A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges

Borges via

Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: 1935

It's about: Borges appropriates and tweeks lives of historical criminals--Chinese pirates, Old West gunslingers, New York street toughs--to explore paradox. Each entry into this collection masquerades as a truthful historical narrative; however, Borges liberally diverges from his source material, essentially turning factual events and people into props through which to set up elaborate philosophical ironies and paradoxes. For example, the protagonist of the first story in the collection, "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell", is a bloodthirsty and pious con man who induces enslaved African Americans to run away with his band of thieves, promising that if they allow him to sell them back into slavery, only to "steal" them away again, they will eventually be escorted North to freedom. Every time, of course, Morell eventually kills his victim when he begins to suspect the true nature of his "Redeemer." Eventually, one of Morell's confederates denounces his scheme to the authorities. Morell, ironically, believes his only hope of salvation lies in fomenting an insurrection among those slaves who still believe rumors of his benevolence--essentially taking on sincerely the role he had only maliciously affected before. The greater irony however, is that rich possibilities afforded by the potential turn of events are thwarted when Morell himself is robbed and killed by a petty thief who does not recognize him.

Part of the richness of A Universal History of Iniquity stems from Borges' ability to weave his dense, darkly humorous paradoxes into genres that tend to be consigned to the pulpy end of the high-low cultural divide. Borges sets his short stories into contexts modeled after Westerns, crime stories, and orientalizing adventure tales. His nominally historical characters participate in the theft, murder, and warfare endemic to these genres, but remain essentially flat characters who exist to be irony incarnate. One of the most intriguing stories, "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv" purports to be the tale of a prophet who rises up in the Middle East in the 8th century to spearhead the meteoric rise of a blasphemous religion. Claiming that communion with God had made his face too brilliant for mortals to look upon, Hakim goes about imposing his religion through warfare while veiled, promising that men will be able to look on his face when they have accepted the truth. Hakim's truth is typically Borgesian.

The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it. Revulsion, disgust, is the fundamental virtue, and two rules of conduct (between which the Prophet left men free to choose) lead us to it; abstinence and utter licentiousness--the indulgence of the flesh or the chastening of it.

This being a collection of tales about violence and deceit, Hakim's charade is spoiled when one concubines lets slip that his supposedly glorified body is, in fact, riddled with leprosy. The suggestion, seemingly, is that an entire religion of degradation and heresy had sprung up to justify one man's physical corruption.

I thought: The entire collection boasts similarly clever, circuitous ironies that can be revisited endlessly. While the tales are all philosophically dense, they contain enough swashbuckling adventure to sustain interest in casual readers as well. The tone of scholarly historicity is a playful contrast to to the elaborately constructed labyrinths of plot twists that Borges builds into each story. The one entry into the collection that wears less well is "Man on Pink Corner", Borges' attempt to write a wholly fictional crime store that pivots around a knife fight between two Argentine street toughs. While exotic backdrops are a favorite for Borges, the setting and dialogue feel oddly forced or stilted in this attempt, as if Borges still needed to lean heavily on specific historical and literary texts in order to create lively literature of his own at this point.

While Borges eventually moved away from drawing so explicitly on other historical and literary sources (though his writing always remained famously inter-textual; many of his stories are literally books about books), the edition of A Universal History of Iniquity I read, which is part of Penguin Classics Collected Fictions, a complete anthology of Borges' short stories, contains helpful footnotes to each story. The footnotes are most enlightening and intriguing when highlighting Borges' divergence from his source material. For example, they confirm the existence of an actual set of "Rules for Pirates" in a book Borges cites in "The Widow Ching--Pirate" but the footnotes also reveal that Borges has (perhaps deliberately) appropriated and changed several other minor details of the story for apparently no reason. None of this really detracts from the stories themselves; rather, it adds to their enigmatic character.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? On the shelf. 

Reading Recommendations: An interesting discussion of Borges the man and his propensity for certain themes.

The Diary of Napoleonic Foot Soldier by Jakob Walter

In 1812, by Illarion Pryashnikov, via

Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: 1991

It's about: The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is the memoir of Jakob Walter, a German conscript in Napoleon's Grand Army. While many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars eventually wrote memoirs of their military service, Walter's is unique among them because it is written from the point of view of a private foot soldier. All first-person accounts to have surfaced so far have been written by men of the officer class who were more educated, cultured, and ideologically invested than he. Consequently, Walter's diary is especially valuable for its candid insights into the day-to-day experiences of a lowly conscript in Napoleon's massive military campaigns.

The Diary itself is divided into three sections; the 1806-7 campaign in Poland, the 1809 campaign in Austria, and the 1812 campaign in Russia. All three are a mix of Walter's casual anthropological observations of Eastern European culture, his accounts of combat in various battles, and personal reminiscences of military culture among foot soldiers. By far, the bulk of the Diary focuses on his memories of the retreat from Moscow, and the long months of starvation, cold, disease, and reprisals from Russian cossacks that it entailed. This section is rendered especially vivid though Walter's focus on his unending efforts to scavenge enough food to keep himself and his friends from starvation: a handful of raw meat from a slaughtered horse one night, a bit of cabbage boiled with dog fat the next. Nevertheless, the visceral nature of his memories is balanced by an off-hand and modest tone. 

I thought: Jakob Walter's memoir is a concise and engaging account of a foot soldier's observation of the turmoil wrought by Napoleon's wars. By this point in history, most people's mental image of those wars is heavily influenced by fiction: War and Peace, Horatio Hornblower, and Master and Commander study the Napoleonic Wars through the eyes of ideologically engaged and aristocratic literary heroes. By contrast, the historical Jakob Walter embarked on his first campaign as a foot soldier conscripted out of private life as a stonemason. Furthermore Walter was remarkably indifferent to Napoleon's personal charisma and political principles for two reasons. First, Walter's native German principality of Swabia had recently been made a tributary state of Napoleonic France; second, as a low-ranking private citizen, Walter had little to gain from his participation in the wars.

