doctor_watch

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-azerbaijan/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65693

See here for methodology, though NB that I’m now also using numbers from Storygraph. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Azerbaijan. 

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Well, it’s a very clear win for one of my favourite books, the mercifully short romance Ali and Nino by the enigmatic Kurban Said. It’s about an Azeri boy and Georgian girl who fall in love in Baku before and during the First World War and Azerbaijan’s first go at independence; global, local and family politics all intersect with a dramatic conclusion. Go get it. It also won when I did this exercise back in 2015.

In his The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught Between East and West, Thomas Reiss marshals the evidence that “Kurban Said” was born Lev Nussimbaum, apparently on a train in 1905, and grew up in Baku where his father was a minor oil magnate; his mother invited Stalin round for tea occasionally; when the revolution came they fled to Constantinople, then Paris, and finally Berlin; he died in Italian exile, aged just 37, Ezra Pound’s last-minute efforts to help him being all in vain; and his grave became the butt of a comic anecdote told by John Steinbeck. That summary does not do the story justice.

I’m not completely certain about Mobility, a story about the daughter of US diplomats based in Baku, who grows up to join the oil industry and comes back to Azerbaijan, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Banine was the pen name of the Azeri-born writer Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff (whose name is spelt in modern Azeri as Ümmülbanu Əsədullayeva) who lived most of her life in Paris after the fall of independent Azerbaijan. Caucasus Days was first published in French as Jours caucasiens and has also been translated as Days in the Caucasus. It sounds rather autobiographical.

Dan Mayland has written four novels about a former CIA agent doing daring deeds in Azerbaijan and nearby countries. It’s fairly clear that the first of these, The Colonel’s Mistake, is mainly set in Azerbaijan. I disqualified the second, The Leveling, which seems to have large chunks set in Central Asia. The other two didn’t have enough support to qualify.

I am allowing Thomas de Waal’s Black Garden to qualify for the list because if you combine the bits set in Nagorno-Karabakh and the rest of Azerbaijan, you probably have a majority of the page count.

Ella Laya is a jazz musician from Azerbaijan who has built her career in the USA. Her novel The Orphan Sky is about a young woman musician in Azerbaijan during the Cold War.

Stone Dreams / Daş yuxular got its writer Akram Aylisli / Əkrəm Əylisli into a lot of trouble for its sympathetic portrayal of the Armenians expelled from Azerbaijan in the 1989 pogroms.

I don’t know much about 7 Seconds to Die, but the remarkable 2020 war very much deserves close analysis.

I disqualified a number of books which covered the Caucasus as a whole, because generally Azerbaijan will only take up around a third of those if they cover Armenia and Georgia as well. I hesitated a bit more over Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (but its setting is mostly now in the Russian Federation); The Book of Dede Korkut, which comes very close in that most of the ancient epic stories are set in the Caucasus but in my judgement not quite 50% in today’s Azerbaijan; and the novels of Olga Grjasnowa, who is Azeri but sets most of her action in Germany among the Azeri community there.

Six of the next nine countries on my list are in Europe, but three are not, and we have a balanced run coming up: Portugal, the Togo, then Greece, then Israel.

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE | Tajikistan
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras | Cuba
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium | Sweden | Czechia
Oceania: Australia | Papua New Guinea

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-azerbaijan/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65693

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/presidential-and-vice-presidential-babies-an-update/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65931

This is an overdue correction and addition to a post I made in January about babies born to Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States, and their partners, while in office.

In particular, I erred by restricting my coverage to babies born to the spouses of Presidents and Vice-Presidents. I therefore omitted those babies born to women who were not married to the presidential or vice-presidential father of the child.

There are probably several such cases that we don’t know about, but there is one that we definitely do know about. Thomas Jefferson, who was Vice-President from 1797-1801 and then President 1801-1809, was almost certainly the father of the six children born to Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman on his Monticello estate, between 1795 and 1808. Given the DNA evidence and documentary records, it’s basically proved beyond reasonable doubt. Sally Hemings incidentally was probably the much younger half-sister of Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles, who had died in 1782.

So the full list of Vice-Presidential and Presidential babies is as follows:

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, Vice-President 1797-1801) and Sally Hemings (1773-1835)

(William) Beverley Hemings (born 1798 – after 1873)
Thenia Hemings (born in 1799 and died in infancy)

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, President 1801-1809) and Sally Hemings (1773-1835)

Harriet Hemings (born 1801, lived to adulthood, date of death unknown)
(James) Madison Hemings (1805-1877)
(Thomas) Eston Hemings (1808-1856)

All were born on the Monticello estate in Virginia. Madison and Eston Hemings moved to Chilicothe, Ohio, and are known to have living descendants. The later lives of Beverley and Harriet are not known. (Harriet was in fact the second child of that name; Sally Hemings’ first child, who loved only from 1795 to 1797, was also Harriet.)

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850, Vice-President 1825-1832) and Floride Calhoun (1792-1866) – NB Floride’s maiden name was also Calhoun; she and John were cousins.

James Edward Calhoun (1826-1861)
William Lowndes Calhoun (1829-1858)

Both were born in North Carolina, the ninth and tenth of the Calhouns’ ten children. James moved to California and is not known to have had children. William stayed in North Carolina, married twice and has living descendants. Both died comparatively young (James at 36 and William at 29).

