Category: Lust To Go

Slumdog Millionaire

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Swarup, Vikras. Slumdog Millionaire. Read by Christopher Simpson. Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, 2009.

Right away I knew I was going to like everything about Q&A (aka Slumdog Millionaire). I like the actor (Christopher Simpson) who reads the story. His accents are great. But, more importantly, I love the way Swarup captures 18 year old Ram Mohammed Thomas’s voice. There is something about the way you are drawn into his story immediately. Ram is a poor, uneducated orphan from the slums of Mumbai. How he ends up on a television game show is anyone’s guess, but just how he wins the billion rupee prize is unfathomable. How can someone like him, someone who never reads, nor has ever been to school, answer all twelve difficult questions correctly? The story begins with that question. Unable to pay Thomas his winnings the show’s producers search to uncover cheating, a scam, anything to get out of coming up with a billion rupees. The rest of the novel is unraveling the mystery. Each chapter is an answer to how Ram could use his life experiences to his advantage, answer the questions correctly and ultimately, win the show.

As an aside, I wish that I had read more reviews that didn’t make comparisons or even mention the movie version. In my opinion, the book is always going to be different from the movie. And really, how can you objectively read the book after seeing the movie? And another thing – if I were Swarup, I would be pissed if I went to sites like Good Reads and found six entries, all for the movie version, before my own written work. The site is called Good READS. If Swarup hadn’t written the book there wouldn’t have been a movie, a screenplay or a soundtrack! The mistake is retitling the book.

Reason read: the movie was released in November. How’s that for ironic?

Author fact: Slumdog Millionaire Q&A was Swarup’s first novel.

Book trivia: Slumdog Millionaire was made into a movie starring Dev Patel, but more importantly, it was originally published as Q & A.

Reason read: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sojourns in South Asia: India” (p 214). I really wish Pearl had indexed the original title.

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton

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Rice, Edward. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: the Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra, and Brought the Arabian Nights to the West. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990.

Doesn’t the subtitle of this book just about rope you in? If the subtitle doesn’t do it for you, how about the man himself? Explorer, scientist, secret agent man? Capable of speaking 29 different languages, supposedly most of them in their proper dialect. Thought to be a Gypsy. If anything, Burton should have the title of Most Interesting Man. He inherited his father’s wanderlust and would often move his family without reason. And, what about that Kama Sutra? Come again? In all fairness, I couldn’t finish the book. Interesting man or not, the writing just wasn’t. This is a classic case of “Did Not Finish.”

Reason read: Burton died in the month of October

Book trivia: There are a few photographs in Sir Richard Burton. Pity there weren’t more – Burton was an interesting looking fellow.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Star Trekkers” (p 222).

Baltimore Blues

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Lippman, Laura. Baltimore Blues. Read by Deborah Hazlett. North Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, 1997.

Tess Monaghan is an out of work reporter trying to make ends meet with little odd jobs. The only stable consistencies in her life are rowing and her friendship with fellow rower, “the Rock.” She manages to stay out of trouble until Rock “hires” her to do some private investigating of his near perfect fiancee. She has been acting so weird as of late so Rock wants to know why. Tess’s tactics to tease out the truth are less than desirable, so when she uncovers an affair and the other man, who happens to be the fiancee’s boss, winds up dead,  all fingers are pointed at Rock. Of course they do. Now Tess has even more incentive to uncover the truth. Along the way Tess uncovers a whole slew of shady dealings involving a rape support group, unpaid settlements for victims of asbestos related ailments, and a sexual predator of children on death row. What makes Baltimore Blues a likeable story is a combination of things. Tess is far from perfect as a private investigator. Her antics are downright funny. The city of Baltimore is like another character in the book. Places around Baltimore play a significant role in the plot which is a treat for readers who really know the area.

My only irritant? Tess doesn’t know the difference between an attempt on her life and a hit and run. Even though her friend Jonathan is killed in the process, it is deemed an accident and dismissed. Tess isn’t the least bit suspicious until there is a second attempt to kill her.

Reason read: Baltimore, Maryland has a book festival in September. What better way to celebrate than a book called Baltimore Blues?

Author fact: Laura Lippman lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Big surprise, right?

