All Our Worldly Goods - a Novel of Love Between the Wars (Irene Nemirovsky, 1947 (translated 2008))

This is my favorite of Nemirovsky's works so far (see here and here for comparison; the first link also discusses a bit of Nemirovsky's extremely interesting back story).

The translator explains that the title carries a different meaning in French - less materialistic in weight than the English words.

The story line follows generations of a family resident in northern France - a town where the German army swept through in both WWI and WWII.  One son (later a soldier in WWI) breaks off the engagement to the wealthy fiancee preferred by his industrialist grandfather and instead marries for love; he is cut out of the family business (though things come full circle).  His son is drawn into WWII fighting.

It's just a very nice story in many ways.  And brings alive, a bit differently than other discussions, some of the reasons why the French just couldn't have been all that excited about ramping up to fight the Germans in 1940.  WWI fought mostly on French soil, with horrific casualties; partial mobilizations less than 20 years later; here come the Germans again - unimaginable.  French citizens who were say 25 when WWI ended were just 46 or 47 when the WWII invasion occurred - how must that have felt?

As in Suite Francaise, interesting scenes when French towns evacuated ahead of the advancing German army.

Quick read, worthwhile, the author is a good observer

Double Cross - The True Story of the D-Day Spies (Ben Macintyre, 2012)

The Wall Street Journal has three sections spread across the Friday and Saturday editions that generally have some interesting reviews, articles, etc. - I save these for PJ, who often catches up on the stack when we are car-tripping on one of our little vacations.  On last year's trip to Laguna Beach and Santa Monica, she noticed reviews on two books about WWII spying.  Since we both are fans of pretty much any movie involving Nazis and spies (particularly 1940s vintage), she ended up getting both books for me as Christmas gifts.

So this was the first one I had a chance to read - had pretty high expectations, and they were exceeded.

I really think, or at least hope, that they do a new movie version based on the "real" story - so many more facts have been declassified in comparison to information available when those charming movies were made - and the "real" story is just phenomenal.

This author focuses on five double agents and their British handlers.  These five were about as unlikely as possible - described on the dust jacket as "a dashing Serbian playboy, a Polish fighter pilot, a bi-sexual Peruvian party girl, a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming, and a volatile Frenchwoman [with an] obsessive love for her pet dog . . ."  Yeah, that was the core team.

I wasn't aware that every single spy based in England and working for Germany had, by some point in the middle of the war years, either been killed, imprisoned, or turned toward working for England as a double agent.  German spy-handlers being duped sometimes had their own reasons for not pushing too hard to find out what was going on - money, prestige, anti-Hitler animus, etc.  But all in all, it just seemed that the Brits were better at this game (assisted in part by code-breaking skill).

Among the challenges in running all of these double agents:  providing information to Germany from each that was good enough to give them credibility with their German handlers, yet not so good that it constituted actionable intelligence.  Amazing how often the mails or other communications channels were just a bit too slow - such that the double agent could send true, actionable intelligence that arrived just a tad late - but the Germans didn't seem to note this pattern or find it suspicious.  All this activity built up to a grand deception for D-Day, when it was critical that German forces be concentrated near Calais (rather than Normandy).  A flood of misinformation was provided, and the German forces in fact were deployed just about exactly as would be expected if the double-cross agents reports were believed.  The British were able to intercept messages indicating that pretty much direct quotes from double-cross agents were getting all the way to Hitler himself.

How much did it help?  I have to believe it was quite significant.  Even if plenty of other factors were involved, and even if the author might be prone to overstate their role.

At any rate, it makes a sensational story.

Thinking the Twentieth Century (Tony Judt (with Timothy Snyder), 2010)

I've found Tony Judt immensely helpful in thinking about the 20th century - especially this book, but also this one though to a lesser extent.  I was interested in this - his final book - for two additional reasons.  First - he was collaborating with Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands (in queue but not read).  Second - this was written as Judt died of ALS - a pretty compelling circumstance in which to leave behind some thoughts; there was a very interesting NYT story about this, and I was particularly interested due to the Claude Lanners situation.

And I would recommend reading this book - I'd just stop before getting to the final chapter.

Judt is always a bit challenging for me - and useful - because he comes from Marxist, leftist, big government, faith in postwar social democracy background - different than my usual sources and inclinations.  But he's smart, not so dogmatic, always interesting (until that last chapter - but maybe that was Snyder's fault?)

