Halifax is Burning

I'm not sure about the facts, but these photos tell a rather sensational story. The latest reports I've heard are that twelve houses have been burnt (no loss of life yet).

These photos were taken from our apartment window at around 3pm today.

At around 9pm, Janelle and I went to the roof of our building and took these photos:

You can't see them in these photos because they blend with the sky quite well, but the columns of smoke are still quite high.

It's pretty exciting and I'm curious to know what's going on. Apparently, it's a pretty big deal because we've had to call in help from out-of-province to deal with this and large portions of the suburbs have been evacuated. So: Halifax is burning, spread the word!

We're actually not in any danger. The fire is off the peninsula in an area called Spryfield. That's in the suburbs. I may find out later that some people I know have been evacuated, but I haven't heard anything yet. Firefighters are hoping to get a handle on it tonight as the wind dies down and we are expecting wetter weather tomorrow.

The Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkein

I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time in grade nine after my english class read The Hobbit. I started reading The Silmarillion immediately afterwards, but found it impossibly boring and gave up.

During my first year of University, I read The Silmarillion completely and found that, huge parts of it were, in fact, quite boring but the other parts more than made up for that. The boring parts were the ones where Tolkein describes in great detail, the creation of the world, the conflict of the Valar, and Melkor's initial episodes ... the ones where he goes galavanting with Ungoliant (the giant spider) and destroys the glowing trees or something like that. But afterwards, it gets more interesting. The Silmarillion is a collection of stories that are loosely connected because they tell about the Silmarillion, where they came from, how they were made, how Melkor stole them, and how the people of Middle Earth tried to get them back. Finally it tells how, when Melkor is on the verge of winning his very, very long war and enslaving all the peoples of Middle Earth, the Valar (the gods of the Tolkein world) come to Middle Earth and fight The War of Wrath, defeating Melkor once and for all, and imprisoning him.

The Unfinished Tales is kind of like a director's cut of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It's not really interesting on its own, but if you've read The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, you might find The Unfinished Tales interesting because it fills in a lot of details. It tells the story of what Gandalf and the other wizards are and where they came from, it gives a short history of the palantiri (the seeing stones used by Saruman and Denethor in The Lord of the Rings), it gives the story of Tuor's journey to Gondolin and how he met Ulmo (the god of the sea), it retells the story of Turin Turambar (told originally in The Silmarillion) with greater detail and character building, it tells the story of The Battles of the Fords of Isen and the death of Theodred--battles that occur during the narrative of The Lord of the Rings but do not come into it--if you remember, Aragorn and his company arrive at Edoras in The Two Towers shortly after Theoden has learned that Theodred has been killed by Saruman's orcs at the fords of Isen. It also tells the story of how Isildur actually lost the One Ring and died. Also, as a matter of interest, The Unfinished Tales also contain the only preserved story from Numenor: the story Aldarion and Erendis.

Anyways, if you read The Unfinished Tales on its own, you probably wouldn't find it very interesting, in fact, it could be downright boring because Tolkein fills it with seemingly insignificant details. But if you read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and have some understanding of the Tolkein world and are kind of curious about some things, The Unfinished Tales does a great job of filling in a lot of the gaps and the details that might make it boring, if read on its own, actually lend a lot of depth and richness to the narrative.

It is extremely well written, and edited by JRR Tolkein's son, Christoper Tolkein with a great deal of editor's notes to explain the text and to connect it with the known narrative of the other books and to point out certain disagreements between the texts or in Tolkein's unpublished notes. So, in short, I really enjoyed this book, although it took me a really long time to get through it and I found a lot of the editor's notes a little boring and repetitive and academic, not that that's a bad thing, if you're interested in an academic study of Tolkein. And if you are interested in an academic study of Tolkein, let me suggest an essay topic for you: Eurocentrism in Tolkein.

All The Excitement

So the past couple days have been pretty exciting! On Monday we went to Victoria's birthday party and pretty much everyone was there: Mom and Dad Swan, Joanne and her girls, and Bekah and Justin and Aunt Esther and Uncle Ken. It was at Peaches' house, so no need to mention that she and her children were there. We had a great time, the kids were absolutely wild and I poured coke on Marcella's head. That was fun.

By the way, Bekah, I still can't post comments on your blog.

And yesterday, Janelle and I went to dinner at Athens with Rachel and some friends from Janelle's school. That was fun. The rice pudding was exceptional, as usual.