Book Audio trivia: This is one of the few audio books I have listened to where the narrator is American and doesn’t have some sort of accent. Although her Baltimore accent is funny.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Baltimore” (p 35).

Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields

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Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs By Survivors. Compiled by Dith Pran. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

There has never been a more deadly genocide of its own people than in Cambodia. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime descended into Cambodia in April of 1975 they brought with them a rein of terror like never seen before. Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields contains eyewitness accounts of the genocide and lends a voice to the children who barely survived. Each chapter is a mini memoir, compiled by Dith Pran, a survivor himself. Some accounts are so graphically disturbing they left me sleepless for days. Imagine being forced to witness the killing of your family and not be able to show a single emotion? Imagine having to kill your own community? These children were worked to death, starved to death, disease-ridden and deprived. And yet, they survived and by all accounts, thrived once they escaped. A moving memoir.

I want to quote something from some of the survivors because their words have had a lasting impact on me. I want to pass that impression on.

  • Sophiline Cheam Shapiro: “I know of almost no family that survived without losses” (p 4)
  • Chath Piersath: “Like other mothers, you tried to wage a battle against it with the intention of saving what was left of your children” (p 7)
  • Teeda Butt Mam: “I was scared that they would hear my thoughts and prayers, that they could see my dreams and feel my anger and disapproval of their regime” (p 14)
  • You Kimny Chan: “We had hoped and prayed to leave for years, and now that we had the chance, we realized that we had nowhere to go” (p 25)
  • Sopheap K Hang: “Mother and I began laughing, but then the memory hit our hearts” (p 33)
  • Savuth Penn: “This time the unforgiving Khmer Rouge did not let my father survive” (p 46)
  • Charles Ok: “But life goes on, and I have to learn to take care of myself” (p 55)
  • Moly Ly: “Hitler is dead, but Pol Pot and his entourage are still alive and craving a return” (p 64)
  • Sarom Prak: “I am not you and you are not me, but we are all human beings (p 71)
  • Khuon Kiv: “Amazingly, human life still beats the odds” (p 103)
  • Sophea Mouth: “Can the effect of violence be so strong that it destroys human compassion?” (p 179)

Reason read: The Cambodian monarchy was restored in the month of September. Note to self, look up the Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors website.

Author Compiler fact: According to the back flap of Children of Cambodia Dith Pran is a photojournalist and the founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. I knew the movie “The Killing Fields” was based on his own experiences in Cambodia.

Book trivia: Each story of a survivor is accompanied by a black and white photograph. But, interestingly enough, the cover has been photoshopped to exclude the temple which, during the Khmer Rouge regime, was used as a killing field.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Cambodia” (p 48).

Information Officer

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Mills, Mark. The Information Officer. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2010.

The Information Officer takes place over eight days in the summer of 1942. World War II is raging all around the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. The bombings are relentless and devastating. Max Chadwick is a British officer responsible for keeping the Maltese morale and promoting British policy. He does this by manipulating the news about the gritty details of the war’s progress (or lack thereof). The reality is Malta is being blown to shreds, but he needs the Maltese people to continue to believe in the British troops despite the German occupation and incessant Italian air strikes. What complicates this delicate arrangement are the deaths of several local women. Made to look like casualties of recent enemy attacks, autopsies prove otherwise. Further evidence causes Max to suspect a British officer is behind the serial killings. It’s only a matter of time before there is a full blown revolt.
Woven into this story is the quiet unfurling of a subplot. Told from the point of view of the rapist/killer, the reader is witness to the birth of a sexual predator. From the very beginning the juxtaposition of the two plots is intriguing. It’s very much like the crime shows you see on television. For the most part, they show the good guys, hard at work trying to solve the crimes. Every so often the scene switches to the bad guy, plotting his next attack.

The first quote to send shivers down my spine, “His breathing was strangely calm and measured, and there was something in the sound of it that suggested he was smiling” (p 20).

Reason read: Malta gained its independence from Britain on September 21, 1964, twenty years after World War II.

Author fact: I don’t think it will come as any huge surprise that Mark Mills has his own website here.

Book trivia: while I didn’t mean to, I read the large print version.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Messing Around On Malta” (p 144).

Briar Rose

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Yolen, Jane. Briar Rose. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2002.