This book goes through interesting discussion of his Jewish background - days in London - then active with Zionists until disillusioned.  Stefan Zweig as not representative of Jews outside big city Vienna - vast swathes of lesser educated countryside Jews in eastern European - very different in the pecking order depending on point of origin.  The Habsburg empire - not a bad thing for Jews.

He discusses his Marxist phase - why it was seductive, how hard it was for folks to let go.  That it had a significant religious component - end time, eschatology.

Sees Israel like the small nationalist states formed after WWI - vulnerable, insecure, identity wrapped up in some notion of ethnicity and self-determination.  A tough way to operate.

Fascism - interesting idea, probably not novel at all but it was to me - that this thrived in large part because of the fear of communism.  Which was a legitimate fear after WWI.  Fascism as lacking pretty much any intellectual framework (coherent or otherwise) - it did present itself as the chance to preserve order in the face of disorder.

At the end of the book - it's what it might be like sitting in the faculty lounge at Yale (where Snyder probably hangs around) - an echo chamber where insignificant little George W. Bush is responsible for all evils, corporate profits are bad, blah, blah, blah.

Judt does have a wonderful discussion about the difficulties of writing something useful - challenging writings will necessarily have a limited audience - says if he writes for New York Times Magazine, it "would be edited and distilled and reduced into acceptable midstream generalities."  A separate aspect I can relate to even in my little world:  "Obviously this is the condition of most people who write:  throwing a letter into the ocean in the forlorn hope that it will be picked up."  We write for ourselves in so many instances.

But how about this howler (from Snyder):  "The state that is responsible for health care is better (as we know) than the private sector at keeping costs down.  And because the state is thinking about long-term budgets rather than quarterly profits, the best way to keep costs down is to keep people healthy.  So where there is public health care there is intense attention to prevention."  Does Snyder really believe this?  If he's so careless to accept this, should I bother reading Bloodlands?  He sounds frighteningly like our president, especially with that dismissive "as we know" line.

Another one from Snyder:  "Amtrak is another example:  a kind of zombie train system which is kept lurching along [by Republicans] to demonstrate that public transportation is and must always be dysfunctional."  What??

The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas, 1844)

PJr and CPG liked, so I tried this - a true "adventure" story, I'd say - well worth reading. Easy to see why it is, and I expect will endure as, a classic.  Certainly made the time at the gym go by quickly.

Even if the book is quite long - as Umberto Eco explains in a nice "introduction," Dumas needed money and was paid by the word for this serialized work.  But the length, and repetitiveness, somehow draw or propel the story forward, I think.

The basic plot is well-known from multiple movie versions.  Edmond Dantes ends up in prison due to machinations of Danglars, Fernand, Caderrouse, Villefort - Dantes was framed as a Bonapartist when that was a dangerous thing to be.  Spends many years in prison; meets the abbe; loses Mercedes; acquires the abbe's hidden treasure following the daring escape; pursues revenge; some innocent folks suffer in addition to all the guilty parties; he has some regrets but ultimately handles it.  Became an expert in just about everything.

Italian bandits - Luigi Vampa, Pepino.  Danglars' scheming wife.  Villefort's deadly second wife.  Valentine and Maximilian Morrel.  Valentine's grandfather (old man Noirtier).  The Count's household help:  Ali, Bertuccio (with son Benedetto (also known as Prince Cavalcanti).  Mercedes's son - the duel.  Haydee.  And many more.

The plot line makes more sense if the reader has a little background with French history in first half of 19th century.  But this is definitely not needed to enjoy the tale.

The Castle (Franz Kafka) (written 1922, published 1926)

After running into so many glowing references to Kafka (including one just today in a Tony Judt book), I decided to go back to his books (at least two of the more famous ones, The Trial and this one).  

K, a land surveyor, is invited to "The Castle" to work.  He never gets there.  He spends time in a snow-laden village beneath the Castle.  It's hard to get around in the snow.  He learns that the authorities in the Castle - highly thought of in all respects - may have made an error in inviting a land surveyor.  He is not permitted to practice his trade.  He does end up for awhile as a janitor in the local school (this after forming a relationship with Frieda, the taproom girl).  He is somehow given two assistants - childlike, unhelpful, always present; one eventually takes off with Frieda.  He is supposed to receive messages from the Castle about his situation via Barnabas, but learns from Barnabas's sisters (especially via Olga) that this may not be very reliable.  (Their family had been disgraced when one of the sisters (Amalia) rejected an overture sent via message by a gentleman from the Castle.)

