Let’s start with the film. We watched All Quiet on the Western Front last night. I usually don’t watch war films, but after all, this one was based on a classic anti-war book, and just won four (that’s a lot) Oscars. It’s the story of a young German soldier in World War I, anxious to support his Vaterland and join the army, caught in the long, long Flanders stalemate, watching his friends, one by one, fall, saving himself through the undertaking of what even (or especially) he knew were evil acts, only to die minutes before the effect of the armistice at 11 a.m, on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

The film is primarily in German (with subtitles, of course), and is well acted, and wonderfully made. I think it was worthy of its Academy Awards recognition. I recommend it with the following caveat: It was by far the most uncomfortable film I have watched.

Yes, it’s about the First World War. But all I could think as we watched it: Ukraine.

And, by the way, if you watch it on Netflix, be sure to stay for the “Making of…..”, a 20 minute piece that will make you appreciate the film even more.

OK, the books.

Having struggled for weeks with Dostoevsky, I read two other books over the past few days. First was “All the Horses of Iceland”, by Sarah Tolmie, a medievalist scholar who wrote a nice mini-saga about a young Icelandic teenager, maybe 1000 years ago, who goes to Scandinavia where he meets a Jewish Khazar trader and goes with him through the steppes to Mongolia, where he is deemed to be a magician and is awarded with a herd of horses to bring back to Iceland, trekking through country ravaged by tribal warfare. It is nicely written, and accompanied by a little magical thinking, but is it great literature? Probably not. But it did remind me of “Njall’s Story”, a true 12th century Icelandic saga, which I read early in my Penguin reading, and which tells the story of pagan Iceland in about the 9th century. Iceland back then certainly was a dangerous place to live, but also a surprisingly sophisticated place, with formalized relationships between tribes, with clear practices of both respect and revenge, and with the annual Althing, the gathering for both politics and trade. I opened “Njall’s Story” certain that I would find it a waste of time. But quite the opposite.

The same was the case with the other book I just read, titled “England in the 19th Century” by David Thomson. It turned out that this was a wonderfully written book, a pleasure to read, not organized chronologically, but by subject. The divide between rural and urban England and the various parliamentary reforms, the adoption of a free trade strategy when England was supreme and the change to a form of protectionism, when it not longer was. The development of the empire in competition with much of Europe, the rivalry with Germany with respect to naval strength, the importance of Victoria who made the queen personally more important than the idea of the monarchy, the development of loyal self rule in Australia and Canada, the Irish question, and more.

Not sure what is next.

But of course, I don’t only read books. I buy them. Usually, I look for books that have been signed by the author (you know that), or that are old or hold particular interest.

This week I made an exception and bought (at a used book store downtown) two books that I have just wanted to read. First, Charles King’s book, “Odessa”, and second Bill Taubman’s “Gorbachev: His Life and Times”. When will I get to them?

I also, of course, found some special signatures, and bought for $2.50 each: “The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix”, signed by James D. Watson, “No Dream is Too High”, signed by Buzz Aldrin, and “This Child Will be Great”, signed by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Don’t recognize Sirleaf? She was the first (and I think only) female president of Liberia.