Don’t let this book fool you. It may be young adult. It may be a quick read, but the subject matter and the crafty way in which it was written is absolutely brilliant. On her deathbed, Grandma “Gemma” makes youngest granddaughter, Becca, promise to learn the story of Gemma’s past. She claims to be the real Briar Rose. Along with her two older sisters, Becca has heard the fairy tale of Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty all her life. It’s the only bedtime story Gemma would ever tell. Now Becca believes there is some similarities between the princess and her very own grandmother. Could Gemma really be Sleeping Beauty? Keeping the promise she made to her grandmother and with the help of a journalist friend, Becca sets out to uncover the mystery. The clues take her to Poland, specifically Chelmno, Hitler’s extermination camp during the Holocaust. Becca meets Josef Potacki and the pieces fall into place. Woven throughout Becca’s story is Gemma’s bedtime story and Josef’s story of survival. The present and past mesh together to tell a deeply moving tale of courage and love.

Quote that grabbed me, “It was hard not to be sacrificed when the other man was the one in power” (p 173).

My only gripe? The brand name dropping to indicate one of the sister’s wealth. Vuitton. Mercedes. Ferragamo. The sisters themselves factored so little in the story it would have suffice to say the mink coat wearing one was extremely wealthy and couldn’t be bothered with her grandmother’s mystery.

As an aside, There was a part in Briar Rose where I was reminded of Dave Matthews, “A hundred years is forever when you’re just a little kid.” See if you can find that place in the book.

Reason read: this was thrown on the August list because I needed something short to take to Colorado with me, but ended up reading it over the weekend…just before leaving! Read in honor of a Polish Music Festival that takes place in August.

Author fact: I don’t know where to begin with Ms. Yolen. Right away, I could tell she knew my part of the world (the mention of Cabot Street in Holyoke was the first clue but Jessie’s House, School Street, and the Polish Club were dead give aways). But, once I visited her website I was blown away. She has won too many award to mention here. Just visit her site for yourself.

Book trivia: Briar Rose won the Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Award and was nominated for a Nebula in 1993.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust to Go in the chapter called “Polish Up Your Polish” (p 183).

Beirut Blues

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al-Shaykh, Hanan. Beirut Blues. Translated by Catherine Cobham. New York: Anchor Book, 1995.

In the beginning, reading Beirut Blues seems like being dropped in the middle of a multi-person conversation without knowing who is involved or what they are talking about. There is a tedium to filling in the gaps as you are reading. With “Dear —” it is obvious from the beginning someone is writing a letter. It takes a little deduction to figure out who is writing the letter and who is her intended audience. There is a lot to fill in within the lines. But, throughout Asmahan’s letters there is passionate reverberation and a running commentary on her beloved Beirut before, during and after the civil war. Most of these letters will probably never reach their intended audience and that fact adds another layer of mystery to them. One of the saddest letters to read is the one Asmahan writes to her grandmother. She focuses on her grandfather’s emotional and physical relationship romance with a much younger girl. It becomes startling clear when Asmahan sees the girl’s bruises and pictures her grandfather leaving them on his young lover. It’s a rude awakening to a different culture. Other poignant letters include ones to the war and to the land of Beirut. But, my favorite part was the end, when Asmahan has to decide whether or not to leave war torn Beirut for France to be with her married lover. It’s a scene rife with indecision and torn loyalties.

Probably my biggest gripe about Beirut Blues is the sheer number of people mentioned in Asmahan’s letters. I have kept a running list of the names dropped: Afaf, Ali, Aida, Bassam, Fadila, Fatima, George, Hayat, Hussein, Hasoun, Isaf, Jill, Jummana, Juhayna, Jawad, Kazim, Karki, Lalya, Munir,  Morrell,  Mustafa, Musa, Naima, Naser, Nizar, Nikola, Nadine, Ricardo,  Simon, Salim, the Spaniard, Suma, Safiyya, Vera, Yvette, Zaynab, Zemzem, Zakiyya (not counting grandmother and grandfather) and I know I have missed a few. To my ignorant American ears these names are confusing. For all I know they are not only the proper names of people but of places as well.

