The Boyer Sisters, Part 3

[Lurky]

I was assuming that most people know what "whitewashing history" means, but I was chatting to a friend who made me realise it's just assumptions.  So, some examples, if anyone else is new to the term:

• I'm British, so our history involves "the Romans", who are assumed as white, because Italians are.  So "Roman Roads", villas, buildings, Hadrian's Wall etc is perceived as white achievements.  However, the Roman Empire expanded far beyond Europe, and people from all the territories joined their armies, as that was a way to citizenship.  They believed in posting people far from their home country, and there's tons of evidence of significant numbers Roman North Africans posted to what is now England.  The Roman achievements in Britain were undertaken by a lot of North Africans, but perceived as "white" because of the name "Roman" is attached to this enormous, and amazingly diverse area.
• The history I was taught went roughly cavemen-Egyptian-Greek-Roman-RenaissanceEuropean, and that misses out a ton of pre-existing incredible civilisations, like India and China.  There are so many amazing stories, and because of sea and land trade, all these cultures interacted, BUT there's a reason the incredible Indus Valley metropolises are ignored, and that's because they make things more complicated.
• I grew up being taken to country houses in England, because the National Trust is a great day out here.  But a lot of these great country estates (USA friends, think Downton Abbey, but larger) used to have these tiny allusions to how they got the money to run them.  Nowadays, if one goes to a NT property, they'll be honest about how these glamourous, massively expensive lifestyles were built on the back of slave labour.  Without the enslaved African people, none of this would exist
• Before there was "Spain", there was this incredible Moorish (African, Muslim) civilisation on the Iberian peninsula, that had the most advanced universities of the age.  Fernando & Isabel waged holy war on the Moors and eventually took back the Iberian peninsula, and destroyed centres of learning that were world-renowned.  But you can't look at the history of Spain and Italy and all the Mediterranean countries without seeing the African culture/civilisations/centres of learning.  I especially love the history of Sevilla, when it was this amazing melting-pot of Muslim, Jewish and Christian learning, and how much of the ancient Greek texts we know about today are because they were preserved in Muslim libraries and universities.
• I was born and bred in London, like millions of people before me, and a significant proportion of them were Black or Asian, because that's what European port cities did.  The thing is, Black culture becomes invisible because a black or Indian or Chinese (modern terms for ease) person who settled in London and married a white person has kids who then most likely marry another white person, and a few generations later, no one can tell.  I look at eg the forcible deportation of Chinese people from Liverpool in the 1940s, and how , walking through the city now, you wouldn't necessarily be able to spot the grandchildren/great-grandchildren of those who were deported, because that's what happens.

These are just a few, off the top of my head.  I'm so lucky that modern history tries to recognise this, so there are things like eg the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, and the museums of big port towns like London, Bristol, Cardiff, etc etc, all acknowledge that there are people from so many different backgrounds that built the success of Britain.

[Gemini]

A few years ago I taught speech and verse to a 9yr old girl, who's parents wanted her to take some extra curricular exams.

I'd known the family from my daughter's school for a while and I was pretty excited to work with her as This girl's speaking voice was incredible! clear, articulate, she would usually be the first choice for any reading in school or church. I honestly thought she would be coming out of the exams with a very high grade, that was until I started asking her questions about the book she was reading from.

This kid had no reading comprehension. 

 she'd beautifully read countless numbers of books but had no idea, other than a very basic understanding of the plot line or information, about what was going on. The who, what, why, when, how of all those books had been totally lost, and she'd missed out on so much along the way. 

I think someone, @formergothardite maybe?, perfectly stated, that 'it doesn't matter how many books you read if you don't comprehend the meaning of them'

Some people are blessed with the ability to combine speed reading and reading comprehension, and I am so jealous of the shear number of books they will get to read (and understand) in their lifetimes. (I read fairly quickly but need to force myself to slow down because I tend to miss stuff) But in all honesty, bragging about reading 1000's of books means nothing if the comprehension isn't there. And from reading his posts, if Gabe isn't a troll, working on reading comprehension would be an excellent idea for him. And Gabe, I say that not to be smug, or rude but because you are not understanding what people are saying to you, and feel you are being attacked when in all honesty, you are attacking others and coming across as the person you accuse them of being. 

 

[purjolok84]

Personally, I don't keep lists of books I own or have read, but I do keep lists of books I want to read and/or own. I think other FJ library rats may be more organized than I am, however. [emoji4]

I have a list of books to buy/borrow on my phone - sometimes when I'm at the end of pay week but still want to go book shopping, I go in and add to my list.

Personally, I'd like to claim I'd read thousands of books (my family probably would do so for me!) but it's probably not the case. I don't generally keep count. Even if I did, no way could I claim to know everything about a topic, especially something as multi-faceted as history.

