A land of people living where their ancestors had been for thousands of years, until foreign conquerors moved in and, with the implied permission of other foreign powers, take over. There are many places to which this description might apply, but to most of the Western world, Israel is far from the first location that comes to mind. Ghada Karmi's In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story could change that for its readers, for the Palestinians certainly feel their land has been taken over by foreign conquerors. This is an autobiography by a woman born in what was then Palestine. Her early childhood took place in Jerusalem in the 1940s when the area was ruled by British mandate after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. At this time the fighting that was going on was essentially recently-arrived Jewish people versus British government, with the Arabs regarding both as foreigners.

But then came a big change. "The UN had decided to accord the proposed Jewish state 55 per cent of the land and the Arab one the remaining 45 per cent, though Jews made up only one third of the population," Karmi explains. Or as her father put it, "How could anyone imagine that they would want to give half our country to immigrants?" Is it any wonder Palestinian Arabs fought for their homeland and continue to do so fifty-five years later? After all, in what is now the United States, the Native Americans reacted exactly the same way to the colonist and pioneers who came to take over their homelands, once they realized where things were going. Karmi points out that Christians, at least in the British Isles where her family fled in 1949, tended to be steeped in the Old Testament enough to also see Palestine/Israel as the land of the Jews. This view combined with horror at the Holocaust to make the creation of a state for Jewish people in their ancient place of origin seem fair. However, just because Jewish people had been treated abominably and unforgivably does not mean that there was any reason that Palestinian Arabs should be mistreated either. The Karmi family's story gives a view less often shown in the U.S.

Karmi's years in England are also interesting to read about -- when is she "a dark-skinned English girl," having lived there since the age of eight, and when is she a Palestinian in a world that views Arabs as incomprehensible and just other? Her parents and particularly her mother always seem to have considered themselves Palestinian foremost, creating a circle of friends of the same origin, and in her mother's case, refusing to learn English. Things were very different for the children, a situation familiar to any reader of American immigrant stories but complicated by the fact that the parents did not really want to leave their home country, and also by the relatively few immigrants to England in the 1950s and 1960s.

However, events such as the Six-Day War of 1967 and the generally pro-Israeli feeling in Britain led Karmi to embrace her heritage. I dare say any Palestinian hearing Golda Meir of Israel say in 1969, "It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist," would have felt the same way. Even the United States did not come up with such ridiculous statements about the existence of Indians being displaced.

Karmi seems to have mixed feelings about the use of violence by Palestinians for political aims: "The hijackings were indefensible; yet watching events in Jordan, I and many other Palestinians could not help but feel impressed." However, her frustration with Westerners who blame her personally for all violence by Palestinians is evident. She nonetheless manages not to stereotype all her opponents, keeping separate in her mind those who have wronged Palestinians and those who have not, and even mentions the small groups of Jewish people who have supported her views and pro-Palestinian activism.

The book ends with Karmi's visit to Israel, a place she has previously avoided since her childhood flight. Her description of the separate lives of most Arabs and Jews in the country now as essentially "apartheid" was shocking, but really hit home, given my upbringing in the U.S. in the 1980s where South African apartheid was universally considered wrong (the controversy was between people who believed it was America's business to work against it and those who felt we shouldn't police the rest of the world's internal affairs).

I don't approve of violence on anyone's part; an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But after this book, I feel I understand more deeply the source of the violence over Israel. Most of all, I pity the nearly hopeless task of those actively working for peace there. However, I also admire them sincerely for taking on so thankless and difficult, yet needed, of a project.

A few years ago my dad sent me a copy of David Weber's On Basilisk Station, a paperback version which was being sold cheap as a promotion for a later book in the series featuring the same characters. He and I (as well as a good chunk of science fiction readers) are fans of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books, which feature several members of the Vorkosigan family as main characters, but mostly Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. My dad Joe wondered if Weber would be as successful in writing his female protagonist Honor Harrington as Bujold was in writing her male protagonist. I read On Basilisk Station and ranked it good enough to stay on the shelf but not nearly as interesting as the first Vorkosigan book I'd read (Barrayar, when it was being serialized in Analog magazine and I was so mad that I'd have to go home from my summer visit before the final portion was published). I had no urge to go and read the rest of the books about Honor Harrington.