Klamm is an important Castle representative who spends time in the Gentlemen's Inn in the village.  K keeps trying to get in touch with Klamm.  His efforts do not succeed.


Pepi succeeded Frieda in the taproom.

The villagers have a strange life in general - generally in awe of the Castle and its inhabitants, inconsistent in their descriptions of the Castle officials, lacking understanding.  And K struggles to figure out how things work in this odd little world.

Chapter V is a masterpiece - K's conversation with the village chairman (low level official not even directly involved with the Castle) - about how K may have been summoned, and where he stands.  Kafka is rightly famous for observing and communicating the modern bureaucracy.

But there's more here - loneliness, inability to meet a goal; the setting in the village is unsettling.

Kafka didn't finish this book either; he was working on it when he died.

And no, I don't really know what to make of it.

The Long Road Home - The Aftermath of the Second World War (Ben Shephard, 2010)

I read lots of World War II stuff, and for good reason.  Most of it focuses on the political leadership, the generals and the armies, also for good reason.  This book is different - it focuses on the displaced persons (DPs, to use the then terminology) resulting from the military mayhem.

I liked it, though perhaps not as much as I was hoping.

On the Allied side, lots of planning and effort went into handling the DPs - it was recognized that this was critical to a lasting peace.  Nevertheless, the issue received a tiny fraction of resources in comparison to military needs (and for good reason).

I've read about a lot of these issues in books like this one, and even moreso in this one.  But this is one of the few to focus almost exclusively on the topic.

One obvious theme is the extreme degree of difficulty in eastern Europe - plenty of tough situations in western Europe, but nothing in comparison to areas where Hitler's armies swept through in 1939-1941; and then Stalin's armies swept back through later in the war.  Some areas saw multiple back-and-forth situations.

Life in DP camps - some of this went on for many years - no doubt substantial similarities to modern refugee camps - internal hierarchies and politics etc.

Nordic types were favored by British and US; Poles generally looked down upon; Jewish DPs as a particular challenge given their unique circumstances (even if the Holocaust per se hadn't yet entered public consciousness, certainly folks knew the Jews had been special targets).  This contributed directly to decisions about formalizing Israel as a state in 1948.

Ukrainians and others (including some Poles) absolutely desperate not to be returned to Russia - Americans and Brits became less strict about this as time went on.  These folks knew what their world would be like in Stalin-land.

The effort to trace lost children - sometimes resulting in returning long-adopted (if informally in many cases) children to parents who didn't know them and were in desperate straits of one kind or the other.

Getting places like Canada and the U.S. to take refugees.

Essentially this was a one-of-a-kind problem in terms of scope (not in terms of its nature) - no real way to anticipate or prepare for the post-war era.  The human suffering continued.

Coming Apart - The State of White America 1960-2010 (Charles Murray, 2012)

This book received lots of attention when it came out.

The author sifts through lots of data (such as it is) and provides a pretty compelling discussion about the separation of "white America" into two significant classes between 1960 and 2010. There was of course always an upper class - but it is interesting to consider how small that group was c. 1960 (and prior), and how similar everyone else was.  The modern upper class, to use that term, is much larger and has segregated itself into neighborhoods; its members are educated, knowledge workers, government workers, professionals, etc.

None of that would come as much of a surprise to anyone.

The part of the book that generated controversy is the discussion of how the lower class is increasingly afflicted by destructive behaviors that look very different from America's founding virtues - while the upper class tends to have a much higher retention of traditional values.

I think this is behavior that we all can pretty much see with our own eyes, but I think this book was new in being so forthright about the situation - in politically correct circles (including virtually the entire media), it is highly impolitic to speak of the poor outcomes for children born to single moms, to discuss the ridiculously high disability rates and reduced rates of men seeking work, etc..  So by calling this out, the book attracted lots of criticism from the left-liberal-progressive sphere.  Plus it's written by a white male with ties to the American Enterprise Institute - meaning attacks on the messenger rather than evaluation of the message   And yes, the data (much of it from surveys, so inherently non-definitive) used by the author is of course open to criticism and interpretation - but directionally, the message is worth taking seriously.