As for the not-so-exciting: the past week or so I've been experimenting with the new Ubuntu, to figure out what it can do, so I haven't been doing much of anything else. I also finished reading Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkein, so expect a review soon. And I downloaded and have been listening to The Cranberries' Greatest Hits album all morning. Oh yeah, I've got the day off today because of a particularly interesting time last weekend.

Janelle and I were on call this past weekend, and because Janie (the Superintendent at our neighbouring building) had the weekend off, we were covering both buildings. So, on Saturday morning there were phone books and broken glass to clean up at her building: someone had thrown the phone books down the stairs and smashed some glass in front of the building. Jane helped me clean that up while Janelle went for some breakfast at McDonald's. Later in the day, we had Ashlin, Marcella, and Laurie for a bit and played on the rooftop garden with them, and then met Mom and Dad Swan at Wendy's for dinner. After that there were a few apartment showings at the other building and then I had to plunge a toilet (that was so much fun!). But aside from that the day was pretty uneventful. On Sunday, Janelle made some banana-coconut cream pie and we ate some with Mom and Dad Swan, which was terrific: the best banana-coconut cream pie I've ever had!

Anyways, the boss gave me a day off this week because I covered the other building, so I'm taking full advantage of it. I slept in this morning, I plan to do some laundry, listen to music, start reading a book, blog a little ... you know, a fun filled day off.

And Now! The News You've All Been Waiting For!!

Ubuntu 9.04 is out. Tomorrow.

Okay, that's probably not news you've been waiting for ... and, I admit, it may not even seem all that exciting but take a look at this release article and tell me you're not at least a little bit curious.

For those of you who don't know, Ubuntu is an open source operating system based on the Unix code. It's developed by a community of programmers and you can download it for the low, low price of ... well, it's free. You can download it (or just find out about it) from the Ubuntu Website.

Culture Shock

Today the final part of a three part series of articles on American culture appeared on Focus on the Family's Plugged In website. Here are the links in case you feel like reading them: Part One: Letting the Joneses Win, Part Two: Talkin' in the USA, and Part Three: Livin' la Vida Vicarious.

Okay, here is my commentary. The author, Meredith Whitmore, who has just returned to the United States after five years of teaching English in Africa and China, writes about her experiences fitting back into what we call "American culture" (although I'm not entirely sure there is such a thing).

I was very intrigued by the Part One. It showed a sharp insight and it was well written. The observations were extremely astute and prompted more than just a cursory glance inward. She challenges the reader to drop our materialistic urges--to forget about the stuff, the possession of which we so energetically pursue, and focus on living instead. The big message of the article is that we tend to value ourselves based on what we have compared to what everyone else has. She says, if our sweater (or minivan, condo, hairstyle, furniture ...) isn't quite as nice as our neighbours, who cares? Those are just things, they don't influence who you are or what you're worth. Okay, that was the first part and I thought to myself, Wow! This is great stuff! I can't wait until parts two and three come out; I want to see what else she has to say! I even forwarded a copy of the article to Janelle to read and she thought it was awesome too.

So, obviously, I was pretty excited when Part Two came out one week later and read it voraciously. I was disappointed. Ok, so before I go on about why I was disappointed, I will summarize Whitmore's article. She quotes someone--she doesn't say who (and I won't go on google and find out)--who says: "The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate." Her big beef in this article seems to be with our obsession with technology, particularly communication technology. She argues that while we have all kinds of communication technology, like cell phones, instant messaging, facebook, e-mail and all that jazzy stuff, we're not actually communicating. I'll quote one example she uses:

"A few weeks ago I was at home working online when my housemate sent a Facebook message from downstairs. But let me restate this: She knew I was only a few feet away and she still sent me a digital message. Once I'd read her post and laughed, I shut my laptop and practically sprinted to her, barely missing the cat on the last step. 'Oh, please!' I said, feigning disgust when she could see me in the kitchen. 'Talk to me! We are not going down this road!'"

In another example, she writes about an episode where she was at the theatre and all her fellow theatre-goers were wearing Bluetooth devices and talking on them and she thought she may have wandered into a crowd of cyborgs.

The third example I'm going to reference is the most poignant, I think, and I will quote it:

"When I traveled with a youth group recently, I watched teenagers in the van chat on cell phones, listen to mp3s and play video games—all without so much as breathing on their seat-belted neighbors. They texted BFFs elsewhere rather than getting to know the teens around them. Hardly anyone talked to anybody else in the vehicle for hours."

