Tag: book lust iii

Among the White Moon Faces

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Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Among the White Moon Faces: an Asian-American Memoir of Homelands. The Feminist Press, 1996.

Reason read: Merdeka Day is in August. In 1957 the Federation of Malaya received its independence and became a sovereign state. Read in honor of that event.

Lim begins her memoir with the introspective commentary on her sense of self – the name with which she most identifies, but ends the introduction by saying she found her identity wrapped up in the women who shaped her entire life. She did not have an easy childhood. She lacked women role models to teach her how to be feminine. Her first time wearing a bra reminded me of my own foray into adult garments.
Confessional: I had a hard time reading Among the White Moon Faces. Lim had a tug of war with chronology; going back and forth in time. One minute Lim is making excuses for the Hokkien language, the next she is describing Ah Chan, their servant. Next, Lim has memories of her mother’s appearance but moves quickly to stories of her grandfather or the Tan Family. All along she interrupts herself to ask questions we as readers cannot answer.
Despite the leapfrogging of the timeline, I appreciated Lim’s honesty. Growing up, she was no angel. She admitted to changing grades on a report card and lying about where she was on Friday nights. As the story progressed I lost track of Lim’s age when her father and a nurse scrubbed her body clean. No one had ever taught her her to clean…anything.
Throughout Among the White Moon Faces Lim struggles with abandonment. Her mother left the family early on. Father would bring his dates home and ignore his children. Interspersed in this honest narrative Lim makes commentaries on British colonialism and American waste. She steps away from her memories to voice her opinions about corrupt cultures.
By the end of Among the White Moon Faces I admired Lim for her determination to make something of herself in a very competitive academic society.

Line I liked a lot, “Nurturing is a human act that overleaps categories, but is not free of history” (p 67), and “There were more ways to be a poet than sit still beneath his judgment” (p 144).

Author fact: Geok-Lin also wrote Joss and Gold which I am scheduled to read at some point.

Book trivia: there is a small collection of black and white photographs in Among the White Moon Faces. There are mostly of Shirley as a child.

Music, “A Summer Place,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, “Sixteen Candles,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” “Jolly Miller,” “O Susanna,” “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” “On Top of Old Smoky,” Beatles, “Oh Rosemarie, I Love You So, I’m Always Dreaming of You,” “Mockingbird’s Song,” Everly Brothers, Ali Akbar Khan, Hawaiian Wedding Song, Pat Boone’s “April Love,” “Ye Banks and Braes of Bonne Doon,” “The Minstrel Boy,” and Bill Haley and His Comets.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Malaysia” (p 40).

At the Mercy of the Sea

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Kretschmer, John. At the Mercy of the Sea: the True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane. International Marine/McGraw Hill, 2007.

Reason read: August is the best time to be on the water. Read in honor of the perfect month for a sail.

John Kretschmer begins his story on November 14th, 1999. His main focus begins with his friend, Carl Wake, captain of the 42′ sailboat La Vie en Rose. Carl was sailing from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean in time to meet Kretschmer for Thanksgiving so this part of At Mercy of the Sea is heartbreakingly personal. [How could it have been Carl’s first and last at-sea voyage?] Tragically, Carl meets up with Hurricane Lenny and does not survive the storm’s wrath. In addition to Carl’s story, Kretschmer also follows the tragedies of Steve Rigby, sailing English Braids and Guillaume Llobregat, captain of Frederic-Anne, also victims of Hurricane Lenny.
Hurricane Lenny was an anomaly, a dangerous freak storm that defied logic. Understanding how a hurricane is supposed to behave plays a huge part of the drama. Part of At Mercy of the Sea is the biography of a hurricane from birth (African, Gulf of Mexico or other) to its landfall slow death. Kretschmer carefully outlines what typically happens from start to finish, beginning with the naming of each hurricane. In this way, he is able to illustrate just how unusual Lenny turned out to be.
Confessional: Like The Diary of Anne Frank, I had a hard time reading towards the end of At the Mercy of the Sea. As the pages turned, the story brought me closer and closer to the demise of the sailors. I knew it was coming, but dreaded the end all the same.

As an aside, last month I read a book about the Vendee Globe race. When Kretschmer mentioned it I was thankful I had more than a passing knowledge of what he was talking about. He also mentioned the book A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, which is on my Challenge list.

