education

Book 31 for 2026: “The Lion Women of Tehran”, Marjan Kamali

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This novel narrates the lives of two women who became best friends in elementary school in Tehran in the 1950s. One, Elaheh, who has lived in luxury until the death of her father forces her and her mother to move to a poor part of the city. Two, Homa, a rambunctious seven year old who lives nearby. Elaheh’s mother has no choice but to enroll her in the nearby public school where they meet and become best friends against the objection of Elaheh’s mother who thinks the people there are tacky and beneath her. Because Elaheh’s (Ellie) prefers to spend time at Homa’s house where there is an entire family–father, mother, children, who are warm and loving, her mother does various things to keep her from Homa’s family. It does not work and Homa’s mother teaches Ellie how to cook and they treat her as one of the own.

Their happy friendship is disrupted when Ellie’s mother marries her former husband’s brother and they move back to the wealthy part of town and Ellie is enrolled in one of the best schools in Tehran. Ellie works hard at her studies and becoming popular and succeeds. She is very embarrassed when Homa gets a scholarship to this school and shows up. Nevertheless, they reestablish their friendship and everything seems to go well until political turmoil occurs. They finish high school and enroll in the University of Tehran. Then betrayal and disaster ensues.

I could not stop reading because of the story. For those who know little of Iranian history in the last 100 years, through the events in the novel, the reader not only learns how difficult life can be in Iran but also a lot of recent Iranian history. It reveals the determination of Iranians to live the best they can regardless of the circumstances and how life can change instantly because of someone’s misguided words. After I finished this novel, I went to the library and requested Kamali’s other two novels.

Book 29 for 2026: “The God of Small Things”, Arundhati Roy

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The Booker Prize winner from decades ago, I decided to reread it (I read it when it was first published) after reading the author’s recent memoir. It is1969 in the southern Indian state of Kerala where a substantial proportion of the population belong to the Syrian Christian church. Does this keep them from adhering to the Indian caste system? No. Caste, wealth, social status, property–they all still matter.

The main characters are one family: Ammu and her twin children who love the wrong man according to their society, the blind grandmother who plays Handel on her violin, their uncle who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and married and then divorced an English woman, their child, and an ex-nun grandaunt who is not a nice person and cannot get over her love for a priest. And then there are their servants and the man, an Untouchable, who is the brilliant carpenter, mechanic, fixer of everything. When the half English child and her mother come to visit after her new husband’s untimely death, everything changes in a day.

Even though written decades ago, the novel is definitely worth the read. Although the details and cultural representations are true to one particular area of India and its culture, the novel’s themes ring true for all cultures and countries, themes of Love, Joy, Hate, Prejudice, Hope.

Note: I also decided to research how much the caste system has changed life in the decades since it was written. In urban areas with new laws there is more leniency regarding rights especially for work and education, but people still usually marry those from the same caste. Rural areas have not changed much to the point that many villages still have a specific area where the Dalits (Untouchables) have to live.

Book 27 for 2026: “Mother Mary Comes To Me”, Arundhati Roy

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Although Roy has written numerous books including the Booker Prize winning “The God of Small Things”, this is her first memoir. While the prose is easy to read, the subject matter is often heart wrenching. Roy’s mother, a single parent (divorced) in India when this was totally unacceptable, accomplishes remarkable achievements including the founding of a very successful school while acting what often seems very cruel as a mother to her two children, Arundhati and her brother. The mother’s treatment of Arundhati is so disturbing that when she is just 18 and in her third year of architecture school in Delhi, she quits going home to Kerala to see her mother and quits communicating with her for seven years. Yet, she admits to loving her mother irrationally.

Arundhati becomes involved in documentary film making, sometimes as writer and sometimes as an actor in the films. In addition to her activities as a writer and film maker, she becomes an ardent political activist against rising Hindu nationalism. She provides details of spending time with hunted activists in the jungle, getting arrested, and even tried for writing a piece the judiciary considered insulting. This is an unusually honest and intimate memoir about her family, her mother, and life and politics in India.

Book 26 for 2026: “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”, Kiran Desai

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By an author whose previous novel won the Booker Prize, this novel was long listed for the most recent Booker Prize. Although 670 pages long, it did not take me as long as I expected to read this because I found I kept going because I wanted to know what was going to occur. It is the tale of two families and two young people, both of whom have studied and lived in the United States. The background city for both families is the Indian city of Allahabad. The two, retired, family patriarchs get together frequently to play chess even though their families are sometimes rivals for status and influence.. The two do not live far apart and all the older family members know each other, including those who have moved away to Delhi and other places. The youngest members do not know each other and accidentally meet on an overnight train. At that point they do not know that their two grandparents had tried to match make them in an arranged marriage. Later, this becomes an embarrassment.

