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managedbybooks · 2 years

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It’s a book haul!! I got a bunch of stuff in the mail AND I went to a huge book sale this past week. There’s a few in here I’ve already read, a few I’ve heard about and a bunch I’d never even seen before! The stack in the left is all stuff I got in the mail and the right is from the book sale! Left Stack (top to bottom): -sunfish by Shelby Eileen -Taxes & TARDIS by N.R. Walker -Ace & Proud Anthology by A.K. Andrews -Sleepwalker by Rachel Ember -The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer -The Other Side of Here by E.M. Lindsey -Verismo by E.M. Lindsey -Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Right Stack (top to bottom): -Another Word for Murder by Nero Blanc -Anatomy of a Crossword by Nero Blanc -Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy -A Deadly Yarn by Maggie Sefton -Roux the Day by Linda Wiken -The Long Quiche Goodbye Avery Aames -The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley -Bloomed to Die by Johnnie Alexander -Pieces from the Past by Elizabeth Penney -The Christmas Riddle by Susan Sleeman -A Ring of Deception by DeAnna Julie Dodson -The Secret Letter by Mary Blount Christian -Shepard’s Lie by Elizabeth Penney -If Looks Could Kill by Elizabeth Penney -A Reel Threat by Gayle Roper -Lass and Found by Sandra Orchard -Silence of the Clans by Jan Fields I also have a ton of exciting library hoods coming in soon! What are you reading lately? If you buy books, how do you prefer to get them? (at Corvallis, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgPuKSTvAsz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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ahb-writes · 2 years

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He had been a jihadi, Haidara argued, in the original and best sense of the word: one who struggles against evil ideas, desire, and anger in himself and subjugates them to reason and obedience to Gods' commands.

Joshua Hammer (The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu)

#language #cultural heritage #joshua hammer #librarian #the badass librarians of timbuktu #abdel kader haidara #journalism #north africa #saving islamic literature #library #al qaeda in the islamic maghreb #phenomenal story #in the original and best sense of the word #struggle against evil ideas #struggle against desire #struggle against anger in oneself

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curiosity-killed · 3 years

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Tagged by @mikkeneko ty 🥰

Five songs I've been listening to on repeat lately:

Ahhh I’ve mostly been listening to either my whipstitch or dance playlist on repeat so

1. Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths

2. Meet Me in the Woods by Lord Huron

3. LEMONS by Brye (10/10 great pirouette prax)

4. Big God by Florence and the Machine

5. Despicable by Grandson

Currently Watching:

My sister and I just wrapped up Firefly Lane on Netflix and I have been half-heartedly and sporadically watching TGCF while I work 😅😅

Last Movie:

Crazy Stupid Love

Currently reading:

The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer but like. Badly. I would like a novel and also spare executive function pls

Tagging: @jovialpizzatyrant @vyther15 @gusu-emilu @princesswithabraidedcrown @huacheng-zhu

#tag meme

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erosofthepen · 3 years

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What's your favorite book?

That's a very hard question to answer. Besides Tolkien, i love A Secret History, and The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu!

#books #ask #asks #bananzar

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emmaryanallmann · 6 years

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The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu

Holy hiatus, Batman! A new city and a new gig have kept me distracted and away from my books for longer than I like. I’ve finally adjusted to a new schedule and when I haven’t been exploring I’ve been working my way through The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer. I was happy to finally get started on this one as I bought it all the way back when I was in Portland(mostly for the…

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#book #book review #character development #Joshua Hammer #nonfiction #The BadAss Librarians of Timbuktu

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alli-g-read · 6 years

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#7. The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save it’s Past, Charlie English

Why: Ever since my own devastating trip to Timbuktu in 2006 and my subsequent evacuation from living in Mali in 2012- I have read the many travel and history books that were inspired by journeys to and from Timbuktu… from Buktu herself to Mansa Munsa to Ibn Battuta to Leo Africanus to Ahmed Baba to the Moroccan Berbers to the Royal Society to Mungo Park to Gordon Laing to Rene Caille to Heinrich Barth to the French colonists to Liberation to Revolution to Peace to ATT to the International Development Regime to Sarah Lecates to the MVP to a coup d’etat to Azawad, Ansar Dine, and AQIM to Liberation (once again) and onward to Badass Librarians and now Charlie English.

