Fun with the Cuban revolution

As I continue the long, hard slog through Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (approaching Page 300), another fact:

Fidel Castro's nom de guerre was Alejandro.

1. Why do people have noms de guerres? Are they just fancy code names, or is there a difference between a code name and a nom de guerre? Because I imagine that a nom de guerre is mostly for fun. "Let's play war. I'll be "Alejandro."

2. Alejandro is part of Castro's real name, so way to be creative, Mr. Revolutionary Leader Turned Dictator.

Losing Book-Itz

After reading Finding Manana, I've been interested in Cuba, so I'm reading Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson, which I have had for a few years but hadn't gotten around to. It is thorough: excluding the appendix, notes and bibliography -- 754 pages. Fortunately, there's a lot of context about Latin American politics and economics, so it's more than just a recount of one man's life. But this is no way to get ahead on the reading list.

So, your Che fact of the day: He had bad asthma.

More nonfiction

Finding Manana: A Memoir of Cuban Exodus
By Mirta Ojito

Ojito was 17 when she left Cuba for the United States as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Her book tells the story of her life in Cuba and the beginning of her life in Florida, mixed in with chapters about others, whose actions led to the boatlift that brought 125,000 Cubans to the United States.

It's amazing how little I knew about Cuba before reading this book: 125,000 people left Cuba in, at best, uncomfortable conditions shortly before I was born. I thought paid attention in American history, but I don't remember this. I even took a Latin American studies class in college, but I think we were distracted by Elian Gonzalez and his dolphin friends.

Ojito, a journalist, is evenhanded in her telling and reporting, and, as an exile she is conflicted about her home:

...Seven years after Mariel, I was still limping through life, maimed by my exile condition. I enjoyed the new freedoms, but, paradoxically, missed the restrictions that I had rebelled against in Cuba.

What would Airhen read?

Some good books from last year's reading list:
Nowhere Man by Aleksander Hemon
Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Rent Girl by Michelle Tea and Lauren McCubbin
Paradise by A.L. Kenedy
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The first three

First, my official 2006 Book-Itz list

Now the (short) reviews (with the latest read listed first):
1.The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Nonfiction.
Packer, of The New Yorker, takes an amazingly ideology-free and thoroughly reported look at the lead-up to the war, the war itself and the occupation. From the epilogue: "I came to believe that those in the positions of highest resposibility for Iraq showed a carelessness about human life that amounted to criminal negligence. Swaddled in abstract ideas, convinced of their own righteousness, incapable of self-criticism, indifferent to accountability, they turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one. When things went wrong, they found other people to blame. The Iraq war was always winnable; it still is. For that reason, the recklessness of its authors is all the harder to forgive."

2. Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir by Paul Clemens. Nonfiction.
White boy grows up in Detroit, a lonely road, and thinks he comes out with some racial insights. I learned more about Detroit than about race in America, and though that was interesting, I was hoping for more insight on white people and black people and how they live (or don't live) together.

3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Fiction.
All the editions of this book were always checked out when I went to borrow it. (See? Baltimore does read.) So I didn't read it till I got it for Christmas. (Thank you, Mom.) It's about clones, but it doesn't matter what it's about because Ishiguro writes like it's effortless and makes it effortless to read. It's got a vague creepiness, and you should read it.