Line I adored, “Retreating into the past is one way to keep your sanity – or disturb it, depending on what you run into there” (p 10). Kretschmer is not wrong. He is able to make keen observations about the psyche of a sailor too long at sea, probably because he has been there himself.
Other lines I really liked, “My wife was weary of my dreams and, worse, downright sick of my realities” (p 70) and “The only way to savor the essence of life is to nearly lose it” (p 173).

Another confessional: reading about hurricanes brings me face to face with conflicting emotions. I got married in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. I was twelve miles out to sea. According to Kretschmer, Ivan produced the highest measured significant wave height, fifty feet.

Author fact: Kretschmer is a professional sailor in his own right.

Book trivia: I would have liked to see photographs of the sailors or, at the very least, their boats.

Music: Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose,” Edith Pilaf, Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffett.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).

Italian Education

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Parks, Tim. An Italian Education: the Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona. Grove Press, 1995.

Reason read: to continue the series started in June in honor of a festival.

With Italian Education British-born Tim Parks continues his lighthearted memoir about life outside Verona where he moved in the early 1980s. In addition to capturing the social, political, and cultural life of Italians, Parks introduces family life and raising his children as bilingual Italians. He and his wife Rita already had a toddler, but in the introductory chapters of Italian Education they discovered they were expecting child number two. This time a daughter. Stefi brings all the trials and tribulations of what it means to father a newborn who never sleeps. As Stefi and her brother Michele grow up they give Parks plenty of subject material on schooling (Italian schools do not offer extracurricular pursuits such as music, organized sports, hymns, or classes in carpentry or cooking), what to ask Santa Lucia for at Christmastime, fishing and going to the beach (Italy offers public beaches to avoid being accused of privatization).
Unlike his previous book, Italian Neighbors, Parks writes with an undertone of discontent in Italian Education. Like the soft green mold slowly starting to spoil a loaf of bread, there is a subtle sense of malcontent hidden in the descriptions of his narrative. There is less humor and more criticism. At the end of Italian Education Parks reveals his wife is pregnant with their third child. It is hard to tell if this brings him joy or angst.

Line I liked, “…the Italians are mislaying their rosaries among the clutter of their economic success” (p 312).

Author fact: Even though Parks has written a bunch of books, I am only reading two more: Juggling the Stars and A Season With Verona.

Book trivia: I wish Parks had included some maps of the region.

Music mentioned: Vivaldi’s Concerto in Re Maggiore for Two Mandolins, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Oh When the Saints,” “Imparare in Liberta,” “Bells of Bovolon,” Giuseppe Verdi, Bellini, “Il treno dei desideri,” and L’Aida.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Verona” (p 243). Pretty simple.

French Lieutenant’s Woman

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Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Little, Brown, and Company, 1969.

Reason read: there is something called a Swan Upping in England every July. Read in honor of that event.

John Fowles approaches the story of The French Lieutenant’s Woman as if he is a modern man looking into a Victorian crystal ball and sharing what he sees with his readers. His technique allows him to make lengthy comments on society, religion, science, politics and economy of the time. He can (and often does) insert himself into the story and even imagines various endings to the romantic saga. Fowles begins his tale by introducing us to Charles Smithson, a thirty-two year old independently wealthy wannabe natural scientist. Charles has impulsively become engaged to the young and beautiful Ernestina Freeman. Ernestina (Tina) also has wealth in her family, being the daughter of a savvy dry goods merchant. As the saying goes, every good romance needs some sort of tension. Enter Sarah Woodruff, an older and mysterious redhead. Rumor has it she was abandoned after a torrid affair with a French naval officer. The entire town of Lyme Regis thinks of her as a whore; utterly damaged goods. And yet Charles cannot help but be drawn to this silent and haunted woman who waits on the quay quietly staring out to sea. As much as he tries to keep his distance, there is something about the French lieutenant’s woman he cannot resist. What is redemption in the heart of an atheist? Fowles imagines three different possibilities for the love triangle’s conclusion. Everyone roots for passion, but I am not convinced there is a happy ending to satisfy all.

Confessional: for the longest time I kept calling the book The French Lieutenant’s Wife instead of Woman. I have no idea why. Here is an interesting tidbit – my husband also thought the same thing.
Another confessional: I did not care one whit about Charles. As Noah Kahan says, I kept “rooting for [his] downfall.”

