Kruse's Keys: Read 'Moving the Palace Slowly Because You Will Miss It (Majdalani)

(This book arrived in the mail with high marks from my younger brother in Chicago.  He'd gotten it from my grandmother in Seattle--a voracious reader of all things excellent).

Maidalani's Moving the Palace is one of the books that leaves you melancholy and blue because...it's over.  It's over and your relationship with the protagonist is severed--forever buried forever in the pages of the novel.

In Moving the Palace's case, we learn the story of Samuel (through the recollection of his grandson)--an erudite Christian adventurer who leaves his homeland of Lebanon amidst the country's wave of great migration during the onset of the 20th century.  Whereas many of his countrymen left for Europe, the Middle East and the United States, Samuel ventures down to the Sudan.  During a stay in Tripoli, he encounters a small Arabian palace by the city citadel.   Upon closer inspection, a plan hatches in Samuel's mind, a plan of what origin his grandson laments: "I do not know--nor will anyone, ever--what planted the seed of that incredible idea in his mind."

This plan, and its numerous iterations and evolutions, are the focus of the story.  We follow Samuel as he disassembles the palace and loads it onto a caravan, descending into Africa with a dream to sell it off to a rich prince.  Like any great tale, nothing goes as planned and Samuel's plan quickly unravels against the backdrop of the World War I.

Best of all, this story brought to mind a slew of other similarly striking novels which I've included before for your reading pleasure.


KEY QUOTES:

•  "But he is the kind of man to shoulder other people's whims, to make them his own, and here he is letting himself be swept along on Shafik's oddball odyssey."
• "It must be remembered that Cairo at that time, though far from Europe, is the first city to rival Paris and Vienna for its soirees, the richness of its salons, and above all the power of its economic and financial elite."
• "The inner circle belongs to dynasties that emigrated before the middle of the nineteenth century and built their fortunes in the first era of Egypt's modernization--like the Sakakini, Egypt's first manufacturers..., or the Soussas, builders of the Suez Canal and customs leaseholders at the port of Suez."
• The last paragraph contains some of the more beautiful sentences that I've ever read.  But I will leave that for you to discover.

KEY REFERENCES:

I put Moving the Palace in the same category as the two phenomenal stories below.  This trio could be read in succession as kind of a 20th century adventurers look at Africa.
The Zanzibar Chest by Aiden Hartley
West With the Night by Beryl Markham
For different reasons, Moving the Palace brought to mind Mahfouz' masterpiece The Cairo Trilogy.  Both stories draw the readers in and entangle them into the lives of the story's characters.

On Perception vs. Reality:
p. 59  Samuel leverages people's perception of him as they imagine a great authority than he actually possesses (i.e., "implementer of English policy").  There's also the idea of the value of items like gold as burdensome to the local chieftains who must worry about guarding it and transporting (versus something with more utility like camels, mules or slaves).

A description Samuel's nature:
p. 63  "But he is the kind of man to shoulder other people's whims, to make them his own, and here he is letting himself be swept along on Shafik's oddball odyssey."

Terms:
p. 90 zajals--form of Lebanese folk poetry, normally oral.  "A zajal is written in two columns, which can be read separately per column and then across—the result is three poems in one, with bountiful repetition."

Zajal rabbit hole:
When Competitive Poetry Was Better Than Soccer
A Boy Remembers Zajal
On Adapting Zajal Poetry for Modern Times
A Modern English Zajal Poem
UNESCO on Zajal

ZAJAL EXAMPLE

p. 91 villeggiatura--a holiday in the countryside.  In this case, Samuel thinks of this term as he enters the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. 

Memory:
p. 90 The idea of preserving memories in couplets as Selim Atiyah does after a memorable evening.

For further research:
p. 05  author describes the 1880-1930 Lebanese emigration abroad.  Syro-Lebanese Migration (1880-Present): “Push” and “Pull” Factors.  In the story's case, the main character Samuel heads for the Sudan
p. 93  Nassib Ayyad (a fictional character it seems) is mentioned as a writer on the Arab poetry revival that occurred in concert wit the Arab cultural renaissance in the early 20th century.  This rebirth is properly referred to as Al-Nahda (awakening).  There's plenty on wikipedia for this but I hate to refer to that, so here are some links on the awakening: 
A Question of Arab Unity
Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective
p. 95  Cairo rivaling Paris in the early 20th century
Dissertation on Early 20th-century Cairo Coffeehouses Leads Penn Ph.D. Student to Egyptian and British Spy Reports
1882-Present Cairo
p. 95  Sakakini and Soussa dynasties: inner social circle in the early 20th century.  These families emigrated to Egypt before the 1850s and built their wealth through Egypt's initial wave of modernization.  Sakakinis were manufacturers and the Soussas were the Suez Canal builders.
Touring the Sakakini Palace

Kruse's Keys: Read 'Essentialism' Because Less CAN Be Better (Greg McKeown)

I listened to this one as an audio book that I checked out from my local public library (SIDE NOTE: public libraries--one of America’s great treasures).  One one hand I loved the convenience of listening to this tale during my daily commute into DC; on the other hand, audibooks are the worst format if you are a notetaker and chronic highlighter.  So, really the worst format for me, especially considering the fact that you lose access to the book and any quasi bookmarks you made when you check the “book” back into the library.  

All that to say that my audiobook reviews are sure to be much less robust than those I actually read.  

Essentialism is a book for anyone who feels overwhelmed at any level of their life.  The author’s contention is that we all have too much going on in our lives--at work, at play, in our relationships and in our things.  This book gives the reader the tools and philosophical background in order to pare away the excess.  Ultimately, McKeown espouses the expansion of German designer and academic Dieter Ram’s mantra “less but better” (weniger aber besser) into one’s life at every level.  Whether or not one has the courage to actually apply it holistically is another question but I’d argue that we’d all do well to take stock of our lives and see where doing less but better might liberate us.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• “LESS BUT BETTER” This is the central point of Essentialism.  Shedding off burdensome layers of your life at all levels (time, mental, physical, etc.) so that you can be and do better by concentrating on what is actually important.
• Just saying “no” (without a qualifier or reason) is okay.  You don’t owe anyone a reason.  
• Focus on where you can contribute most and cut away everything else ruthlessly.
• This book pairs well with the seminal Deep Work by Cal Newport (my review is here).

KEY QUOTES:

• Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
• “The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.”
• “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
• “Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”
• “the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”
• “As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

KEY REFERENCES:

Fast Co Interview with Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams 10 Commandments of Good Design