What have you read lately?

[apl68]

Bring Back Our Girls:  The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls, by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw.  It's a detailed look at the 2014 kidnapping of almost 300 school girls in Nigeria by the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency.  The authors try to cover all aspects of it--the background of Boko Haram and the Nigerian political situation, the mediators who negotiated hostage deals, the international efforts to find and rescue the abductees, and the experiences of the abductees themselves.

Their experiences occupy a great deal of the book.  Their captors attempted to force the Christian girls to convert to Islam through beatings, hunger, and threats.  They also demanded that they submit to forced marriage with Boko Haram fighters.  Those who persisted in refusing were reduced to slavery--which is still widespread across much of the Muslim world--as punishment.  Some eventually gave in.  They found that their new husbands' attitudes toward the status of women and wives were exactly what one would expect of them.  The largest group professed Islam, but drew the line at "marriage."  They continued to be pressured to do so.

And then there was one group who simply refused to cooperate.  They resisted by singing hymns and reciting Bible verses among themselves, keeping clandestine diaries of their experiences, and even putting themselves at risk to smuggle food to their fellow captives when their captors committed the odd lapse of having them room in a storehouse.  Their story is an inspiring episode in the midst of the tragedy.  And there was a lot of tragedy.  About 40 of the abductees are believed to have died one way or another.  Many are still "married" and missing.  And the wider war killed thousands, displaced a couple million, and tore apart whole communities.

All and all, a fine piece of journalism.  Spectacular crimes and incidents like this tend to grab the whole world's attention for a time before fading away.  Most people never really get much understanding of the wider stories behind the story.  Bring Back Our Girls does a real service in trying to fill in what's missing.

[ab_grp]

Now we're back into the Expanse universe (Corey) with Abaddon's Gate.  Just started, though I wasn't as into the previous books as my husband was (compared to other series), and I am not gaga for this one just yet, either.  We'll see.

Finally finished this one, which took more than a month.  Eek.  Husband did not like this one as much as the previous ones.  I thought it had some interesting ideas and am interested to see where the series goes from here, but there was too much going on to follow at times.  Maybe too many big ideas plus too many characters and too much action? A bigger picture for the series emerges than in previous books.  In any case, the beings introduced in previous books have built a gate to somewhere, so the focus is on that gate and the consequences of various human actions.  I think that was the most intriguing part, how the non-human force perceived the human actions and acted in return.  They introduced some more good characters, though not as strong as the ones introduced in the last book, in my opinion.  I hope those characters come back in future books.  As the name suggests, the series appears to be about expansion through the known and unknown universe(s?). 

We started on The Test (Neuvel).  Here's the Amazon blurb:

Britain, the not-too-distant future.
Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.
He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.
When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?

I'm not sure where I came across this one.  It's hard to describe without giving away the plot, but it's very brief (110).  We started it yesterday evening and got about 75% of the way through.  So far, I really like it.  I was unsure where it was going at first (and am unsure of where it will go from here), but there is a lot of psychological stuff going on that I find very interesting (also from a testing perspective).  I expect that we might finish it this evening.

[Charlotte]

We started it yesterday evening and got about 75% of the way through. ....  I expect that we might finish it this evening.

Do you read aloud or are you both reading separate books?

[ab_grp]

We started it yesterday evening and got about 75% of the way through. ....  I expect that we might finish it this evening.

Do you read aloud or are you both reading separate books?

We read aloud to each other, switching back and forth every so often (sometimes at the section or chapter, or after so many minutes, depending on the book).  Some books are a little more difficult to do this with than others, but it works out pretty well overall.

We finished The Test last night.  Again, a little hard to describe with out giving away the plot, but it was an intriguing psychological thriller (in some ways, it almost reads as a psychological case study) and didn't end up exactly as I thought it might.  I am on the fence about the ending, though it does fit well enough with the story.  Definitely not a happy book.  Dystopian? I'm sure the general idea has been done before, but I still appreciated that it was a different type of story than a lot of other books we've read.

So we started on Bird Box (Malerman), which received pretty good reviews and was made into a fairly popular movie.  I hadn't paid much attention when the movie came out, except to get the impression that people are blindfolded and not allowed (?) to look at the world around them.  That seems to be in line with the plot so far.  It's another story that seems as though it could be too similar to others or contrived, so we'll see how it turns out.  I guess it's another dystopian psychological thriller.  Where did the people go? What happened? Hopefully the author will pull this off in a clever way.  It's also pretty short (272 pp), so we should finish it pretty soon.  We're using these as palate cleansers before getting back to various sci-fi series that are more epic.

[Economizer]

Not lately, but certainly relating to current topics, I read MARIJUANA: THE NEW PROHIBITION in the mid 20th century. In that work, it was supposed that "grass" users and suppliers would meld into and with criminals and criminal suppliers in business, criminal, and social circumstances. Well, I do believe that has happened and the confluence of those cultures has made it very difficult
for peace officers and law enforcement agencies to ascertain and act against suspicious appearances and activities that forewarn dangers to the general American public. Me? I hate to have to attempt to work, and to play,  and to attempt to guide those that I love in the environments this has and continues to create!

Does this suggest that I have become a proponent of the legalization of "Weed"? HELL NO! What I do support is the
maintaining and not diminishing defenses against its use and availability.

[hmaria1609]

I haven't posted here in a bit.
Finished: Lincoln's Wartime Tours From Washington, DC by John Schildt
Local history about Pres. Lincoln's tours to battlefields and cities and towns in MD and VA during his presidency.