For the most part, the Diary actually benefits as a work of literature from Walter's political indifference and lesser education. His prose style is plain, direct, informal, and completely readable. Walter generally restricts his attention to his own experiences, generally refusing to speculate or comment on the political context of the war or the motivations of the generals and princes who directed its progress. While he does not shrink from fully recounting the shocking deprivations of the retreat, he is never stoops to self-pity or recrimination. However, this same limited scope can become frustrating. As a reader, I very much wanted to know what Walter thought of his own conscription and Napoleon's military projects, but the author is generally silent on these matters.

Walter's self-portrait is filled with intriguing contradictions. In the 1806-7 portion especially, he casually recounts drinking binges, brutally requisitioning supplies, and violently forcing Polish peasants to act as guides and translators with little  embarrassment. This unapologetic roughness is offset by pious allusions to his Catholic beliefs, and his evident affection for the brother and two sisters from whom he is separated by war. At one point, he finds a book he deems insulting to his faith and "bound a stone to this book, and sank it in the big lake." When Walter, nearly dead from typhus and malnutrition, is finally able to visit with his younger sister after the retreat from Moscow he mentions that they "tarried as a loving brother and sister for an hour's time and then parted again with tears." However, Walter's personal contradiction add up to a convincing portrayal of a conflicted, complex human.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf. 

Reading Recommendations: For an interesting historical comparison, read In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front Gottlob Herbert Bidermann's account of his military service to Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.

Warnings: Some mild references to alcohol.

Favorite excerpts:

He [Napoleon] watched his army pass by in the most wretched condition. What he may have felt in his heart is impossible to surmise, His outward appearance seemed indifferent and unconcerned over the wretchedness of his soldiers; only ambition and lost honor may have made themselves felt in his heart; and, although the French and Allies shouted into his ears many oaths and curses about his own guilty person, he was still able to listen to them unmoved.

What I'm reading next: If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Review: Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets

Chechen rebels in Grozny, 1995. (via)

Reviewed by Christina
[I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.]

Published: 2011

It's about: "Not with a bang, but with a quiet, ten-minute address on Christmas Day 1991: this is how the Soviet Union met its end.  But in the wake of that one deceptively calm moment, conflict and violence soon followed.  Some of the emergent new countries began to shed totalitarianism while others sought to revive their own dead empires or were led by ex-Soviet leaders who built equally or even more repressive political machines.  Since the late 1980s, Lawrence Scott Sheets lived and reported from the former USSR and saw firsthand the reverberations of the empire's collapse.  Eight Pieces of Empire draws readers into the people, politics, and day-to-day life of the region, painting a vivid portrait of a tumultuous time.
Sheets's stories about people living through these tectonic shifts of fortune- a trio of female saboteurs in Chechnya, the chaos of newly independent Georgia in the early 1990s, young hustlers eager to strike it rich in the post-Soviet economic vacuum- reveal the underreported and surprising ways in which the ghosts of empire still haunt these lands and the world."  (back cover of my paperback edition)

I thought: I loved it.  I've never been particularly interested in war reporting, and I didn't really realize that's what I was getting into when I requested a copy of Eight Pieces of Empire.  I didn't know that this book would be difficult to read, and if I had I probably would have politely declined.  BUT.  I'm so glad it came my way.  You know those books that force you to examine how little you know about the world?  This is one of those books.

Lawrence Scott Sheets is a strong, journalistic writer (he covered the former USSR, especially the Causasus, for Reuters and NPR) and he fills these dire conflicts with some bizarre characters and absurd situations.  I can totally get behind the stories and the people in them; in a lot of ways, things weren't so different where/when I lived in Kazakhstan.  And despite the innately foreign and occasionally gruesome subject matter, Sheets makes his material human and relatable. 

There are a few stylistic things that grated on my nerves- the overuse of scare quotes,  Sheets' inconsistency in referring to characters sometimes by their given names and sometimes by their surnames, and a few other minor quirks.  But the book itself is excellently paced and so well-written.  Combine that with important and interesting recent history- I would never not recommend this.  It is interesting and worthwhile, especially for a reader who has any connection to or special interest in ex-Soviet countries.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!  сейчас!

Reading Recommendations:  Be ready for the war violence.  Technically this is a quick, easy read.  Emotionally, not so.

Warnings:  Appropriately grisly descriptions of war violence.  And a couple of swears.

What I'm reading next:  McSweeney's Issue 11

(P.S. - Sorry for not doing something funny today.  As you may have noticed, all the BB writers have a little preoccupied lately.  If you need a laugh, you can check out last year's post.)

Review: The Queen by Robert Lacey

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on their wedding day via

Reviewed by Connie

Published: 2012

It's about: This biography of Queen Elizabeth II of England is a consolidation of the many books Lacey has researched and written about his favorite subject. In 150 pages, it covers the major points of her life, from her birth to the end of 2011.

I thought: I must preface my review of this book by saying I'm not a big reader of biographies. If I read non-fiction, I prefer it to be "creative non-fiction," which this book is not. It is what it professes to be -- a telling of the Queen's life "in brief."

That having been established, as far as biographies go -- especially consolidated biographies -- this is a superior one. Lacey has certainly done his research, and he speaks about Elizabeth's life credibly and authoritatively.

However, I would not call this biography unbiased. Lacey clearly adores his subject, and I might even call him a royal apologist. On the subject of any and all criticisms of the Queen over the length of her rule, he firmly positions himself on her side.

Have you ever seen the movie, The Queen, starring Helen Mirren? You know how it tells about Diana's death from the royal perspective? That (fabulous) movie is based on another of Robert Lacey's books, if that gives you some idea of what I mean.

Overall, I didn't find the author's bias unreasonable, and it doesn't detract in any way from the book.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf

Reading Recommendations: If you want a good, (very) quick overview of a fascinating figure's life, this is worth picking up.

Warnings: None

Favorite excerpts: It's a biography... it's pretty straight-forward writing, so no passages particularly stood out to me.

