Kennedy's assassination is probably the most famous of all. Nearly 50 years after the events new books and papers still appear on a monthly basis. We've all seen the famous footage (eat your plate first warning), heard about the numerous conspiracy theories and seen Oliver Stone's JFK, and our parents still know exactly where they were at the time the news reached their ears.

At 12.30 PM Kennedy's limousine entered Dealey Plaza and approached the Texas School Book Depository. When the Presidential limousine turned and passed the Book Depository and continued down Elm Street, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy from the sixth floor. The first bullet, dubbed "magic bullet", passed through President Kennedy’s neck and Governor Connally’s chest and wrist and embedded itself in the Governor’s thigh. The second bullet missed its target and supposedly hit a tree. The third bullet fired entered the rear of President Kennedy's head. Head matter, brain, blood, and skull fragments, originating from Kennedy, covered the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass wind shield and raised sun visors, the front engine hood, the rear trunk lid, the follow-up Secret Service car and its driver's left arm, and motorcycle officers riding on both sides of the president behind him.

Acht seconden in Dallas (eight seconds in Dallas) by fairly unknown Belgian author Paul de Bruyn is a roller-coaster ride through the events leading to, including, and after the assassination. The first chapters focus entirely on Oswald. From his troubled childhood to his final hours in a Dallas police station, De Bruyn explains how a withdrawn and temperamental kid raised by a paranoid mother turned into the mentally disturbed adult that had little friends, joined the United States Marine, flirted with communism, moved to the USSR and back to the States with a beautiful Russian wife and finally came to assassinate the most powerful man in the world. The penultimate chapter briefly zooms in on Jack Ruby, the convicted murderer of Oswald.

Just as with what happened on 9/11, an event of similar global importance, The Kennedy events spawned (and still spawn) a large number of conspiracy theories. In more or less chronological fashion, The Bruyn's roller-coaster rushes through all acts of the play and tears apart in detail every main conspiracy theory. All of Oswald's supposed ties with governmental agencies are debunked; Kennedy's Mafia related links and Ruby's contacts in the underworld are proven to be unlikely if not inconceivable. Though hard to digest, Oswald acted alone, fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository and was murdered by another serverly mentally instable lad called Jack Ruby.

Soley using nothing but the facts and by crafty putting together the pieces of this enormous jigsaw puzzle, The Bruyn has managed to write a thrilling book, a real page turner! It might not be the best book in terms of writing style, but it's highly entertaining and informative. Totally recommended. If you happen to run into it in some second hand bookstore for a few bucks: buy it.

Heeft geschiedenis nut? (Does history have a use?) is a collection of essays from Dutch historian and arch cynic Van Rossem. The essays deal with a wide range of topics, from a few longer ones on heavy subjects like the World Wars to a large amount of short stories, discussing all kinds of topics. A recurring theme in most of the essays is the importance of historical memory.

Van Rossem is highly educated, a formidably storyteller, and most of all, he has a great sense of humour, but this book as a whole is not very good. It's a bit of a messy collection of stories that are only distinctally related. But, though some are a bit outdated and others have a few rough edges, most essays provide a good read, a laugh, and you learn something for free.

"Berlin is not a beautiful city". For anyone who has visited Berlin more than once, the opening line of this book will sound familiar. Berlin is an ugly city. Among the large European capitals, it's perhaps the ugliest, with its dozens of deteriorated buildings, the overrepresented threepenny Zuckerbäckerstil architecture, and the countless fallow fields. Yet Berlin, a city heavily damaged by war and torn apart by a wall for decades, where social and political diversity clash at so many levels it seems impossible to manage, is one of the most dynamic and attractive cities in the world. Berlin is beautiful!

Remarque, currently editor in chief for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, worked in Berlin as a correspondent for the same paper for years. During his time in Berlin, he wrote the columns that were finally bundled in Boze geesten van Berlijn (evil spirits of Berlin). Debates in Berlin can mostly be traced back to the Second World War, the German division, or both. In a series of wonderful stories collected though numerous interviews, Remarque paints the picture of struggling modern day Berlin, from the differences between Ossis and Wessis, the seemingly silly discussions on street names and architecture, and the city's €60 billion (and counting, ed.) debt, to the highly anticipated Berlin Szene and the city's enormous attraction to many.

