Book list: planning to read in 2014

Here are some of the books that I am planning to read in 2014. I will try to read at least one book about children education, economy, and authors from the past :)

My main area of interest is history and biography. Please feel free to add a comment if you know good books to read. 

• The Third Vision: The Science of Personal Transformation by Francis H. Vala
• Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End by Norman G. Finkelstein
• Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary by Joseph Conrad
• Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
• Teach Your Children Well by Madeline Levine
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Coup: 1953, The CIA, and The Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations by Ervand Abrahamian
• The Trial by Franz Kafka

Book list - read in 2013

Another year is gone and it is time for me to list the books that I read in 2013 (here is the link on the Goodreads).

My three favorites:

- King Leopold's Ghost
- The General's Son
- I Am Malala

and here is the rest:

Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu by Yaroslav Trofimov

Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer

Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History by Antonio J. Mendez, Matt Baglio

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright, Bill Woodward

The Colonel

The Colonel is the latest book by the Iranian author, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. This book is banned in Iran and was first published outside of Iran. Even though some of his books in Farsi are widely popular in Iran this was the first book I read by this author. The story is about a former colonel from the Shah era and his wife and five children after the 1979 revolution in Iran. The story is told through flash backs in time and by references to some of Iranian historic events and figures. This combined by his style of writing makes the story a bit harder to follow. The personal and family conflicts caused by the revolution and clash of tradition and modernity drives the family in different paths.

One of the reasons that I enjoyed this novel was that since I lived in Iran during the revolution I could imagine myself being any of the characters in the book.

Argo

Few years ago I read the book Our Man In Tehran by Robert Wright. The book is about american hostages in Iran and Canadian involvement in that crisis from the point of view of the Canadian ambassador in Iran during those days, Ken Taylor. I also wanted to read the book Argo when it was released but never found the time to do so until the movie started to make lots of noise and eventually winning the Oscar. I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie.

I got the audio-book of the Argo from the library. The narration is done very well and the book is well written which made me to want to keep listening. I find this book more entertaining to read than Our Man In Tehran but the latter gives more realistic information about the whole situation. I got the feeling that the author either knowingly or just by mistake describing scenes in a way to make them more dramatic. One example of this is the reference to the revolutionary guards walking at night on the streets and blowing their whistles. I was living in Tehran during that time and I know that because of the increase in theft during and after the revolution some neighbors hired security guards to watch out for the cars and the houses in their neighborhoods. These guards were not part of the revolutionary guards but in Argo they are referred to as being part of them.

As I was reading both books I was asking myself that there must have been few people inside Iranian government who were aware of the situation and this report on the CBC kind of answered this question.

Here Comes Trouble

Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life

I listened to the audio-book of this title which I got from our library. Part of the reason I choose this book was that I couldn't find the audio-books in my to-read list in the library. This has happened to me before, looking for a specific book and not finding it and coming across a title that was intriguing enough to borrow it, and I 'd been pleasantly surprised with these books. I usually check the online reviews, some negative and some positive, for the books that I want to read. I did the same for this title. Some of the negative reviews were more based on the author, Michael Moore, and his previous works rather than this book. For most part the reviews were good and I decided to go ahead and listen to it.

This book is a collection of stories about the author from different stages of his life and is narrated by himself. I enjoyed both the narration and the stories.

Following is the list of the stories in this book:

The Execution of Michael Moore

Crawling Backward

Search Party

The Canoe

Piet

Tet

Christmas

A Holy Thursday

The Exorcism

Boys State

Zoe

Getaway Car

Two Dates

Twenty Names

Milhous, in Three Acts

Crisis Intervention

A Public Education

Raid

Bitburg

A Blessing

Abu 2 U 2

Hot Tanned Nazi

Parnassus

Gratitude

In the "A Blessing" he tells the story of George Zabelka, the Roman Catholic priest who blessed the Enola Gay before its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The dialog between Michael Moore and the priest is very interesting, specially now with the trial of Bradley Manning underway. The story revolves around the sense of guilt the priest has about his moral support for the bombing.

George: "... it is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and their consequences and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong."
Michael: "but George this was war no one is allowed to ask any questions."
George: "and it is exactly that kind of attitude that continues to get us into more wars, no one asking any questions specially in the military."

Faith At War

After September 11 Yaroslav Trofimov was assigned by The Wall Street Journals to travel in Islamic countries and write about his experience about the people and their culture living in these countries. Faith At War is the collection of his interviews and personal views during these travels.

This was the second book I read by this author. I enjoyed reading his other book, The Siege of Mecca, which was the 2009 gold medal winner from The Washington Institute and I learned a lot about the Saudi Arabia and what happened in the Grand Mosque in Mecca on 1979. I had a high expectation reading the Faith At War and I wasn't disappointed. The first book is more focused and discusses in more depth the history of Saudi Arabia and the siege of the Grand Mosque but the second book covers more of a basic overall culture of people and their attitude toward the west.

His travels included the Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Mali, and Bosnia. I recommend this book for people who are interested in having a basic knowledge about these countries and their people and their culture keeping in mind that his interviews are limited and only shows a cross section of people of each country. I agree with his point that the failure of west to understand and accept the culture of people of these countries leads to fundamentalist groups to gain power.

I read this book as part of the 2013 Middle East Reading Challenge.

5 Broken Cameras - Village of Bilin

Reading the book "The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine" (I wrote about it here), I learned about the way people in the village of Bilin in the West Bank are opposing the settlement building on their lands. They have chosen to protest peacefully and pursue legal ways to oppose this and save their lands and village. "5 Broken Cameras" is a movie about this movement which is nominated for best Documentary Feature in the 2013 Academy Awards.