What I'm reading next: Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy


*I received a complimentary review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Mormon Enigma by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery

Emma Hale Smith (via)

Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery

Reviewed by Ingrid

Published: 1984

It's about: An academic biography of Emma Hale Smith, first wife of Joseph Smith Jr., founder of Mormonism, written by two Mormon women. Emma Smith is a sensitive spot in Mormon history because she refused to accept that her husband received revelation from God to practice polygamy. After her husband died, Emma refused to join Brigham Young - the new leader and second prophet of the LDS church - and the majority of the Mormon community as they trekked west to establish themselves in the Salt Lake Valley. Emma had a very prickly relationship with Brigham Young, the two eventually became bitter enemies. Brigham Young's words about Emma Smith have survived in the church's memory much more so than Emma Smith's words have, so she has come to have a negative reputation within the church, though it has lightened up in recent years. She is now most often represented as a more romanticized and idealized version of herself in LDS produced movies about Joseph Smith, Jr. and the early days of the church. She is also often given a nod for being the first president of the Relief Society, a society for women that still exists in the church today. Her firm refusal to accept polygamy and her life after the death of her husband are rarely discussed in official histories.

Interestingly, because of the authors' portrayal of church history figures in this book, the leaders of the LDS church were angry about its publication. An article in Dialogue explains that LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks told Linda Newell that the book "'represents a non-traditional view of Joseph Smith'" and "may damage the faith of church members who read it." (45).  However, despite what I thought before I did a little research for this review, the authors received no church discipline besides being banned from talking about church history in public.

I should note that LDS scholarship can be difficult to navigate because many LDS church history scholars come to their research with a significant bias. Mormon apologists have an obvious bias which clearly shows in what sources they prefer and those they throw out. Many other LDS scholars developed their interest in the history because they grew up in LDS culture but later left. Their work is also often biased the other way - they feel a strong desire to prove that Joseph Smith could not possibly have been the prophet he claimed he was. (See No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie.) There are also scholars in between these two camps who lean slightly one way or the other, such as historian and believer Richard Bushman, who wrote the more recent (and also more academically sound) cultural biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., Rough Stone Rolling.

Though the authors of this book are believers, the research seems to me as fair and as close to being without bias as it could be. (Of course, every historian approaches history with a bias of some kind. It's impossible to be completely objective.) Throughout the narrative they name their sources and discuss their legitimacy. For example, stories about Emma from journals of close friends the authors would consider more legitimate, while later statements made in public meetings from church members that followed Brigham Young to Salt Lake City and shared his hatred for Emma, less so. The authors often compare sources side by side and present all the information they could gather with their own commentary.

photo of Emma Smith Bidamon in her old age (via)

I thought: My mom read this book as soon as it came out and mentioned it often as I was growing up. It seems that most of my preferences in reading are informed by what my mom has read and liked, a fact that I am proud of :). Then there is also my fascination with polygamy. I say this every time I review a book on polygamy - the majority of literature out there about polygamy is polarized and boring. Yeah, polygamy is freaky. Yeah, polygamy is anti-gender equality. But there is so much more to it than that, and I always embrace the books explore the nuance. This book certainly did that. Emma and Joseph loved each other but had a very tumultuous relationship. Like I said above, Emma is almost always vilified or romanticized. This book attempts to show her as she was.

I was surprised that this book spurred the amount of controversy that it did. If you asked me, I couldn't point to a single thing to which I would expect church leaders to respond to negatively, but I've heard that the church has been more open about these things since I've been around (I was born a few years after this book was published.) The authors try to represent Joseph Smith as Emma saw him, which of course is fair in a biography about Emma. Thanks mostly to quotes from his letters and sermons, Brigham Young looks like a jerk when he talks about Emma, but Brigham Young is known for his temper and for saying all kinds of colorful things. The LDS church, like any large institution, likes to try and control what information is out there concerning its history. Because I myself am a Mormon and a believer, I try to give the church the benefit of the doubt and expect that they have and will respect sound academic research. This isn't always true, though, unfortunately.

But anyway, overall I loved the book. The LDS church is in desperate need of realistic female role models, and I think that Emma Smith's strong will and sense of compassion for those around her is worth admiring. The stories about Emma that most stood out to me where the many, many times she took strangers and orphans into her home. Her second husband even had a child from an affair and when the mother couldn't raise the child, Emma took him and raised him as her own. I wonder if Emma's struggle with polygamy helped her grow stronger emotionally and grow in her compassion.

I loved the realistic and fair representation this book provided of this admirable yet flawed woman. We're all flawed. That's what makes life interesting and worth living. 

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Reading Recommendations: If you want to read more about the controversy surrounding the publication of this book, check out pages 40-48 of this article published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

Warnings: None.

Favorite excerpts: "Emily Partridge [one of the plural wives of Joseph Smith Jr.] perhaps expressed the sentiments of many who knew Emma when she wrote in 1883, 'After the many years I can truly say; poor Emma, she could not stand polygamy but she was a good woman and I never wish to stand in her way of happiness and exaltation. I hope the Lord will be merciful to her, and I believe he will. It is an awful thought to contemplate misery of a human being. If the Lord will, my heart says let Emma come up and stand in her place. Perhaps she has done no worse than any of us would have done in her place. Let the Lord be the judge.'"

What I'm reading next: The Earthquake Machine by Mary Pauline Lowry

Review: Perfect Madness by Judith Warner

Anne Taintor

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 2005

Full Title: Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

It's about:  This righteously angry treatise explores the societal and historical pressures that create a burden of stressful expectations for middle-class mothers in America.  Ms. Warner explains how evolving parenting trends and cultural attitudes toward motherhood have culminated in our current unhealthy situation.  Working Moms and stay-at-homers alike tend toward perfectionism, continuous self-sacrifice, and ever increasing control-freakishness.  The author tells how we got here, why it's wrong, and how to fix the situation. 

I thought: Well.  I thought this was a pretty fascinating read, despite the fact that it not everything in it rings true for my generation of mommies.  The book is only seven years old, but the women quoted are closer to my mother's age than my own and the then-current statistics and situations Ms. Warner uses are from the period when I was in high school and college.  But still, I get it.  I feel for these women and their families: the endless list of "should"s, the constant procession of meaningless tasks day after day, the pain of feeling pressured to give every part of yourself to your kids.