I think it was only a few months ago that I spotted a later book in the Harrington series on the shelves of my friends Ben and Jodi. (I assumed it was Ben's because I never had any idea Jodi was a science fiction reader, but it turns out it's hers.) It was something I could read while Jon and I visited their place to catsit, but once I got started I wanted to keep going. Without pause. I think I just about did so; it didn't take more than two or three days to finish. The fact that the majority of the 10 novels in the series have some play on "Honor" in their titles makes it really difficult to keep the names straight; I had to look up the fact that it was Echoes of Honor, the eighth novel in the series. But after reading that one (and having skipped the intervening six books made no difference), in which Honor escapes from an enemy prison planet, I DID want to go straight to the library and check out all they had.

Unfortunately, our branch didn't have the whole series and I was about to go on a trip, so I didn't have time to have them sent from other branches. I took the four they had, one short story collection with stories set at different points in the series chronology, Changer of Worlds and the novels The Honor of the Queen (Book 2), Field of Dishonor (Book 4), and War of Honor (Book 10). All but the last and thickest one went with me on the trip; it wasn't until I got home that I discovered the CD-ROM in an envelope attached to the endpapers of War of Honor -- which just happened to contain the text of all 10 novels and 3 short story collections published so far, as well as several other novels and collections also published by Baen. In rich text format, HTML, and a couple of PDA formats. All this is apparently also available on Baen's web site, but a) I didn't know that and b) it's a lot faster to copy all that from a disk.

One of the things I like about this series and that I particularly noticed in War of Honor is that Weber writes both sides of the story. Indeed, all sides of the story, which frequently requires insight into the people high in the governments of at least three multi-planet nations, citizens of those nations' views on their governments and those of other nations, and even of non-human species. And the vast majority of them are portrayed as well-intentioned. There are certainly some evildoers who are flat-out amoral, but most of the characters really believe that they are working for the right cause (even when the reader, having knowledge the character doesn't, can see that they are doing exactly opposite). It may be adventure fiction, even space opera, but there are very few flat characters who only exist to provide enemies for the protagonist. Throughout all the series that I've read, the complexity of real life with real consequences for any action applies. (This may be why the most recent four novels, which delve a little more into political situations as Honor's rank and influence increase, are about three times the average length of the earlier ones.) The parallels with real life incidents are not always subtle (in case the government of the People's Republic of Haven after the coup against the Legislaturalists doesn't remind the reader of the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France, Haven's new leader is named "Rob Pierre" and his next-in-command is "Saint-Just") but perhaps remembering our history will help us analyze the events of real life.

But the core of the series is the symbolically named Honor, a member of the (space) Navy of the Star Kingdom of Manticore who takes a book or two before she comes across as a relatively normal human being. She is a wonderful leader and commander no matter what the situation is, but frankly, seeing her anger at a foreign planet's sexism and grief over the death of a mentor in The Honor of the Queen was the first place in the series chronology where the character herself really resonated with me. The books are generally written so that references are explained and reading them in series chronology is not necessary, so I would probably recommend leaving On Basilisk Station for later and starting with one of the other books.

Would my dad think these books are good as the Vorkosigan ones? Maybe. Despite both series' being military/adventure science fiction, Honor's position is always a lot more "within the system" than that of Miles Vorkosigan and his other family members. There's also a lot more technology and actual shooting war in the Harrington books; the Vorkosigans seem to do much more one-on-one conflicts with their enemies on Barrayar, a planet still working itself back up from years of being cut off from the rest of the universe, and even when visiting elsewhere. I note that Baen did not include any of the Vorkosigan books on the CD that came with War of Honor even though they do publish them -- perhaps they don't think there's much audience overlap, perhaps they just preferred to promote single books and shorter series on the disc, or perhaps Bujold didn't give permission to have her books made available this way. Nonetheless, both series are definitely worth reading.

I read a book recently that was a biography of two people; a modern history of one country; a family saga of three generations of love, break-up, and their repercussions; and a political mystery/thriller. How can all that go into one book? It's The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter's Quest by Aminatta Forna, whose parents were Dr. Mohamed Forna, former finance minister of the African country of Sierra Leone, and his Scottish first wife. The book tells the story of her father's life and her own childhood (in and out of Sierra Leone, depending on the danger to her family from changing regimes). It is both a child's-eye view of having a father who is successively a doctor, a politician, and a political prisoner, and an adult's search for corroboration of her fragmented memories and information she never knew on the trial leading to her father's execution on trumped-up charges. The book makes clear the tangled politics of the decades since Sierra Leone's independence and the complex web of extended family, as well as brief jaunts into European and African racism and even the differences in children's stories. Overall, I found it so absorbing I had trouble putting it down to get other things done.