Murray reviews how America was founded on four principal virtues:  industriousness, honesty, marriage and religiosity.  (One can debate the specifics of the list, but something along these lines is at least roughly correct.)  He discusses how those virtues have for the most part disappeared among the lower classes (and weakened among the upper, though appearing to be stabilizing).

Interesting discussion based around excerpts from writings by the founding fathers and the amazingly perceptive de Tocqueville . . . that the U.S. didn't need a lot of laws or a detailed Constitution because its people were so tied into the four virtues . . . and that the system devised in the 18th century wouldn't work absent those virtues.  Looking at how poorly the system functions these days, one is inclined to agree.

Murray ends up sounding a positive note - he thinks things will get better, in part because they are so obviously unsustainable in current form (see quote below).

I don't think I agree with his outlook.  Quite likely the four founding virtues were out of date in various respects and required some significant tweaking - but we have moved so far away from them that I don't think we will be coming back.  Just look at two examples from the recent election results - 2012 presidential race, 2012 California state results - dependency and victimhood (a/k/a pitting group against group) are increasingly our country's new virtues.  The more sober virtues are very difficult to build and maintain - they are the exception.  They have seldom been duplicated anywhere in the world throughout history, as far as I know.  So America changes, and I don't think for the better.  (Though that doesn't change the fact, if one can so call it, that we still have lots of advantages over the rest of the world.)

By the way:  the book focuses on white America.  But the author states (and I guess there is some survey data) that the principles apply across the races.

A quote indicating optimism of the author (I agree with the sentiment but don't see reversal of the trend):  ". . . sooner or later, at some budgetary figure, the amount of money we are spending to achieve easily achievable goals will eventually persuade everyone that using armies of bureaucrats to take trillions of dollars, spend a lot of it on themselves, give back a lot of it to people who don't need it, and dole out what remains with all sorts of regulations and favoritism is not reasonable or necessary.  Wealthy nations can accomplish the core goal of the advanced welfare state - the economic wherewithal for people to provide for their basic needs - without the apparatus of the welfare state."

Saladin (Anne-Marie Edde, 2008 (this translation 2011))

Lots of detail here, and I moved through it pretty quickly.  Other than lots of information about Saladin, I'm not sure it added a lot to the list of books that appears here.

Saladin is most famous for retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.  He was a Kurd that had great battlefield success and translated this into great political success from a power base in Egypt - united (if briefly (and half-heartedly at best for many groups)), disparate Islamic factions and thus could beat the Crusader states at a time when they were in some disarray.  Did not establish an enduring succession.  Not of royal family.

Interactions with Richard the Lionhearted and others brought him into popular literature in the West.

Among other things, the book  reinforces how long the disputes between Shiite and Sunni have been going on.

Saladin as probably very sincerely religious, certainly very aware of how to use this in politics.  Author discussed jihad (and heaven-via-death-in-battle) as she thought it worked in 12th century - probably not much different than now (most pay lip service, a few suckers/fanatics volunteer, most demur).

Interesting discussion of siege tactics in a pre-gunpowder era; they were able to chuck pretty large objects over walls from distance (and return fire from within the walls).

Saladin wasn't mythologized in the East until the 19th century - because his line of succession didn't last, there wasn't much of a hagiography push even for the re-conqueror of Jerusalem.  Then co-opted as a figure for Islamic unity, and adopted by folks like Saddam Hussein.

The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1914-15 (published 1925))

One quickly sees how the adjective "Kafkaesque" came into usage.

Joseph K. is arrested and prosecuted by a shadowy court system.  He never learns the nature of the charges against him.

K. hires a lawyer, who doesn't seem to advance his case.  I like the scenes with K.'s practical uncle.  Also the scenes where K (a senior bank official) is competing with the vice president.  Also the opening scene (where he is arrested in bizarre fashion).

K. sees folks in the court system - those charged, minor court officials, clerks, etc.  But never gets a clue as to how things work, or even why he is in the system.

I see Kafka referred to as an incredibly important author for the 20th century, and I understand that this work (though unfinished, like all his works) is thought to be one of his best.  I like it; I also must be missing something because I don't quite get why it's considered so great.  Pretty clearly it's about modern bureaucracy, lack of accountability, lack of transparency?  I note that the book was written in 1914-1915 - before the emergence of the Soviet state.  (Though there had been plenty of repression in German lands over the years (Kafka being Czech)).

