Top 5 Books that I Read in 2011

Hello and welcome to 2012; here is a list of my 5 favorite books that I read in 2011:

5.  The Monument by Kanan Makiya.  I wrote a previous post on Saddam’s victory arch, the subject of this book.  I had read one other book by Makiya, The Republic of Fear, about Ba’athist Iraq under Saddam.  Makiya is a political dissident from Iraq and was forced to publish under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil until recently.  From reading The Republic of Fear, it was no mystery to me that The Monument would largely center on the nature of Saddam’s unique brand of pan-Arab fascism, but I didn’t expect it to have the level of art historical writing or image theory that it does.  I rarely read anything relating to Middle Eastern art, but Makiya applies the history surrounding it and Western art theory to the creation and interpretation of the victory arch, which makes it wholly relatable.

4.  The Silence of the Sea by Vercors. This was the first fiction novel I have read in awhile; it’s very short and only takes a couple of hours to read.  It was written in 1942, right at the height of the Nazi’s occupation of France.  It details the forced quartering (like, housing, not tearing apart by the limbs) of a German officer in the country house of and older French man and his young, female niece.  It explores the definition of

resistance, and the extent and moral limits of inaction.  The old man and his niece choose to resist the occupation by ignoring the presence of the German officer, despite very human temptations.  The beauty of The Silence of the Sea is that it has no direct answer as to what constitutes resistance; for Vercors, inaction is not necessarily passive support as many condemnations of civilians under Nazi occupation seem to muddle up.

3.  Marianne into Battle by Maurice Agulhon.  This book chronicles the history of the French female allegory for liberty, named Marianne.  Agulhon engagingly chronicles how Marianne arose out of the 1789 revolution and quickly became a propagandist tool into the 5^th Republic.  If you are interested in the small details of history then I certainly recommend this book.

2.  Eye Scream by Henry Rollins.  I actually read this in high school, but I reread it this past year and got way more out of it the second time around.  Henry Rollins, former singer/yeller for Black Flag and consummate angry person, has been more known in recent years for his spoken word than hardcore punk.  Unsurprisingly, Eye Scream is violent, sociopathic, and wonderfully lyrical.  Rollins’s aggressive intensity is mirrored only by the sadly honest clarity of his worldview.  I love this guy so much, I’ll probably write a whole column on him soon.

1.  Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer.  These are the memoirs of Speer, who was Hitler’s chief architect and the Minister of Armaments for the Nazis.  It was secretly written mainly on scraps of toilet paper while he was serving a 20 year sentence imposed at Nuremburg.  When it comes to Nazi ‘confessions,’ they typically seem to be Eichmann-like, saccharine and dishonest, apologies, with no real remorse.   Speer isn’t begging for forgiveness in his memoirs, but accepts responsibility for the role he played.  He isn’t slobbering with excuses of brain washing or having no other choice, but instead treats his readers like adults.