Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Two More Books

I recently finished Mount Pleasant by Don Gilmor. Somebody was giving it away in a cardboard box outside their house. I live on Mount Pleasant Avenue, so I figured "what the hell." It's a decent look at a middle-aged man's midlife crisis. It's a nice portrayal of the vicissitudes of the Rosedale set. And "Occupy Toronto" makes a presence.

I could identify with everything about the guy except his background and the fact that he had a nice house to sell to get himself somehow out of his debt crisis.

I'm also trying to read Imperial Reckoning: the untold story of Britain's gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins. So far I've read a tight summary of the events leading up to the "Mau-Mau" rebellion and a couple of chapters documenting British barbarism and hypocrisy. It's a tough slog.

My only observation right now is to think of those right-wing imbeciles who condemned Obama for returning a bust of Winston Churchill to the British government. (It had decorated the office of his predecessor.) Besides being a completely routine thing, Obama's actions would make sense given what Churchill's government had enabled in Kenya.

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