt Whitman and even speaks only in Whitman verses. The story is dark, bizarre and gripping. You cannot but feel the deepest sympathy with the strange boy and his uncanny interpretation of reality.

"The Children's Crusade" takes place after 9/11. Young boys are recruited to blow themselves up in New York, housed in empty appartments and prepped by an anarchist woman. The policy psychologist unravels the system and gets into contact with one of the boys.

"Like Beauty" is kind of science fiction. An android with a programming mistake - he is too human - escapes from the city (New York) together with a lizard-like alien to a place where they expect a space ship to leave for another planet. Again, the android is programmed with Walt Whitman poetry.

Interestingly enough, it starts all very well. The first story is special and amazing. Then the quality decreases, as do the characters and the writing. Sometimes it's good to know what to publish and what not. If the novel only contained the first story, I would give it a five star rating, so if you're interested, please read it. The two other stories are unfortunately not of the same quality.

Howard Bloom - The Lucifer Principle (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) ***

In "The Lucifer Principle", self-proclaimed scientist Howard Bloom investigates the power of evil: its  reason to exist, its value, its biological, psychologial and social causes and purpose, and luckily also how to deal with it. As with any of Bloom's books, you get an incredible display of borrowed knowledge, from biology, paleontology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, history, economy, psychology and any other "ology" you can think of. He is the guy with the big picture vision, who identifies patterns and analogies to substantiate his thesis, regardless of whether these patterns actually exist, or regardless of whether there is any causal relationship between these grand analogies he identifies.

In his view, evil is an inherent part of our life. It's part of everything that happens. It's the power of destruction versus the power of creation at work in everything that's taking place.

Like in his other books, he has an optimistic view on the future. The global superorganism to which we increasingly belong, will try to find ways to deal with evil, and the former tribal fights over resources (land, live stock, women), the deepest savagery that drives humanity, will be turned to positive outcomes through the power of imagination, the new world that we can imagine to live in one day.

Even if Bloom connects what should not be connected, or even if he jumps to conclusions, or even if he too eagerly wants to prove that he is right - instead of taking the scientific method to question his own theory - the sheer amount of interesting facts make this a highly interesting book, which will surely challenge your current ideas. If only for that reason, it's worth reading.

Colm Tóibin - The Blackwater Lightship (Picador, 1999) ***

Because I was so enthralled by Irish author Colm Tóibín's latest novels, I bought this earlier work, "The Blackwater Lightship", shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. The story is about three generations of women who each have problems with the mother-daughter relationship. Because the son/grandson is dying from AIDS, the family now has to live together at the remote country house of the grandmother.

Like with his other novels, Tóibín is a master at creating real-life characters, people of flesh and blood, whose position you can understand, and even if you can't understand them, they are still presented as entirely plausible and natural. All the characters have own personality and even way of dialoguing: cynical, confrontational, conflict-avoiding ... but at a much deeper level they are thrown together by life itself. They have no other choice but to deal with the situation, and because of Declan's disease, they have to overcome their own all too human smallness to create something grander for the young man's last months.

Even if it's not his best novel - I think his writing style has much improved - its still above average by any standard. Tóibín is the master of the deep emotions of daily life and he loves all his characters. There is no evil to be spotted, unless in fate itself.

Recommended!

Luckas Vander Taelen - De Grote Verwarring (Houtekiet, 2016) ***

Luckas Vander Taelen, documentaire-maker, ex-politicus, columnist en vrijdenker durft het zoals gewoonlijk aan om zijn mening te uiten over één van de heikele thema's van het moment: hoe omgaan met het toenemend fundamentalisme in de islam, en dan met name in België?

Als atheïst is hij tegen elke vorm van indoctrinatie door religieuze instanties, hoewel hij uiteraard niemand het recht ontzegt om te geloven.

Hij klaagt de houding aan van politieke partijen en opiniemakers die het verschil niet kunnen zien tussen iedereen gelijke kansen geven aan de ene kant, en religieus fanatisme aanvallen aan de andere. We leven in een samenleving waarin mensen kansen krijgen, en het eindeloze verwijt dat het "de samenleving" is die verantwoordelijk is voor de problemen, of dat het "Westen" de oorzaak is van alle problemen - zowel lokaal als internationaal - houdt geen steek.

Hij verwijt "links" dat ze mee gaan in dit discours, wat leidt tot een soort blinde verdediging van "de migrant" zonder dat de problemen worden aangepakt die sommige migranten creëren of waar ze ook zelf het slachtoffer van worden.

Hij pleit voor betere en meer integratie (maar geen assimilatie) met respect voor de waarden en vrijheden waar deze samenleving eeuwen voor heeft gevochten. Het probleem durven onderkennen is een eerste stap om tot een oplossing te komen.

Ik hou van zijn logica, zijn rechtgeaardheid en zijn echte bekommernis om er iets aan te doen. Jammer dat iemand als hij de politiek de rug heeft moeten toekeren.

