Review: Murat, and Loyalty

    I found this book both interesting and oddly inspiring.

It was very good:  a good reader and a nice short story with loyalty, sacrifice, empathy, and above all, death with dignity.

Bon c’était très bien :
une bonne lectrice et une histoire courte avec la loyauté, les sacrifices, l’empathie , et surtout de mourir avec le dignité.

“Merci, librivox.org !
Bonne lectrice mais he n’aimes pas trop la musique avec.”

January 5, 2022 –

25.0% “Quel traison ! Dommage que la poudre etait mouillé.

Et quelle sauvetage !!
“… 5 segunds encore…””

January 5, 2022 –

29.0% “5/6 obéirent, mais 2 espagnols n’avait pas la lâcheté d’obéir !
Chouette !!”

January 6, 2022 –

30.0%“Dumas   is the master of suspense in this one!”

January 7, 2022 –

50.0%”Ça semble un bon offre d’asile, quand même.”

January 7, 2022 –

60.0% “Pas de Vive Joachim : pas bon.”

***

     I liked the story, and I gained a bit of hope for loyalty, and thus renewed hope in humankind.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Logic and Voting For Our Future, on Day 29/67

      My thoughts on  Day 29 of my 67 night-school class set of lesson plans for GED/HiSet learners, the middle of week 8/18, have been on applying mathematical proofs to the history of voting in the US (and on how reading transfers to other materials, like voters registration and ballot text…):

 

History and applying that history logically to our present circumstances are also crucial in the voting process

   Voting in the upcoming midterms is crucial to our republic, and to our future.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector & Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: Nous Les Dieux, by Werber Showed Me My Bias

    I found this book both interesting and enlightening, about my own biases against imagination.  Werber    reminds us that no ideas are entirely without value, and that no human talent can afford to be wasted, even at the risk of driving ourselves crazy by following those imaginative ideas where ever they may lead.

Ce livre c’est vraiment Bon!
This book kept me riveted.  The topic was derivative but done in a way that was still really imaginative and really interesting. I also enjoyed seeing all of the various historical characters mixed in.  I will stop here before I end up giving spoilers.

There is also a question at the very end of the first page that has always haunted me, especially after being told that I had “un imagination debortant.”  It is a scary idea, that one’s own “fertile imagination” could drive one around the bend like that.   Ca me donne peur…

 Interesting final observation.  At the bottom of one page, the gods and us, a human child, sit watching ants.  I wonder if this led him to write his famous trilogy about Ants (Fourmis)???

***

     I may not have liked the story, but I did learn that greater versatility is possible, from it.  And it also reminded me how important reading, any sort of reading, is, during early childhood and adolescence, as preparation for citizenship.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: The Souls of Black Folk, By W.E.B. Du Bois

I listened to a book by a pioneering scholar whom I have admired since elementary school:

This book is one that should be on every shelf in America, and I mean that in the widest sense, as in North America and South America. Since it’s in the public domain, it is available freely as an audiobook, beautifully read on librivox.org, and presumably also on both the project Gutenberg and the internet archives sites. Du Bois mentions, in fact, very nearly the same subjects spoken of by Dr. Anna J. Cooper in her work a decade earlier in A Voice From the South, By a Woman of the South, except that he rarely mentions women except for Phyllis Wheatley and one or two other women. He does however, not explicitly, but still, mention the Episcopalian clergy problem, bringing up the same issue that Dr. Cooper mentioned in her work about black people being trusted to lead and educate the black community. And also the problem of the history of slavery having very real lasting impacts into the present day at that time, and unfortunately still today. What he says is the same thing that she said earlier which is that both context and history matter.

1.0%“Librivox.org has a well liked reader for this classic. Excellent”

August 19, 2022 –

2.0%“Beautiful poem to start with by Ms. Simmons.”

August 19, 2022 –

3.0% “Had never thought of the Freedmen’s bureau as a government.

Going to SC, taking back the little land already issued to freed slaves.