"To me," she writes, "How Americans communicate often feels more like a tutorial in how to avoid communication."

The example about the youth group is, to me, the important part of the article. I think she could have just put that in and cut everything else out and that would have been excellent. Getting to know the people around you is something I find very lacking in North American culture--myself included.

Here follows what disappointed me about this article: I don't particularly care for her brand of sarcasm. It's very cheap. But that's just my taste, it's not an objective observation. It seems to me that the article deals more with the symptoms of the problem: our obsession with technology than with the actual problem: our culture of laziness. To me, that's a major problem with Focus on the Family in general: they tend to put more focus on the symptoms of the problem than on the actual problem. For example, they campaign against abortion and homosexual marriage but those things are just a symptom of the problem of Sin--we should expect unsaved people to live sinfully and not try to treat their sins with campaigns and legislation but to present to them the One who can save them from their Sin. Anyways I think this article is typical of Focus on the Family's way of looking at things.

I mentioned earlier that I'm not entirely sure if there is such a thing as American culture. (Obviously, by American, I mean North American.) And I think that's what Whitmore is trying to talk about in these articles: the great vacuity that is North American culture. I think there is a lot of regional culture in North America, for example, Halifax has a lively culture of beer, academics, and music and the three mix together very well to create a fine, fun, and intelligent culture in this city. But there is no grand culture that describes all of North America except for the great vacuity that is our Media: we have shows like Jerry Springer and Maury playing on TV, our magazines are obsessed with scantily clad women and the clothing that they may or may not wear, a big chunk of our newspapers are devoted to Entertainment. It's all vacuity; it's all meaningless; it brings no joy or value to our lives.

And this obsession with Entertainment is the topic of Whitmore's third article, titled "Livin' la Vida Vicarious." She writes about how TV and Media life seems to have become much more engrossing than real life, and how this is replacing real-life experiences. While I agree with her in principle, I find her approach very judgmental and self-righteous. I don't know any people who confuse TV and Media life with real life like the people in the examples she uses in her article. Anyways, it just turned me off and I was disappointed enough to blog about it.

So read the first article, it's great and has some astute and inspiring observations but the other two articles are just a bit annoying. Personally, I appreciate Matthew Good's social commentary on the same subject much more.

Angelina Jolie -- What?

So I just read in the news that Angelina Jolie has "topped a list of the world's most beautiful women." So, she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world or something. I very, very strongly disagree. In fact, I think they should put the entire list in the toilet.


Above is a photograph of Angelina Jolie. Okay, I know it's not the most flattering photo, but I will refer to it when pointing out why I don't think Angelina is the most beautiful woman in the world. (Incidentally, I think Angelina Jolie's most attractive role was in the film Gone in Sixty Seconds where she had platinum blond dreadlocks.) So here are my reasons:

1. Her lips. Everyone seems to be crazy about those lips but I don't know what they're seeing. It's just ridiculous, those lips are probably the chubbiest part of her body not that that's a bad thing, in itself--it's just so incongruous.

2. Her eyes. They're plain and forgettable. I can't even remember what colour they are, seconds after looking at them. They're also too small.

3. Her hair. It's thin and flat. And that hairstyle is just yucky. If her hair had more body or if she had dreadlocks it would be way more attractive.

4. She's just way too skinny. I mean, I can see her collar bones sticking out through her sweater! That's just ridiculous.

5. Her face. It's plain, it's too narrow, it doesn't have any outstanding features.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Angelina Jolie is unattractive or even ugly. I just don't think she's very pretty. On a scale of one to ten, I might give her a four or a five, compared to Janelle's perfect ten.


Ok, ignore the ugly bum on the left but take a look at Janelle. This is why I give Janelle a perfect ten:

1. Her eyes. They're a vivid, perfect blue and they've got a great shape. In short, they're unforgettable.

2. Her freckles. Freckles are sexy.

3. Her hair. It's got lots of volume and body. And it's curly. No boring or forgettable hairstyles here!

4. Her smile.

5. Her face is nearly perfectly proportioned and her big hair frames it really well.

6. She's not plain looking and she's not skinny. She's just amazing.

7. She's mine.

How I Met and Married Janelle

I first heard the name Janelle Swan shortly after my parents returned from their first trip to Zambia. My mother circulated an e-mail that Miss Swan had composed about the witch craft trials that were taking place around Sakeji at that time, in which several men from the assemblies there were accused of witchcraft. I noticed that the e-mail was very well written and the stress and emotion of the situation were evident in its tone. I read the e-mail, and deleted it.