Monte Cassino - The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II (Matthew, Parker, 2004)

I've read a fair amount about this battle (have been interested in it from Irvin Bormann perspective in addition to general interest in World War II).  At first I wasn't feeling that this book added a lot - and I still prefer the discussion about the battle (and Italian campaign in general) in this book.  But the author's technique - heavy reliance on survivor interviews - became progressively more interesting or captivating as the book proceeded, and I ended up liking it quite a bit.

It reinforces the message that the Italian campaign was messed up in so many ways, that so many lives were thrown away in the way the attacks were staged, that so little was accomplished in terms of diverting Nazi resources etc.  It's hard to be too critical of the political and military leadership in such a difficult overall situation, but it makes the thought of the losses even more depressing.

The Germans were excellent, well-trained soldiers.  The Gustav Line was amazing.  Even Hannibal was smart enough not to try to attack up the Italian peninsula from the south.  The weather was appalling.

Got a better feel for the multi-national coalition involved (which of course made everything more difficult in terms of coordination, which turns out to be pretty important in these settings).

The title here seems overblown, but some of the battle descriptions make you wonder if other battles were much worse than Monte Cassino - it certainly had elements of World War I static slaughter, as well as Stalingrad house-to-house fighting.

I keep thinking politicians should be required to read books like this, and then re-read them once or twice more, before they ever commit soldiers to battle.

The Botany of Desire (A Plant's-Eye View of the World) (Michael Pollan, 2001)

Everyone knows that humans breed plants in various ways.  The author's premise here was to try to look at the interaction from the perspective of the plants (example = the way flowers lure bees into spreading their pollen).  It was an interesting book, but not because that premise worked particularly well.  (Maybe there's a deeper game going on that I realize, but I don't think plants are manipulating humans.)

He focused on four plants:

1.  Apple (sweetness) - lots of discussion about the importance of apples on the American frontier, including lots of discussion about John Chapman.  He notes that ol' Johnny Appleseed was growing apples trees from seed - meaning that the crop would be inedible, usable only to make cider - meaning hard cider in those days - the primary hooch available on the frontier.  Author claims that the apple industry tried to reposition the Chapman story as Prohibition loomed (at which time it also invented (marketing) phrases like "an apple a day keeps the doctor away").

2.  Tulip (beauty) - lots of discussion about the tulip mania (1634-37).  Not very interesting.

3.  Marijuana (intoxication) - he discusses how marijuana seems to operate on the brain - an intensification of the senses, an ability to focus on one thing deeply (if for a limited period).  He compares this to Huxley's discussion of mescaline (peyote) - which Huxley thought aided perception by essentially turning off the perception filters we use (and need) to function efficiently. Not sure what to make of this.

4.  Potato (control) - I love reading about the potato (such as in this book).  A plant from the Americas that transformed Europe.  He went through the Ireland experience - British (anti-Catholic) laws preventing Irish from accumulating land so they are restricted to small plots; soil and climate not conducive to grains; potato (with a little milk) as a 100% complete diet for people and their few livestock; potato works beautifully on the small plots; requires so little work to plant, harvest, prepare (contributes to view of Irish as lazy); population rises from 3 million to 8 million; they all plant the same variety; blight; population back to 3 million.  So that's interesting, but the author was more focused on genetic engineering, how potatoes are grown in Idaho, the risks of monoculture.

The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene, 1948)

I liked this a lot in the beginning stages of the book, then felt it broke down toward the end - partly because I didn't think the reliance on Catholic doctrine of the period to create tension in the lead character (Scobie) was particularly effective.

Now I learn that Time magazine has this book in the top 100 English-language novels since 1923; the Modern Library ranked it 40th.  That surprises me.

Short, and definitely a good read - always held my attention.  I like Greene's writing - he sees us.

Scobie is an inspector in a West African country during WWII; his wife is unhappy; he pities her; borrows money from a Syrian smuggler to pay her passage out of the colony; inspects a suicide at an inland station; inspects a Portuguese ship and uncharacteristically doesn't bust its captain for a Germany-bound letter; Wilson keeps an eye on him (and on his wife); Scobie meets a survivor of a shipwreck and falls in love; further adventures follow.  Wilson shares lodgings with a veteran of the colony who amused himself by going after cockroaches.

I have no idea what life is like in one of these colonies but trust that Greene (who worked in one) did a great job describing it.

