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hilly81.bsky.social
@hilly81.bsky.social
8 followers 21 following 10 posts
https://www.goodreads.com/hillaryread
Both pics in my profile taken by me 😁
So far I’ve only been posting what books I’ve read.
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hilly81.bsky.social
This is the best cover that’s been created for Hadji Murad, even though it of course makes no sense—the soldier is clearly from our modern time.
The Penguin Modern Library Classics cover of Hadji Murad, the Aylmer Maude translation, which is a photo of a Caucasian soldier in modern camo fatigues—a machine pistol over his shoulders—the gun hand wearing one black glove and holding the other—black beanie with a regimental badge—dark beard only around the edge of his face. He has a bit of a stare, but doesn’t look worn.
August 3, 2025 at 7:42 PM
hilly81.bsky.social
Just finished reading Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, about a white reporter in 1959 who darkens his skin to pass as a black man and travels around the American South. He later worked with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr.
Image caption: Griffin collects his fee from a dapper patron at Sterling Williams shoeshine stand in the French Quarter. Griffin worked with Williams off and on for a week in mid-November (p. 21 ff). All the change he collected he left with Williams. Excerpt: the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's Excerpt: Then I heard myself say what I have heard them say so many times. "It's not right. It's just not right." Then the onrush of revulsion, the momentary flash of blind hatred against the whites who were somehow responsible for all of this, the old bewilderment of wondering, "Why do they do it? Why do they keep us like this? What are they gaining? What evil has taken them?" (The Negroes say, "What sickness has taken them?") My revulsion turned to grief that my own people could give the hate Excerpt: A middle-aged woman with stringy gray hair stood near my seat. She wore a clean but faded print house dress that was hoisted to one side as she clung to an overhead pendant support. Her face looked tired and I felt uncomfortable. As she staggered with the bus's movement my lack of gallantry tormented me. I half rose from my seat to give it to her, but Negroes behind me frowned disapproval. I realized I was "going against the race" and the subtle tug-of-war became instantly clear. If the whites would not sit with us, let them stand. When they became tired enough or uncomfortable enough, they would eventually take seats beside us and soon see that it was not so poisonous after all. But to give them your seat was to let them win. I slumped back under the intensity of their stares. But my movement had attracted the white woman's attention. For an instant our eyes met. I felt sympathy for her, and thought I detected sympathy in her glance. The exchange blurred the barriers of race (so new to me) long enough for me to smile and vaguely indicate the empty seat beside me, letting her know she was welcome to accept it. Her blue eyes, so pale before, sharpened and she spat out, "What you looking at me like that for?" I felt myself flush. Other white passengers craned to look at me. The silent onrush of hostility frightened me. "I'm sorry," I said, staring at my knees. "I'm not from here." The pattern of her skirt turned abruptly as she faced the front. "They're getting sassier every day," she said loudly. Another woman agreed and the two fell into conversation. My flesh prickled with shame, for I knew the Negroes rightly resented me for attracting such unfavorable attention. I sat the way I had seen them do, sphinx-like, pretending unawareness. Gradually people lost interest. Hostility drained to boredom. The poor woman
November 26, 2024 at 8:55 PM