Reading Setting: On a hammock in the Dominican Republic, happy to be reading something that had been on my list for a while.

Takeaways: “Legend, by its nature, is oversimplification.” This was a very good book if you are at all interested in the complex history of Timbuktu. It weaved together the stories of European exploration with the modern tale of when Northern Mali became an Islamic state in 2012-13. Each of these stories told the more ancient history of the glory days of the Malian Empire when Timbuktu was a global center of Islamic literary, science and art traditions. This book did not shy away from the complexities of history, myth, truth and truth that we may never know.

Closing Note: “I imagine Timbuktu’s story as a series of myths and corrections laid down one on top of the other.” This book makes it clear that these myths and corrections are almost impossible to untangle. The more widely circulated “Badass Librarians of Timbuktu”- had a similar cast of characters for the modern day story and came out around the same time but did not dig as deep as English did here. I’ve thought a lot about writing my own book into the history of Mali and my own story there – this book almost made me sad, because I feel like it is the exact book that I had outlines for at one point. In retrospect, its not and it will just help me further contextualize my story if I ever write it.

Next Book: Unbowed: A Memoir, Wangari Maathai

#timbuktu #mali #charlie english #books #50 book challenge #reading #the storied city #The Quest for Timbuktu #bookreview #book review #bookworm

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sashasgargoyles · 7 years

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Hi! x 7, 37, 38 :)

Hi friend!!

7. What was/were the last book/books you bought?War and Peace by Tolstoy and The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu (whose author I cannot remember rn)

37: How many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now?

In my current apartment, there are basically only 3 books (Anna Karenina, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and The Trials of Apollo) because I’m moving out next week and I already packed up my books. At my home address, I mean it’s literally in the hundreds.

38: What language do you (most often) read in?

English! The only other language I ever read in is French and I definitely don’t do it as often as I should

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kramerbookcovers-blog · 7 years

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We begin with our inaugural Tumblr background, THE BADASS LIBRARIANS of TIMBUKTU, by Joshua Hammer. A work of nonfiction, which is what really ties it all together.

#books #nonfiction #kramerbooks #new nonfiction

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ahb-writes · 4 years

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Book Review: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

War comes and goes. Pedagogy brightens and dims. Economic prosperity rises and wanes. Racism, for whatever the reason, is burned into the skin. . .

As a twenty-something, Haidara traveled up and down the Niger river, meeting and speaking with thousands of villagers to negotiate from their hands ancient manuscripts that had been guarded by their families for hundreds of years. Ever the diplomat, he sought to reassure them of his capacity to value, restore, and preserve these texts.

On many occasions, the man traversed the desert, either by camel or on foot, languishing beneath the bold and blistering sun. His travel from his home in Mali to Burkina Faso, for example, included 12 hours travel on camel, plus another 19 hours on foot. Remarkably, villagers and heads of family buried their manuscripts in the sand, stored them in tin chests, or tossed them into rice bags and hid the bags in distant caves -- kept, always, from the hands of foreigners and colonists whom, intriguingly if not ironically, would have begrudged if not perverted the discovery of such knowledge among the "savages" of Africa. THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU is abundantly clear in that the new-old discovery of these manuscripts, and the enlightenment they beheld, is an overturning of centuries-old racism that has permeated the lives of the peoples of Africa. War comes and goes. Pedagogy brightens and dims. Economic prosperity rises and wanes. Racism, for whatever the reason, is burned into the skin. . . Hammer's book isn't simply a discussion of ancient texts; it is also a chronicle of the more contemporary threats these texts, and the free-exchange of knowledge in general, face in today's world. Religious radicals, kidnappers and gangsters, fundamentalists, disenfranchised militiamen, and indigenous rebel groups all populate North Africa to varying degrees. And to this end, Hammer provides exquisite and thorough description of how three ideological masters of Islamic austerity twist centuries of goodwill into their very own war against the perceived inadequacy of human practice in the land of their god. Abdelhamid Abou Zeid (cunning and ruthless), Mokhtar Belmokhtar (determined and hard-bitten), and Iyad Ag Gahli (skillfully diplomatic) converge upon Mali's isolated north with differing prospects in mind but eventually settle on the usurpation (and conversion) of the nation into an isolated state/caliphate under Seventh Century law.

