jiujensu's reviews
448 reviews

I think the story was compelling enough that I kept reading, so I won't rate it low. I wanted to pull for someone in the book - anyone - but I really did not like any of the characters. It's a town of psychopaths who learn nothing from their experiences and refuse to grow.  

Got this 4 leaf clover 7 day read on Libby while waiting in the very long line for the regular borrowing. 

On the story, I liked the upbeat takes on protecting the environment and life generally. A sweet read.

This is from 2008 and in any other topic, it might be obsolete - the recommendation might be to read the more recent books. And we do need to read the most recent stuff. 

But! This older book is still very valuable. The older ones usually give a lot more detail around the time of their publishing than a recent work might. Even if you just read the last chapter and coda, you could get a concise history of what everyone always views as the complicated conflict. I would say it's not so complicated as it is a lot of US/Israeli lies to debunk - there's a lot of ground to cover and racism to unpack if you use official US policy as your starting point. But the whole problem is Zionists looked at Argentina and Palestine, chose Palestine, were unhappy there were people already there and looked for ways to get rid of them (from before 1917 to the present).

I was initially intimidated by this one,  so I put off reading it. There are a lot of numbers and sometimes numbers are harder to conceive of than the individual stories. Don't worry, there are individual accounts by Palestinians, soldiers, academics, and human rights officials. The brutality of the everyday violence of occupation is illustrated in brilliant detail. 

This book sets the record straight. People (USians) always - get the origin of the conflict wrong; blame the Palestinians for losing in "war" in '48 instead of the ethnic cleansing it actually was; blame Arafat for not being a partner for peace despite talks; never addressing the injustices - occupation, apartheid, return of refugees; wrongly conflate Hamas and Hezbollah and wrongly ascribe their goal as Islamist instead of resistance to occupation; allow Israel to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as policy but the second Palestinians kill one Israeli, statehood, refugees' return, freeing political prisoners,  etc is ALL off the table + Israel is allowed to retaliate against the resistance to occupation, meaning it inflicts double violence and has the West's support. 

I thought it was also interesting in that it addressed why the US population persists in quoting Israeli propaganda. Until about the time of the book, only scholarly articles and books by academics contained the necessary debunking. I think since that time, more accessible things have been written for the general public. I suppose you could credit social media too. It's a shame that the answers we needed to combat Zionist lies that still persist today were hidden in the ivory tower for so long.

This stands out as the only novel I've read set in or around the church of Christ. I hope it's not autobiographical at all. Maybe inspired by that Andrea Yates case c of c woman who drowned her kids. Whatever the case, good story, but not a light one at all.

Stories of leaving the faith. So many of these make me think of stories from my experience. These folks make me want to write mine down. 

Kendzior is one if the most earnest and heartfelt writers I've ever read. She writes about Missouri, being an American, her travels and her family and weaves in politics so skillfully I promise you might not realise - or at least won't mind.

I almost went through and listed all the destinations and tourist attractions, because I want to see all of them, but there are many and that isn't a review. I did especially enjoy descriptions of the tourist traps on Route 66, the accidental cult site encounter, the ghost story, and if course all the Western deserts, parks and arches.

The most inspiring thing throughout the book - and a value I hold dear - is to be open to experiences. And open to people too, though that can be a challenge for this introvert. As with our country, we should be so with people - open to the beauty or quirkiness and honest about the flaws through history.

* I received this book as an ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. I chose to write an honest review, though it isn't required.

This is the second half. What to say. 
Here's a few sort of negative things and then a few positive. 

Some parts are repeated sort of - but that's due to it being smuggled out of prison in parts. He should get a pass. 

I also have to say that as a "novel" I can't really say that there's necessarily a fictional plot. I've read some articles about the work and it seems he may have wanted to chronicle a part of Palestinian history of the resistance using composite characters and not necessarily centering himself. It does read more like a history in parts because the events actually did happen. You can decide what you think about that. 

Whatever you think about the story or classification, I think he did well in this second half covering differing viewpoints of the Palestinian people, the different attitudes toward Oslo, toward resistance operations, toward what was called suicide bombings and other elements. 

Definitely worth a read - especially given the author's role in the resistance and his demise. I think it'll provide some insight you don't expect, especially if you're used to reading US commentary on the Palestinian struggle for rights and self determination. 

https://annas-archive.org/md5/e9d7f17d739babed8f20e93ce62b581d

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https://t.co/iBiJk1Ewjp