Sonia wants to become a novelist and is attending college at a small liberal arts college in New England where she becomes involved with a famous but cruel artist who becomes obsessed with her and whose influence she has become unable to escape, initially literally and later psychologically. Sunny lives and wants to stay in NYC to escape the overbearing influence of his mother and the violence between her and the two brothers of her deceased husband.

Not wanting to reveal all the complexities of the lives of these two young people who come to love each other but whose lives keep tearing them apart and the challenges they face as they try to make sense of their lives, I will simply say this is a novel I recommend. The reader learns a lot of about Indian culture and its variances, about the huge differences among different parts of India, e.g. Goa and Delhi, but also how universal family and personal struggles really are.

Book 25 for 2026: “Atlas of Borders: Walls, Migrations, and Conflicts in 70 Maps”, Delphine Papin and Bruno Tertrais

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This book is way more than the maps. It starts with Borders Throughout History going back to ancient times when borders were not clearly defined. Modern borders emerged with modern cartography. The “more detailed the map, the more accurately boundaries can be drawn.” Cultural borders based on religion, language and such rarely align with actual modern borders. Think about places you know and who lives there and the cultural and religious differences. The first maps show Borders in Six Stages delineating the changing borders before 1800 to current borders.

The next set shows Borders and Civilizations–what we often refer to as Western Civilization, Latin American, Orthodox Christian, Islamic, African, Hindu, Sinic, Buddhist, Japanese. This view started with the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (1996). In many ways this Atlas is also a history book on how various agreements and treaties affect boundary changes. An example is the map of the results of The Sykes-Picot Agreement. It also includes the legacy of the British Empire and how this affected borders over time.

I had not thought much about how even after colonialism, Europe still has some over seas territories, mostly islands over which wars have been fought even though many have never heard of them. The book includes maps and discussion on border disputes in Latin America as well as other parts of the world. There is another section on sea borders and those disputes continue today, e.g. the Arctic which many countries try to claim. And then there is the Persian Gulf with detailed illustrations of the Strait of Hormuz and all the islands there. I had forgotten that Bahrain is an island until I read this book.

There are too many sections to detail here, but the maps of the South China Sea and the disputes involving China there are very illustrative of just how complex claims by countries can be.

When I think of walls, I think of Berlin Wall and its fall and the disputes in US over walls between US and Mexico, but there are others in the world–Morocco, the Koreas. There is a map illustrating all the places where walls exist today. There are more than 70 closed borders protected by a wall or fence. The number of barriers is rising. The book not only lists them but how high they are in meters. Then so many disputed borders still exist that the maps and lists take up two pages of lists.

There is so much interesting information in this book that I cannot recommend it enough for anyone interested in history and current affairs.

Book 23 for 2026: “The House of Islam: A Global History”, Ed Husain

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While waiting for a requested book to arrive at the library, I found this one and decided to read it. Because of personal interest I already knew quite a lot of about different types of Islam and some of the history, but this book goes into great detail explaining the founding and history of different groups, e.g. Sunni including different groups within Sunni Islam, Sufi, Shia. Sunni groups vary greatly from more mainstream to the very strict fundamentalism of the Salafis/Wahhabis which is the group controlling Saudi Arabia. The Shia are predominantly in Iran, Iraq, some of Syria, and are minorities in most of the Gulf States as well as Saudi Arabia. Sufis can be found all over the Muslim world, and in the West people often equate them with the whirling dervishes.

A bit of history many in the West do not know is how Mohamed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, joined with the ancestor of the current Saudi rulers to conquer and control all of Saudi Arabia in the 1700s. This extreme conservative part of Islam is still the rule and law in Saudi Arabia. It is such a potent force in the world today because Saudi Arabia has spent billions to export their preferred form of Islam across the world. Osama bin Laden belonged to this group of Muslims. They have built mosques and training schools all over the world. Some adherents feel it is their obligation to kill others who do not agree with them including other Muslims. al-Wahab’s book, Kitab al-Tawhid, The Book of Oneness, dominates the global market and promotes this strict form of Islam. It is from this form of Islam that ISIS and other groups have arisen. Most Sunni Muslims in the world do not adhere to this form of Islam. Many people do not realize that the majority of Muslims are not Arabs.

The author also explains the rise in jihadism with recommendations on how to deal with Islamic extremism. Part of this goes into the history of early Islam when for hundreds of years much of the progress in a lot of the world was via Muslim science, mathematics, literature, etc. Part Three details The Rise of the West and the Loss of Muslim Confidence which has led to anger and frustration and a strong sense of humiliation which has lead to much of the extremism occurring now and recently.

Although I do not agree with some of the author’s statements and claims because of what I know from Muslims I do know, I highly recommend this book. I think many people in the West have little to no knowledge regarding Muslims, the history, etc. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world currently and it behooves people to gain understanding.