In my mind's eye, I saw Janelle as a tall beautiful girl, probably a few years older than me and definitely out of my league. Not that I even considered whether or not there was a possibility of me even ever meeting her, much less ever being with her. It was a foregone conclusion that she was too beautiful, too smart, and too good for me.

The next time I heard the name, it was a few years later and I was on the telephone with my little sister, Sophie. She had gone to Zambia with my parents and had spent some time with Janelle at Sakeji. I was on the phone with Sophie because my girlfriend Erica and I had just broken up. I was very lonely and so I had prayed for someone to keep me company and that very night Sophie called for no particular reason. Anyways, we were talking and somehow, Jill Avery's name came up. Jill Avery works at Sakeji School in Zambia. That triggered something in Sophie's memory and she exclaimed, "Patrick! I know the perfect girl for you!" It was Janelle. She told me how beautiful and wonderful and funny and smart Janelle was. I was skeptical and thought nothing more of it. In fact, I completely forgot this conversation for a long time.

Months, possibly even more than a year later, I was in Toronto working with Stephen Vance's Good News Outreach for the summer. One of my coworkers was Vince Kember. He knew Janelle from when she went to university in Ottawa. Anyways, for some reason, her name kept coming up in our conversations, you see Vince was crazy about Janelle. He kept telling me that if she was any younger, he would marry her and that I should meet her because I'd like her and that we were very much alike and would probably like each other a lot. Of course, I was skeptical.

It was towards the end of that summer, I remember I was stacking chairs after another children's meeting in the tent when Vince came in and took me to the other tent where he introduced me to Janelle. She had stopped to see him while driving through on her way to a wedding in the Stratford area. I stood to the side, kind of awkwardly, and Vince introduced us. I said, "You have crazy hair." I might have stood there for a few more minutes, but I said nothing more and then split.

I was right. Janelle was beautiful. Of course, I never made the connection that this was the same Janelle Swan that Sophie had told me about until much later. Again, however, I thought that she was too beautiful, too smart, and too good for me. I thought nothing more of her.

The summer ended and I enrolled in classes at York University's Glendon College. I moved into Mark and Jason's apartment where I spent two months on the couch before Tim moved out and I moved into his room. It was pretty tedious and lonely. I hung out with Stacy and Sarah a lot--they were awesome friends, even if their dad was a little crazy. I went to classes, I explored the city and the subway. (I was crazy about the subway.) And then Vince (who had gone back to Ottawa and was now attending classes at the University of Ottawa) told me about a conference in Montreal, he invited me to go with his family and Ciela. I bought a bus ticket to Ottawa and after a strange fiasco and major mix up I met up with Vince and his family. Then I broke Vince's expensive glasses. I spent the weekend and a couple of days in Ottawa with Vince, his family, and Ciela. It was pretty cool and I even considered moving to Ottawa.

When I got back to Toronto, Vince and I were chatting on MSN again and Janelle's name came up. Vince had sent her to my website and she had read my poems and stuff and told Vince that she liked them. He told me that she would probably like to "meet" me, so I asked for her e-mail address and added her to my MSN list. We immediately began chatting and I discovered that, in addition to being beautiful, smart, and good, she was also very likeable and nice. We hit it off and began chatting regularly, sometimes for up to four or more hours at a time.

After about a week of this, I invited Janelle to my parent's house for Christmas. I wasn't really expecting her to accept, I was hoping she would, but I thought it would be too much to hope for and definitely too soon. It turned out, Janelle was more daring and courageous than I had expected and she agree. I was pretty excited, but trepiditious enough to tell everyone that it was my parents who had invited her. Anyways, we kept chatting, I really, really liked her and was pretty sure she felt the same way about me. By the time Christmas arrived, I was pretty sure that I would be falling in love with her when I saw her.

She arrived on a Saturday evening on the train and I met her at Union station. She looked great, I thought she was beautiful. We were nervous at first but we got along quite well. I took her back to the apartment I shared with Mark and Jason and made her some pancakes for supper. We spent the next day together in Toronto, went to meeting and all that stuff, and on Monday morning we boarded the train for Cochrane. My parents were supposed to meet up at the station in Cochrane and take us home, but the train broke down on the way and what was supposed to be an eight or nine hour train ride stretched into a seventeen hour train ride. We didn't mind. We talked, held hands, and fell completely and madly in love.