The German Genius - Europe's Third Renaissance, The Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (Peter Watson, 2010)

I've had the good fortune to read quite a few truly excellent, helpful books in 2012 - but this one definitely is near or at the top of the list.

I keep trying to get a handle on Germany (see here, for example) - looking to catch up a bit after a reading list too heavily weighted toward U.S., England, France.  And when I think about what I've read about Germany - for the most part my list would confirm one of the points made by this author  - it's like we tend to think of Germany in terms of a 12-year slice (1933-1945) when the country was dominated by the Nazis.


The author notes this preoccupation without minimizing the Nazi era - after all, a 12-year run like this could not have occurred in a vacuum - big and complicated things led up to it.  So his approach is to put the Nazi era into the context of German intellectual history going back to the end of the J.S. Bach era (1750 or so), discuss how the ideas developed that - seasoned with (among so many other things) late unification as a country (1870) and World War I trauma - went wrong in the Nazi era, and suggest a fuller way of thinking about Germany going forward.

But still . . . I never do get tired of watching those movies from the 1930s and after that feature Nazi villains . . .

Anyway (and to repeat) - this book was extraordinarily useful, and I bought it immediately.  850 pages; I'll guesstimate I dog-eared 50-75 pages (a very high percentage.)

There's too much here to try to summarize . . . a few ideas:

-- The role of "Pietism" in the Germanic brand of Protestantism.

-- Emphasis on "Bildung"

-- Pietism and Bildung as key elements in inculcating a culture of self-improvement - the idea of a responsibility to use one's time wisely for the long-term good of the self and of society (I am happily afflicted by this notion)

-- Delayed unification as a country; Napoleon's intervention in early 19th century as permitting educational reforms to blossom in a way that would not have happened had the country been locked in structurally.

-- Widespread education was prized and effective at all levels - surprising charts showing the pervasiveness of education in Germany via schooling levels achieved by soldiers in various national armies.  This paid off, big time, in so many areas - a large reservoir of educated, motivated citizens from which to develop talent.

-- Conflicting strands:  state was tied up in education in a way that linked graduates to the state (compare France or Russia, where the students so often stood against the state).  But repression was strong . . . a tendency for scholars to look inward rather than take on the state critically ("internal exile" - a concept also heard in Russia and other repressive states)

-- Really incredible achievements in music, education, historical method, philosophers,all things scientific or technical; military successes post-unification.  Accomplishments way too numerous to start listing, Germany predominant in so many ways.

-- Late formation into a state made insecure and self-conscious; high achievements perhaps bred arrogance; belief in narrow national character when history really wouldn't support it - the Volk - this is twisted as demagogues see fit.  Some dangerous characters emerge, anti-Semitism; WWI defeat; emergence of the term "degenerate" and application to Jews.

-- Hitler running off highly talented but tainted (typically meaning Jewish) scientists . . . Allied quote to the effect that the Allies won WWII because "our (meaning those working for the Allies) German scientists were better than their German scientists"

-- Discussion of the denial of knowledge/complicity toward Nazi state that prevailed after the war - but how else could the country move forward?  Subsequent generations start to address, criticize.  A platform from which to move forward.

Paintings in Proust (Eric Karpeles, 2008)

I've been thinking about Proust's signature book lately - maybe attaching too much significance?  But I'm pretty sure it's quite important.  (Previous discussions of the book are here and here.)  (One reason I'm thinking about the book is that during our recent and most enjoyable visit to Portland, I found a basically untouched used set at "Powell's World of Books" - nice to own it, finally.)

Proust helps me see differently.  Other authors have this effect, but not as strongly.

I have no idea how to distill his essential messages, if there are any.  But somehow he applies a combination of open-mindedness and studied preparation to see people, objects in art or nature (sublime or otherwise), everyday objects - with far more depth than most of us do.  We miss so much.

As I get older, I can better see that the "studied preparation" part is crucial.  Being open-minded and receptive is just a threshold - if you don't bring anything of depth to the process of perceiving, you cannot see or appreciate nearly as much.  Seems obvious, right?  ("Studied preparation" - not sure exactly what this involves - but at a minimum it would be steady exposure to sophisticated literature, art, music.)

