3.15.2007

Reading

I'm not doing so well keeping up with book reviews.

Bad Blood by Lorna Sage: Sage was a noted literary critic in the UK. This is her memoir of growing up in a small town in England after WWII with her man hating grandmother and her brilliant, but alcoholic and womanizing grandfather. It's amusing and interesting but not life changing
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova: very overwritten for what is basically a vampire thriller. Also, the format was confusing. At one point I calculated that I was reading about someone reading a letter about someone reading a letter about someone reading a letter about someone reading a letter about someone doing something.
The Sea by John Banville: a depressed widower returns to the seaside town where he spent his depressing childhood. Someone drowned. eh. He got a Booker prize for this?

The big one:

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah: unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about this book - the publicity has been very widespread. Ishmael Beah grew up in Sierra Leone. At the age of 13, he got caught up in that country's civil war. His family was killed and he was forced into the army, kept hopped up on drugs, and taught to murder people without mercy. The book is hard to read, but hard to put down. Ishmael survived and recovered and was able to emigrate to the United States and graduate from Oberlin College. But his story is rare. The book filled me with a kind of helpless rage against what people can do to other people. Considering this, I'm not sure why I recommend this book, but I do. I think it should be required reading.

3 comments:

Felix said...

Oddly, one of the things I liked about the Historian was the nestedf layers of discovery in the story. This may be because at the time I read it, I was digging around for historical documents about a long-defunct railroad, and the protagonist's story seemed to parallel the way that that research was proceeding. Sometimes historical research really is like that. You find a reference to somebody's letters filed with a set of company records in a university archive. Then you track down their letters in another file, and find references to a set of photographs no longer extant. Then you have to see if you can track down the person last reported to have the photographs, etc.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about the spirits of defunct railroads pursuing me from beyond the grave.

Steph said...

I guess I just don't have the necessary patience - I like things to be more straightforward

Maybe you should carry some garlic, just to be safe. According to Ms. Kostova, historical research is dangerous work.

Felix said...

Perhaps the smell of gasoline or jet fuel would be more effective in repelling ghosts of the steam age.

I also must admit that I enjoyed the way Ms. Kostova made historical research seem dangerous and, hence, glamorous and intriguing and sexy.