😦

The Bureau and Gen. Howard had an impossible job, given the circumstances.”

August 19, 2022 –

4.0%“Mamon, unfortunately, appears to have won…”

August 19, 2022 –

6.0%“Had this call for education across the South, for all citizens, been heeded at the time, current events could have been avoided.”

August 19, 2022 –

7.0%“Exactly. Better living conditions give better work results.”

August 19, 2022 –

8.0%“Interesting, the irony of the fact that Booker T. Washington’s policies would in fact undermine the very existence of his own school, given that his de-emphasizing higher education would mean they wouldn’t be any teachers for Tuskegee.”

August 20, 2022 –

9.0%”Cunningly devised laws … to be preyed upon… handicapped… dangerous for the future… Here is the imperative for trained Negro leaders. … Educate them. Then by the ballot…”

August 20, 2022 –

11.0%”Beautiful homage to the risk of death in childbirth.”

August 20, 2022 –

13.0%”Same call as that of Dr. Anna J. Cooper for the Episcopalian clergy.”

August 20, 2022 –

14.0% “I will go to the king
… If I die, I die.”

Beautiful use of Esther’s words…”

   and yes:

“Exactly: the Toutons 1000 years ago were woefully barbaric, while knowledge came from beyond Europe.”

Hang on:  How did he manage not to mention Dr. Anna J. Cooper in this book?!

Doctor Anna J. Cooper   essentially builds the same  case that he does, and I love that question that she poses “who will care for our souls”.  I still wonder if that’s where W. E. B. Du Bois took the title for this book ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ from, as I’ve read somewhere that it was a response to this book by Dr. Cooper.

The United States can totally Do Better, can’t we?

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Terrible Review in Honor of Al Bester: The Stars My Destination

JMS has been trying to get a Babylon 5 related hashtag trending today, for the reboot, which reminded me of a book I read, and disliked, which was mentioned somewhere as the reason for the  name of the villain in the series whom we all love to hate. 

Secretes -Babylon 5 as Devil’s Advocate (PsyCorp villian ‘Al Bester takes opposite tack from end of Bester’s book)?

***

   I read it, but really had to force myself to finish it, since it was just not my style or cup of tea.  Not sure where the rumor comes from that this is where Bester of the PsyCorps gets his name.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Reading Octavia Butler for Fun, and For Our Future, on Day 28/67

      My thoughts on  Day 28 of my 67 night-school class set of lesson plans for GED/HiSet learners, have been on what makes a choice or situation equitable, and on a fiction series that provokes interesting thoughts around that question.  So, reading even fiction, even just for fun, can also lead to learning, to questioning, and to a better future (not to mention that reading fluidity transfers to other materials, like voters registration and ballot text…):

As an aside, both Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison are writers whose works should receive far more attention…

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

This book had me hooked from about the first five pages. The complex and well-drawn protagonist is very well matched with the ethical dilemmas presented and with the complexity of the ‘rescuers ‘ of Earth. Now I’m dying to get my hands on the next book in the series!

Update: I’m still tempted to give it five stars, which I only reserve for reference books and books that I feel the need to own, rather than check out from or donate to the public library system. This book has so haunted me since I finished reading it that I feel compelled to put aside my work and check out the next one from the library! 🙂 I note that I especially feel this way after having read Toni Morrison’s The Origin of Others and suddenly really seen how this protagonist being Black affects the rest of the story.

Reviewed in June, 12018 HE

Octavia Butler     has always given us much to chew on, but this series topped all of her question sets, for me.  The ethics of a choice imposed on a nearly dead planet by a species which is sacrificing many of its own members to save those of another, while claiming the right of the rescuer to do as they will, regardless of the desires of those being rescued.

   Voting in the upcoming midterms is crucial to our republic, and to our future.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector & Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Merci pour Le Capitaine Pamphile, M. Dumas, pere: Reading Really Is Fundamental…To VOTING

The recent ProPublica article on the return of literacy based voter suppression in some states reminds me that many people need stories that show them, and that reading even fiction, helps preparing kids and adults for reading other things, like voter registration forms, ballots, and exit polls.