Proust wrote "Imagine today a writer to whom the idea would occur to treat twenty times under different lights the same theme, and who would have the sensation of creating something profound, subtle, powerful, overwhelming, original, startling like the fifty cathedrals or forty water-lily ponds of Monet." That's how he writes; that's how to see.  (Also an example of how he saw painting and literature as similar arts.)

Technology brings valuable exposure to us, but (as has been lamented for a couple hundred years now) makes it more difficult to find (or, more accurately, to choose to find) the time, quiet, and/or serendipity to generate useful, original, thought or in-depth perception.  We exchange this possibility for a diet of spoon-fed mediocrity, while stalwartly rationalizing the sad trade-off via absurd assertions that a person can focus on multiple distractions at the same time without affecting cognition, depth of thought or receptivity to sensations and ideas.  Oh well.

I bought the version at left Sept 2012 - at Powell's, Portland OR.

The premise of this book:  Proust wove dozens of references to art works throughout the novel, along with lengthy passages dealing with the fictional painter, Elstir.  Karpeles had a fine idea - he went through all ~3300 pages and came up with a list of art references, then included reproductions in this book along with text excerpts from the passage in which the art reference appeared.  (Heavy stock paper, nice quality reproductions.)  This approach really works, on at least three levels:

1.  Enjoying the art even if you didn't read or are one of those who don't particularly like Remembrance of Things Past.

2.  Providing a memory refresh on the novel independent of the art references - which is valuable, it is not easy to hang onto the story line given its length and complexity.

3.  Reflecting on the way Proust used art to illustrate points in the novel; perhaps picking up the ability to do the same; the irreplaceable way in which art can accomplish this.

Odette as a figure from a Botticelli painting.  I like so many of the paintings . . . perhaps especially The Mother (Pieter de Hooch) (see the part toward the back where the small child looks out the door); and Portrait of an Old Man and a Young Boy (Domenico Ghirlandaio) (from the Louvre).

Delightful, valuable.  Will buy it.

Catherine the Great - Portrait of a Woman (Robert K. Massie, 2011)

This was interesting and a quick read, but I didn't like it as much as this book by Massie, and certainly not as much as Massie's Peter the Great and Nicholas and Alexandra.

Peter the Great rules 1682 through 1725; Elizabeth 1741 through 1762; Catherine from 1762 through 1796.

Frederick the Great rules 1740 - 1786.  Followed by three Frederick Williams; then Wilhelm I (in power at time of Bismark's unification).  (Wilhelm II rules 1888 - 1918 (his father died after about 90 days as king).)

The value here was in getting a better fix on where Catherine fits in.  The annoyance was all the gossipy content - it was mostly a distraction though I suppose it would help understand some of her behavior; I guess this is how you drive bestseller status in a biography.  Whatever.

I can see where she would be regarded as one of the most important empress/queen types, alongside Elizabeth I.

Thoughts:

1.  Not terribly remarkable that minor nobility from a minor Prussian state would become betrothed to Russia's emperor-to-be.  Very remarkable how she took the position and ran with it, to say the least.

2.  Peter III was a pretty weird guy - obsessed with Frederick the Great and Prussia, tone deaf to Russia.  Catherine basically taking his throne via coup, with widespread military support.

3.  Unfortunate and very convenient that he - and the other potential contestant for the throne (Ivan) - died in captivity.  (Catherine not particularly hurt by the suspicions as to her role.)

4.  Empress Elizabeth brought Catherine to Russia and promoted her marriage to Peter III.

5.  Potemkin (yes, of the village fame) and his important role.  Peter the Great pointing Russia westward and obtaining Baltic access; Catherine continuing this, getting Black Sea access.

6.  Catherine and the three partitions of Poland - this is where Poland essentially disappeared in late 18th century, not to reappear until after World War I.  (Which reappearance turned out to be quite temporary.)

7.  Ruled for decades, died in 1796.

8.  Pretty much self-educated; initial attraction to the ideals of the philosophes; spent lots of time with Diderot; constant correspondence with Voltaire; tried to refashion Russian law; ended up deciding that strict authoritarianism was the way to go.

9.  Horrified by French Revolution; this contributed to authoritarianism (though she had settled on that path far earlier); this also provided some slight rationale for the dismemberment of Poland.

10.  The author really seemed to promote Catherine - who no doubt was important and talented - but focuses very much on her generosity, her wisdom in purchasing art works and building palaces, etc. - without ever asking where the money was coming from and what that all meant.