Books in Clumps: Sad Stories About African Boys

Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala. This one is a first novel by a young Nigerian Harvard grad, and it was unusual, and interesting. It's the story of a young boy who is conscripted into a guerrilla army in an unnamed African nation, and parts of it are pretty horrifying. We never know which side he's (forced into) fighting for, or exactly how old he is, but the details of the experience are vivid and disturbing. The book is written in pidgen English, which I thought made the writing more effective, and drew you into his situation more fully, but a couple of people in my old book club found it distracting.


I also recently read What Is The What, by Dave Eggers. If you're going into this one thinking that it will be another sardonic, humorous Dave Eggers masterpiece, think again. This non-fiction book is the life story of Valentino, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, as told to Mr. Eggers, and it is - not surprisingly - pretty brutal. I will admit there are moments of humor, but they already pale in my memory compared to the stories about small children being eaten by lions or murdered by ruthless soldiers. Not especially funny subject matter.

The book is not only about Valentino's trials as a boy in Sudan, but also about his eventual relocation to the U.S. and the subsequent challenges he had to face in this country. I really found this part of the story interesting, and overall, it is a moving and humbling piece of reading.

I need to take stock of what I’ve read so far. I know it’s far from the designated goals, and I know I’m missing a couple of books in there, but here is the gist of it, what I can remember:

Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
Quiet American, Graham Greene
Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
American Vertigo, Bernard Henri-Levy
Highest Tide, Jim Lynch
Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
Man of My Dreams, Curtis Sittenfeld

That makes TEN books. I have a few more I could report on tomorrow, but... I may not. Sigh. Well, this isn’t a Reading Year for me, I guess. More like the Year of Expensive Purchases, like a house, and a super-fancy mountain bike that I have ridden exactly once, and the fact that I have to keep buying the garbage bags and paper towels for the book store myself if I want to maintain any semblance of tideness. So I guess I've been so busy spending money that I have not had a moment to read a book! I'm pretty much out of money, though, so I think I can get back into it soon. Reading, thankfully, is cheap entertainment.

January Reading

All right, well, I still don't have time to write something thoughtful about what I've been reading, so I'm just going to list what I've read so far:

Book #1 of 2006: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers. I probably don't have to write anything about this anyway, since everyone in my age range has already read it. Thumbs up from me.

#2: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. I liked this, as well. I mostly read it because I was traveling to Saigon and the book is set there, and I wanted to be as big a cliche as possible. I thought I was so clever picking this up on my way over there, and then when we got there every little street child was selling bootleg copies of the book to tourists. Not quite as clever as I thought I was, now, was I?

#3: Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. I know she's a Whitbread winner and all, but I Did. Not. Like. This. Book. It was good enough for me to finish it, and the story line was all right, but the thing that bothered me to no end was the author's incessant use of parentheses, usually as an aside showing what a character was thinking. But it wasn't one character who did this: It was all of them. It was so distracting and unhelpful and annoying that I couldn't see past it.

#4: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. Now this book, on the other hand, I loved. Wow. It's sort of hard to describe it. It's partly a mystery about a guy whose wife disappears, partly a dreamy fantasy, and it's lyrical and interesting and philsophical. Since I read it and have gushed to friends, I have come to understand that it is rather trendy to be a lover of Murakami. That's all right. I can't wait to read another one of his books.

I know I am slacking on keeping this blog up to date and interesting (not that it ever was the latter), but I'm going to try harder. I just don't have as much free time as I used to, I guess.

Onward!