There's some annoying melodrama in the writing style: someone's "words crackled like lightning" and sentences like "When the mommy light fades, will [the children] shiver in the dark?"  Ughhhh.  I have to fight not to snicker and/or roll my eyes when I read things like that, even if I do agree with the author's general premise and most of the arguments she makes.  People get worked up so easily about the "Mommy War" issues; there's really no need to try to pointedly ramp up the reader's emotions.  I am also not wild about the red and black cover that seems to scream "DANGER!" and "WARNING!" 

Perfect Madness is an interesting combination of forms: one-third personal essay, one-third informal history of American motherhood and feminism, and one-third reporting on and quotations from the interviews Ms. Warner held with hundreds of mothers.  The end result is 100% RANT, but since it's a rant I agree with, I didn't mind in the least.  I loved the parallels between mothering styles of the past and those of today, especially the comparisons between 1960's perfecto-moms and today's supermoms.  I think the similarities have even increased since this book was published, thanks to Mommy Blogs and the new coolness of craftiness.  And I completely agree with Judith Warner's argument that society (read: lawmakers) needs to step in and actually support families with more than lip service.  

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!  It's not perfect, and it needs an update.  But it's still a well-written, well-researched, well-argued tract on an important subject.

Reading Recommendations: Obvs, moms will probably like this the best.  If you dig opinionated reporting and care about the lives of middle-class mothers, it's a pretty quick read.

Warnings: One chapter discusses marital sex in some detail.  One rather surprising swear word that I remember.

What I'm reading next: Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner  (my very first chick lit!)

Review: And the Band Played On ... by Christopher Ward

And the Band Played On ... The Enthralling Account of What Happened After the Titanic Sank by Christopher Ward


Reviewed by Ingrid

Published: 2011

It's about: Christopher Ward's grandfather, Jock Hume, boarded the Titanic in April 1912 as a young violinist with the ship's band. After bravely playing up to the final moments of the sinking and famously ending with the hymn "Nearer My God To Thee," Jock strapped his violin case to his chest for extra buoyancy and jumped into the icy water. He did not survive.

Jock Hume via

This book tells the story of what happened after those final moments. Hume's pay was officially ended at 2:20am, April 15th, 1912, and a few days later his family received a bill in the mail for the buttons on his uniform. Hume also left behind a pregnant fiancée, Kate Costin, who a few months later gave birth to the author's mother, Johnann Costin. Jock's father, a musician and violin maker, pathological liar and all around sketchy guy, tried to reap as much money from his son's death as he could.

Meanwhile, a few days after the sinking, cable ship Mackay-Bennett returned to the site of the sinking to retrieve the Titanic dead. Jock's body was recovered, identified, and buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His personal effects, including a pocket watch and violin mute, where sent back to his family in mortuary bag labeled "Body no. 193."

I thought: The two major complaints about this book from reviewers on Goodreads is that the narrative jumps around too much and that Ward takes too many liberties with his research. I didn't have a problem with either of these things. In fact, I LOVED that this book started with a family history project. Allow me to explain. I'm Mormon. We Mormons love us some family history. When I was growing up I always heard about my great grandparents and other ancestors, and it seemed that some relative or another was always in the middle of a major family history project. I always felt a special connection to my great grandmother, Lola Davada Olsen, whom I was named after. Unfortunately, she didn't leave behind journals or letters, nor was she involved in heavily documented life events, so I don't know as much about her as I wish I could.

The fact that this book was written about the author's own grandparents and great grandparents and the time and effort he put into his research, which was obviously very meaningful to him, is what made this book absolutely wonderful. I know that it is quite possible to find all the details that Ward was able to find, (especially when you have a slew of research assistants, as he did.) Almost all the details he writes about were gleaned from letters, official records, or people who knew and wrote about Jock and the Titanic band. I love how Ward's narration seems to follow his research, rather than rearranged into chronological or some other order. It seemed quite natural and comfortable to me.

Besides all that, the story itself was absolutely fascinating. Ward had the opportunity to dwell on some gruesome details, like the state of many of the frozen bodies recovered by the Mackay-Bennett - which he touched on just enough to satiate my curiosity, (which usually overextends itself far beyond what is good for me anyway,) but the book actually focuses more on Jock's family and ended on a positive note. See my favorite excerpt below for a good example of how Ward was able to draw the details of this story together in a meaningful and quite satisfying way. 

The paperback version of this book was just released in honor of the Titanic centenary. Buy it here. 

Christopher Ward via

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Reading Recommendations: If you're a Titanic enthusiast or even someone with just a passing interest, this well-written and fascinating story is definitely one you'll want to add to your collection.

Discover UK also recently aired a documentary based on this story. For more information, check out the book's website.

Warnings: Some disturbing descriptions of the bodies of Titanic victims near the beginning of the book.

Favorite excerpts: [After buying a violin supposedly made by his great grandfather, Andrew Hume:] "It is very difficult getting experts to commit themselves to opinions, particularly when they know they are likely to appear in print. But I managed to get Rattray and Woolston to agree on two things. My newly acquired Hume violin is a good, if not a great instrument, with a very fine sound. And the person who made it was not the person who varnished it, the construction being superior to the varnishing. The implication was clear. This was a violin bought 'in the white', probably in Saxony, and varnished by Hume. An original Hume fake. I felt proud to own it and wished not for the first time in my life, that I had learned to play the violin.

I had the good fortune, soon after the publication of the hardback edition of this book, to be invited to talk at a few book festivals. I asked a young postgraduate student at the Academy, Catriona Price, who comes from Orkney, if she would accompany me to some of these author events and play Andrew Hume's violin. As people arrived, Catriona played Scottish jigs, the sort of music that Jock described as 'something to cheer them up' and, at the end, played three verses of 'Nearer My God To Thee'. No microphone was needed, although some of the venues were quite large. As people settled in their seats, many were tapping their feet; as they left, they were drying their eyes.