Your average American can't find, say, Yemen, on a map and probably forgot where Kuwait was about six months after the first Gulf War. Courtesy of Dr. ap Zylstra in Arts & Humanities Honors, I know a lot more geography but still suffer the standard American history education with regard to the Middle East (nothing later than ancient Sumeria in grade school; one college course that got up to Alexander the Great). The National Geographic Society's 2002 book Cradle & Crucible: History & Faith in the Middle East is a great introduction to geography, history, culture and religion for the region, making it a lot easier to understand whatever treaty, organization, or bombing is in the news at any one moment. (And given the publication date, this is probably why it was written and published, although one could say that about any time in the last 25 years.)

The history portion of the book is an easy-to-read overview of more than nine millennia, getting more detailed as it gets closer to the present, so the reader doesn't feel like they're getting flooded in a procession of ancient empires at the expense of events with a more direct influence on today's problems. Even if you have some knowledge of European history (and the Islamic world's role in preserving knowledge during Europe's Dark Ages), seeing everything from the Crusades to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire from the Arab and Muslim points of view (and remembering that the two are not identical groups) really makes you think of familiar history in a different way. I couldn't read the section on European powers' "mandates" to divide up the former Ottoman territory into new countries after World War I without thinking "Wow, the people actually living there got really screwed over!" -- and that's before Israel as a state even became an issue.

The book ends with a chapter each on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, discussing both the basic theology of each religion and the cultural experience of its practitioners living in the Middle East. (Being a Christian there certainly differs from being one in the United States, not only because of being a minority but because different sects of Christianity are prevalent there. However, the book points out the great differences between Judaism in Israel and Judaism overseas.) Since Islam is the majority in the Middle East, that chapter has the most political and cultural explanation attached, but members of all these faiths have to decide what degree of power religion is to hold in their lives and what power it should or should not hold in their governments. The book does not endorse extremism, but it helps you understand where it's coming from without being a difficult read.

The "sword & sorcery" subgenre of fantasy doesn't usually hold my attention. I got through the Lord of the Rings books, but just barely, and was never tempted to reread them. There are a few books that sort of fall into the category that I like -- T.H. White's The Once and Future King, Tamora Pierce's books in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, the Immortals Quartet, and the Protector of the Small Quartet (all chroncling one kingdom starting with Alanna: The First Adventure), and Diane Duane's Tales of the Five books (starting with The Door Into Fire. All of these are set in medieval-style kingdoms, though only White's bears any resemblance to the actual Middle Ages of our world. And they all tell stories of people and how they grow and change, with quests, battles, magical beasts, and spells only important in that they propel those changes. That is what makes them readable not just once but over and over to me, and what sets them apart from the other "sword & sworcery" I've read.

Lois McMaster Bujold has done the same in science fiction for quite a long time -- her Vorkosigan books, from the meeting of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan amongs interplanetary conflict in Shards of Honor to their son Miles Naismith Vorkosigan's continued work as an Imperial Auditor in the most recent, Diplomatic Immunity, focus on people despite the very exciting "space opera" events that befall them. It should be no surprise that a recent venture into fantasy, The Curse of Chalion grabs the reader the same way. Though it is the will of the gods driving the plot rather than the march of technology in Curse, the politics of governments in the medieval-style setting is just as complex as in the Vorkosigan books' multi-planet empires, and the people just as human. Vorkosigan fans will not be disappointed in this book as some of them (myself included) may have been in her earlier fantasy work The Spirit Ring. I would also like to mention that the pentatheistic theology of the people in Curse makes far more sense without excessive explanation than the worship systems of any fantasy universe I've encountered, even the ones listed above as my favorites in the genre. (This may not be completely realistic, judging by the complexity of Greek mythology or any other polytheistic system I've read about, but it clicks into place immediately and provides a firm foundation for the events of the story.) I would definitely read more stories set in this universe.