As an aside, I have to wonder if Josh Ritter read The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Was he inspired by John Fowles’s description of Sarah’s eyes, “…they bubbled as the best champagne bubbles” (p 75).

Lines I Loved, “People sink out of sight, drown in the shadow of closer things” (p 337) and “Love had left the world” (p 429).

Author fact: Fowles has written a great deal but I am only reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The French Lieutenant’s Woman was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. I have to put this one on my list because I love Meryl (who doesn’t?).

Music: “As Sylvia Was Walking.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Lyme Regis” (p 134).

Singer’s Gun

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Mandel, Emily St. John. The Singer’s Gun: a Novel. Unbridled Books, 2010.

Reason read: the first fingerprints used to solve a crime were in July of 1901. Read in honor of Crime Prevention Month.

Anton Waker comes from a long line of scammers and thieves. The desire to commit crime should naturally flow through his veins. For as long as he can remember his parents have stolen antique valuables to resell them. Anton’s beautiful and brash cousin ensnared him early into the business of creating fake documents such as passports, social security cards and birth certificates. Anton himself has faked his own academic credentials in an attempt to get a “real” job. Despite his intimacy with fraud, Anton continuously tries to make a clean start. This makes him a likeable character. New job which he is successful at. New marriage with the girl of his dreams. Every decision starts with good intentions yet deception always finds a way to fray the edges. Every time Anton thinks he has escaped, corruption sucks him back down the hole. There is always one more job to do. Like a trapped rat, he cannot escape his criminal family until his cousin offers him one last job. She promises him his freedom if he delivers this one last package on a remote island in Italy. However, it will mean the end of his carefully constructed crime-free lifestyle.
I thoroughly enjoyed Mandel’s work. I had only one cringe moment. Elena, a Russian recipient of a passport, was instructed to not carry a handbag to the meeting place yet at the end of a transaction she puts the documents in a bag.
As an aside, when I was in college a professor said to me that if you introduce a gun in an early chapter it has to go off before the book ends. His exact words were, “If you put a gun on the table in the first chapter it has to be fired by the last chapter.” Mandel must have gotten that wisdom as well, but she was far more clever with the advice. She debuts the gun in the title but withholds the singer and his or her weapon until you have all but forgotten about them.

Author fact: I am also reading Last night in Montreal for the Challenge. I am excited to be revisiting Mandel’s work in the future.

Book trivia: the audio version of Singer’s Gun is narrated by Morgan Hallet.

Music: New Order and Depeche Mode.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “O Canada O Canada” (p 51). Note: Singer’s Gun has nothing to do with Canada except Emily St. John Mandel (and one character) is from Canada.

Italian Neighbors

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Parks, Tim. Italian Neighbors: or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona. Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.

Reason read: the Arena di Verona festival is held every June. Here is something cool: while I was in Verona we walked by the amphitheater while they were busy setting up.

Tim Parks takes you on an Italian journey where every mundane experience comes alive in vivid detail. From the moment he and his wife move into the apartment inhabited by the belongings of ghosts thirty years passed to learning that all beverages have their time slots (order your cappuccino before 10:30am), Parks will have you giggling with delight on the outskirts of Verona. At the same time as delivering humor, Parks also brings the beauty of the region with cherry blossoms in spring and the sharp white peaks of the Alps piercing the bright blue sky. Doesn’t it all sounds so magical?
Parks takes you by the hand and leads you through various instances of Italian customs and cultures. Taxes. Death. And speaking of death, take cemeteries for example. Sometimes loved ones are moved from their final resting place. As Parks says, “They come to find their loved ones and discover the grave is gone” (p 144). I would not have believed him until I experienced this for myself. I went with friends to a cemetery in Udine. We were looking for a long-deceased uncle. Row after row of photographs of loved ones smiling out at me from the grave, but we could not find Giuseppe. The family shrugged and nonchalantly declared he must have been moved or removed. They then wandered away from the place he should have been, discussing what to have for lunch.
Another example: driving in Italy. Parks paints an action movie picture of racing through winding and narrow lanes with walls on either side; just room enough to barely clear the sideview mirrors. All the while another motorist is following you too closely to avoid an accident should you stop short. As so often with all of Italy, the picturesque is juxtaposed with the sharp edge of danger. This much is clear.
Italian Neighbors was such a delight to read that I cannot wait for the sequel, An Italian Education.