Unlike  The Count of Monte-Cristo, this one is a childrens’ book!   I had no idea that he’d also written for kids.

I listened to some of this book, as usual, via LibreVox, and the reader was  terrible:

Abandoned listening to pompous reader reading annoying children’s book.

Reading Progress

November 5, 2020 – Shelved as: livres

November 5, 2020 –

page 35

9.11% “C’est intéressant comme tout le monde savait tout les détails de Les mille et une nuits : moi, je viens d’apprendre qui était le roi Camarazamann il y a peu de temps avant.

It is interesting how everyone knew the details of The Thousand and One Nights. I only just learned about who King Camarazaman was a short while ago.”

***

     I may not have liked the story, but I did learn that greater versatility is possible, from it.  And it also reminded me how important reading, any sort of reading, is, during early childhood and adolescence, as preparation for citizenship.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: Anna J. Cooper’s A Voice From The South, By A Woman of The South

I got this book from Gutenberg project, initially, but found a cleaner pdf, and then epub versions on The Internet Archive.

(What is it with the WP editor killing my paragraph spacing?!!)

Interesting ending, on belief. I held off on rating this for a while, and then rated it a 4 star -everyone should read this book, book, but maybe not use it as a current reference book.

Doctor Anna J. Cooper  starts off by building a case that if the United States is based on Christianity, then it has certain obligations, including not allowing a set of institutions based on bullying and hypocrisy to rule the country. From there she points out that these hypocritical and bullying, or ‘might makes right’, institutions, have taken advantage of Black labor, and kept Black people in poverty. She points out that it is a tremendous waste of potential, and also that history and context really do matter. Toward the end chapters, she is calling for the Black community to build institutions for what would later be called Negro uplift, and I love that question that she poses “who will care for our souls”. I wonder if that’s where W. E. B. Du Bois took the title for his book ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ from, as I’ve read somewhere that it was a response to this book by Dr Cooper. She is, of course, an extremely strong advocate for education, for understanding history, for context, and says near the end of the book that we should be using our trigonometry and physics to help our neighbors measure our fields and build up housing and businesses, banking institutions within the Black community given that that’s denied to us by the dominant society. The statistics that she cites are unfortunately not very different by percentage from those cited 50 years later by Dr. King and haven’t changed much to this day. She calls for the essentials of food, clothing, and shelter, and Universal education to be provided to the Black community because we have paid our debt in work, in inventiveness, and in blood in the cotton fields and on the battlefield.

Please also see the reading updates. She started off by building a case based on accepted ideas of the time, many of which are outdated, but were necessary to get her audience to listen, back then.

Leaves me saddened and angry that so little progress has been made in the century since she wrote this. As she wished for, more Black writers are finally being published, but context is still sorely lacking.

The United States can do better.

Reading Progress

August 10, 2022 – Shelved as: to-read

August 10, 2022 – Shelved

August 11, 2022 – Started Reading

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: bookgroup

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: racisme

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: policy

August 11, 2022 – Shelved as: dcpl

August 11, 2022 –

page 11

2.99%“By pg 11 I had to take strong issue with her treatment of Islam both in the Arab countries and in Turkey especially. I have lived in Turkey, and still have many Muslim friends who will strongly object to her characterization of Muslim women as empty headed. Even during the time she was writing, 100 years ago, the women of the Harem were not so, and for a hundred years after Suleiman, they were powerful.”

August 11, 2022 –

page 12

3.26% “Exactly:

“… our satisfaction in American institutions rests not on the fruition we now enjoy, but springs rather from the possibilities and promise that are inherent in the system, though as yet, perhaps, far in the future.”

