Theme Thursday -- Action -- Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

Hosted by Reading Between the Pages

Rules:

*A theme will be posted each week on Thursday
*Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading that features the theme
*Post it and don't forget to mention the author and title of the book
*Event is open for the whole week
*Link back to Reading Between the Pages

This week's theme is action. 

Cover via Amazon

The conflict wracking the modern world is not, I think, best understood as a "clash of civilizations," if that proposition means we're-different-so-we-must-fight-until-there's-only-one-of-us.  It's better understood as the friction generated by two mismatched world histories intersecting.  Muslims were a crowd of people going somewhere.  Europeans and their offshoots were a crowd of people going somewhere.  When the two crowds crossed paths, much bumping and crashing resulted, and the crashing is still going on.

~page 355, Destiny Disrupted:  A History of the World through Muslim Eyes by Tamim Ansary

This is a great book that (as you can see by the title) looks at world history from a very different perspective than Westerners are familiar with reading about in their high school textbooks.   Jon recommended this book and I'm glad I picked it up. 

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- The Memory Bank by Carolyn Coman and Rob Shepperson

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence, or two, of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.

"Don't forget your whistle!" Hope reminded Honey -- every morning of every day.  Honey needed that whistle, in case of emergency, in case things went terribly wrong.

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Check out the rules and join in the fun.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. Post a link along with your post back to this blog.

 Just a few feet inside the building, the conveyor belt came to a sudden stop and Hope, light as a feather, went flying.  (Thinness ran in her family but they also didn't feed her enough.) She landed at the feet of a tall man in a suit.

(Page 56 of The Memory Bank is an illustration, so this quote is taken from page 62.) The illustrations are really cool -- pen and ink and pencil and full of emotions.  When Fiona and I started this one I was prepared to be telling you all that it is more for younger readers than our last read (Troubletwisters) but the more we read the more I realized that it, too, has its darker moments.  Hope's parents put her sister out on the side of the road for laughing in the car and tell Hope to forget all about Honey.  As Hope begins to learn about the war between the World Wide Memory Bank and the Clean Slate Gang, she finds herself a key player in the conflict.  Meanwhile, she continues her desperate search for her little sister. My favorite part of the book was the illustrations.