Confessional: I now want to stay in Montecchio. According to Tim Parks, June is the month to go because of all the poppies in bloom. Sounds wonderful.

Line I liked (and there were a bunch), “A test of the extent of your Italianization is whether you still grind your teeth when you hear that something has closed” (p 262). I picked this sentence as my favorite because after driving nearly two hours when we arrived in Florence we discovered the park closed at two. We arrived at 2:02pm.

Author fact: Parks returns to the subject of Verona in A Season With Verona which is on my Challenge list, along with An Italian Education and Juggling the Stars.

Book trivia: I really wished there had been photographs in Italian Neighbors.

Music (I think): “On the Bridge at Bassano We Hold Hands” and Ave Maria.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Verona” (p 243).

Magician’s Wife

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Moore, Brian. The Magician’s Wife. Penguin, 1998.

Reason read: Algeria celebrations its Revolution Day in June.

We begin Magician’s Wife in 1856 France. Emmaline Lambert stands in the shadow of her famous magician husband, Henri Lambert. Her personality dims next to the brilliance of her husband’s growing notoriety as an illusionist and inventor. The crowds are agog over his inexplicable trickery. Emmaline almost becomes a cliche being described as uneasy, nervous, foolish, and unsure; acting with trepidation and panic. But in reality, she is just a lonely woman without intimacy in her marriage. It is all about the choices you make in life. Emmeline admits she married a man she did not love. Upon being summoned to the opulent estate of Napoleon III the Lamberts meet dashing Colonel Charles Deniau. Like tendrils of relentlessly advancing vines of kudzu, the Colonel ensnares Emmeline Lambert’s confidences little by little. France has a mission for Henri: in an effort to increase France’s empire and conquer Algeria, astound the Bedouins of North Africa. Frighten them into submission. Is Emmaline falling in love with Deniau? Will she convince her husband to perform the ultimate illusion for the sake of domination?

Author fact: Moore also wrote The Doctor’s Wife which I am reading for the Challenge. I am sensing a pattern here.

Book trivia: The Magician’s Wife was inspired by true events.

Music: “Marseillaise.”

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

Accidental

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Smith, Ali. The Accidental. Pantheon books, 2005.

Reason read: I have no freaking clue when I am reading this book. I already one book from the Scotland chapter.

Is this a cautionary tale about the dangers of miscommunication, assumption, or dysfunctional family silence? The Smith family, on holiday in Norfolk, England, find a beautiful woman on their doorstep announcing her car has broken down. She soon stays for dinner then stays the night. She learns their names: Eve, a writer on the brink of literary success; Michael, a philandering professor; Magnus, a teenager wrack with guilt over a school prank gone horribly wrong; Astrid, a typical twelve year old girl bored with life; everything is substandard in her eyes. The family learns her name, Amber. No one recognizes her from anywhere. Either the Smith family cannot or will not ask each other what they know about the mysterious stranger. Based on their preconceived opinions about each, other each family member makes a blind assumption. Amber is a friend of Eve’s. Amber is Michael’s next “bit ‘o fluff on the side,” maybe one of his latest students he to shag? Amber is a teacher from Magnus or Astrid’s school. Each family member sees a situation from a completely different point of view and that’s when the lies start. Without confirming anything about Amber, the Smith family starts to let the woman integrate herself into their daily lives until it is too late to extract her.

Author fact: Smith is a Scottish writer. I am also reading Hotel World for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The Accidental” could be a movie. It has a little of everything.

Favorite part of the book: when Smith explains the entire Ah-Ha video for “Take On Me.” She captured every minute of my sister’s favorite song.

Music: Elton John, Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” “smooth Operator, Beatles, Barbara Streisand, Chris Montez’s “The More I See You,” Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army,” Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet,” Four Seasons’ “December 1963 (Oh what a Night),” Ray Stevens’ “Misty,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Marianne Faithfull, Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” and Mick Jagger.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Scotland: More Than Haggis, Kilts, and Ian Rankin” (p 200).

Trainspotting

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Welsh, Irwin. Trainspotting. W.W. Norton & company, 1993.

Reason read: in the month of May there is a festival in Scotland called the Beltane Festival.