Even to this day. This is why I took the oath of office twice.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 13

3.53%“Cites a lady well before Viktor Frankl on happiness as feeling able to make progress on important work for others.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 14

3.8% “Mais, non. Europe got Chivalry from Arab poets via the Crusades. La chivalrie ne vient pas de l’église ni du feudalisme, elle a eu du “nos ancêtres les Gaulois.”. De la Sorbonne , sans doute c’est aussi pour ça que j’ai laissé la France.
No, chivalry did not come from feudalism and certainly not in the church. She must have gotten this while at the Sorbonne from the old French “our ancestors the Gauls” thing.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 15

4.08%“Like my grandma at Mt Zion UMC, she probably believes this, but, whether she believed this or not, politically speaking, she really had no choice but to praise and lift up the church and Europe in order to assure the white folks of our loyalty to the United States.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 19

5.16% “This was written only 21 years after the emancipation.

” Just at the age of ruddy manhood.”

A time for introspection indeed. Wow.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 22

5.98%“”We need men who can be a father a brother a friend to every week, struggling, unshielded girl.””

August 12, 2022 –

page 26

7.07%“Is she essentially calling for an Episcopalian talented 10th?”

August 12, 2022 –

page 33

8.97% “Beautiful:. “a people whose civilization was hoary headed before the parent elements that begot his race had advanced beyond nebulosity.”

Sorry, Gus, but this beats your “my people were writing poetry while your people were swinging through the trees !” (Gus to the white guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding)”

August 12, 2022 –

page 34

9.24% “And the interesting thing is that ” this incarnation of power ” is still with us , unfortunately.

It’s what western civilization is built on.”

August 12, 2022 –

page 37

10.05% “Thank you: “… you will not find jurisprudence formulating as an axiom the absurdity that man and wife are one, and that one the man – that the married woman may not hold or bequeath her own property…”

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Cooper !!”

August 12, 2022 –

page 50

13.59% “”… deliberately fold their arms and turn round when Black Woman’s turn came to alight”

Yup.”

August 12, 2022 –

30.0% “” teaching GOOD MANNERS.”

Yup, things haven’t changed. Unfortunately.”

August 13, 2022 –

35.0% “”…and all the strong will have learned at last to deal justly , to love mercy, and to walk humbly; and our Fair land will happen taught the secret of universal courtesy…”

Exactly what Project Do Better is working for. Thank you for this encouragement, Dr. Cooper, of blessed memory.”

August 13, 2022 –

38.0%“Man or woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrng. The pleading of the American woman for the right and the opportunity to employ the American method of influencing the disposal… is based on principles as broad as the human race and as old as human society. Her wrongs are thus indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, all helpless suffering, and the plenitude of her rights will mean the final triumph of”

August 13, 2022 –

39.0% “”…lofty purpose of Spain’s pure-minded Queen”
??!

Seriously ?
Dr. Cooper didn’t read some of the original letters back and forth between Columbus and Isabel about those ‘cannibalistic barbarians’ that it was okay to force into slavery despite the church’s position against it.”

August 13, 2022 –

47.0%“”The community that closes its gates against foreign talent can never hope to advance beyond a certain point. Resolve to keep out foreigners and you keep out progress.””

August 13, 2022 –

48.0%“”-in 1619.””

August 13, 2022 –

49.0%“But in fact, the laboring man has nearly been ground to powder here.”

August 14, 2022 –

52.0%“Ouch! But, in my experience, also true…”

August 14, 2022 –

57.0% “Even today: “… we know that our present poverty is due to the fact that the toil of the last quarter Century enriched these coffers, but left us the heirs of crippled, deformed, frostbitten, horny-handed and empty-handed mothers and fathers.”

Still, today!!”

August 14, 2022 –

60.0% “”A man who’s acquaintanceship is so slight that he cannot even discern diversities of individuality, has no right or authority to hawk “the only true and authentic ” pictures of a race of human beings.”

Exactly!
Thank you, Dr. Cooper.”

August 14, 2022 –

66.0% “”… the South presents a solid phalanx of iron resistance to the Negro’s advancement…”

And she still does, even today, which is why I left.”

August 14, 2022 –

67.0%“” give him a fair wage and an honest reckoning and a kindly God-speed””

August 14, 2022 –

76.0% “”In cities, lower priced houses on streets are almost uniformly kept for the white poor.”