This, I thought, was just the kind of violin that Jock would have been proud to have with him on the Titanic."

What I'm reading next: Torch by Cheryl Strayed

Review: And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran

via

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 1963

It's about: When he was 8 years old, Jacques Lusseyran was blinded in a terrible and bizarre schoolroom accident. But, amazingly, that isn't his defining life event. He went on to become a young scholar and a leader in the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris. He was betrayed and arrested in the Summer of 1943, and then deported to Buchenwald.

And There Was Light is his autobiography, chronicling the first twenty years of his life.

I thought: WOW. Talk about a memoir-worthy life from a unique perspective. I found this book so inspiring that as I sit down to write about it I'm almost in a stupor. It's difficult for me to sum up my thoughts and feelings about it. Monsieur Lusseyran must be one of the most amazing people I have ever read about. Despite all the terrible life events he suffers and witnesses, he never pities himself. Or, at least, he never pities himself in his writing.

via

He writes about the experience of blindness so clearly that I think I can almost imagine what his world was like. He was born a very visual person, a visual learner, and that gives him an especially interesting point of view after being blinded. He describes his historical studies as an endless scroll of pictorial events and dates. He describes blindness as not darkness (as most sighted people would assume) but glorious inward light. And the way he writes about music! Ah! I am a total sucker for original imagery, and Lusseyran's writing is full of clever, poignant descriptions. I'm not sure whether this comes from being an exceptional writer or from having an exceptional point of view (as a blind person) but I loved that about this book.

My one complaint seems silly now that I'm remembering his incredible life, but I feel like I have to mention it anyway: In his attitude toward women, Jacques Lusseyran was most certainly a product of his time. He gushes about his stalwart male comrades, and then (with a couple of passing exceptions) describes all women and girls as silly, ornamental playthings. He also generally takes a judgmental stance toward anyone who hasn't been successful in life- the former "hobos" with whom he lived at Buchenwald are "stupid and lazy." I wanted M. Lusseyran to be 100% charitable and honorable, but I suppose nobody's perfect.

Still, I'd hate for anyone to read that last paragraph and throw the baby out with the bathwater. I loved this book, and I'd recommend it to almost everyone who wants an uplifting and awe-inspiring reading experience.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf! You will want to have your own copy and a few spares to loan around.

Reading Recommendations: Steel thyself! The Nazis were seriously messed up. Seriously.

Warnings: Some light Christianity. If religion offends you, you might not be as inspired by this book as I was. It's not heavy-handed, though.

Favorite excerpts:
"The world of violins and flutes, of horns and cellos, of fugues, scherzos and gavottes, obeyed laws which were so beautiful and so clear that all music seemed to speak of God. My body was not listening, it was praying. My spirit no longer had bounds, and if tears came to my eyes, I did not feel them running down because they were outside me. I wept with gratitude every time the orchestra began to sing. A world of sounds for a blind man, what sudden grace! No more need to get one's bearings. No more need to wait. The inner world made concrete."

"Before becoming the word of a man, even if the man is Mozart, all music is music. A kind of geometry, but one of inner space. Sentences, but freed from meaning. Without any doubt, of all the things man has made, music is the least human. When I heard it I was all there, with my troubles and my joys, yet it was not myself exactly. It was better than I, bigger and more sure."

What I'm reading next: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (with Connie and Ingrid!)

Review: Eleanor Roosevelt's Life of Soul Searching and Self Discovery by Ann Atkins

Reviewed by Connie

Published: 2011

It's about: This "Flash History" publication purports to give a condensed version of Eleanor Roosevelt's remarkable life, from childhood to First Lady to UN delegate and negotiator.

I thought: In a word -- disappointing. However, no book is wholly without its merits, so allow me to list those before enumerating my disappointments. Atkins succeeds to some degree in portraying Eleanor's insecurities, highlighting the fact that her journey to greatness was just that -- a journey -- and that she did not spring from the womb a fully-developed, confident, outspoken advocate of human rights. This is to the book's credit. Plus, Atkins resists the urge to gloss over some of Eleanor's early views that contradict her later ones, including even slightly Anti-Semitic comments from a young Eleanor's personal letter. But the book's greatest strengths lie in the occasional personal anecdote from Eleanor's life and, above all, the excerpts from Eleanor's journals and other writings. They are well-selected and often very moving. Indeed, Eleanor's skill with prose is a welcome relief from the generally low quality of writing throughout the rest of the book.

Which leads me to my disappointments. My first impression upon reading even the first few lines was, What terrible editing. Surely this book has never seen an editor's desk. Compounded with a page design that was obviously done by someone (not all too apt) in Microsoft Word, it is difficult to look beyond these basic and glaring deficiencies to judge the text of itself. Unfortunately, once I did, my disappointment was hardly abated. The quality of writing is generally sub-standard, even for a younger audience, to which this book is presumably aimed. It is also written in present tense, which reads awkwardly in a biography. Then throw in some ill-placed authorial opinions and judgments on some historical figures, and the picture of this book isn't too pretty.

Verdict: Though I appreciate the aim and research of the book, unfortunately I have to put this one in the rubbish bin.

Reading Recommendations: I will be looking for a more complete biography on this incredible woman, and I would suggest that you forego this one and look for another along with me.

Warnings: None

Favorite excerpts:
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

What I'm reading next: The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life by Nava Atlas

*I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Reading Lists: The African-American Experience

Welcome to this week's installment of our newest feature here at The Blue Bookcase:Reading Lists. Every week either one of us or a guest blogger will post on one of his or her favorite topics and provide a list of books he or she is familiar with on that topic. At the end of each post we will invite you to throw out any suggestions of books, fiction or non-fiction, that you have read or know about on that topic and we will add them to the list on that post.
These lists are not comprehensive by any means, but may be useful in helping you find your next read. Enjoy!

This week, Connie compiles a list of books on the African-American experience.