Gritty yet moving. Violent yet tender. Lonely yet loud. Animally human. How can anyone fully explain the phenomenon that is Trainspotting? Once you get the hang of the narrative the characters come alive. All their faults laid bare. They are disgusting and darling all at the same time. Hideous and hilarious. The black humor and absurd situations had me giggling and then glancing around to see if anyone was offended.
In the absence of a plot this is the story of addictions told from the point of view of addicts and the people who circle their periphery. To describe the kind of desperation addiction can create – when trying to find a viable vein, one character resorts to injecting their privates. Revenge is brutal. Sex is raw and callous. No one is really all that likeable until you find yourself thinking of them long after you close the book. A certain kind of magnetism…like a train wreck.

Lines I liked, “Any port in the storm, and its raging in here behind my face” (p 17) and “I wish I hadn’t waited to long to become a human being” (p 262).

Music! So much good music!: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” Dire Straits’ “the Sultans of Swing,” “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” “Save the Last Dance For Me,” “Rollin’ Down the River,” “The Wanderer,” “Jolene,” Rod Stewart, Rupert Holmes’s “Escape (the Pina Colada Song,” T’Pau “Chin In your Hand,” The Pogues, Claire Grogan’s “Don’t Talk to Me About Love,” Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control,” Lou Reed’s “Heroin,” Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” The Smiths’s “There is a Light That Never Goes Out,” Kylie Minogue, The Velvet Underground, Nico, the Clash, Status Quo, John Cale, David Bowie’s “The Golden Years,” Elvis, Wolfe Tones’ “Banna Strand,” the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” Elvis Costello, Simple Minds, James Connolly’s “Boys if the Old Brigade,” “A Scottish Soldier,” Wet, Wet, Wet, “Auld Lang Syne,” Peter Gabriel, Proclaimers’ “Sunshine on a Leash,” U2, Iggy Pop, Frank Zappa, Moon Unit Zappa, “Danny Boy,” “Roses in Picardy,” and a bunch of Neil Diamond’s sings: “Song Sung Blue,” “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “Love on the Rocks,” “Sweet Caroline,” and “Beautiful Noise.”

Power Without Glory

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Hardy, Frank. Power Without Glory. Vintage Classics, 1950.

Reason read: Frank Hardy was born in March in Southern Cross, Australia. Read in his honor.

Power Without Glory is written in three parts:
Part One (1890 – 1907): The Road to Power. As John “Jack” West climbs the power ladder he learns the art of bribing the police to turn a blind eye to his illegal activities of running a gambling tote; hidden behind the front of a tea shop where no one ever bought any tea. When the shop become too hot, Jack moved his operation to a wood and coal storage yard that was surrounded by high wooden fences, barbed wire, and houses that Jack ingeniously bought for his employees. Piggy, Cauliflower Dick, One Eyed Tommy and the Ape could keep watch over the entire complex. Soon, bribery is not enough to keep Jack’s activities under wraps. He resorts to the threat of violence to keep his underlings and the authorities in line. As his “influence grows and grows it isn’t long before the idea of murder enters Jack’s mind.
Part Two (1915 – 1931): Abuse of Power. West now lives in a fancy mansion with his wife and four children. He not only controls the police but government officials as well. But it is not enough for West. He joins the Australian Imperial Forces as a soldier to gain more followers. As his power grows stronger so does his bafflement when people cannot be bought or intimidated. One such person he cannot control is his wife, much to his increasing resentment. The trouble with achieving anything is that success will have you asking what is next? Where do I go from here? When you reach the very top of success, where do you go from there?
Part Three (1935 – 1935): The Decline of Power. Everyone starts to defy John West, the once all-powerful tyrant. It begins at home with his wife and three children turning their backs on him. The betrayals are explained away as his wife betrayed him with another man and his children are willful and spoiled. As every slight grows stronger West loses his grip on power. His feared rein becomes diminished and impotent.

As an aside, this is the second book I have read in the month of April about a young man hearing the call to fight fascism in Spain. Ben Worth’s demise is no different than that of the young men in Journey to the Frontier.

Lines I liked, “tonight’s interview revived his faith in the power of the bribe” (p 67), “Power of the kind that John West was amassing – power for its take and domination over other people for the sake of domination, presupposes the ability to take reprisals” (p 117), “The more blood and hair that flew the better he enjoyed himself” (p 125).

Author fact: Frank Hardy is a sort of wonder child. He left school when he was thirteen and twenty-seven when he began a writing career.

Book trivia: Power Without Glory was originally a self-published work.