Alley dwellings and black infant mortality.”

   Comment: to be fair to Dr. Cooper wrt Spain’s Catholic Queen, the letters between Isabel and Colo. were only recently accessed, afaik, as shown in San Diego, CA, The Museum of Man’s “Cannibals” exhibit abt 2019, so they were not likely accessible to the Francophone or Anglophone world at her time.

   We really can Do Better, can’t we?

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Revu: Les Damnes de La Terre, Frantz Fanon -Colonialism Hurts Everyone

Dnf, I can’t deal.  Les Damnés de la Terre, The Damned of the Earth, sounds about right.

See my reading updates, please.

Just too épatée…

Ok, thinking about this book, or the half that I read, it felt sickeningly like writing some difficult scenes from my series Ann and Anna where whipping or other horror is remembered. But almost every page I read of this book was like that. I had no idea how similar life in the colonized countries was to life in enslaved or Jim Crow USA.

  And yup, Sartre was the right guy to write that Preface.

Reading Progress

September 11, 2015 – Shelved

September 11, 2015 – Shelved as: to-read

June 4, 2016 – Shelved as: livres

June 4, 2016 – Shelved as: racisme

June 4, 2016 – Shelved as: teaching

June 4, 2016 – Shelved as: tspt

June 4, 2016 – Shelved as: esclavitud

August 2, 2018 – Shelved as: chokwelumumbajac… (Paperback Edition)

August 2, 2018 – Shelved (Paperback Edition)

August 2, 2018 – Shelved as: policy

August 2, 2018 – Shelved as: intergenerational

August 2, 2018 – Shelved as: election12016

August 2, 2018 – Shelved as: chokwelumumbajacksonmi

August 2, 2022 – Started Reading

August 2, 2022 –

page 1

0.32%“En fin trouvé !!”

August 2, 2022 –

page 7

2.25%“They banned the book, and he only saw a copy only just before he died? Difficult”

August 3, 2022 –

page 8

2.57%

August 3, 2022 –

page 9

2.89%

August 5, 2022 –

page 10

3.22%“Donc il faut aussi lire son premier livre Peau Noire, Masques Blancs, et aussi découvrir plus l’histoire des Caraïbes…”

August 6, 2022 –

page 11

3.54% “Je ne peux pas m’empêcher de penser comme il avait juste terminé d’écrire son livre quand il est mort.
Can’t stop thinking of how he just finished writing that book before he died.”

August 6, 2022 –

page 12

3.86%

August 7, 2022 –

page 12

3.86%“C’est triste”

August 7, 2022 –

page 13

4.18%

August 7, 2022 –

page 13

4.18%“Wow. Still digesting the fact that he had the guts to write this book during the Algerian War, putting himself in danger, not to mention having the book banned obviously.”

August 8, 2022 –

page 14

4.5%

August 9, 2022 –

page 15

4.82%

August 9, 2022 –

page 15

4.82%“İnteresting, very specific reasons that Fanon asked Sartre to write this forward. And apparently, it worked. Many read Sartre’s preface but not the book, which was seemingly addressed to a different audience.”

August 9, 2022 –

page 17

5.47%“Damn! No wonder Fanon didn’t make any comment when he read the preface. Sartre! İs he telling the colonizers what they want to hear? Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

August 9, 2022 –

page 19

6.11% “Yep, there is the other shoe. Now I see why he picked Sartre.
Ouch!
The hand-picked token indigenous people educated in Europe and sent back to be the buffer, galloping toward the hypocritical carrot. Wow.”

August 9, 2022 –

page 21

6.75% “”elle a fabriqué de toutes pièces une bourgeoisie de colonisés…”

Just what the British did in India and I didn’t realize that all the European powers have done this all across Asia and africa. Similar to division via the color line in the US.”

August 9, 2022 –

page 22

7.07% “… à la mer.

Yeeoouch!!”