Since Berlin once again became the capital, after Die Wende, German rulers face an all but impossible task to find the right balance between the radiation of power suiting Europe's largest nation and Hitler's undeniable inheritance. This book superbly captures the difficulties faced by post WWII and post GDR German society, and the struggle for a German identity as a whole. This excellent book is a must for anyone with an interest beyond Bratwurst und Bier.

Honestly, I'm not that into Shakespeare. Never have been. Heck, I've never even tried reading one of his famous plays. But when I recently ran into this book by Bill Bryson at the local Rinket Library, I thought it would be a good introduction to this almost mythical figure, without having to reluctantly work through any of his writings for some school assignment.

Not much is known of William Shakespeare. No pictures of him survived (at least, not one that we can be certain of), and it's not even certain how 'Shakespeare' should be spelled! The only scarce bits we know of his Elizabethan/Jacobean life are reconstructed from a few entries baring his name in the old city archives. Other than most Shakespeare bibliographers, Bryson carefully avoided filling in these voids with his own theories and produced a work that contains only the facts, resulting in a compact yet comprehensive biography.

The great storyteller he is, Bryson takes the reader all the way back to the English golden age, carefully describing daily life under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, with its strict rules, religious troubles, wicked public entertainment, and how Shakespeare became a dominant force in the London theatre scene, and ultimately, the most influential writer of all time. In his fluent, humorous style, Bryson explains how a country son became to be considered a genius, and how his writings helped shape modern English.

Great book. Very interesting and highly enjoyable. Especially the parts in which Bryson tells about famous Shakespeare researchers crack up because of the lack of available resources are hilarious. As one reviewer put it: "Very good book. He actually makes Shakespeare interesting."

Hmmm... interesting book, this. In a very snippy style, so called child prodigy Helene Hegemann writes about a disturbed, heroin addicted girl's coming of age.

There's not much of story in there. It's all fragments and pieces, ably glued together by psychedelic flashbacks and drug induced daydream experiences. The story's protagonist, precocious Mifti, is very aware of her troubles, and you can't help drawing the analogy with Hegemann, at the time of writing herself a Berlin based teenage girl. Considering the excessively bizarre encounters of Mifti, however, this was probably deliberately done so to add to the book's shock effect.

Axolotl Roadkill caused a bit of stir soon after it was first published, because of supposed plagiarism. The book contains several pieces of some blog and pieces of other, initially uncredited, sources. Hegemann responded by saying 'sampling' is a part of present-day media culture.

I didn't like this book at all, mostly for two reasons. First of all, it's very difficult to concentrate on because of its fragmented nature. The cut 'n paste nature mentioned earlier obviously contributes to this. Secondly, it's all but impossible to identify with poor troubled Mifti. But perhaps I'm just not the kind of person that takes a taxi to nowhere out of boredom to end up being sodomized by the driver.

Next up: a book on Shakespeare! No, really.

This Pulitzer Price winning book attempts to explain why European societies ended up dominating the world, instead of others. By comparing the prehistoric continental differences in land mass, ecological barriers and available domesticable mammals and crops Diamond unfolds a comprehensive, yet understandable theory on the history of everybody for the past 13.000 years.

In short (here we go): readily available crops in certain regions of the prehistoric world (especially in the fertile crescent and parts of China) gave those places a head-start over the other continents because they allowed for the earliest sedentary settlements, and the resulting food surpluses in effect allowed for specialism (like mercenaries) and population increase (where the original hunter-gatherer lifestyle just couldn't compete against), leading to improved technology and allowing germs to cause epidemics and eventually immunity (giving Western Europeans an edge in their conquests of many parts in the world, like The Americas, where an estimated 95% of all natives died of European originated diseases) .

Furthermore, it is explained that the broad x-axis of the Eurasian continent, which limits the climate differences, allowed for a quick wide spread of crops, domesticated animals and technological diffusion all the way from as far west as Ireland to far-east Japan, giving Europe and Asia an enormous advantage over the y-axis orientated continents of the Americas, Africa, and the isolated continent of Australia.

The book zooms in on all continents and digs deeply in its past to explain history's broad pattern. Why did ancient societies in subsaharan Africa domesticated only one large animal, even though we usually associate Africa with large mammals? Although the Mayas developed writing, why did it never spread further north into North America or even to the neighbouring Aztec society only several hundreds of kilometres away? Why did the first European settlers in Australia encounter people still living in the Stone Age?