[purjolok84]

A few years ago I taught speech and verse to a 9yr old girl, who's parents wanted her to take some extra curricular exams ... she'd beautifully read countless numbers of books but had no idea, other than a very basic understanding of the plot line or information, about what was going on. The who, what, why, when, how of all those books had been totally lost, and she'd missed out on so much along the way. 

snip

But in all honesty, bragging about reading 1000's of books means nothing if the comprehension isn't there. And from reading his posts, if Gabe isn't a troll, working on reading comprehension would be an excellent idea for him. 
 

The girl you taught sounds like she might have had hyperlexia - good at decoding text, not so good at the meaning behind it. That's so sad that she got to nine years old and no one suspected she had no idea what the words meant. It takes all the fun out of reading.

As for Gabe, who knows? The comprehension may be there but he needs to use it - 'read to learn'. Otherwise those 1000 books may as well have been toilet paper.

[nausicaa]

22 hours ago, freedom_for_all said:

Little thread drift but how do y'all keep track of your books? Someone mentioned keeping a list of the books they have read over the years and I got curious. How do you keep track of what books you own and where they are etc?

Looking for a good system. 

I think I'm going to start keeping an actual list in a notebook, but to calculate this year's I looked at my checkout history at my local library and my purchase history on Amazon. There was only one book I read that I already owned and wasn't on either of those lists. 

For those of you wondering about my NYE dress, I went with the dress I posted in red. Seemed to better suit the James Bond theme. Silver nails, headband, and shoes. Nike! pics attached. It was cold. Could have used a tartan shrug...

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

[formergothardite]

You look lovely @nausicaa! 

I'm terrible at keeping track of what books I've read. A couple years I've been good at writing them all down, but typically I don't track the number of books I read. 

[sta_sha]

@nausicaa That dress is gorgeous!

I want to keep better track of what I'm reading in 2017 so I started a Goodreads account. I also keep a list of books I want to read/ books I own in my day timer.

[ladyamylynn]

@nausicaa You're gorgeous! Sorry I tried to think of a more smug and condescending way to say that but I couldn't.

[Fascinated]

I've been hoping you'd share a photo, @nausicaa!  You look incredible!  The dress is gorgeous in the red and looks so great with your hair. I love your headband, too. I hope you felt like a million bucks!

[nausicaa]

Thanks all! I felt great until I pulled the rookie move of drinking too much. Probably out of boredom because my girl friend/unofficial date got together with a guy pretty early on and so I was a third wheel.

Apparently a lot of people drank too much last night and made some questionable decisions because there is now, unfortunately, puke covering the hem of that gorgeous dress. 

It is not my puke. 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

A) drop dead gorgeous dress.  To bad about the puke, but that is how real life differs from James Bond's life. 

I refuse to count how many books I've read.  My mother and teachers despaired of me ever getting the hang of learning to read, but once I did they all despaired of getting me to stop and do anything else.  I still read read ALL the time.  Most of what I read is just for pleasure, so not terribly dense or literary.  Some is more challenging fare.  I do read quickly and always tested very highly for comprehension, but I cannot say I remember every word of every book I ever read.   I don't think 1000 books is an implausible number of books for someone of Gabe s age to have read (particularly since he wasn't including a list of what books were included in that number. )  I do think it's unlikely he remembers the details of all 1000 books, although that doesnt necessarily  make it a waste of time.  Thinking about what you have read and asking the right questions about the ideas that come from your reading are more important than the reading itself. 

Who  the hell cares how many books a person has read anyway? Are we all Donald Trump tweeting to the world about who is the bigliest reader? 

C) I keep a list of library books I have read in a series of notebooks. I started keeping the list because I am notorious for forgetting the title/author of books -even ones I really liked and want to recommend.  I could do it on the library website, but I keep forgetting to do it and I'm in the habit of keeping the notebook. 

 

I tried Goodreads, but I got put off the whole thing when I negatively reviewed a book and found myself in the middle of a shit storm where the authors leghumpers jumped all over me.  Was a bad experience. I guess I'm used to fj. People here may not always agree, but we are generally respectful. The Goodreads dustup generated actual threats. Thank God I was using a fake name  (Yeah, AL and Gabe, there is a reason people shouldn't use their real names on the Internet)

 

[Joyleaf]

I don't know how many books I have read. I don't even know how many books I own. And I'm far too lazy to count them.
Husband and I recently decided that we have too many books and need to weed out, so we got rid/sold 1,000 books.
We both like to read a lot and in different languages AND we like books.
Does that make us particularly scholarly? Not really.
We read a lot of stuff for fun. And even some of the books we read to learn about certain subjects turn out to be useless or at least partially outdated or not well researched.
So from my point of view the number of books read doesn't mean much.

Edit: I just realize that sounds much like a humblebrag, but that's not how I meant it. I'm just very tired and bad with words right now.