Line I liked, “My appeal, even my normal liveliness, must have deserted me” (p 64). Here’s another: “I expected some burning emotion to be rekindled between us, but the kiss ended quickly and there was no aftermath” (p 72). And another: “…instead you sing the reality you live” (p 135). Last one, “Coming to this school, having new shoes and a mother in America, seemed to put a gleam on my mind as if I had polished it with almond oil” (p 170).

Reason read: August 15th is the official Lebanese holiday Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Author fact: Another al-Shaykh book on my challenge list is Women of Sand and Myrrh. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Book trivia: This is a book that requires a little patience to read. There is no pulse pounding plot, nor dilemma a hero must solve before the last page.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Leavened in Lebanon” (p 130).

Fordlandia

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Grandin, Greg. Fordlandia: the Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009.

This is the story of what happens when someone with a boatload of money gets a hair-brained idea: they can fund their outlandish dream but have no idea how to actually accomplish it. Henry Ford found success with his motor company and felt that this same success would translate well in a foreign country he knew little to nothing about. (After all, he had lots of advisers for that.) Suffice it to say, Ford started out with good intentions. He needed a new place to grow high quality rubber but that project quickly morphed and ended up growing into the more ambition dream of creating a civilized utopia in the wilds of an Amazonian jungle. Other well known companies set up the essentials of home away from home in places like Cuba and Mexico, but Ford wanted to create a brand new society. He envisioned shopping centers, ice cream parlors, sidewalks for the civilized townspeople to stroll upon, electricity, running water…all the comforts of middle America in a remote riverside section of Brazil. It’s ironic that Ford felt he was rescuing a vision of Americana so far from “home.” Of course, these visions were bound to fail. Ford ran into obstacles practically every step of the way. Clearing the land of massive tangle of jungle and vines wasn’t as easy as any of his advisors thought it would be. Engineers didn’t properly grade the roads causing washouts every time it rained….in a rainforest. The humidity would rust saw blades faster than the men could wear them out on the difficult bark of foreign trees. Keeping skilled labor on the job proved to be just as difficult. Diseases unfamiliar to mid westerners plagued the workforce. Prohibition wasn’t law in Brazil so those men who didn’t quit were often drunk thanks to rum boats moored on the river. Then there were the insects that plagued the crops. The list goes on. As you can imagine, all of this would lead to a breakdown. Of course this story can’t have a happy ending, but it is fascinating all the same.

Quotes I liked, “The Amazon is a temptress: its chroniclers can’t seem to resist invoking the jungle not as a ecological system but as a metaphysical testing ground; a place that seduces man to impose his will only to expose that will as impotent” (p 6),  and “At night vampire bats often worked their way past window screens to feed, and since their razor sharp incisors could painlessly pierce flesh, the Americans would sleep through an attack, awaking to find their toes and ankles bloodied” (p 197).

Reason read: Believe it or not, August is reported as the driest month in the Amazon. If you can imagine that.

Author fact: Grandin is a Guggenheim fellow.

Book trivia: Fordlandia has a bunch of really great photographs. My favorite is titled, “Making a High Cut on a Big Tree” (p 174).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Amazonian” (p 17).

 

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Terius

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Borges, Jorge Luis. “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Terius.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Translated. New York: New Directions, 1964.

With Uqbar being this elusive place I came to think of it as a Brigadoon of sorts. Borges opens the short story with this line, “I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopaedia” (p3). But, the 11th volume of the encyclopaedia is quite the mystery. Tlon is a nonexistent country and Orbis Tertius is a planet with an unknown history. Does it really exist? The first person narrative struggles to learn more about this unusual place and has come to the conclusion it is a psychologically governed land that consists of a secret society comprised of arts and intellectuals.

Reason read: Borges was born in the month of August. Read in his honor.

Book trivia…I mean short story trivia: This is only 16 pages long. a very quick read (although I read it several times as there is a lot going on).

Author fact: Borges’s full name was Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges. Awesome name.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travel to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Rowed Trip

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Angus, Colin and Julie Angus. Rowed Trip: a Journey by Oar from Scotland to Syria. Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press, 2009.

