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| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), 1884, 251 pages. Genre: adventure, American lit, classic, humour Basic Overview: Huckleberry Finn, friend of Tom Sawyer, leaves his Missouri home to escape his drunken, abusive father, and heads downriver on the Mississippi, having many adventures along the way. His companion on the journey is Jim, a runaway slave, whom Huck tries his best to protect.
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton, 1955, 200 pages. Genre: international, fiction Basic Overview: The novel tells of Pieter van Vlaanderen, lieutenant in the South African police force, beset by illegal temptation, and his struggles with his yearnings, his family, and his faith. The theme of apartheid in general and the treatment of one particular black woman in specific provide a background for this story. The Whispering Land by Gerald Durrell, 1961, 217 pages. Genre: animals, non-fiction, British, adventure Basic Overview: Naturalist and owner of his own zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey, Gerald Durrell, accompanied by his wife Jacquie, make an animal-collecting and filming trip to Argentina, where they encounter seals, penguins, guanacos, peccaries, and rather magnificently do not manage to encounter any vampire bats, despite the author’s baiting the trap with his own big toe. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, 1998, 346 pages. Genre: short stories, poetry, fantasy, British Basic Overview: Gaiman’s subjects are varied – his stories are about H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional New England town, about Lucifer in Los Angeles, wholesale contract killers, Penthouse magazine, teenage fans of Michael Moorcock and their fantasy lives, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the Holy Grail, to name a few subjects in Gaiman’s anthology. | |
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| The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins, 1878, 251 pages. Genre: classic, british, suspense Basic Overview: English Lord Mountbarry throws over his charming fiancee for the scheming Countess Narona, and after their marriage, calamity ensues. Murder, mysterious disappearances, ghosts, strange revulsions, and the city of Venice feature in this suspense story. Personal Opinion: The Haunted Hotel was so much unlike the dense, detailed, carefully plotted stories by Wilkie Collins that I have come to know and love so much. It was simplistic, uninteresting, with no character development, an ending you could have guessed a mile off, and with nothing but determination to steer me towards finishing the book. I was really surprised at how the mighty Collins had fallen. A quick trip to Wikipedia gave me some biographical details that explained the whole thing. Apparently Collins, suffering from rheumatic gout, became addicted to opium in the form of laudanum, and after the death of his closest friend, Charles Dickens, in 1870, Collins became increasingly addicted to the point of suffering paranoid delusions, and believing that he had a doppelganger with him at all times, whom he called "Ghost Wilkie". Wikipedia says that "his novels and novellas of the 1870s and 1880s....are generally regarded as inferior to his previous productions and receive comparatively little critical attention today". I was really disappointed in this book. Expecting my usual fun Wilkie Collins read, I instead read 251 pages of drivel. Not a good choice, and a waste of my time. | |
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| Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Richard and Nicholas Crane, 1987, 236 pages. Genre: travel writing, non-fiction, british, adventure Basic Overview: I received this book through the kindness of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cat63 , who sent it to me, overseas, when I evinced an interest in it. Subsequent research has proven to me that it is unavailable for purchase in Canada, so I am doubly grateful for the gift. Thank you! Journey to the Centre of the Earth is written by two mad Englishmen, cousins, who decide to go off for a few weeks' bicycling to the geographical centre of the earth, which is defined as the place most remote from the open sea in any direction. To get to this isolated spot, which lies in northern China near its borders with Russia [then the USSR] and Mongolia, means that the pair must pedal their bikes through monsoons in Bangladesh, extreme heat in India, altitudes of up to 17,000 feet in Nepal and Tibet, and ride through parts of the Gobi and the Taklamakan deserts in China. Interesting new words learned: col, burdock, barchan, loess | |
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| Lafcadio's Adventures - A Novel by Andre Gide, first published in English in 1925, 278 pages. Translation of Les Caves du Vatican in 1914. Translated by Dorothy Bussy.
Genre: international, nobel winner, mystery
Basic Overview & Background Information: Andre Gide (1869-1951) was born and died in Paris, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, four years before his death at the age of 82. Gay, an atheist, with works published about the need for prison reform and against colonialism, particularly in Africa, Gide's works represent the twentieth century and particularly the post-WWII era's turning away from Victorian values, and the new focus on the different, the new, and for Gide, the unpopular. Gide's ideas were present in his fiction as well, as interested readers will find out in Lafcadio's Adventures. One year after the death of Andre Gide, the Roman Catholic Church put all of Gide's works on their Index of Forbidden Books.