[CharlieInCharge]

I have absolutely no idea how many books I've read in my life. I would assume thousands because I have a BA in History and a MS in Library/Informtion Sciene and that's in addition to being a voracious reader. I do have a weird memory and can recall exact passages when prompted, but I don't think that means much in terms of comprehension. I also re-read favortite books, some dozens of times. 

All that said, it has been discussions about books and arguments over issues which have most shaped my worldview. Books are great, but application of knowledge only happens in the real world. You could read every book on Earth and still be ignorant if you don't know how to use that information.

Also (total bragging) my three-year-old loves books and was read the first four Harry Potter books by his first birthday. We are waiting on the rest until he is a bit older  I'm sure he will be able to compete with Gabe before too long in the numbers game. 

[FrumperedCat]

I've used goodreads in the past too and find it very useful for getting info on upcoming books but have stopped using it as my lists just got too out of control. I guess this is because I started using it when I was about 15 and since then I've grown a lot so the books I have on my lists I'm no longer interested in but too lazy to sort out 100+ books.

I do recall though one year I completed their challenge of reading 100 books and felt mightily proud of myself. Goodreads is a very good platform for keeping track of the amount of books read as well as upcoming books. If I ever come across a book and i'm awaiting a sequel I find goodreads are very good about providing accurate info about release dates/blurbs/titles.

[pelerine]

I'm 30 and have read 1,383 books* in my lifetime**.  Lest y'all be impressed, the bulk of that is children's fiction from never-ending series like the Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys.  My reading of adult books as an adult is significantly lower.

The only subject in which I can truly claim to be well-read, at least in any academic sense, is my graduate research topic.  And even in that, I'm about 5 years out of date now, because by the time the research was done, I never wanted to read another book about rural mechanization and twentieth-century Midwestern farm women.  So much for expertise. 

*If you count each reread as a book, it's probably more like 1600 or so.
**From first grade on, my mom made me write down every book I read, and I kept the habit into adulthood.  So I have a real record covering most of my life.
 

(And because somebody asked where we record our reading: I use LibraryThing.  It's the most affordable "real library-like" program I've found.  (If you're into behind-the-scenes-at-the-library, it's a fully-functional ILS and OPAC.))

[Nina]

On 1.1.2017 at 2:18 AM, Lurky said:

'm British, so our history involves "the Romans", who are assumed as white, because Italians are.  So "Roman Roads", villas, buildings, Hadrian's Wall etc is perceived as white achievements.  However, the Roman Empire expanded far beyond Europe, and people from all the territories joined their armies, as that was a way to citizenship.  They believed in posting people far from their home country, and there's tons of evidence of significant numbers Roman North Africans posted to what is now England.  The Roman achievements in Britain were undertaken by a lot of North Africans, but perceived as "white" because of the name "Roman" is attached to this enormous, and amazingly diverse area.

This is something wich I always try to stress. There are many known Soldiers of all ranks wich were highly mobile. The Legions wich served in the Lower Rhine Valley and in the modern Netherlands after the Bataver Revolt  came mostly from Spain and Africa for example. 

The Celts as we understand the term today, are in faxt rooted in the Hallstatt/LaTène Population of the Mainland. 

 

One statement I made is not correct. Yes, Three religions are centered around one god. But how they worship him is quite different. The rest of my statement still stands. 

 

I might have put some very hard words towards Brigid. But reading between the lines and having a case of female sibling problems in my Husbands family made it seem plausible that Brigid might have been (not necessarily consciously) a bit snobbish about her being engaged and getting married. I however was not there so I cannot be certain. I was also egged on by an incident my Husband and SIL + Son had while meeting them at Linden. So please accept my apology. 

On 1.1.2017 at 2:18 AM, Lurky said:

he history I was taught went roughly cavemen-Egyptian-Greek-Roman-RenaissanceEuropean, and that misses out a ton of pre-existing incredible civilisations, like India and China.  There are so many amazing stories, and because of sea and land trade, all these cultures interacted, BUT there's a reason the incredible Indus Valley metropolises are ignored, and that's because they make things more complicated.

True. But even in Central Europe during the Iron Age were some very interesting cultures wich are seen as Babarians. It is a very mediterranean  centric view. 

 

 

 

[dawbs]

FWIW, goodread's app is awesome for book tracking.
I don't use it for read/unread/want-to-read as much as I use it for 'what I own/don't own'.

It excels at that...I can stand in the local thrift store and scan the barcode on the back of a James Howe book and be told we already own "The Celery Stalks at Midnight" but not "Edgar Allen Crow".
(It's easier for me to know what decent books I own, harder with series especially things that are inane.  I'm afraid all the Junie B. Jones books in my house blend together)

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, Nina said:

 

True. But even in Central Europe during the Iron Age were some very interesting cultures wich are seen as Babarians. It is a very mediterranean  centric view. 