Now: The Deadly Hours by Susanna Kearsley et al.
A gold watch believed to be cursed is passed through the centuries. Two of the contributing authors are ones I've enjoyed and own their novels.

[spork]

Bring Back Our Girls:  The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls, by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw. 

[. . .]

slavery--which is still widespread across much of the Muslim world

[. . . ]

I do not know of any data that would support this claim.

[Golazo]

+1
I suppose one could argue that conditions in some countries where labor abuses are frequent (ie, confiscation of passports, non payment of wages, debt traps) amounts to slavery. But calling this much of Muslim world is a stretch even in this case.

[apl68]

+1
I suppose one could argue that conditions in some countries where labor abuses are frequent (ie, confiscation of passports, non payment of wages, debt traps) amounts to slavery. But calling this much of Muslim world is a stretch even in this case.

I don't have the citations ready to hand and don't have the time to look them up, but in recent years I've seen articles--non-sensationalized articles in thoroughly mainstream publications like New Yorker--regarding the continued existence of outright chattel slavery in several North African countries.  There are also continued reports of guest workers being essentially reduced to household slaves in Persian Gulf states like Dubai.  All of this is distinct from the wartime actions of Islamist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS.  I guess one could quibble over how widespread it has to be to be considered "much" of the Muslim world, but it's not limited to just one or two places.

[mamselle]

It may be helpful to distinguish the Arabic or North African/Middle Eastern world from "the Muslim world," then.

Islam being an important religious affiliation in parts of SE Asia and the Oceania/Pacific Island nations as well as the Mediterranean rim, geographic specificity might be a more helpful description than a religious adjective that could seem to suggest slavery is consistent with Koranic belief systems.

That may be at least one root to the objection under consideration; my limited knowledge of Islam suggests that it's no different from the other Abrahamic faith traditions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity) in perhaps having holy texts that appear to accept a slave-based economic system, but whose current cultural mores reject that stance as theologically indefensible, given the larger message of the whole of any one of those faith systems' received canons.

M.

[smallcleanrat]

+1
I suppose one could argue that conditions in some countries where labor abuses are frequent (ie, confiscation of passports, non payment of wages, debt traps) amounts to slavery. But calling this much of Muslim world is a stretch even in this case.

I don't have the citations ready to hand and don't have the time to look them up, but in recent years I've seen articles--non-sensationalized articles in thoroughly mainstream publications like New Yorker--regarding the continued existence of outright chattel slavery in several North African countries.  There are also continued reports of guest workers being essentially reduced to household slaves in Persian Gulf states like Dubai.  All of this is distinct from the wartime actions of Islamist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS.  I guess one could quibble over how widespread it has to be to be considered "much" of the Muslim world, but it's not limited to just one or two places.

Why call it a "quibble?"

[spork]

+1
I suppose one could argue that conditions in some countries where labor abuses are frequent (ie, confiscation of passports, non payment of wages, debt traps) amounts to slavery. But calling this much of Muslim world is a stretch even in this case.

I don't have the citations ready to hand and don't have the time to look them up, but in recent years I've seen articles--non-sensationalized articles in thoroughly mainstream publications like New Yorker--regarding the continued existence of outright chattel slavery in several North African countries.  There are also continued reports of guest workers being essentially reduced to household slaves in Persian Gulf states like Dubai.  All of this is distinct from the wartime actions of Islamist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS.  I guess one could quibble over how widespread it has to be to be considered "much" of the Muslim world, but it's not limited to just one or two places.

Chattel slavery is not widespread across the "Muslim world," whatever publications like The New Yorker might have reported. The equivalent of debt bondage might exist in some locations in South Asia, but is not limited to majority Muslim communities. Same for  remote parts of North Africa. If chattel slavery is practiced anywhere, it would be rare and unrelated to religion. The closest comparison I can think of is captive labor in West African cocoa farms, Thai fishing boats, and sex trafficking.

"Slavery existed/exists elsewhere" is the butwhataboutism practiced by members of Georgia's board of education:

https://theintercept.com/2021/06/04/georgia-racism-education-schools/.

In book news, I just finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and have requested the second and third books in the trilogy from the local library. It's been maybe twenty-five years since I've read any Gibson novels. While I think he's a far better writer stylistically than, say, Neal Stephenson, I'd rate Pattern Recognition as ok but not great. It's not really sci fi, and feels dated given a post-9/11, post-Soviet setting with mention of DVDs, etc. Plus I didn't like how the story was conveniently resolved at the end. Too deus ex machina.

[apl68]

It may be helpful to distinguish the Arabic or North African/Middle Eastern world from "the Muslim world," then.


M.

That's a very fair point.  This (and some other things as well) does seem to be much more of an issue in the Arabic world than in the broader Muslim community.  And it's no longer the norm in most of the Arabic world, which I was not trying to imply.

One thing about posting on a site frequented by academics--it reminds me to be more careful with my use of terms!

[mamselle]

Good for you for being flexible.

M.

[spork]

And I hope my comments did not come across as critical of you. I haven't read the book, but I'm always leery of claims made by journalists, academics, policymakers, and random go-gooders about events in other parts of the world (Kony 2012/Invisible Children, Greg Mortenson/Central Asian Institute, and the American Red Cross in Haiti come to mind) -- especially accounts that have an Orientalist tinge to them.