Au Revoir, 2007!

Here's wishing all my readers the best 2008 ever.

The Year's Books

Here’s a list of all the books I read this year, arranged alphabetically by author's last name. By the way, I actually read more books than these - only the ones I finished get counted, though.

Non-Fiction
1. Dante: Poet of the Secular World – Erich Auerbach
2. Failed States – Noam Chomsky
3. A Time to Keep Silence – Patrick Leigh Fermor
4. Return to Yesterday – Ford Maddox Ford
5. The Divided West – Jurgen Habermas
6. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 – Alistair Horne
7. The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert (selections)
8. The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French 20th Century – Tony Judt
9. The Tomb in Seville – Norman Lewis
10. Facing the Night: A Diary (1999-2006) and Musical Writings – Ned Rorem
11. Freud and the Non-European – Edward Said
12. On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory – Brian Tamanaha
13. Conversations with Gore Vidal – R. Peabody & L. Ebersole (Eds.)
14. Point to Point Navigation – Gore Vidal
15. The Bit Between My Teeth – Edmund Wilson
16. The Shores of Light – Edmund Wilson
17. Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March – Adam Zamoysky

Fiction
1. Saturn – Ben Bova
2. Grifter’s Game – Lawrence Block
3. The Vengeful Virgin – Gil Brewer
4. Mrs. Bridge – Evan S. Connell
5. Falling Man – Don DeLillo
6. The Dud Avocado – Elaine Dundy
7. Crabwalk – Gunter Grass
8. The Slaves of Solitude – Patrick Hamilton
9. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
10. The Farthest Shore – Ursula LeGuin
11. Dance Night – Dawn Powell
12. The Engagement – George Simenon
13. The Strangers in the House – Georges Simenon
14. The Enchanted Garden – Elizabeth von Arnim
15. Butcher’s Crossing – John Williams

Don't Cry For Me, Rawalpindi

As this week’s killing of Benazir Bhutto shows, nothing canonizes a leader faster than an assassin’s bullets. So before she disappears in a nimbus of saintliness bestowed upon her by the American press, you might want to read Tariq Ali’s account of her career. Her history is far seedier than we’ve been let to believe. A court in Geneva recently found her and her husband, Zardari, guilty (in abstenia) on charges of bribery. Similar corruption cases are pending against them in Spain and Britain. Furthermore, it seems that Benazir and Zardari may also have played leading roles in the assassination of her brother, Murtaza. And finally, if bribery and fratricide aren’t enough for you, Ali reminds us that when she was Prime Minister in 1999 Bhutto supported the Taliban in Afghanistan.

You can also read his take on her assassination here.

Wallerstein on the NIE

Immanuel Wallerstein comments on the recent NIE report which claims that Iran shut down its nuclear weapon research program in 2003:

Most of the press and public analysis of this report presumes that this assessment was made by the Director of National Intelligence and that it is being read by the Bush administration and the Congress who are only now taking it into account. Some have even called it a "coup" against Bush and/or Cheney and the neo-cons. I do not believe this sequence for a moment. I assume that the assessment has already been discussed within the Bush administration. After all, the report is said to have been written as much as a year ago. I believe that the report is the outcome of the discussion within the Bush administration, which made the decision with the knowledge and assent of George W. Bush that the report should be released to the public. The report will not lead to a reversal. It signals that the reversal has already occurred.

(snip)

I have the sense that the NIE assessment is an elegant way of saying: the Bush doctrine, Requiescat in pace!

Strangely Compelling...Yet Utterly Hilarious