There are several different subject categories in which I could put Rowed Trip: adventure, boating, bicycling, travel, culture, or even marriage to name a few, because all of these subjects are covered in Colin and Julie’s account of their journey from Scotland to Syria. Everything about their trip is either informative or funny but always entertaining. To start from the beginning, Colin’s ancestors are from Scotland while Julie’s are from Syria. While studying a map (I forgot why) they realized there are various waterways the entire distance between their homeland countries. As seasoned adventure travelers they asked themselves wouldn’t it be fun to travel the entire distance by boat? Both Colin and Julie have considerable experience in this area and have written books about it. As newlyweds, married less than a year, what better way to break in a marriage?
To be fair, in actuality Rowed Trip is a misnomer. The entire trip wasn’t by oar as the subtitle suggests. There were miles traveled by ingenious bicycles and trailers as well. Due to complicated lock systems most of France was traversed by bike, to name one instance. Because Colin and Julie each take turns writing the chapters their individually personalities reveal themselves. Colin’s style of writing is more descriptive of the surroundings while Julie has more introspective emotion. Both narratives are didactic at times. It was interesting to read how they handled navigating the locks in each country (which seems to be one of their biggest challenges besides getting their trailer stolen and blown bike tires).
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Rowed Trip and breaking with the Lust rules, I probably will research Colin and Julie’s other books not on my list.

Favorite quote: I didn’t really have a favorite quote or at least no passages jumped out at me. However, I did enjoy the couple’s efforts to navigate in countries where neither spoke the language. They lived by one of my favorite philosophies, “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission>”

Reason read: July is ocean month. Maybe not nationally recognized as such, but it’s one of my favorite times to be on the water.

Author(s) fact: Colin and Julie are married and each have written other books about their adventures as I have mentioned before.

Book trivia: Rowed Trip includes a smattering of photos. I think there could have been more. Or, at least, I would have liked to seen more.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (p 191).

First Man

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Camus, Albert. The First Man. Translated by David Hapgood. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995.

First Man opens with Henri Cormery, the new manager of the Saint-Apotre property seeking help for his wife, in labor with their second child. But, the meat of the transcript is  the son, Jacques Cormery, looking to understand he father he never met. With a deaf-mute mother and a contradictory tyrannical grandmother, Jacques’s quest for knowledge is slow-going. Henri Cormery died in combat when Jacques was just an infant and the women in his family are reluctant to remember anything. Most of the story centers on Jacques in the formative years, his education, his religion, his poverty and of course, his mother and grandmother. While most of the story centers on the bleakness of poverty and the restrictions placed upon Jacques because of that poverty, I liked the sly sense of humor Camus inserted throughout the story. Take this dialogue, for example: “How is it going?” “I don’t know, I especially don’t go in where the women are.” “Good rule…Particularly when when are crying…” (p 15). It just goes to show you that emotional women still drive men nuts. What I didn’t appreciate in First Man was how confusing an unfinished transcript could be. On page 8 Jacques’s mother’s name is Lucie, but by page 90 she is Catherine. Then there were the hundreds and hundreds of reference notes. It made reading slow and plodding at times.

As an aside, I have to laugh. Because I have been thinking of this as Camus’s last book I have been calling it The Last Man. Go figure!

Quotes I like, “She said yes, maybe it was no; she had to reach back in time through a clouded memory, nothing was certain” (p 80).

Reason read: June 19th is the anniversary of Revolution Day in Algeria.

Author fact: Camus’s daughter is instrumental in getting this work published. Even his wife wouldn’t release it to the public.

Book trivia: This is Camus’s last work. The handwritten manuscript was found with him after his fatal car accident in 1960. I think it is fitting that First Man is the last book written by Camus that I will read for the Challenge.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “North African Notes: Algeria” (p 159).

Zero Days

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Egbert, Barbara. Zero Days: the Real-Life Adventure of Captain Bligh, Nelly Bly and 10-Year-Old Scrambler on the Pacific Crest Trail. Berkley, CA: Wilderness Press, 2008.