Music mentioned, “Here the Conquering Hero Comes,” “The Rose of No Man’s Land,” “Tipperary,” Beethoven, Dvorak, Fritz Kreisler, Chopin, “The Wearing of the Green,” “Liebesleid,” “O Promise Me,” and “The Internationale.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Australia, the Land of Oz – Fiction” (p 29). Confessional: I originally crossed this off my list because it is out of print and I was having a really hard time finding it. Yay for interlibrary loan!

Dark Star Safari

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Theroux, Paul. Dark Star Safari. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Reason read: Theroux was born in the month of April. Read in his honor.

Paul Theroux likes putting himself in dangerous situations. Traveling across Africa in overcrowded busses and taxis, under the constant threat of flat tires, engine troubles, heat exhaustion and bandits is only part of the journey. Rubbing elbows with tourists and natives alike; the insistent begging for money follows him everywhere (as an aside, Kira Salak encountered excessive pleas for money along the River Niger in her memoir The Cruelest Journey). Yet, despite it all, Theroux begrudgingly admits he enjoys traversing the African continent. He is patient of delays but intolerant of filth.
Here’s the thing about Theroux’s prejudices. Everyone gossips. Everyone speaks poorly of a stranger for one reason or another. We all do it at one time or another. Theroux just happened to put his colorful and not so politically correct musings in a book. Knowing the context, I think I would like hanging out with Paul Theroux especially on cruise ships and in swanky hotels. His snarky comments about the fellow passengers and wandering tourists are unveiled observations about visitors as a comfortable, indulgent society. He makes no apology for his disdain. What was more difficult to stomach was his harsh opinions of the natives and relief workers, especially when referred to an an old man. Theroux is definitely not a people person and that made reading Dark Star Safari more of a slog.
If I can end on a positive note: I love it when literature brings familiarity to a foreign place even if you have never been there before. It is as if Dark Star Safari provided me with an unintentional guidebook for travel to a place I will never see with my own eyes.

Favorite quote defending the aging process, “Years are not an affliction” (p 198).
Other line I liked, “…nothing is more revealing of a person’s mind than a person’s anger” (p 25). So true.

As an aside, this is the third book that has a section on female circumcision or infant clitoridectomy.
Confessional: I read the section about Malawi with great care because of a Malawi penpal I had in high school. He died in an automobile accident.

Author fact: Theroux was once a Peace Corps volunteer. I am sure it was during this time that he developed a disdain for the privileged and misinformed tourists he met in his journeys.

Book trivia: several times throughout Dark Star Safari Theroux described the landscape as otherworldly, of another planet like a “dark star.”

Music: Bob Marley, Enya, Tracy Chapman, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams, Flatts and Scruggs, Thomas Mapfumo’s “Hondo,” “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7) and again in “Brazil” (p 44). Brazil has nothing to do with Dark Star Safari.

Journey to the Frontier

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Stansky, Peter and William Abrahams. Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War. Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Reason read: the Spanish Civil War ended in April.

Julian Bell (1908 – 1937) and John Cornford (1915 – 1936): Both were poets, intellectuals, English, and part of the aristocracy. Both had famous relatives (Bell was the nephew of Virginia Woolf and Cornford was the great-grandson of Charles Darwin). How did they both end up fighting for the Republic and ultimately dying in the Spanish Civil War?
Julian started at Cambridge as a soldier for peace in 1929. At twenty-six he was unsure of his future and the critical dilemma of his day was how to oppose the war and Hitler at the same time. His life was very full before heading to Spain: poetry, academia, literature, philosophy, politics, and even romance all vied for Julian’s attention. He lived all of it to the fullest, including an entanglement with a jealous and clingy yet decidedly married woman in China. What Julian said of the woman was quite amusing, “She’s such a devil when she cares to be, and yet completely charming” (p 292). That’s love for you.
One of the most poignant comments Julian Bell made, “It’s the most dramatic step I’ve taken, I think, after being born” (p 250).
Rupert John Cornford seemed destined for war, named after a poet who was eager to go on a military expedition. Like Julian Bell, Cornford was absorbed in literature. At fourteen he was critiquing his mother’s poetry (and was quite harsh, I might add). He once said of her, “I don’t believe chaos begins till things get lost” (p 197) in response to her lack of tidiness. The Young Communist League in London was the center of his life.
John Cornford was only supposed to be in Spain for a few days. He wanted to see the fighting and then get back before anyone missed him. Cornford’s companion in Spain, Franz Borkenau, supplements Cornford’s movements, filling in details and confirming events.
Confessional: I read about John’s end around the time of the ten year anniversary of Prince’s passing so when John, despite a nasty head injury left the hospital out of boredom I couldn’t help but think of Prince. Even though John’s body hadn’t healed properly he checked himself out for fear of missing out on the action.
Julian Bell set out to be an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War. What is interesting is that he didn’t know how to drive a lorry; he didn’t know how to speak Spanish; he didn’t know how to administer first aid; he didn’t know how to tell if someone was deceased. Nevertheless, he wanted to gain a first-hand military experience. Like John Cornford, Julian Bell had a companion, Richard Rees, to bolster his narrative.