We arrived at my parent's house in the wee hours of the morning. Mom woke up, made us some food and hung out with us for a little bit. Then we went to bed. The next morning I got up and found Janelle in the kitchen with mom, and greeted her with a great big hug. She was awesome and I loved her like crazy. It didn't take long before we were kissing all the time and I intended to ask her to marry me before she went back to Nova Scotia. My family loved her, she got along great with everyone, it was lots of fun and very exciting.

One afternoon we took a walk. It was short walk because it was very cold. Janelle asked me what we were, what our relationship was because I hadn't asked her to be my girlfriend or anything yet and I planned to ask her to marry me. I didn't exactly know what to say so I think I made something up that we could call each other until I asked her to marry me. I would have to buy a ring first. Anyways, I can't remember what it was that we were going to call each other.

So after Christmas, Chad and Leanne drove us back to Toronto and the next morning I took Janelle to the train station. I had bought the ring a day or two before we left Kapuskasing. On the way to the train station we stopped by the giant elephant sculpture at the CIBC plaza at Yonge and King, and then walked along King Street. We came to the St. James Anglican Cathedral and the doors were open so I asked if she'd like to go in. We went in, sat down, talked for a while. It was very emotional because she was going to be leaving in a few minutes. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask, "If I gave you my ring, would you wear it?" And then I got down on one knee and, presenting the ring and stuttering a little, I asked her if she would marry me. Instead of saying "Yes" or "No" like normal people, though, she said "Shut up!!" and then repeated it again as if I hadn't heard the first time, and said it again and again.

Anyways, she eventually got around to saying yes. We called her parents who gave us their blessing and then went to Union Station and she got on the train and disappeared. It was very lonely after that. I was slow telling people about it. I went home and went to bed and slept until Chad called to tell me that I'd forgot my suit in his car, I didn't tell him. Later on my mom called and I told her and she told my dad and we talked for a while. My dad was a little nervous, but he was okay with it. I can't remember who I told next. I eventually told Chad, but I can't remember if it was before or after my mom told him. Anyways, everyone eventually found out.

After that we had to plan on a date. We decided not to wait for too long and opted originally for a wedding in June but then we changed it to May 20.

I flew to Halifax in February for Spring Break and spent ten days with Janelle and her sisters and their families. We went to the beach and I fell in love with the ocean. The ten days went by too fast and I flew back to Toronto again. School ended for me, I took a job tutoring a few people. It wasn't very lucrative. I decided to leave the city and took the train to Kapuskasing. I spent the month of April and some of May at my parent's house. Time dragged by.

And then on May 10, I flew to Halifax. Janelle picked me up at the airport. We were very nervous and excited. Ten days flew by, people kept coming in, we spent more time at the airport picking people up than anywhere else, I think. And then we got married. It was a really fun wedding, I think. I liked it a lot.

We had a nice honeymoon at Peggy's Cove. The only thing I regret is insisting that we go to meeting on Sunday morning. After that, we drove through Northern Quebec to Kapuskasing in Janelle's parent's car where they hosted another reception for us, for the people who didn't make it to the wedding. A few days later, we drove to Stratford, where we moved into Chad and Leanne's house. They were going to Germany for a couple months and we were going to babysit their house, so we spent the summer in Stratford and moved to a tiny one bedroom apartment in Toronto at the end of August ...

Talking About Relationships

This is the part where I blather about dating relationships.

Frankly, dating relationships disgust me. They belong to people who don't have the guts to get married or have no interest in getting married. First, let me say that you don't have to know someone very well before you marry them because no matter how long you've been dating, no matter how well you think you know someone, you'll always find yourself married to someone completely different. My advice is, jump in with both feet or stay single. Or let your parents pick.

Like Socrates said, "By all means, get married. If you marry a good wife you will be happy. If you marry a bad wife, you will become a philosopher." And you can turn it around and apply it to women too: if you marry a good husband, you might be happy. If you marry a bad one, you will become a philosopher.

Anyways, every dating relationship eventually comes to a certain point where one partner turns to the other and says something like, "What are we and why?" This is inevitable.

