after 9 days! The authors are Colin White and Laurie Boucke.
When Cheng gave me the book on her return, I actually told her, 'I'm actually not a bibliophile'! Then she assured me that it is very readable and some of the stuff might be suitable for posting in my blog. Still, after thanking her, I left it aside until early this morning. The verdict after just reading its Preface and A Word of Warning by Johannes van Dam: 'I'm going to like it!' and 'there are lots that I could borrow and share in this blogsite!'
Briefly, in its Preface: 'This is the sixth edition and 21st year in the publication of The UnDutchables: an observation of the Netherlands, its culture and its inhabitants.'
'...the book is biased towards the urban environment, especially Amsterdam. However, in travelling through the countryside, one finds many of the same things, perhaps in a more peaceful setting and at a slower pace, but fundamentally the same traits: commercial cunning; cosy homes; coffee rituals; money worshipping; moralizing; criticizing; obsession with weather; humanitarianism; compromise and consensus; straightforwardness; and so forth.'
In its 'A word of warning':
... 'Holland remains a cultural (and guttural) ghetto, but a pragmatic one at that. We are pragmatic about controversial things like drugs, euthanasia, homosexuality and abortion. If a more liberal attitude paired with good counseling and education can diminish a bad thing, we do it; so with our liberal abortion law, we perform less abortions than any other country, even relative to our size; our liberal drugs policy results in less junkies, drug deaths and other damage than any of the more pious, protesting countries (and boy, do they cheat with the statistics) and so on.'
... 'I will let you in on a little secret. The pivot of the mind of the Dutch is this little word, maar, even smaller in English: "but". Any statement we make, we counter ourselves with "but", to show the other side, even if there is none.'
Just discovered the official site at the end of the book (not that I have finished reading it):
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