African Laughter
Posted: 2018/10/30 Filed under: Book Reviews, Lust To Go, NonFiction | Tags: 2018, africa, book lust iii, book review, Doris Lessing, memoir, NonFiction, october, travel 1 CommentLessing, Doris. African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe.New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
Reason read: to celebrate Lessing’s birth month in October.
Even though Doris Lessing was born to British parents in Iran and didn’t move to Southern Rhodesia until she was six, Lessing called the African continent her homeland. She spent twenty-four years there until she moved to London, England. African Laughter is a very personal memoir about four trips back to Zimbabwe after being exiled for twenty-five years.
Interestingly enough, the title African Laughter comes from Lessing’s joy of hearing Africans laugh. “The marvelous African laughter born somewhere in the gut, seizing the whole body with good-humoured philosophy” (p 80).
Confessional: there were times when I got lost in Lessing’s chronology. An example: Lessing is visiting her brother and describing a scene languishing on the verandah. Her brother’s two Alsatians (popular dogs as pets in Africa) are lounging nearby. One dog in particular, Sheba, hungers for Lessing’s female attentions. Lessing then seamlessly goes on to describe how Sheba finally attached herself to her male owner only to be strangled to death in some loose wire at the end of a fence. Because she doesn’t reference two periods in time I wasn’t sure when this happened. Subsequent mentions of poor Sheba are depressing, knowing her sad demise.
Lines I liked, “All writers know the state of trying to remember what actually happened, rather than what was invented, or half invented, a meld of truth and fiction” (p 72) and “With a library and perhaps some sympathetic adult to advise them, there in nothing in the world they cannot study” ( p 206).
Author fact: Lessing was born in Iran in 1919.
Book trivia: African Laughter has some great insight into other books Lessing has written, like The Golden Notebook.
Nancy said: Nancy mentioned African Laughter as one of the books she found “engrossing” after she had written the “Dreaming of Africa” section in Book Lust.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Zipping Through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 268).
Turn the Page October
Posted: 2018/10/10 Filed under: audio books, E-Books, Early Review, Fiction, NonFiction | Tags: africa, Bosnia, Bryce Courtenay, cats, Doris Lessing, Dorothy Dunnett, Early Review, family, Fiction, Hal Roth, Henry Roth, historical, immigration, Ivo Andric, Jan Morris, John Grisham, librarything, NonFiction, Nora Roberts, Oxford, Robert Wilson, romance, sailing, series, South africa, sports, time travel, travel Leave a commentFiction:
- The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson – in honor of October being Star Man month.
- Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (EB) – in memory of Mehmed Pasa Sokollu’s passing. He designed the bridge over the Drina river.
- Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (EB) – in honor of the Verdi Fest in Parma that takes place every October.
- Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (AB) – to remember the Tom Kippur War.
Nonfiction:
- Oxford Book of Oxford edited by Jan Morris – in honor of Morris’s birth month.
- African Laughter by Doris Lessing – in honor of Lessing’s birth month.
- Always a Distant Anchorage by Hal Roth – October is Library Friend Month & I had to borrow this from a distant library.
Series continuations:
- Tandia by Bryce Courtenay – to finish the series started in September in honor of Courtenay’s birth month.
- The Race of the Scorpion by Dorothy Dunnett (EB) – to continue the series started in August in honor of Dunnett’s birth month.
- Finding the Dream by Nora Roberts (EB) – to finish the series started in August in honor of Dream Month.
Fun:
- Joey Goes to Sea by Alan Villiers – a gift from my aunt Jennifer.
Early Review for LibraryThing: nada. I have the promise of three different books but they haven’t arrived yet.
