Late For Tea At The Deer Palace, The Lost Dreams Of My Iraqi Family by Tamara Chalabi

Late For Tea At The Deer Palace is one of the most captivating books I have ever read. Rather than telling you what kind of a book it is, I 'll let you read part of the prologue Tamara Chalabi herself has written. 

"......It was 19 April 2003, ten days after the fall of Baghdad to the US led coalition forces, and the city, depleted and derelict,  was grappling with a new reality. The heat of the day was intolerable, and I could feel my very eyeballs become coated with perspiration, a strange and unwelcome sensation. This was my first ever visit to Baghdad,  My father's home, his parents' and grandparents' before him, and theoretically mine as well. I had arrived at the capital in a long car journey from the south in the company of my father, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading opposition figure to Saddam Hussein's fallen regime.


Everybody asks me about my father. He has been labelled a maverick, a charlatan, a genius. He has been named as the source of supposedly faulty intelligence that led America into the war in Iraq. He has been called a triple agent to the US, Iran and Israel. But this is my story. He has his own tale to tell, although I acknowledge that my father has played a pivotal role in shaping my relationship to his country, Iraq. As with everything with in the Middle East, nothing makes sense until you  you understand the past, and the past is never straightforward... .........."

This book painted a very vivid picture of Iraq in my head, an Iraq I never new, an Iraq with so long a history, so rich a culture, so diverse in ethnicity, and so aesthetic. I also learned how this great land of wonders was brought in to misery, hatred, and destruction by the worst curse that fallen upon the human race ever, power hungry politics. Anyone with an interest in history, particularly of the region that Iraq belongs to, will find this book very informative too. 

Inventing George Washington Was A Painful Experience

N.B. I have based this review on an uncorrected proof copy of "Inventing George Washington" by Edward G Lengel, so the contents of the final print may be different in parts that are quoted here. 

Inventing George Washington by Edward G Lengel was a bad reading experience, I'm afraid.   I'll start what little I have to say about this book with this quotation from the preface of the book.

".....Although many excellent books about the founder and his era have been published in recent years, there are few-precious few-that do not include, usually inadvertently, some elements of mythology both vintage and modern.   Washington apocrypha has become so thoroughly entangled in history and folklore that it is often impossible to identify, let alone disprove.

     This book does not aspire to peel away these layers of myth and restore the "authentic" Washington to our view. Instead, it looks at Washington myths, and mythmakers, and traces the mean by which they have defined and redefined the Founder from the beginning of the nineteenth  century up to present day. ..."

Well, the book more or less does what its author says it does, but why does it have to do just that? I mean, we read about a significant person to learn from, be inspired by, and be motivated by that person as well as to enjoy that person's life as a story. But Inventing  George Washington offered me none of that. But any way, don't be biased by my review, read it and come to your own conclusion, and better yet, tell me about how you felt about the book.         

Island Beneanth The Sea By Isabel Allende

Ever since I read Eva Luna , I was eagerly looking forward to read the other books by Isabel Allende.

When I got my hands on Island Beneath The Sea, I was very exited with anticipation, believing that a wonderful story was awaiting  me, and I wasn't disappointed. The novel was yet another example of Allende's remarkable gift of storytelling.

The plot starts in 1770, in the French colony of Saint Domingue, Which is Haiti now.

The main character of the story is Zarit\, mostly known as Tet\, a born slave girl who's mother was an African slave and the father a white sailer. Though destined to be a slave for life, Tet\ is determined to be a free woman one day, and gives all she has to make that dream come true. Despite all the unimaginable hardships that come on her way, she keeps pushing through towards her goal.

The book illustrates an era of history when the mankind was in a distinctive stage of its evolution. The era of colonialism and slavery. It's terrifying to realize the kind of mess made when a few nations went about colonizing the world, robbing native people in various countries of their resources and making them slaves, destroying indigenous knowledge, ultimately making things really horrible for themselves too.

This book tells us that the unity of people can bring any system down, and even a determined individual can make a difference.

Isabell Allende's Island Beneath The Sea is entertaining with a powerful plot with many dramatic events, inspirational with convincing illustrations of will power, educational with so many historical facts, and mysterious with indigenous African culture with its voodoo loa. However, the ending was totally disagreeable for me. Read the novel and you would know why. Comparing Eva Luna and Island Beneath The Sea, Eva Luna is my favorite, mostly because it was more enjoyable a story, but Island Beneath The Sea is far more informative and inspirational.

The Barbary Pirates by William Dietrich, a fast- paced novel with adventure, humor, and history

The Barbary Pirates is novel that is one of a series written by William Dietrich around the fictitious character Ethan Gage. It is written with some relevance to certain true historical incidents and characters as well. to I was a little confused as I just started this book because I had not read any previous books of the series and the language was a bit modern for a book telling a story set back in 1802. But as I kept reading everything came in to light and it was impossible for me to put the book down.

The main character, Ethan Gage, is as American who has a taste for adventure, treasure hunts, and women. Wherever he goes, he attracts trouble. The plot starts when he is given an assignment by Napoleon Bonaparte to find a legendary weapon called “the mirror of Archimedes”, a super-power weapon apparently originated in Atlantis and later used by Archimedes. Gage is accompanied by Georges Cuvier, William Smith, and Robert Fulton in his voyage from Paris to Venice, Thira and Tripoli, to hunt for the mirror, his lost love, and a son he did not know existed. The journey is full of adventure and danger with Gage's arch enemy Aroura Somerset, a clan called the Egyptian rite, and Barbary Pirates in pursuit, desperate to have the weapon for themselves.

I found The Barbary Pirates fantastic as a novel of adventure, thriller, and history, very fast paced and absolutely funny. The dialogs were hilarious, full of sarcasm towards Gage from others for his attraction to trouble.

There is a historical note at the end of the book that clarifies the historical incidents, places and people that the reader encounters in the book. I found it very informative. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope to get my hands on the other Ethan Gage adventures soon.

 

What's In A Word By Webb Garrison

This is a fascinating book that tells us how some of the most common English words and phrases were originated,the real story behind them. The book covers more than 350 everyday words and phrases, all presented in simple,easy- to- understand language. I'll quote some parts of the author's own introduction of the book below.

"Practically every word and phrase we use is an easy to swallow verbal capsule. They're often potent and complex, being the end result of centuries of use. I have been fascinated by etymology{the study of word origins and developments} since my youth."

"......................this book is written in the form of "short short stories"-abbreviated forms of the American short story in which O. Henry excelled. The vignettes included here are brief enough for bath room reading, and many of them include surprise endings almost, but not quite, in the fashion of Paul Harvey's tales."

As you read thorough this book, you learn not only how those words came in to use, but also the history and culture in America and England in different eras. Any body with an interest in linguistics, culture, or history will specially find this book a good read, but this book suits the average reader pretty well too. I would end this review with just another quotation,this one from the content of the book .

"Few expressions have a more ancient lineage " checkmate." Now synonymous with " to thwart" or "to frustrate," it was long restricted to the game of chess.

No one knows where chess originated or when. It was already old when early Arabs borrowed it from the Persians. Through Spanish traders it reached Europe in the eighth century. In taking up the new game, the West adopted some of the ancient terms connected with it.

One such term was shah{king}, designating the most important of the playing pieces. According to the rules of the game, when shah was trapped, defeat was inevitable. An Arab who maneuvered his opponent into a hopeless position would cry, shah mat ! {the king is dead} Passing through Spanish and French, this expression entered English as checkmate and came to name any stroke of victory."