Karl Ove Knausgaard - Dancing In The Dark - My Struggle 4 (Harvill Secker, 2015) ***

Book 4! Two more to go and Knausgaard's "The Struggle" series will be finished, I guess. In this book he describes how he became a teacher right after secondary school (!), moving to the north of Norway to start working in a local school. Like with the previous 'novels' he takes the concept of autobiography to a new height, recreating in minute detail the facts and dialogues and thoughts and feelings that he cannot possibly have remembered, fantasising the day-to-day happenings around the key moments of his life.

And you get it as it is: the love stories, the friends, the teachers, the distress, the puerile attitude, the young man's irresponsible behaviour now that he's living away from his parents, and his responsible behaviour now that he's a teacher, his disrespect for his drunken father, his brother, his mother, and his own drunken bouts ... all themes and stories that we have started to know from the previous books. But nevertheless, it makes for fun reading, especially because it is so easy to identify with him. Knausgaard is nine years younger than me, but the context, and even the music where not that different then. The people are real people, with real stories and behaviour, erratic or friendly. The plot and the characters are real, and then you may wonder why you read this description of a reality that is nothing special, that is so unbelievably common and recognisable ... because that's exactly what it does. His writing is so good, that you get transposed again, not into fiction, but into a reality that you had almost forgotten. It brings back memories of what you, as the reader did at that time. It's a kind of literary time-machine. And that makes it fun. There is doubt about it that I will read the other two books.

Orlando Ortega-Medina - Jerusalem Ablaze (Cloud Lodge, 2017) *

Orlando Ortega-Medina is a Californian of Judeo-Spanish descent, and "Jerusalem Ablaze" is a series of short stories that take place in Japan, Oregon, Canada and Israel.

The stories are immature, with unreal and dark situations that are created for effect, but without any sense of humanity or even tension. The narrating is distant, without any interest or even deepening of the characters. You read and wonder 'so what'? Who are these characters and why would I care about them? The stories and the characters remain at the surface, with the plot twists as the only element of interest, but as I said, mainly there for effect. The writing is good, but without a specific style or voice.

I have better things to read.

Carlos Castán - Bad Light (Hispabooks, 2016) ****

A man is murdered. His friend muses over their friendship. There is not much action. There is no investigation, apart by the friend himself, near the end, rummaging through his appartment looking for clues. The rest of the novel is an abstract investigation, about life, about art, about the relationship between the individual and life and art. It is a philosophical quest, more than a crime investigation. It is a search for a lost friendship, a reconstruction of lost loves too, as both men have become single recently.

Castán's style is poetic, meandering from thought to memory and back in a kind or abstract stream of consciousness, and every fact, and meeting and plot twist is lifted to a higher level, a comparison with art, with philosophy all drenched in an incredible sadness and darkness. Even love does not bring light, only sorrow and a sense of abandonment: "One cannot truly love a safe haven unless there are dark forces lurking outside, a world brimful of orphanages and tombs and beasts, of children who have gone hungry that night and a wind that howls as it whips around the corners of the neighborhoods in which we had never set foot".

This novel will not cheer you up, but offers the kind of writing that luckily escapes the "creative writing" courses that destroy literature, offering a voice that is special and unique, that defies commercial interests or even literary pretense. That authenticity and careful craftmanship, together with a wonderfully sustained and balanced atmosphere make it a strong book.

Lawrence Krauss - The Greatest Story Told ... So Far (Simon & Schuster, 2017) ****

"The Greatest Story Ever Told" obviously refers to the bible, but that is just fiction, so Krauss brings us the wonderful story of science and matter, which is the real "Greatest Story Ever Told ... So Far", allowing for new scientific insights to change our current beliefs.

Krauss takes you along to the very tiniest particles of matter, and beyond that, explaining how to even can exist, and explaining what we don't understand. And despite his genuine efforts to include the layman among his readership, by inventing analogies and visual explanations to give us a glimpse of what mathematics or what the Large Hadron Collider has revealed, the outcome is still as mystifying as it was before. But luckily not only to me, but also for particle physicists and astrophysicists who look in wonder at their findings, probably even more surprised than I am, because they can understand at least part of it : "Not only have our explorations revealed the existence of dark matter, which is likely composed of new elementary particles not yet observed in accelerators, but far more exotic still, we have discovered that the dominant energy of the universe resides in empty space - and we currently have no idea how it arises" .

But that makes it fascinating. Not an easy to read book, but fascinating stuff.

David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers (Penguin, 2014) **

Israeli politician Baruch Kotler flees from his country with his young lover Leora to the Crimea, where, by accident, he meets the KGB officer who once betrayed him when he was a Soviet resident, sending him to the gulag so many decades ago. They had already rented a room at his betrayer's place, so they stay locked up in the same space for much of the novel.

The novel is about betrayal, and as Vladimir betrayed Baruch so many decades ago, so does Kotler himself feel to be a betrayer, not only to his wife but also to his country. But is also about being Jewish in modern times, even if non-religious, about the state of Israel, about zionism.

Even if the overall concept of the novel and the plot are good, and even the writing is not bad, the overall impression is one of a missed opportunity. The tension never goes really deep, and maybe too many questions are answered, especially the place of 'jewishness' is a little too preachy for the non-jew that I am.