This picture has nothing to do with anything,
but everyone else has included one, so
I felt the pressure

While I love this new feature of The Blue Bookcase's, I've had a difficult time coming up with a topic I seem to read a lot about. I read more by author, I suppose, than topic, and plus my interests are so vast, so I tend to read one book on this, one book on that, dip my toes into topics without jumping all the way in.

However, luckily for me, I have realized that I tend to read a lot about African-American experiences. You could blame it on me currently living in the South in a county that is predominantly black, but to be honest, the interest budded before I moved here. However you analyze it, the fact remains that I have read a lot of books on it. Here are a few of the better books I've read on this topic. I chose to focus on novels and memoirs that I have read and am most familiar with.

The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake -- This is a quick, young adult read told from the perspective of a young black girl, Maleeka, attempting to fit in in an inner-city middle school and to be comfortable in her dark skin. Though this is short and simply written, it is incredibly powerful. It's one I return to every couple of years.


To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- Who hasn't read and been moved by this book? There's something about a story of inhumanity told through the eyes of an innocent child that makes it all the more moving.

Native Son by Richard Wright -- I read this book in high school, and I remember being so disgusted and so fascinated by it I had to force my way through it, and yet I also couldn't put it down. Wright is more of a blunt, confrontational racial issues writer that can be off-putting, but I can't help but love his style. The book tells the sometimes graphic, not-so-pretty story of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old black man living in a Chicago ghetto in the 1930s, who embraces the racial anger inside of him and becomes a "brute Negro." Let me tell you, it is a fascinating-- not to mention shocking-- perspective. I distinctly remember reading a part in which a woman's head is cut off (this happens in one part, not throughout, the novel) and the description of her hair swirling in her blood. Right after that, I went to lunch, where I found I could not eat my spaghetti.

Read more »

Review: War on the Margins by Libby Cone

Reviewed by Meagan

Published: 2009

It's about: Amazon.com offers a great summary: "France has fallen to the Nazis. Britain is under siege. As BBC bulletins grow bleak, residents of Jersey abandon their homes in their thousands. When the Germans take over, Marlene Zimmer, a shy clerk at the Aliens Office, must register her friends and neighbours as Jews while concealing her own heritage, until eventually she is forced to flee. Layers of extraordinary history unfold as we chart Marlene's transformation from unassuming office worker to active Resistance member under the protection of artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who manage to find poetry in the midst of hardship and unimaginable danger. Drawn from authentic World War II documents, broadcasts and private letters, "War on the Margins" tells the unforgettable story of the deepening horror of the Nazi regime in Jersey and the extraordinary bravery of those who sought to subvert it."

I thought: When I was introduced to this book as a fictional account of the Channel Island of Jersey during the German Occupation, I, of course, immediately thought of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which, if you haven't read it, takes place on Guernsey in the Channel Islands during the same time period. Readers looking for the same elements that feature in Guernsey won't find very many in War on the Margins. The epistolary format, poetic language, the vibrant and dynamic fictional characters, for example, are not present. But this doesn't mean that War on the Margins isn't just as readable. Based on the author's thesis, the novel is steeped in historical facts. Actual communications between Germany and Jersey are included and several of the characters portrayed really existed. These factors made the book read less like a novel and more like a historical article--a little drier, perhaps, but all the more fascinating given its non-fictional  basis. I found several of the details of the lives of the Channel Islands residents during the occupation fascinating and it made me want to learn more about this forgotten part of war history.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? In-between. The read was supremely interesting and spurred me to look for additional reading material in the genre, but I'm not sure I'd feel the need to revisit the novel again. 

Reading Recommendations: If WWII is a topic that interests you, or if Guernsey whetted your appetite about the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, this novel provides excellent and interesting details. Also, as far as I know, a paperback version of the book is only available in England, but there is an Amazon Kindle version available in the US.

Warnings: Nothing I can really think of. There are of course illusions to many of the travesties of war, but nothing too overtly graphic.

Favorite excerpts: War is not neat and tidy.

Everywhere the Germans communicated the message “We Own You".

Not a word about the occupied Islands, though everyone yearned not to be forgotten. Which was worse: to flee into Underground tunnels most nights and sit in the damp as the bombs thudded down, or to see one's street overrun with German soldiers and vehicles, and the sunny beaches pockmarked with mines? To have to watch one's step, hold one's breath, keep a pleasant face so as not to upset the wrong person and end up in prison? To find you couldn't trust your local government?

What I'm reading next: Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

Review: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Reviewed by Ingrid

Published: 1997

It's about: W.P. Inman is a young Confederate Soldier during the American Civil War. After sustaining a pretty serious wound to the neck and desperate to return home, he leaves the field hospital in the middle of the night and starts the journey to his hometown of Cold Mountain and his love interest, Ada Monroe.

Like Odysseus in The Odyssey, Inman comes into contact with many different kinds of characters along his journey home, each of them representing a different aspect or characteristic of humanity. Inman finds that the war
strips away everything unnecessary and shows humans at their most base - the best and the worst of them.

The story also follows Ada back at (in? that sounds weird, like your in a mountain, although it's the name of the town) Cold Mountain. After her father dies, Ada is left with the farm to herself and absolutely no knowledge of how to run it. Eventually she finds Ruby, a hick girl from the woods who has all kinds of practical knowledge. Ada finds that her education in literature and art hasn't done much to help her actually stay alive during the war, and she comes to depend not only on Ruby's more basic approach to life but also her friendship.

I thought:

Well, I was pleasantly surprised with this book. The story moved very quickly and definitely kept my interest. Like Amanda over at Dead White Guys, I found myself really caring for the characters right from the beginning. (Here's her review on Goodreads.) Frazier does a great job drawing out complex, interesting, lovable characters from the smallest, most telling details. Though the story itself is interesting I would say this book is 100% character-driven, and I love that.

Ada, for example, is a fascinating character - she's well educated, pretty, well-spoken, but still a bit unsure of herself. I loved this quote -

"[Ada] wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being." (328)

I remember having that thought when I was a teenager. Now it seems naïve, but thoughts like these are what makes Ada so loveable.

