Backroom Book Club (July) - "7000 Days in Siberia"
Per lady Prole's request, I am posting a run-off poll for every book from the initial list that garnered four or more votes. Have at it, lads! The options are:
Guns, Germs, and Steel (The Fates of Human Societies)
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
Maus : A Survivor's Tale : My Father Bleeds History/Here My Troubles Began
Art Spiegelman's "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" is a unique and unforgettable work of literature. This two-volume set of book-length comics (or "graphic novels," if you prefer) tells the story of the narrator, Artie, and his father Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. "Maus" is thus an important example of both Holocaust literature and of the graphic novel. The two volumes of "Maus" are subtitled "My Father Bleeds History" and "And Here My Troubles Began"; they should be read together to get the biggest impact.
Artie is a comic book artist who is trying to create art that is meaningful, not just commercial. As the two volumes of "Maus" unfold, he gradually learns the full story of his father's history as a Jewish survivor of the World War II Holocaust. There is a complex "book within the book" motif, since the main character is actually writing the book that we are reading. This self-referentiality also allows Spiegelman to get in some satiric material.
The distinguishing conceit of "Maus" involves depicting the books' humanoid characters as having animal heads. All the Jews have mice heads, the Germans are cats, the Americans dogs, etc. It is a visually provocative device, although not without problematic aspects. To his credit, Spiegelman addresses some of the ambiguities of this visual device in the course of the 2 volumes. For example, Artie's wife, a Frenchwoman who converted to Judaism, wonders what kind of animal head she should have in the comic.
"Maus" contains some stunning visual touches, as well as some truly painful and thought-provoking dialogue. Vladek is one of the most extraordinary characters in 20th century literature. As grim as the two books' subject matter is, there are some moments of humor and warmth. Overall, "Maus" is a profound reflection on family ties, history, memory, and the role of the artist in society.
Seven Thousand Days in Siberia
Written with calm courage in a matter-of-fact style, this searing diary is one of the fullest, most shocking accounts yet of the Soviet prison-camp system. Rewarded for his work as a communist in his native Austria and in Yugoslavia, Stajner was sent to the U.S.S.R. to run a print shop in 1932. Four years later, the victim of a Stalinist purge, he was sentenced to an initial 10 years in Siberian prisons, then to another 10. His journal recreates the regimentation, irrationality, thought control and sadism of the Gulag system. The reader learns of nuns murdered by NKVD soldiers, harems of women prisoners, executions committed in assembly line fashion, the mass slaughter that accompanied Soviet collectivization of farming. Now living in Yugoslavia, Stajner believes his ordeal was the fault of Stalinism and not of true socialism. His remarkable firsthand account stands as a condemnation of an unfree society.
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Re: Backroom Book Club (BBC) July Run-Off
Originally Posted by Fragony
if you don't like it.
I'll just 
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