Book 19 for 2026: “An Unnecessary Woman”, Rabih Alameddine

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Aaliya Saleh, 72, lives alone in an apartment in Beirut. Her obsession is reading books and translating books into Arabic. Every January she starts a new translation. Upon completion, she stores the translation in a box and puts it in the spare bedroom. No one ever sees them or reads them. Her family members envy her large apartment because she is divorced and has no children–her brothers think they should have it because they are married and have children. Her mother is a difficult woman and has become stricken with mild dementia. Written in first person, Aaliya relates her life as she sees it. Her impotent husband walks out and she is fine with this because he is a difficult person. Living alone she is able to defy norms and customs and lives as she chooses, a reclusive life for the most part except for her decades long job running a small bookstore. During her telling in the novel she is now retired with some relatively minor aches and pains. She has managed to live as she chooses in spite of the Civil War, repeated bombing by the Israelis, and other difficulties. Toward the end, an unthinkable disaster occurs that threatens what she views as her life’s purpose.

This character’s prodigious reading and knowledge of literature and authors inspired me to look up authors I had not read, learn more about them, and go to the bookstore and library in search of some of the books she discusses in the novel. It also made me think more about how societies see women as unnecessary (or worse) if they fail to comply with societal norms. This novel’s setting may be Beirut, but it could be anywhere in the world in terms of the price women often pay when they defy cultural norms and live as they choose.

Balinese Gamelan Music and Dancing

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Earlier this week I attended a concert at Pomona College. I do not recall ever hearing Gamelan music before. Gamelan is percussion music. In fact the word means percussion orchestra. The instruments used in this performance are called gong kebyar. The instruments are made of bronze, iron, or bamboo. This music sounds nothing like European music. The instruments are tuned to a very high pitch and deliberately what one might consider out of tune. This is intentional. Pomona College has its own gamelan ensemble. Musicians and dancers from The Californian Institute of the Arts joined them. They performed traditional temple dancing, music from Balinese puppet theatre, and some original pieces by a famous Balinese couple (Dr. NyomanWenten and Nanik Wenten) –both music and dance. The style of this music is loud and fiery. I could only take photos because recording was prohibited.

Book 14 for 2026: “Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What Can We Learn From It”, Stanley A. Rice

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The title of this non-fiction book explains what this book is about. The author is emeritus professor of biological science at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and of Cherokee heritage. He cites all the historical findings and current research regarding how natives used fire to control forests and grasslands, the numerous large native cities found both in US and Latin America using lidar technology, and how the colonists were totally mistaken when they thought they had found a land that lacked the influence of humans regarding forestry, farming, orchard keeping, etc.

He notes that the way the indigenous people in the US farmed and maintained orchards was not like those of the Europeans so they thought no one was doing anything and they were incorrect. He also goes into a lot of the history about how European diseases especially brought about the demise (genocide) of millions of native peoples even often those who had not themselves seen Europeans. Many European diseases spread from domesticated animals to humans (he provides a long list) and natives had no immunity. He cites of only one Western Hemisphere disease (syphilis) that went from the Americas to Europe. He claims that there were so few native diseases in this hemisphere because there were no large animals to domesticate.

The way Native Americans farmed, maintained forests, established orchards, etc. was so different from the European way that Europeans thought no one was doing anything productive with the land. To the contrary, they were affecting the land greatly but in ways that were more sustainable. Currently, he notes in the US forest management people have begun to recognize Native American forestry expertise and use it in many places.

Book 11 for 2026: “How literature saved my life”: David Shields

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I only acquired this book because the author of “Delights”, Ross Gay, recommended it as one of his favorite books. I almost quit reading it but kept going because I wondered why he loved this book. Perhaps if you watch a lot of movies (I am not a movie person), it would be better because Shields critiques a lot of movies, almost none of which I had ever even heard of. He also seems to prefer non-fiction and critiques a lot of non-fiction essay writers. To be honest even though I read hundreds of books, most of the books he mentions I have never read. His taste apparently differs greatly from mine. I have read Joan Didion, John Cheever, Gertrude Stein, Yeats, as he has and I do agree with him about the essay, “Killing an Elephant”. In this essay George Orwell describes a horrible event he experienced as a young man while working for the British in Burma (now Myanmar). I agree with Shields that this essay describes better the horrors of colonialism and racism better than most books written on those subjects.

What bothers me about this work by Shields is the relentless negativity. I consider myself to be a rather realistic person, often perhaps too blunt for my own good. Nevertheless, I do not view my life or that of others as nearly as hopeless and lonely as Shields seems to view it. Here is a quote from near the end of the book:

“I believe in art as pathology lab, landfill, recycling station, death sentence, aborted suicide note, lunge at redemption. Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That’s why I pick at my scabs” and four pages later at the end: “I wanted literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn’t lie about this–which is what makes it essential.” I know lots of folks talk about the plague of loneliness permeating society these days. He focuses on this relentlessly for 207 pages. Do most people feel this awful a lot of the time? Am I naive? How did I escape it?