Frazier's writing style reminded me a lot of Cormac McCarthy, though not quite as sparse and depressing. Remember when I talked about McCarthy's creepy made-up compound words in my review of Blood Meridian? Yeah, Frazier does that exact same thing (words like "eyewhites," "flowerheads.") I don't see this very often and I like it. I also noted that, perhaps as a nod to our good friend James Joyce, Frazier opted to use the dash to signify dialogue. Considering his background in English Literature, I don't think this was an accident.

Speaking of Frazier's background ... you can tell that this book was written by an Academic. For example, this quote -

"Monroe would have dismissed such beliefs as superstition, folklore. But Ada, increasingly covetous of Ruby's learning in the ways living things inhabited this particular place, chose to view the signs as metaphoric. They were, as Ada saw them, an expression of stewardship, a means of taking care, a discipline. They provided a ritual of convern for the patterns and tendencies of the material world where it might be seen to intersect with some other world. Ultimately, she decided, the signs were a way of being alert, and under those terms she could honor them."

You can TOTALLY tell that an Academic wrote that, can't you? It sounds way more like an academic article than a young girl's thoughts, right? Come to find out, Charles Frazier has a PhD in English. Surprise, surprise. Ada is very well educated and rather precocious, though I don't think I'll buy that she's thinking such complex thoughts as these. But hey, I'll take it. There are much worse mistakes an author can make. And anyway, I loved Ada's character, so I didn't mind that much.

One last thing - this book had a very deep, mythic quality to it. I've heard a bunch of times that the story is based on the Odyssey - definitely true, in that the narrative is structured in the same way, and the characters that Inman meets in particular are each representative. Frazier's descriptions especially draw this out. I thought that this was pretty cool and unlike a lot of other contemporary American Fiction, at least what I've read of it.

I also think it's interesting to note that Frazier chose to situate his story in the South during the American Civil War. By the 1860s, America was still quite a young country and trying to establish its own identity. By building on a storyline that most readers are familiar with and placing his characters in a time and place that, like I said above, strips away the unnecessary, Frazier seems to be making a statement on the American Identity. Does that make sense? Pretty ambitious, but I think Frazier does an amazing job of it.

Gah, there's so much more I want to say, but this review is already getting too long! Read it and let's talk about it.

Mmm. Jude Law as W. P. Inman. (via)

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Warnings: Graphic war violence, including some very disturburing imagery. Also there is a part where a cute, fuzzy little bear cub is shot and eaten. Sad, so sad.

Favorite excerpts:
"Like the vast bulk of people, the captives would pass from the earth without hardly making any mark more lasting than plowing a furrow. You could bury them and knife their names onto an oak plank and stand it up in the dirt, and not one thing--not their acts of meanness or kindness or cowardice or courage, not their fears or hopes, not the features of their faces--would be remembered even as long as it would take the gouged characters in the plank to weather away. They walked therefore bent, as if bearing the burden of lives lived beyond recollection." (226)

What I'm reading next: Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst

Review: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Reviewed by Ingrid

Published: 2011

It's about:

Just months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, William E. Dodd was asked to be the new ambassador to the United States in Germany. As he settles in to his new home in Berlin along with his wife, daughter Martha and son Bill, Dodd struggles to fit in with flamboyant diplomats and Nazi officials. Dodd is hesitant to accept this "New Germany" and its uncomfortably strong anti-semitic sentiment, though he does harbor some dislike of Jews himself. His daughter, however, is eager to accept  the exciting new ideas and ardent enthusiasm of the Nazis. True to her typical young American self, she offends many with her outspoken comments and has many, many affairs, to the embarrassment of other American officials. However, as time passes and the violence becomes more and more prevalent, Martha and her family find themselves severely disillusioned with this beautiful country and its new government that seemed so promising.

Larson based this non-fictional work on the extensive diaries, letters, and memoirs written by both William Dodd and his daughter Martha. 

I thought: At first I was hesitiant about this book after scanning Greg's review on New Dork Review of Books, but ultimately I agree with Greg: I loved it. One of the reason I was hesitant was because I thought the title was melodramatic, until Greg explained that it's a translation of Teirgarten, the central garden of Berlin. Also, I'm often hesitant to read non-fiction books about history, especially moments in history like this one that are so often distorted by the extreme emotion people tend to feel about it. However, I was extremely impressed with the way Larson approached such a charged era. Instead of relying on pure shock value, Larson delves deep and reveals "an era of suprising nuance and complexity," as it says on the jacket of my copy. 

The Dodds are very endearing in their stereotypical Americanness, especially Martha. Larson did a terrific job constructing a fascinating story from their diaries and letters.

Also, the "Sources and Acknowledgments" section at the end was surprisingly interesting, as well the GREAT  and very extensive footnotes that have all kinds of extra little stories and facts. This book was very well researched. 

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Reading Recommendations: If you're like me and are disappointed to see shows like Swamp People take over the Hitler shows on the History Channel, this book is one you'll like.

Warnings: Some violence, as you would expect, but nothing gratuitous.

Favorite excerpts:

At eleven o'clock the next morning, July 5, 1933, the Dodds took a taxi to the wharf and boarded their ship, the Washington, bound for Hamburg . . . A dozen or so reporters also swarmed aboard and cornered Dodd on deck as he stood with his wife and Bill. At that moment Martha was elsewhere on the ship. The reporters threw out questions and prodded the Dodds to pose as if waving good-bye. With reluctance they did so, Dodd wrote, "and unaware of the similarity of the Hitler salute, then unknown to us, we raised our hands."

     The resulting photographs caused a minor outcry, for they seemed to capture Dodd, his wife, and son in mid-Heil.

     Dodd's misgivings flared. By this point he had begun to dread leaving Chicago and his old life. As the ship eased from its moorage the family experienced what Martha described later as "a disproportionate amount of sadness and foreboding." Martha wept.

What I'm reading next: Not sure. I'm about to go look at my bookshelves and decide.

Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern by Joshua Zeitz

Reviewed by Connie  

Published: 2006

It's about: Yes, yes, another book about flappers. I told you, I'll take any opportunity to read about women, women's issues, and women's studies. This book, like Posing a Threat, is about the flapper decade -- 1920s America. This book, however, focuses more on the celebrities and big wigs that popularized and perpetuated the flapper movement. It describes in detail the romance of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the romping adventures of The New Yorker writer "Lipstick," and the rise of select movie stars that made the young, rebellious girls of the time go wild wanting to be like them.

I thought:  [Long pause] Ehh.... it's somewhat enjoyable. I suppose my opinion will be a little skewed, considering that I read this one directly after reading another book on the same topic. Zeitz has completely different assumptions about the flapper movement than Latham did, who described it as a grass roots movement. He focuses less on the average flapper and more on the names in the newspapers of the times -- though that isn't to say those big names' lives aren't interesting. Being bookish myself, I enjoyed reading about literary genius F. Scott Fitzgerald and the romance that inspired so many of his works as well as about the beginnings of famous magazine The New Yorker. I just don't know if I buy into the argument that they began and can take full responsibility for the general attitude of the decade.

Also, I don't know if it's because the author is a man or because he merely disapproves, but most of the book seems to be condemning the flapper movement as mindless, teenage rebellion and lots and lots of sex. And then lots more sex. Especially in comparison with Posing A Threat, Zeitz seems to oversimplify a complicated movement, and then harshly judge that oversimplified image.

Verdict: This one belongs somewhere in between

Reading Recommendations: As I've mentioned before, as this is a non-fiction historical account, if this subject matter doesn't interest you at all, don't bother. If the subject matter does interest you, consider this one... though consider some other ones first.

Warnings: This guy talks about sex a LOT. Not description stuff.

Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers by Angela Latham

Reviewed by Connie


Published: 2000

It's about: This historical account of the "flappers" of 1920s America examines women's "performances" of the era -- their fashion, hairstyles, the emergence of bathing beauty competitions, and the popularity of burlesque shows -- in order to expose the embedded contradictions of this glamorous period. Louise Rosine, for example, is arrested for wearing a one-piece bathing suit to the beach and not wearing stockings to her knees, but bathing beauty competitions parade one-piece bathers for all the world to see and crown them queens.  Furthermore, the new, revealing fashions of the time that abandoned the corsets and ankle-length hoop skirts of the Victorian Age prove to be a liberating force for women while at the same time contributing to the commodification and sexualization of the female body.

I thought: As my own sense of feminism has grown over the past few years, I have taken every opportunity possible to learn more not only about what it means to be a woman in the world of today but what is has meant to be a woman in the past and how we got to the point where we are. When I picked up this book, I knew little more about the "flappers" than I had gleaned from photographs and your regular ol' F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.  This book, however, opened my eyes and shed light on an era rife with contradictions, complicating the notion of a flapper so that I still am not quite sure if they advanced the female cause or inhibited it.  Frankly, that's probably a good thing, as the movement likely did both.

The book is not only historical accurate about a complex era, but it is also a surprisingly enjoyable read. Latham begins her book with the anecdote of her grandmother, who continued working as a school teacher in the 20s after she married (women were expected to quit after marriage) and who had bobbed her hair but pinned on her long braid every day for work (a bobbed haircut was grounds for dismissal).  Already, this book had my interest.

As Latham focuses on the "performances" of the era through an ethnographic approach, she includes plenty of primary sources from newspapers and personal accounts, photographs of women getting arrested off the beach, illustrations from period magazines, and humorous and enlightening anecdotes to give the book a leisurely feel. This is no history textbook, ladies and gents.

Verdict: Stick this on the shelf

Reading Recommendations: Well, if the topic itself doesn't interest you, I probably wouldn't bother.  But if you've always wanted to know more about the flapper era, I definitely recommend this book.

Warnings: Obviously, issues of nudity are addressed in the book, but there's nothing explicit here.

Favorite excerpts: My favorite part of this book was the anecdote about Louise Rosine, the 39-year-old, heavily-built "immodest bather" who was imprisoned for her outfit:

"According to the 'blushing warden,' Wes Brubaker, Rosine, once in jail, disrobed entirely and announced her intention to remain undressed until she was freed.  Although hunger strikes had been attempted under his authority, the warden was unprepared to deal with this form of rebellion.  He finally called upon the assistance of two female inmates whom he instructed to pin blankets around Rosine's cell to shield her from view."

Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser

Reviewed by Julie

Published: 2001

It's about: This chunky book details the entire life of Marie Antoinette, from her childhood in Austria until her beheading after an interesting journey as the Queen of France. (If anyone didn't know she got beheaded...sorry about that unceremonious spoiler. Haha.)

I thought: I've grown up reading a lot of historical fiction, which was a delight for me, but have stayed quite away from historical non-fiction because, well, it's real. Real can equal boring. War facts, government stats, etc, can all become very old very quickly. But Fraser, who is known for her thoroughly engaging historical non-fiction (The Six Wives of Henry VIII, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605) didn't disappoint. In 458 pages, she describes not only the standard facts of the life of a royal in eighteenth-century France, but tiny details contributed by dozens of first-hand witnesses to the queen's activities, temperament, wardrobe, choices of friends, political involvements, etc. The story jumps out at you and smacks you in the face with interestedness and you really can't stop reading.
I've called this my "dessert" book, since I've been reading it in my spare time for months, but it's really quite remarkable. No fluff at all. Besides the fact that she's a dem good researcher, Fraser's writing style reminds me of an essayist's, as opposed to a stuffy old textbook writer's.


Verdict: On! The! Shelf! On! The Shelf! My copy is borrowed; I'm buying one of my own, stat.


Reading Recommendations: If you're interested in these people already, Louis, Marie Antoinette, their children, Madame Campan, the old empress, Du Berry--this book will delight you to pieces. If you're not really interested in them, it will probably still delight you. Don't try to read this fast and/or all scholarly-like, the details will bury you quickly. Just enjoy it.


Warnings: Very long! Many dates. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't reading this for a class and that I was allowed to forget most of the specific dates and remember favorite quotes from the queen and tidbits from her life.