Lots of people like to hike. Some people like to take it to an extreme, like Barbara Egbert and her family. She, with her husband, Gary, and their ten year old daughter, Mary, spent six months hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. All 2,650 miles of it. Well, Barbara had to come off the trail at the end to become a trail angel so technically she didn’t hike the entire thing but Mary became the youngest person to do so. Zero Days is a memoir of sorts about that adventure. I expected the story to be in chronological order, starting with Day one in April at the Mexico border and ending six months later at the Canadian border. Instead I found to be quasi-chronological with random sidetrackings, even referring to previous hikes before Mary was born. Here are some examples, chapter three is all about the other hikers they met along the way. Chapter eight is all about the different towns they stopped in. Day 11 of the hike can be nestled with day 108 on the same page. Names aren’t consistent either. Mary could be called Scrambler (her trail name) in the same sentence. Same with Captain Bligh (husband, Gary). Egbert sometimes refers to herself as Nellie Bly. Aside from the meandering, I thoroughly enjoyed Egbert’s tales from the trails. I learned a great deal about what it takes to hike the great trails of the United States. Like, for example, you can take detours miles and miles off the PCT and you have still hiked the PCT. You can leave the hike for weeks at a time and still be called a thru-hiker. Hell, you can even hitchhike through some of it and still be called a hiker!

My one complaint – I was distracted by how many times Barbara would exclude herself (or her family) from the norm. Maybe it was just me, but Egbert seemed to put herself in a different category than the rest of the hikers; than rest of society even. I can’t really explain it except to say I began to notice of pattern. Here are some examples of what I mean, “…many thru-hikers count on doing a lot of hitchhiking. We had decided ahead of time to hitchhike as seldom as possible” (p 136), “We had a good experience at White’s, but during a later year, some thru-hikers reported a much less pleasant time” (p 137), and “After five months of the Pacific Crest Trail, the dental procedure that summons up fear in the hardiest souls had struck me as nothing more than a minor annoyance” (p 159).

I like the way libraries work. My copy of  Zero Days traveled from Sierra Vista, Arizona. 🙂

Reason: June is National Take a Hike month. This would be some hike!

Author fact: Barbara Egbert’s family is reported to have their own website. However, when I went to check it out I was told it was “temporarily unavailable.” I guess after ten years the 15 minutes of fame ran its course. Either that or someone forgot to pay the site bill.

Book trivia: Zero Days includes “the Blighs’ PCT Album.” I especially liked the picture of Crater Lake.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Hiking the (Fill In The Blank) Trail” (p 95).

Art Student’s War

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Leithauser, Brad. The Art Student’s War. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2009.

Right off the bat I have to mention the author’s note. If you are someone who normally skims or even completely skips this part, in a word: Don’t. It’s touching. For starters, I don’t know many men who have a decent relationship with their mothers-in-law much less those who find inspiration in them, but Leithauser has done those guys one better. He goes on to say that The Art Student’s War “must serve as a tribute…” to his mother-in-law. Classy. Seriously.

I didn’t think I would like The Art Student’s War because I’m not a big fan of the overly dramatic. Within the first fifty pages Bianca Paradiso’s family is rocked by scandal: her aunt accidentally reveals a breast when her bathing suit slips. The dynamics between the two families is never the same after that. Yes, I know the times are different now and you can almost expect to see a bare breast on a beach these days, but the amount of anguish the entire family suffers at the hands of this one mistake seems a little exaggerated…until I read on. First of all, mental illness plays a part here. And. And! And, I should have known better. Bianca’s character has been melodramatic from the start. Once, she was moved to anxious tears because she regretted not talking to a soldier on a bus. She lamented he didn’t hear her say thank you.
As the story deepens, and you get to know the characters better, Bianca rounds out to be a steadfast good girl with all the dreams and aspirations of becoming a worthy artist. Those dreams are first realized when she is asked to help with the war effort: to use her talents to draw portraits of wounded soldiers in the local hospital, the very hospital where she was born. It is here that she meets Henry. The relationship that blooms is complex and sets Bianca’s Coming of age in motion.
Halfway through the book there is a weird break that is told from the perspective of Bea’s uncle. It’s a glimpse into the future and doesn’t quite fit with the flow of the story. If you are paying attention, it gives away the plot and reveals more than it should. When we come back to Bea, she is a married woman with twin six year old sons. She has remained close to a few childhood friends, but is not the artist she used to be. Life goes on. Detroit is like another character in the book, growing along with Bea.

An added benefit of the Art Student’s War is the art history lesson you get along the way.

Reason read: Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, was born in the month of May.

Author fact: Leithauser is a Detroit native who studied at Harvard. That should tell you something – street smarts and book smarts!