Hannibal Hamlin (1809-1891, Vice-President 1861-1865) and Ellen Hamlin née Emery (1835-1925)

Frank Hamlin (1862-1922)

Born in Maine, Frank was the sixth and last of Hannibal’s children, and the second and last of Ellen’s. (Hannibal’s first wife Sarah, who died in 1855, was her half-sister.) I have not found any record that he had children.

Schuyler Colfax (1823-1885, Vice-President 1869-1873) and his second wife Ellen née Wade (1836-1911).

Schuyler Colfax III (1870-1925)

The only Vice-Presidential baby born in Washington, DC, Schuyler Colfax III started off in politics, becoming mayor of South Bend, Indiana at only 28, but ended up working for Kodak for most of his career. He has living descendants.

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908, President 1885-89 & 1893-97) and Frances Folsom (1864-1947)

Esther Cleveland (1893-1980)
Marion Cleveland (1895-1977)

They were the second and third of the Clevelands’ five children (Grover already had a child by a previous relationship). Esther, the only Presidential baby to be born in Washington D.C., was actually born in the White House. One of her daughters was the philosopher Philippa Foot, the co-inventor of the Trolley Problem. Marion was born in the Clevelands’ holiday home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her second husband was John Harlan Amen, the chief interrogator at the Nuremberg tribunal. Both have living descendants.

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963, President 1961-63) and his wife Jacqueline née Bouvier (1929-1994)

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (1963-63), born prematurely at the Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and died two days later.

All being well, the Vances will add to this tally in a couple of months.

My thanks to Tim Roll-Pickering for putting me right.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/presidential-and-vice-presidential-babies-an-update/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65931

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-fifth-elephant-by-terry-pratchett/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65680

Second paragraph of third section:

Sergeant Colon balanced on a shaky ladder at one end of the Brass Bridge, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. He clung by one hand to the tall pole with the box on top of it, and with the other he held up a home-made picture book to the slot in the front of the box.

I have very happy memories of first reading this while bouncing around the hills and valleys of North Macedonia in 2001 during the conflict there, which actually made it rather appropriate reading; I wrote then:

it is the story of a multiethnic diplomatic mission to a neighbouring, less developed country from the urban metropolis of Ankh-Morpork. As I met up with my Bulgarian, Romanian and American colleagues in Sofia, then proceeded to Skopje to rendezvous with our Greek, Turkish, Serb, Kosovar and Albanian comrades, before touring [North] Macedonia to find out what the hell was going on there, Pratchett’s satire took on a very hard edge for me. My Albanian colleague devoured the book on the day we travelled to Ohrid, though he confessed to some very understandable confusion about exactly who was a dwarf and who was not. Pratchett manages to give a gravely humorous treatment to some very serious themes.

I’m glad to say that I found it just as entertaining coming back to it a quarter-century later. Some of the puns are groan-worthy; some of the satire lands a bit better than other bits; but the core values of empathy and humanism (very much extending to the inhuman characters) are consistent, and there are some deep ideas about symbolism, community and identity. (Though there’s also a less successful sub-plot about the Watch falling to pieces in Ankh-Morpork while Vimes, Carrot and Angua are away in Uberwald.) Sure, these books are a formula; but it’s a good formula that can cope with varying the ingredients. You can get The Fifth Elephant here.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-fifth-elephant-by-terry-pratchett/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65680

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/knights-of-the-round-tardis-by-lr-hay-and-return-to-marinus-by-jonathan-morris/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65672

A couple of recent Big Finish audios set in a slightly divergent First Doctor continuity, with the initial TARDIS team from the TV drama An Adventure in Space and Time – David Bradley as the Doctor, Claudia Grant as Susan Foreman, Jamie Glover as Ian Chesterton and Jemma Powell as Barbara Wright. They have already done several audios from 2017 to 2021, but I had not heard them. These two are very recent, released last September and in January this year, but are being marketed as “Doctor Who Unbound”, as an alternative timeline not constrained by TV continuity (though I didn’t really spot anything in either that would have been constrained).

David Warner is as ever great at channeling William Hartnell as the First Doctor. Jemma Powell and Jamie Glover are OK as Ian and Barbara. I find Claudia Grant a bit squeaky.

Knights of the Round TARDIS sets us up in Oxfrod just before the Battle of Evesham, with Simon de Montfort pitted against the forces of King Henry III for the sake of the future governance of England, and the famous friar, Roger Bacon, offering technological innovation. It won’t take the informed Who fan very long to work out who ‘Bacon’ really is. The cast are all having a good time, but it didn’t really work for me; historical stories run the risk of just doing the events as they happened, by the numbers, and at the end Simon de Montfort is given a very Whiggish briefing on the future constitutional history of England by the Doctor and team. You can get Knights of the Round TARDIS here.

Return to Marinus is a different matter. You can enjoy it without having previously listened to Knights of the Round TARDIS (in fact, that’s what I did myself), but I think you’ll be mystified by it unless you have at least a passing familiarity with the 1964 TV story The Keys of Marinus. I happen to love The Keys of Marinus, and stories of Team TARDIS coming back to societies that they have already irrevocably altered on a previous visit are often fun (witness The Ark). I’m really impressed that Morris has found new riffs on each of the sub-plots within the main story; it ends up being a bit episodic, but that’s not always such a bad thing if that’s what the material requires. The ending puts a truly impressive twist on several of the established plot elements. You can get Return to Marinus here.

I’m looking forward to the third of this trilogy, Battle of the Acid Sea by Simon Guerrier, but it looks like I will have to wait until next year.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/knights-of-the-round-tardis-by-lr-hay-and-return-to-marinus-by-jonathan-morris/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=65672