Imho it's whatever-the-economically-egemonic-area-of-the-time centric view. Egypt after the pharaohs is nothing more than a footnote in the list of lands conquered by different powers, Greece starts to lose importance when conquered by Romans and falls into oblivion at the end of the Eastern Roman Empire until the 19th century wars, Italy is central until the end of the Western Roman Empire then not much to notice besides Rome and the Pope until Renaissance then again nothing more. Great Britain barely exists before 1000ad and becomes something more than peripheral only with Henry VIII, with Elisabeth II becomes the centre of the world until the end of the Empire in the 20th century.  The rest of the world (meaning anything outside Europe and ME) literally doesn't exist before Westerners "discover" it. Mongols lasted as long as Genghis Khan. In the Americas before Columbus existed only Maya, Aztecs and Incas. I could go on. It's basically a history based on money, trades and wars caused by the splitting of money and resources.

[Hummingbird]

http://1000booksbeforekindergarten.org

There is a national organization promoting reading called "1000 Books Before Kindergarten." My local library just jumped on board. Parents and kids get to choose which books they want to read, so no hidden agenda.

So you see, it's not as hard as you think to read 1000 books. But in my humble opinion, it's quality, not necessarily quantity, that makes a difference. 

That said, I also believe you should never apologize for your reading tastes. Trashy romances and cozy mysteries are great 'palate cleansers' when you're struggling through a series of difficult books. 

[formergothardite]

2 minutes ago, Hummingbird said:

That said, I also believe you should never apologize for your reading tastes. Trashy romances and cozy mysteries are great 'palate cleansers' when you're struggling through a series of difficult books. 

I'll be honest and admit that I got a bit addicted to reading the Twilight series.  I read the entire series in a couple of days and then sat back and tried to figure out if they had really ended the book with an adult falling madly in love with a newborn baby. The books are crap, the message is terrible, but I did enjoy reading them. 

I never could get into 50 Shades of Grey, though. 

When my oldest was little I think I got a list of 100 books to read before kindergarten. I'm not sure we read them all, because sometimes she wanted to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear five billion times. 

[DaisyD]

I don't read as much as I should these days. When Mr. D got me the last Harry Potter no one was allowed to talk to me for the 24 hours it took to read it. I did take a 3 hr nap in there, but otherwise I was in the book. I just can't put them down once I'm into them. Maybe I'll read more once we retire.

As for history, I don't really blame the history books for not including more. There's way too much history out there. I do get annoyed that kids with an interest in history get pushed back towards STEM. History is the only subject the boy gets into, and the schools don't seam to think it's a legitimate interest.

[Destiny]

Lol! She did indeed end the series like that. One would think the editors might have said but Stephanie that's creepy, but alas no.

The only thing that worked for me in those books was New Moon's description of depression as just empty months. That resonated with me, cos that's how it worked for me.

[Joyleaf]

28 minutes ago, Hummingbird said:

That said, I also believe you should never apologize for your reading tastes. Trashy romances and cozy mysteries are great 'palate cleansers' when you're struggling through a series of difficult books. 

Oh yes!
Most times I'm reading a "difficult" book (scientific or otherwise) I have a "fun" book I'm reading to relax.
That doesn't mean that scientific books can't be fun, but, let's face it, many of them aren't written with that in mind.

BTW I love Project Gutenberg.
A twitter account I follow recommended this book last year about a mission to China at the beginning of the 20th century:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41878

A found it surprisingly interesting and not too badly written.
On one hand the author is well-informed about China at that time and relates interesting tidbits of history and recounts his own experiences.
On the other hand he is repulsively convinced that Christianity is THE way to "refine" China and prepare it for the modern world (instead of staying barbaric and backwards). He dreams about what good people the Chinese could be if they were just Christian and took on Christian morals while at the same time complaining about the Christian(!) sailors from Europe and their bad influence.

Project Gutenberg has a lot of books with interesting titles under the keywords "missionary" and "mission" and I think I'll read some more of them.

[formergothardite]

40 minutes ago, Destiny said:

Lol! She did indeed end the series like that. One would think the editors might have said but Stephanie that's creepy, but alas no.

 

 

The only thing that worked for me in those books was New Moon's description of depression as just empty months. That resonated with me, cos that's how it worked for me.

 

 

You would think somebody would have said "Society frowns on things like that, can we not have an adult fall in love with a baby?" I'm surprised that got through editing. 

The depression part really did hit on what it is often like to be depressed. She did get that right. 

[catlady]

Most of my books have been nonfiction, and I lean towards history and architecture.  Most recently Russian histrory.  My guilty pleasure last summer was a vintage trashy paperback from 1977 called Condominium by John D. MacDonald.  Someone left it in a room at the motel where I worked about 10 years ago, and since it was surprisingly good, I've read it at least half a dozen times.