Journey to the Frontier dips into the life of Lynton Strachey and examines E.M. Forster’s Howards End in the time of the Edwardian-era heyday.

Author facts: Stansky is a graduate of Yale and Abrahams is a graduate of Harvard.

Book trivia: It has been said that the title Journey to the Frontier is the fusion of two different works: On the Frontier, a play by Auden and Isherwood and Journey to the Border, a novel by Upward.

Music: Beethoven, Sibelius, “Pie in the Sky,” “Solidarity Forever,” “Bandiera Rossa,” “La Cucaracha,” “The Old Grey Mare,” and “She Was Poor but She Was Honest.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Spain” (p 218).

Birds Without Wings

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De Bernieres, Louis. Birds Without Wings. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Reason read: In Turkey there is a day in April called Children’s Day.

De Bernieres introduces a mystery within the very first few pages of Birds Without Wings. You do not know what Ibrahim did to the beautiful Philothei. You do not know what the narrator did to his son Karatavuk except to say he/she lives in shame. Throughout Birds Without Wings the reader is introduced to a myriad of characters. The Dog – a mysterious stranger whose smile gives nightmares to children and adults alike. Mustafa Kernal – the teenager in Military Training School. Karatavuk, Mehmetak, Polyxeni, Ayse, Stamos, Snowbringer, Leech Gatherer, Tamara, Broken-Nosed, Rustern Bey, Charitos, Yusufthe Tall, among others. At the center is Philothei, betrothed since childhood to Ibrahim. Ever since childhood she has been beautiful beyond measure.
This is a story of human nature in the midst of prejudice and hate, war and relationships. Told from the perspective of a myriad of characters, Birds Without Wings is tragic and heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.
De Bernieres knows human relationships, especially marriage. I had to laugh at this situation: when a wife is unhappy with her husband he might get a little too much pepper in his food. After doing a bad thing the husband thinks I am going to get too much pepper in my food again tonight. But a husband a;ways has more power. He can put aside his wife and get a new one if he thinks she has been adulterous.
As an aside, I wish I had paid attention to all the bird references from the beginning of Birds Without Wings. There were so many! Sparrows, seagulls, ducks, doves, goldfinches, pigeons, partridges, nightingales, robins, owls, blackbirds, songbirds – they all soar (or cannot) and sing and escape cages. Of course, the ultimate little bird is the lovely Philothei who states plainly, “I have found that perfection is not enough” (p 463).

Author fact: Louis De Bernieres also wrote Corelli’s Mandolin but I am not reading it for the Challenge. Birds Without Wings is my only De Bernieres book.

Quotes to quote, “There comes a point in life where each of us who survives to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time…” (p 3). What about this quote, “Nowadays no one would say, “I think we’ll remove all these people from their homes and send them to another country” (p 487)?!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging Up the Past Through Fiction” (p 79) and again in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Turkish Delights” (p 238) which always makes me think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

Elegy for Easterly

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Gappah, Petina. Elegy for Easterly: Stories. Faber and Faber, 2009.

Reason read: Zimbabwe gained its independence in April.