For a few years around 1990 I loved all of Anne Rice's work. I picked up Interview with the Vampire partially because Slash of Guns 'n Roses said it was his favorite book, and partially because a high school classmate recommended it. I remember immersing myself in The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned over Thanksgiving break 1989. Non-Vampire Chronicles books Cry to Heaven and The Feast of All Saints fascinated me too, despite their lack of supernatural beings. And when I started college in 1991, my group of friends pretty much passed around the Beauty trilogy -- whether it was good or not, it was explicit!

But The Tale of the Body Thief bored me, and Memnoch the Devil wasn't even finishable. So I never bothered to pick up new Vampire books as they appeared. I thought Rice might have gotten back into readability with The Witching Hour, which I really like, but I can't really remember what happens in its sequel Lasher even though I own it, and I'm prety sure I sold Taltos to the used bookstore with The Mummy (as well as giving away the Beauty trilogy once I had access to better erotica).

Nonetheless, I had enough good memories of Anne Rice universes to pick up Blackwood Farm off the library's new books shelf and read the inside front cover. My curiosity was piqued by seeing that it claimed to combine the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series, so I checked it out. And once I started, I was as hooked as I was thirteen and a half years ago on the Vampire books. Really, there are three storylines in this book: the vampires, the Mayfairs, and the story of Quinn Blackwood and his family. The Blackwoods on their rural Louisiana estate are very different from the relatively urban Mayfairs of New Orleans, so their history doesn't feel like a retread of The Witching Hour. But Rice's strength seems to be in complex stories that span decades and generations, and the union of the different series gives her the opportunity to be even more complex. I've got to agree with the Amazon.com reviewer who says "Blackwood Farm has an unusual flaw: it isn't long enough." The ending is awfully sudden and leaves you wanting more, but I'd rather have that situation than end up disappointed in the book I've already read. I'm rather looking forward to the upcoming Blood Canticle -- not with the excitement of a kid waiting for the new Harry Potter, given the rather iffy summary given on Amazon, but curiosity to see if she can stay at this high level for a while.

It all depends on what you consider heavy metal music, and if you even think there's any heavy metal around anymore. Two books in the bookstores at the moment take quite different views of what constitutes metal, and which one you prefer will depend on how you define the genre. (Which makes me wonder what people with no prior exposure to metal will think -- too bad I can't think of any friends of mine who have lived under a rock that long.)

David Konow's Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal and Ian Christe's Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal start out in the same place: Black Sabbath as the progenitors of metal, with some help from Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. But Konow takes a much broader view of metal -- his 1970s include a lot more Kiss and Aerosmith than Christe's; his 1980s focus much more on bands that got MTV play during the daylight hours as well as the Headbanger's Ball on Saturday nights, while Christe prefers the bands most people only knew from reading the black t-shirts of their high school's headbanger clique. So Bang Your Head deals with the end of the most high-profile days of glam metal, while in many ways the relatively underground scene Christe chronicles had nothing to lose from changing fashions and the grunge explosion.

For me, Bang Your Head was a lot more fun to read -- it tells the amusing stories of the bands' attempts to life the wildest rockstar lives possible. One of the Amazon reviews calls it a "puff piece" for this reason, but seeing the details of the bands' lives is what many fans like (hence the popularity of such shoes as MTV's "Cribs" where the camera tours famous people's houses, and of course "The Osbournes" which enthralls people who never bought an Ozzy Osbourne album in their lives). Sound of the Beast loves to categorize -- power metal, death metal, nu metal, etc. -- and for those with eclectic tastes like me, putting everything into its own little box gets annoying pretty quickly. "OK, I own three out of ten albums on his list of definitive '70s progenitors, but only one of the list of paradigmatic New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands" -- well, the list titles aren't really so pompous, but they still made me feel like I was supposed to measure up to his standards or be considered a "poser." Remembering the comment in Chuck Klosterman's metal-fan memoir Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota about the surprising popularity of certain non-metal artists, like the B-52's, among his head-banging friends, I'm sure I can't be alone in wanting to ignore the habit of sticking a label on every group (then and now).

Metal music is escape -- the kind of escape you prefer is up to you. If you want to escape fluff and find something that holds up to even some non-fans' critical analysis, you'll probably prefer Sound of the Beast. If you want some energetic fun, you'd do better with Bang Your Head. However, if you just want to know about the evolution of the music that has held so many people (and particularly disenchanted young people, and those who remember being one) in thrall for decades, you might want to set aside the time to look through both.