August 10, 2022 –

page 23

7.4% “So that was the reason that “the air of England is too pure for slaves to breathe” -easier to forget those blood stained colonies:

“Vous faites semblant d’oublier que vous avez des colonies et qu’on y massacre en votre nom.””

August 12, 2022 –

page 24

7.72%“Les mots de Sartre sont assez choquants”

August 13, 2022 –

11.0%“Sartre à terminé d’écrire ce préface en septembre 61 et Fanon meure en novembre , seulement deux mois , jusqu’à temps d’avoir vu la publication de son livre.”

August 13, 2022 –

12.0%“Botswana ? “…la décolonisation est toujours un phénomène violent.””

August 13, 2022 –

14.0% “Just like here in the US. Schools, religion, and even ‘science’ put to the service of racism, claiming that we were devoid of ethics, and even ‘anti-values’.
Useful only as a cheap labor force, thus ineligible for the equality called for by Dr. Anna J. Cooper.”

August 13, 2022 –

15.0%“Divide to rule: “la bourgeoisie colonialiste avait enfoncé à coup de pilon dans l’esprit du colonisé l’idée d’une société d’individus où chacun s’enferme dans sa subjectivité…””

August 13, 2022 –

19.0%“He’s describing the same process and situation in the colonies that was taking place during slavery and in fact also during the Jim Crow era in the United States to us.”

August 14, 2022 –

20.0%“Wow”

August 14, 2022 –

22.0% “Nonviolence & compromise fruits of colonialism?

All same except president of Gabon reçu par le président de la République française…

Oh.”

August 14, 2022 –

23.0%“C’est trop violent”

August 14, 2022 – Finished Reading

And still,  our world gets warmer and warmer, in bad ways.

Shira

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Merci, M. Dumas: Learning Context From Annoying Queens…

Unlike most of his books thus far, the story of Queen Margot, for me,  was not even close to as profound nor as captivating (read that: thought-provoking) as The Count of Monte-Cristo. 
I listened to this book, as usual, via LibreVox, and the reader was  ok, as I recall:

I found this book depressing.   First, Hugenots massacred on St. Bartholomew’s Day, then our two heros becoming fast friends after trying to kill each other, then dying together for something they did not do, and then cursed royalty.  But Dumas certainly knew how to make the history and intrigues interesting.

***

J’ai trouvé ce livre assez déprimant.
D’abord, les massacres des huguenots du jour de Saint-Barthélemy, ensuite, les deux héros: ça c’est une vraiment belle histoire en fait après deux attendant de se tuer entre eux ils se deviennent les meilleures amie et muerent ensemble, malheureusement pour quelque chose qu’ils ont pas fait, et ensuite les hommes prix d’une famille maudite d’être royal.
Mais Alexandre Dumas a su très bien rendre intéressant tous ces histoires et intrigues politique.

Reading Progress

– Shelved as: livres

November 22, 2020 –

2.0% “”…son perfumeur et son empoisonneur…”/perfumer and poisoner:
Catherine di Médicis”

November 22, 2020 –

10.0%“Horrible massacre…”

November 23, 2020 –

10.0%

November 23, 2020 –

50.0%“touts ces mots sûr les blessûres me donnes envie d’ller me battre avec une epée -donc, je suis une mauvaise Gandhienne !!”/all these words and wounds make me want to pick up a sword and fight -so, I’m a bad Gandian!!

November 25, 2020 –

60.0% “Avec l’amitié de ses amis, que j’aimerais bien avoir avec quelquien moi aussi, cet amour de bougie ne vaut rien.
Je comprends que dans cette époque les femmes c’était méprisées, mais ça ne m’arrange pas mon café du matin. ☹️”

November 25, 2020 –

69.0%“Comment le poison du Pargali Ibrahim de Muhtesem Yuzyil…”/like the poison of 2nd in Charge, Ibrahim of Pargi, from the show Magnificent Century…

November 25, 2020 – Finished Reading

     I may not have liked the story, but I did learn from it.

Shira

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Shira

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