The novel is occasionally about its title character, Lafcadio Wluiki [note: the 'W' and the first 'i' are silent], but the French title, Les Caves du Vatican, is much more apt. 'Cave' can be rendered 'danger' in Latin, and as 'cellar' or more precisely as 'wine cellar' in French; the double pun, which cannot be rendered in English, and which I only noticed due to the kind auspices of the translator, speaks of the kidnapping of the Pope, which may or may not have occurred in this novel, and his imprisonment in the cellars beneath St. Peter's in Rome.
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| The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1998, 325 pages. Translation from the Polish copyright 2001 by Klara Glowczewska.
Genre: non-fiction, travel, journalism, africa, anthropology
Basic Overview: Ryszard Kapuscinski was Poland's press correspondent to Africa; he remained there for nearly fifty years but never lost the feeling of being a foreigner in a strange continent; the white man viewing but not acting, only reporting. He did, however, feel a great passion for the 53 countries which now make up Africa, and discredited the notion that Africa could be viewed as a whole: "the continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos...in reality, except as a geographical entity, Africa does not exist".
Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, and stayed almost until his death in 2007. When he first set foot on the continent, he was just in time to watch the end of colonial rule, and to witness the violence that so often ensued upon liberation.
The Shadow of the Sun is a series of vignettes and articles. Many of them are deeply informative, and intended to be so. I read a fascinating chapter on the childhood, despotic rule, and the aftermath of Uganda's Idi Amin, and a no less fascinating, but more grisly chapter on the backdrop to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In other stories, the subject matter focuses on Kapuscinski himself, to begin with, but always with a view to explaining something interesting, unusual, or incomprehensible that he has found out about Africa or its people. In such a way, I read about Kapuscinski's bouts of malaria, his near-death from thirst in the Mauritanian corner of the Sahara desert, the near-constant burglary that plagued him and his apartment when he lived in Nigeria, and the difficulties of covering for the press a coup d'etat in Zanzibar.
Personal Opinion: If it had not been for the fact that new books had arrived in the mail this past Friday, I would have found parting with Kapuscinski's book much, much harder. As it was, I read it slowly, savouring each drop, wishing that I, too, could travel with Bedouins, spend the nights in tribal villages in Ethiopia, and so on, and so forth. For me, things are different. I am not a press correspondent, I am not male, and I do not have 50 years left in which to have a love affair with a continent. *deep sigh*
The book is beautiful. From opening scenes in Ghana, where a newly-arrived Kapuscinski rides a bus in rural Ghana, in wonderment about the people, their knowledge of unseen paths through the forests, and the colourful nature of everything around him, to the end, in Ethiopia, where he reflects on what he has learned after his decades in the continent, I was captured by both the subject matter and the writing. Good-natured, curious, never afraid to express his emotions on the page, Kapuscinski uncovers so much of what is beautiful about Africa, and so much about what is wrong in Africa. For me, the starkest thing is the hunger, and the knowledge that most black Africans subsist on one meal of porridge made of manioc* or mealies** a day, and are almost always hungry, will gnaw at me until I figure out how I can help.
I will put this book on my list of all-time favourites, and recommend it to anyone with an interest in Africa.
*manioc - a tuberous root, also called cassava, also refers to its flour, usually made by pounding it, made into porridge by mixing with water.
**mealies - corn, when pounded into flour it is called 'mealie meal', usually made into porridge by mixing with water. | |
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| 28. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, 1915, 712 pages.
Genre: fiction, british, psychological fiction
Basic Overview: Philip Carey, raised in the early years of the century in a south-of-England vicarage by an undemonstrative uncle, searches for love and meaning in many different ways. As a starving artist in Paris, a medical student in London, and lover of an anemic and unpleasant waitress, Philip's life takes many turns towards self-awareness.
Personal Opinion: I loved this book [the italics refuse to be turned off]. Maugham is a favourite of mine, and this is the longest and most probing book that I have ever read by him. Deeply autobiographical, Maugham's story is one of pain, loneliness, and a deep sense of separation from his fellow humans. Philip has a clubfoot which shames him deeply; Maugham was gay, and denied it for years, even marrying at one point, until he found a male lover with whom he lived out his days. I found it very interesting to watch Philip Carey's early Christian faith turn to the existentialism of his later days. Beautifully conceived, written, and with a superb ending, this book rates a solid two bookmarks up.
29. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002, 529 pages. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Genre: historical fiction, pulitzer prize winner
Basic Overview: Calliope Stephanides, a hermaphrodite later manifesting himself as Cal Stephanides, narrates this novel of family history back to the days of her grandparents in their native Turkey, their emigration to America, and to her/his upbringing in and around Detroit. The story jumps back and forth between family history and Cal's life in the present in the diplomatic service in Berlin.
Personal Overview: My feelings about this book are extremely mixed. I purchased it last July and simply could not get through it as I was not enjoying it. This time I tried harder, but I found myself very irritated by some of Eugenides' writing. He employs some narrative devices in what I felt was an almost self-congratulatory manner. However annoying I found Eugenides' narration, his story was a good one, and the end of the book very gripping; the story ended extremely well. However, it's not a book I'm going to want to read again.
Next up: really undecided. On my bedtable, for my consideration, are Dickens' "Great Expectations" [now I can't get the underlining to turn ON], Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun", and a book that a LJ friend sent me called "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" by Richard and Nicholas Crane, about an epic bicycle trip. Decisions, decisions! | |
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| The Snows of Kilimanjaro and other Stories by Ernest Hemingway, 1995, 154 pp. Stories originally published between 1927-1936. Genre: fiction, classic, nobel prize, short story collection Basic Overview: This slim volume contains ten short stories, including the two which are Hemingway's best-known, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Brief Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Personal Opinions: | |
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| If I Die Before I Wake - The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Magregor, Toronto, Ontario, 1918, by Jean Little, 2007, 243 pages. Genre: young adult, historical fiction, canadian Basic Overview: Fiona, aged 12, is the diarist of the years 1918-1919, when the Spanish Flu pandemic struck down millions of people worldwide. Closer to home, she loses a family member and nearly loses another; the methods of flu treatment, quarantine, and how to keep well while nursing the sick are all interesting topics touched upon in this book. Personal Opinions: This book, one in Scholastic Canada's excellent "Dear Canada" series, which my nine-year old daughter loves, was pressed upon me this morning, and it was a good book. I knew next to nothing about the Spanish Influenza pandemic and I am far better informed now. The book includes a map, period photographs, and author's notes, all of which are worth the time put into them. The author, Jean Little, a Canadian born in China to missionary parents, has been a favourite writer of mine since I was nine myself, and her writing is as pleasing as ever. If you have book-minded children who read fairly well, especially if they are female, I would highly recommend any of the books in this terrific series, and I would also recommend that you read them yourselves - they make for great historical reading, and it doesn't feel like you're reading a textbook! Currently reading: E. Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes, John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Derek Walcott's Prodigal.
25 / 100 words. 25% done! | |
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The Street Lawyer by John Grisham, 1998, 449 pages. Genre: legal thriller Basic Overview: Michael Brock, a rising star in a high-class Washington, D.C. law firm, is among the lawyer hostages held by a homeless man with dynamite strapped to his body. The experience changes Michael radically, engendering in him an interest in the rights of the homeless, and after hesitation, he resigns his position and joins a store-front law firm specializing in advocacy for street people. The lawyers at his old firm, and the police are on his tail for a stolen file, and Michael is out to prove that his old firm acted in a criminal manner by evicting squatters from a downtown building. Personal Opinion: Last summer my mother moved and gave me all of her old John Grishams. This one I loved and I wanted to reread it. As well as being a really good legal thriller, the human faces that Grisham gives to the homeless and disenfranchised move this book from being just another thriller to being nearly advocacy in itself. Even if you're not a John Grisham fan, I'd recommend this book for its unsparing look at municipal and governmental handling of people in the United States who lack an address. | |
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| Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883, 218 pages.
Genre: adventure, young adult, british, classic
Brief Synopsis: Young Jim Hawkins comes into the company of pirates after one of them dies at his parents' inn up the coast road from Bristol. In the company of a squire, a doctor, and Long John Silver, Jim journeys to Treasure Island and a whole host of adventures, aboard the Hispanolia.
Personal Opinion: Fresh from my enjoyment of Stevenson's Kidnapped, I thought I should try out his other classic. I liked it, but not as much as the aforementioned book. It was a great adventure story, and what interested me the most was that so many piratey stand-bys were born in this very book. It was in Treasure Island that we got the origin of treasure maps marked with an 'X', pirates with a parrot on their shoulder, the tune "15 men on a dead man's chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!", a parrot saying 'pieces of eight', and the pirate saying 'shiver me timbers'. And the archetypal pirate in all of this, of course, is Long John Silver, who is an unforgettable, and rather likeable rogue. It's definitely a readable book that occupied me during a sick day at home - not too taxing on the brain and long on interesting story.
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