The short stories:

  • At the Sound of the Last Post – Esther is attending the funeral of her philandering husband.
  • Elegy for Easterly – Martha Mupengo is pregnant has been moved into a house where a murder-suicide had occurred.
  • The Annex Shuffle
  • Something Nice From London – a brother who bled his family dry emotionally and financially is finally dead.
  • The Mupandawana Dancing Champion – who knew the man could dance until he died?
  • In the Heart of the Golden Triangle – what would you put up with to stay seated in the lap of luxury?
  • Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros – a man, seeing the World Wide Web for the first time, gets caught up in its excesses.
  • The Maid From Lalapanzi
  • The Cracked, Pink Lips of Rosie’s Bridegroom – guests surmise when the bridegroom’s new wife will meet her demise.
  • My Cousin-Sister Rambanai – an Americanized daughter comes back to her homeland for her father’s funeral.
  • Aunt Juliana’s Indian – good help is hard to find.
  • the Negotiated Settlement – Sometimes a tragedy can alter the course of a marriage, for better or for worse.
  • Midnight at the Hotel California – I loved how the all-commodity broker described his job, “…if it can be bought, it can be sold, and if it can be sold, I am your man” (p 208). Did anyone else think of the movie Say Anything?

Quotes I loved, “I thought I loved him; but that was in another country” (p 8), “And we had no jam for our bread, no milk for our tea while Peter drank away our father’s inheritance in London” (p 75), “Fame is an elastic concept especially in a place like this, where we all know the smells of one another’s armpits” (p 91).

Music: Oliver Mtukudzi, Michael Jackson, Bhundu Boys, Alick Macheso, Andy Brown and the Storm, System Tazvida and the Chazezesa Challengers, Cephas Mashakada and Muddy Face, Boyz II Men, Hosiah Chipanga and the Broadway Sounds, Mai Charamba and the Fishers of Men, Simon “Chopper” Chimbetu and Orchestra Dendera Kings, Tongai “Dehwa” Moyo and Utakataka Express, Bob Marley, Chamunorwa Nebeta and the Glare Express, Lumumbashi Stars, “Bhutsu Mutandarikwa,” and the Eagles’s “Hotel California.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Zipping Through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 268).

Cruelest Journey

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Salak, Kira. The Cruelest Journey: 600 Miles to Timbuktu. National Geographic, 2005.

Reason read: Timbuktu gained its independence from Mali in April.

Why do we as humans do hard things? Why do we run one hundred miles in a desert? Why does Kira Salak want to travel the length of the Niger River from Old Segou to Timbuktu? Six hundred miles of enlightenment? Courage? Money? Recognition? Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer from the 1770s is an obvious inspiration for Salak. She draws upon the experiences gleaned from Park’s letters about his journey down the Niger River in 1795 Not only does Salak provide readers with a mini biography of the man, she also includes a great deal of historical context when thinking (obsessing?) about Mungo Park.
What sets The Cruelest Journey apart from other travel memoirs is that Salak lets the reader into her private thoughts and fears in a transparent manner. In addition to worrying about her safety and getting to Timbuktu in one piece, she is equally concerned about her future. Will she get married and settled down? She goes to great lengths to get answers.
I have to admit the buying of the slave girls was an odd twist at the end of the journey. Even though freeing a couple of Mali slave girls was an objective Salak claimed to have had from the very beginning, she did not mention it throughout her journey until the end. Wouldn’t this be on her mind as she travels the six hundred miles? It’s not like looking out for hippos or dealing with dysentery. Buying people just isn’t common practice for a young white girl.

As an aside, I was reminded of the nature photographers when out photographing wildlife. They cannot interfere with the circle of life no matter how distressing the situation. When Salak reaches Timbuktu she is suffering from exhaustion, dysentery, starvation, and heat stroke. Remi and his partner, Heather, act like Salak is a wild animal they are not allow to interfere with. Salak does not mention them giving her aid or anything to ease her discomfort and illness other than to offer her a bottle of water, but she repeatedly describes Remi’s personal chef and other luxuries on the boat.

Line I liked, “I’ve never been good at small talk, particularly not with people I’ve just purchased” (p 223). I was going to say this is also something we have in common, besides being left-handed and afraid of hippos, up until the part about purchasing people. My favorite line, however, is the very last sentence in the book, “…the journey will always tell you when it’s over” (p 229).

Author fact: Salak was the subject of a CBS segment in 2008.

Book trivia: even though a National Geographic photographer followed Salak down the Niger River there are no photographs in The Cruelest Journey. I was a little more than disappointed.

Confessional: Salak wrote, “As a matter of fact, I had a strange, irrational fear of hippos that was so strong it might have come out of a past life” (p 31). I, too, have that same strange fear. I do not live anywhere near the animal, but I cannot ever bear to look at them in captivity or on a television screen.
Like Salak, I too, am a southpaw.

Music: Salif Keita

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Timbuktu and Beyond” (p 229).