Book trivia: scattered throughout The Art Student’s War are illustrations. These are the illustrations his mother-in-law drew that inspired the book. Leithauser also includes a photograph of Lormina Paradise. Very nice.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Definitely Detroit” (p 74). As an aside, Pearl calls Leithauser’s writing “magical” and I couldn’t agree more.

Lotus Eaters

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Soli, Tatjana. The Lotus Eaters. Read by Kirsten Potter. Blackstone Audio, 2010.

In the year of 1975 North Vietnam is still pushing towards Saigon. It’s the end of the Vietnam war (or American war, depending on who you ask). The Lotus Eaters opens with the city’s demise being eminent and the panic to escape, mounting. Caught in this frenzy is Helen Adams, a seasoned American photojournalist, and her Vietnamese lover, Lihn. Stepping back in time, we learn that Helen is following in the footsteps of her soldier brother, killed in action earlier in the war. She has come to Vietnam to research his death and ultimately falls in love with the war.  As we follow Helen from her first arriving in Saigon, we witness her naivete and her desperate need to belong. Quickly, she attaches herself to Sam Darrow, a fellow photojournalist who has been around the block a few times. He is supposed to be a hard-nosed, loner of a photographer, but he and Helen soon develop a romantic relationship that defies logic and marriage vows. Sam’s assistant, Lihn complicates things when he too falls in love with Helen. In the midst of well-worn war, emerges a not-so obvious love triangle.
In other reviews I have read the complaint is Soli takes the story too far, drags it out too long. I disagree. Each phase of Helen’s time in Vietnam, as well as her time away, builds a layer of her personality and adds to the complexity of her emotions. I am of two minds about the beginning, though. Soli reveals upfront that Lihn is Helen’s lover and they are desperate to get out of Saigon. That information nagged at me throughout the rest of the telling because I knew it was coming. For example, I expected something to happen to Darrow because the shift in Helen’s relationship with Lihn. It was a matter of when this something would happen that kept me guessing.

Reason read: Saigon fell in the month of April. Confessional: this was a little longer than I anticipated so I listened to it a few days into May.

Author fact: The Lotus Eaters is Tatjana Soli’s first book.

Reader fact: Kirsten Potter graduated from Boston University.

Book trivia: The Lotus Eaters won the James Tait Black Prize in 2010.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Vietnam” (p 248). Duh.

the dancer and the thief

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Skarmeta, Antonio. the dancer and the thief. Translated by Katherine Silver. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Due to overcrowding in a Chilean prison a select group of nonviolent prisoners have been granted amnesty by the President and released. From this prison come Angel Santiago and Nicholas Verga Gray. On the inside they were just criminals with numbers. On the outside they are vastly different from one another, yet nevertheless their lives are destined to intersect. Again. Twenty year old Santiago is anxious to avenge the horrible abuses he suffered in prison at the hands of other inmates as well as the warden. Sixty year old Gray wants nothing more than to put his life as a master thief behind him and reconnect with his estranged wife and son. Zealous protege meets reluctant master. Meanwhile, the prison warden, knowing that his life is in danger now that Angel Santiago has been freed, allows a violent inmate to go free for one month. While the rest of the world thinks this prisoner is in solitary confinement he is on the hunt for Angel Santiago. The mission is to kill him before he can kill the warden. If this wasn’t enough of a plot, add a teenage girl who has lofty dreams of becoming a dancer. Broke and broken Victoria meets broke and broken Angel. Now Angel needs money more than ever. Who better to get it from than a master thief? And, thanks to a dwarf, he has a plan.

Reason read: Chile gained her independence in April.

Author fact: Skarmeta is known for The Postman which I am reading…eventually.

Book trivia: The Dancer and the Thief was made into a movie in 2009 starring Ricardo Darin and Abel Ayala.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “It’s Chile Today” (p 115). Here’s the head scratcher about this chapter. The subject of Chile is not under ‘C’ for Chile but rather ‘I’ for It’s. So, let’s say someone asked me what Pearl would recommend for books that have a connection to Chile. I wouldn’t find Chile in the table of contents unless I knew to skip C and go right to I. Odd. To be fair, there are a lot of chapters like this but this is the first time I noticed it.