The Last Wave

Finished July 12
The Last Wave by Gillian Best

This novel moves around in time from 1947 to the present. Martha is at the core of the story, which includes her husband John, her children Iain and Harriet, Harriet's partner Iris, and their daughter Myrtle, and Martha and John's neighbor Henry.
Martha became a swimmer at a young age after a new drowning incident in 1947. This incident brought out a reaction in her father and her taking swimming lessons helped calm his feelings around it. Martha found the sea to be a natural fit and she increased her distance and endurance simply for the love of the act itself. She had never thought of swimming competitively until an insistent reporter, looking for a story, put it in her head. But marriage was imminent for the young Martha at that point and she turned her back to the sea to take on the role of wife and mother. Ten years later, the call became too strong, and she broke out of the traditional role she had chosen to take on the challenge of swimming the English Channel. By the end of her life, she had swum across the channel ten times, and tackled health and aging issues. For Martha, the sea is an escape from her life, a calming influence, a place that she can stop thinking and just be.
This is a story of relationships, of intolerance, of anger and regret, of families and those who become family through the act they take on for us. A wonderful book

Occidentalism

Finished September 30
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies by Iam Buruma and Avishai Margalit

This book's purpose is not to demonize the enemies of the west or assist in the "war on terrorism", but to understand what drives Occidentalism, and to show that the suicide bombers of today have their roots in history that includes the west itself. Understanding doesn't provide excuses, but just additional knowledge in dealing with those who demonize the west.
The book looks at occidentalism from a variety of viewpoints. One is the idea of war against the west, one is the idea of the city as an occidental evil that with an urban reality destroys the local culture. Another looks at the idea of the hero versus the merchant, where the pursuit of economic wellbeing works against the true way things should be. Yet another looks at the philosophy of the mental model of the west as seen by its enemies and how they interpret the west's intent. We then get to religion and the various ways the west is seen as idolatrous, including the way that women are treated. The last is the seeds that bring revolution, looking at various examples and showing how some current situations mirror these historical ones, and theorizing what that means for the world going forward.
Well-researched and insightful, this analysis goes back more than two centuries to trace the roots of anti-Western ideas and sentiments, and places modern terrorists within this historical continuum.