So I've come up with a few simple rules for managing this topic, whenever it comes up. Of course, these rules are split along gender lines. If you don't like that, just remind yourself that this is my blog and therefore my unqualified opinion and if you were taking this seriously in the first place, you should know better. So here are the rules:

Questions Men Are Allowed to Ask:

Questions that have "yes" or "no" answers. For example, a man can ask, "Would you go to dinner and a movie with me on Saturday night?" or "Will you marry me?" (If the answer to that is "No" you can ask a follow up question like, "Is there a chance that the answer will eventually change?" but remember to keep it to "yes" or "no" questions. If the answer is No again, drop it. Don't ask again unless you have reason to believe that the answer might be different.) Also, if you get a "No" answer, don't let it shake your confidence. It's probably nothing personal. At least you asked. (Just make sure you look your best and don't stink or have stuff in your teeth when you ask, because she might say No just because you look sloppy.)

Questions Women Are Allowed to Ask:

Women can ask whatever questions they want. Also, they don't have to justify their answers to questions men ask. If the answer is No, that's enough. Men should never ask questions like "Why?" Because it makes them sound whiny and unconfident and nobody likes that and if the woman wanted to qualify her answer, she would have. Women can ask questions like "Why?" because women can ask whatever questions they want.

Other Rules:

If a man asks a question like "What are we and why?" the woman is unconditionally allowed to slap him as hard as she likes in the face or kick him in the balls. If the question has to be asked in the first place, it's probably because the man doesn't have the balls to ask the woman a "Yes" or "No" question. My advice to you women is ditch this man and don't look back. He could string you along for a very long time. I don't care how much you like him or how hot (or rich) he is, if he isn't going to ask you to marry him (or be his 'girlfriend', if he's a chicken) you should ditch him. In any case, the woman should be the one asking that question if the man hasn't asked a "Yes" or "No" question. It might prompt him to do so. Men can be forgetful sometimes.

If the woman asks a question like "What are we and why?" and she gets an answer like "Just friends" she should drop it. Don't keep bringing it up or asking "Why are we just friends?" If she wants to be more than just friends she should ask him to marry her (or be her 'boyfriend', if she's a chicken). If the woman gets an answer like "Just friends" when there is some serious emotional stuff going on, like constant hand holding, kissing, making out, or even sex, the woman is unconditionally allowed to kick the man in the balls or even kill him as the situation requires. Okay, maybe not kill him, but get a good guy friend to "talk" to him, if you know what I mean. And then she should drop the relationship and not talk to him again unless she has reason to believe that things have changed.

If the woman is asking the man to marry her she had better have a ring or some other token handy. It shows she's serious. Also, if a man asks a woman to marry him without giving her a ring or promising to get her one right away the woman should say no just as a matter of principle.

If a man and woman are "just friends" they should not be kissing, constantly holding hands, snuggling, cuddling, or having sex. If a man asks a woman to be his wife or girlfriend and she says no he is prohibited from engaging in any kind of serious emotional stuff with that woman. If the man hasn't asked the woman to be his wife or girlfriend yet he is prohibited from engaging in any kind of serious emotional stuff with that woman. If the woman insists, the man should first ask her to marry him or be his girlfriend; if she says no and she continues to insist, the man should leave; she isn't a very good friend.

These rules are subject to change at any time without notice.

Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec

Brothers Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski were Jews who formed a partisan unit in Western Belorussia during 1942. By 1944, when the area was liberated by the Red Army, the Bielski unit consisted of twelve hundred Jews who had been saved from the ghettos and concentration camps.

I watched the movie Defiance (starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia and Liev Schreiber as Zus) in January with Janelle and Dan and Katie. Afterwards I ordered the book and just now finished reading it. I have to say that this is one of those rare cases where I liked the movie way better than the book. The movie is not historically accurate. A lot is cut out and changed to make it more movie friendly and more watchable. If the movie followed the book, it would be a documentary.

The book is a quasi-pseudo academic book that focuses mostly on the sociology of the partisan movement in Western Belorussia. I say it's quasi-pseudo academic because it's not really, really academic. The author often presents arguments unsupported with facts and the book is full of conjecture ... but maybe that's just how sociologists write. (Nechama Tec is a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, she is a Jewish holocaust survivor herself.) The book focusses mainly on the mundane details of day to day life in the Bielski Otriad and it compares the Bielski Otriad to the many, many Russian partisan units in the surrounding forest. The book is more informative than engaging. It didn't really do it for me, especially not when it could have been informative and engaging! There are some very interesting parts in the book, but mostly it's just tedious.

I was expecting this book to be a quasi-biographical book about the Bielski brothers, but instead I ended up with a textbook on forest-dwelling partisan sociology. And I'm not a big fan of sociology. (My most boring classes in highschool and university!)