This is one of those books from which you actually learn something. To prove his theory, Diamond tests it against all continents, explaining any peculiarities and anomalies. Because of this, the book contains many repetitions. Because of this, the book contains many repetitions. Because of this, the book contains many repetitions. Which eventually becomes indeed a bit annoying.

Nevertheless definitely highly recommended, if only to be able to explain at a party why New Guineans used to eat each other after the battle. Priceless.

In between reading Guns, Germs and Steel I figured I could also read this novel by Dutch-German author Hans Keilson to keep me focused. So I did just that. Keilson, long time unnoticed by the international press, recently got enormous attention after a New York Times journalist described him as "one of the world's greatest writers". Well, at 101 years of age, he certainly is one of the oldest!

Komödie in Moll (translation: Comedy in a Minor Key) is novel about a Dutch couple who commit themselves to the dangerous work of trying to hide a Jewish man during WO II. All goes well, until the hider contracts an unfortunate illness and, after a short time of progressively high fever, dies. Which, of course, leaves the couple with the dreary and dangerous task of disposing the body.

The story is so well written that you seem to float through it, in the end making you wonder wether the story is perhaps just another chapter of a longer one. Therefore, I'm eager to reading the highly acclaimed In de ban van de tegenstander, before I would go so far as calling Keilson one of the greatest, and his books masterpieces.

 

 

Except for Pale Fire, which is also included in many top 100 literature of all time lists, most of Nabokov's work is eclipsed by his controversial masterpiece Lolita. Pnin, however, though a less well-known novel, is a brilliant book in both style and plot. It's an ironic story about a clumsy Russian refugee professor (Pnin) who fled from the communists and Hitler, trying to cope with the American lifestyle, language and superficiality.

Pnin's old fashioned ways make for a very funny story, but the underlying theme of infinite misfortune is quite tragic, slowly becoming more and more significant towards the end of the book. Nabokov, a Russian refugee himself, exquisitely interweaves the story's narrator into the plot, who appears to be a very close friend of Pnin's, yet, in several scenes, Pnin claims otherwise, climaxing in a tense close encounter between Pnin and the narrator.

Pnin is a great book and Nabokov was a real American hero. Go read it!

My next book will be Guns, Germs and Steel. Stay tuned!

Back when I was a kid, my grandmother gave me a copy of Hawking's A Brief History of Time (which she read herself first). I read the first few pages, but quickly lost motivation and the book got lost underneath the cuddly toys. Perhaps I was too young (or too dumb) for theoretical physics.

Last week however, I ran into a pile of Hawking's latest in the local book store, read a few pages and understood most of it. So I instantly bought it.

In The Grand Design Hawking and Mlodinow discuss the possibility of a theory that unifies all other theories that try to fully explain and link together all known physical phenomena, and predict the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out in principle. They try to explain, without the use of mind blowing formulas, how particles behave at microscopic scale (quantum physics) and why quantum physics can't be incorporated with Einstein's general relativity. Furthermore, it is explained why the lack of quantum gravity isn't so important on a microscopic scale but is on a cosmological scale and therefore there is need for a unification of all other theories, the new, yet not fully completed M theory.

 I've always liked Hawking. He's like The Übernerd: he understands stuff only a few do, and even takes time to write books about it. Whereas most of us programmers stick with easy 3D projection, Hawking comfortably calculates stuff in 11 dimensions. Some aspects of The Grand Design are still beyond any imagination and very hard to understand, but Hawking and Mlodinow made a book that is very readable, even for dummies like myself. Recommended for anyone who believes 42 isn't the answer.

Next: Nabokov's Pnin.

Just like I thought, this one was a bit easier to read (in fact, if it wasn't for last night's beers, I would have read it to the end in one go). "Het slimme onbewuste" (the smart unconscious) deals with the common misconception that the conscious mind is more important than the unconscious. But as it seems, there's no such thing as free will, every decision we made actually originates in the unconscious mind.

The author, Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, illustrates his views with the usual interesting research examples you'd expect from a popular psychology book, but imo failed in writing a great book. The jokes (most of them put between brackets) are not funny at all and annoying; the writing style is thoroughly inconsistent, varying from childishly simple to academic babble, and some of the theories presented seem to contradict in a way that makes me wonder whether the time was even right for this book to be written.

Anyway, it still makes for a decent read, and I enjoyed most of it. Wouldn't really recommend it though.

Next one will be The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking. Cheers!