This book constitutes necessary education for those who claim intellectual prescience on matters of geopolitical consequence.

The intersection of these three men and their group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the peaceful efforts of Haidara to collect and preserve the history of African intellectuals, is at once incidental as well as inevitable.

But as readers soon learn, there is always a brash divergence of cultural obligation wherever AQIM manifests its rifles and all-terrain vehicles. The group's seizure of Timbuktu and its many outlying village areas eventually forces Haidara and his cohorts into action to preserve North Africa's knowledge and history. How does one traffic 377,000 manuscripts out from under the nose of the region's most determined militants? Per Abdel Kader Haidara, very carefully. As such, THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU contains beautiful and treacherous passages of spy-novel-like intrigue in which Haidara's men smuggle ancient texts under the cover of darkness via canoe, camel, taxi cab, and more. The lengths through which these librarians and tenants of literature go to protect these texts may feel absurd, but the reality sinks in rather quickly: avoiding military checkpoints is the key to success, and risking escape from the calculated raids of demanding security figures is a life-or-death decision. This book constitutes necessary education for those who claim intellectual prescience on matters of geopolitical consequence. Some readers may feel lost by the fact-finding expeditions upon which the author constantly embarks, but rest assured, one cannot live for discovery without first pledging allegiance to the unknown. Hammer's descriptions of the reputed murderers lend astonishing perspective to otherwise typically faceless oppressors. Abou Zeid was short and bow-legged, and had bad posture, very dark skin, "a hawk-like face," and a badly fraying beard; he was extraordinarily violent, yet never raised his voice, and he always commanded his followers with a resilient, even temper. Belmokhtar was a hardened soldier who lost an eye in an explosives-training accident, thus sporting a fantastic scar, while "his mouth twisted from time to time into a ghost of a cold, almost wry smile" (p. 103).

THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU a deft negotiation of all that is grand, all that could be lost, and all that remains unsolved, regarding humanity’s trouble with humanity.

Ghali is an interesting case; having survived poverty, exile, and the brutality of conflict at every stage of life, the man turned away from a world of pastoral music, politics, and a reverence of the religiously moderate and toward the more deliberately fervent (and violent). Ghali was a large and imposing man who near-always ran from his problems. Hammer's descriptions of the African landscapes are raw and absolute. Highlights include his sighting the quartz-and-sandstone outcropping, Fatimah's Hand, as "three fingerlike pillars almost the color of human flesh, tilting slightly backward and extending two thousand feet from the desert floor toward the sky" (p. 43). Pink Dune, an 80-foot mountain of sand on the bank of the Niger, "it's face intricately scalloped by the constant wind" (p. 153), and whose exquisite view of the sunset permits even the most horrible men on the continent the boyish pleasure of sleeping close to the stars. On one side of the dune lie dozens of islets; on the other side, the near-infinite Sahara, "a flat ocher sea" blemished with tufts of yellowing grass. And Hammer's description of the Amettetaï Valley, the eventual last stand of Abou Zeid and his faction of AQIM, is brilliant: "low gray and black granite hills, eroded to rubble and pocked with caves," accent a dangerous and ambush-prone stretch of 25 miles that includes boulders, caves, crawl spaces, and "sandy ancient riverbeds" that flood during the two or three annual rainstorms (pp. 219–220). Quality journalism and a skilled attempt to document the preservation of reason against modern-day ideological primitiveness (and their barbarous underpinnings) make THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU a deft negotiation of all that is grand, all that could be lost, and all that remains unsolved, regarding humanity's trouble with humanity.

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