What I've been reading - Poetry, Mythology, and WWII spying, oh my?

 "Wild Embers - Poems of rebellion, fire and beauty" by Nikita Gill. I have struggled since forever to find poetry that speaks to me, I just feel like I should have poets or poems that I like and I've not been able to find a collection or poet that really speaks to me. Enter Nikita Gil. A poet I found on, wait for it, Instagram. Super short, powerful, feminist poems lend themselves easily to Instagram. I was not even through this short book when I was on my library website ordering her other books and hoping online to buy copies of this book for all of my friends that are having summer birthdays. Love love love. 

Also by Nikita Gill "Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters". Lovely lyrical prose and short poems about some familiar (Medusa, Hera, Aphrodite) and some less familiar, along with some personal favorites (Persephone, Hecate) from the lore of Greek and Roman mythology. Mythology doesn't always value women (looking at you, Zeus, you horrible thing) but this book elevates these women and goddesses and tells their stories which so often get swept aside. Also, loved loved loved.

"Transcription" by Kate Atkinson. If the name Kate Atkinson sounds familiar it's because she wrote the INCREDIBLY popular book "Life After Life". I was picking up some library holds and walked past an endcap and saw this book and thought I'd give it a shot. It follows a woman named Juliet Armstrong throughout 3 different time periods - 1940, 1950, 1981. Juliet gets pulled into the world of domestic spying with a mysterious boss, a dog that is being held as ransom, and some home-grown Nazis who are making plans if the Nazis to succeed in crossing the channel. I thought one of the most interesting things about this book was the 1950 setting, you don't hear much about Britain immediately after the end of the war and what the adjustment out of wartime feels like. 

"The Deep" by Rivers Solomon. I heard the premise of this book and was immediately drawn in - it was interesting to me that you could take such a heartwrenching idea (pregnant female to-be-slaves were thrown over the sides of ships that were transporting them from their countries) and turn into something mystical and ethereal (like the babies from these women survived their attempted murders and became sea creatures who have the memories of their ancestors. It has some decidedly Giver vibes. And it's a short story so it's a super fast read! 

"What Should Be Wild" by Julia Fine. A little girl grows up isolated in a crumbling old estate with her dad. They are isolated because anything alive that she touches will die or anything dead that she touches comes back to life. Which you know is problematic but then the more I thought about it the worse it got - uh wooden spoons coming to life? Leather car seats? Eeeeeek. The story is a little convoluted - family curse, something evil in the woods, alternate universe things, CW for torture. Kinda felt like it wasn't as interesting as I wanted it to be, but it has potential. 

Book review: "Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man's Odyssey Into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide" by Sven Lindquist

 I know, I'm coming in hot with the feel good book review. But you can't be that surprised right?

I picked up this book because I was watching the HBO "hybrid docuseries" (whatever that means) of the same name. The HBO program was so well done and interesting and even though it's 4 hour long episodes long I've rewatched it several times. The book is one of three works that they base the series off of. The whole program is about basically, genocide. It covers a lot of areas - Native Americans and the establishment of the United States, the terrifying colonial takeovers in Africa, more modern acts of genocide like the Holocaust, Rwanda and the Balkans and slavery all around the world. It is heavy material but I learned so much and it was really beautifully and artistically done. Also, my boy Josh Hartnett is in some of the recreations (which are not cheesy). Anyway, if you have HBO I'd truly recommend it.

Okay, on to the book!

I love the opening sentences: "You already know enough. So do I. It is not the knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions." Ah yes, the scary part - self reflection and change.

So Sven's book focuses on Africa. It's kind of a historical reflection and interspersed with it is his own travels through Africa as a writer - but it's far more historical reflection than travelogue. (Though it's funny to hear him talking about lugging a wordprocessor and tons of floppy disks (amazing! so convenient!) through Africa on buses through the dessert. Another touch point that he uses is the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Joseph Conrad was ahead of his time when it came to writing stories that DIDN'T glamorize the British colonial era (looking at you Kipling). There were some real life Kurtz figures in history and he talks about them.

It can't be overstated how much the Africans were viewed as non-humans. An example of this in the book is that there was a certain type of bullet that was prohibited in warfare between "civilized states". It could only be used for big game hunting and colonial wars. No shooting other white folks with it but if you want to shoot a lion or an African, fair game. The bullets were designed to break into pieces which lead to infection and festering. If the initial shot didn't kill you immediately it would eventually. 

This book was also the first time that I had heard of the Guanche people. They were the "first people to be destroyed by European expansion".  They were of African origin but lived on what we now call the Canary Islands. There were about 80,000 of them. Then in 1478 Christopher Columbus' patron sent an expedition with guns and horses to the island. By 1483 there were only about 2,000 left. Mostly women, children and the elderly. Almost complete extinction of a people in less than 5 years.

Here's an interesting quote: "(at the time of Columbus' arrival) many scholar's believe that there was roughly an equal number of people in Europe as in America....during the following 300 years the population of the world increased by 250%. Europe's increased fast by around 450% - 500%. The original population of America fell by 90%".