Ooops, I almost forgot…earlier this week I promised to pass along One Amazing Thing. Congratulations to Taryn at bookwanderer, who is the lucky winner! Please email me with your address.
And this has nothing to do with anything, but it made me chuckle…
Are you ready to get this party started? I was going to wait a few months to start this challenge, but it looks like the party is ready to go…
Welcome to the World Party Reading Challenge, where each month we will celebrate both a US holiday/observance AND a different country. Because what better way to party than with a book. The idea is to read more international literature, but I used US holidays and observances as the inspiration. Some connections might be obvious, others less so. I promise I’ll divulge the secret workings of my brain, but not until the beginning of each month (actually, it will most likely be the week before, and I’ll try to include some reading suggestions with each post), when I’ll post a little bit about my choice for the month. Don’t worry, I will give you the complete list ahead of time, it’s just that, for now, you might be left wondering why we’re reading about England in honor of Valentine’s Day.
Details:
12 months, 12 countries, 12 books. Each month we will read one (or more, if you’d like) book either set in, or written by an author from, the featured country (in a few cases I’ve been vague and you just have to stick to the criteria). If you’d like to read a non-fiction book about the country, that works, too. However, I do ask that you avoid books like Eat, Pray, Love and You Shall Know Our Velocity!, which feature multiple countries. The intent is to try to get a sense of place from your book or author. And yes, audio books are allowed. Also, my apologies to the under-represented South American and Pacific countries. Next year I’ll have to find a National Shoe Day and then we can read about the Philippines.
Do you have to participate all 12 months? That would be swell, and if you want to consider the challenge completed, then yes, all 12 months are required. However, if you have a burning desire to read a book about Rwanda and only want to participate for that month, I won’t turn you away. Party crashers are always welcome.
I will post a Mr Linky each month for the reviews about the featured country. Feel free to go back and enter reviews as the year goes on…I won’t hold you to India in October if it takes you until January to finish. The only advantage to posting your reviews timely is that I MIGHT do an occasional giveaway for participants. However, I make no promises.
The challenge runs April 2010 to March 2011. If we have fun, I’ll do it again next year with different holidays and different countries.
Here is the list of US holidays and observances that we will be celebrating with a book from another country:
Please sign Mr Linky if you plan on joining the party. You do not have to post a reading list, although if some of you would like to post a reading list (yes, I’m looking at you, Eva), feel free to leave the link below. Otherwise, you can just leave a link to your blog or your post stating your intent to join. And I’ll post about the April holiday and books about France later this month, so stay tuned.
A Small Place
Jamaica Kincaid
1988
81 pages
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FTC disclosure: I bought this one from Powells. I lurve Powells. Except maybe you could talk to them about their slow shipping? It’s agony waiting for an order!
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The Antigua that I knew, the Antigua in which I grew up, is not the Antigua you, a tourist, would see now. That Antigua no longer exists. That Antigua no longer exists partly for the usual reason, the passing of time, and partly because the bad-minded people who used to rule over it, the English, no longer do so. p. 23
I’m not quite sure what to make of this book, which is a collection of essays about the post-colonial state of Antigua. Kincaid is angry, rightly so, but she also seems to take it a little far, stereotyping all English as “bad-minded” and “pitiful” and “miserable.” She is also critical of the post-colonial Antiguan government, with its inefficiency and corruptness.
There’s an interesting Mother Jones interview with Kincaid, in which she talks about how she seeks the truth over positivity. She says “I think life is difficult and that is that” and that she is not interested in the pursuit of happiness. Which I find incredibly depressing. But then at the end of the article she admits to being very lucky, so now I don’t know how to reconcile that with all the anger and negativity in both her book and the interview. And with the fact that she was sent to New York to be an au pair and send money back home, but once in New York she cut off ties with her family, didn’t send money home, and pursued her own life. Which is totally her right, but also sounds a bit like the pursuit of happiness to me.
Anyways, I’m not saying that we should all keep our head in the sand and ignore the bad things. I don’t think that at all. And I know that not everyone has the luxury to pursue happiness. But I just get the impression she completely poo-poo’s it, along with American attitudes, and I just can’t go that far. Either that, or she’s just feeding us a line. What do you think?
All the Living
C.E. Morgan
February 2010
208 pages
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FTC disclosure: I almost left this blank. The horror! Luckily, I remembered to come back and tell you I bought it, so you can recall the troops.
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Publisher Comments:
One summer, a young woman travels with her lover to the isolated tobacco farm he has inherited after his family dies in a terrible accident. As Orren works to save his family farm from drought, Aloma struggles with the loneliness of farm life and must find her way in a combative, erotically-charged relationship with a grieving, taciturn man. A budding friendship with a handsome and dynamic young preacher further complicates her growing sense of dissatisfaction. As she considers whether to stay with Orren or to leave, she grapples with the finality of loss and death, and the eternal question of whether it is better to fight for freedom or submit to love.
All the Living has the timeless quality of a parable, but is also a perfect evocation of a time and place, a portrait of both age-old conflicts and modern life. It is an ode to the starve-acre Southern farm, the mountain landscape, and difficult love. In her lyrical and moving debut novel, C. E. Morgan recalls both the serenity of Marilynne Robinson and the shifting emotional currents and unashamed eroticism of James Salter. It is an unforgettable book from a major new voice.
This was the book I mentioned a few weeks ago in a Sunday Salon, the one that is likely set in present day, but feels more like something from the 1950s. Probably because Aloma is pretty isolated living outside of town on a tobacco farm. And the closest town is very small town, in the sense that everyone knows each other’s business.
It was okay, but then I’ve never made it through a Marilynne Robinson novel, so I’m guessing that’s not a writing style that is ever gonna rock my world. And I’ve never even heard of James Salter. Have you?
The Disappeared
Kim Echlin
December 2009
235 pages
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Yet another FTC disclosure: Yet another purchase. And one I will never regret.
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Publisher Comments:
A searing, fiercely beautiful love story for the ages, The Disappeared — already a best seller in Canada — traces one woman’s three-decades-long journey from the peaceful streets of Montreal to the humid, war-torn villages of Cambodia, as a brief love affair turns into a grand passion of loss, mourning, and remembrance, set against one of the most brutal genocides of the twentieth century.
When sixteen-year-old Anne Greves first meets Serey, a Cambodian student and musician forced by his family to leave his country during the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, she never considers the consequences of their complicated romance. Swept up in the fury and infatuation of young love, Anne rebels against her father’s wishes and embraces her relationship with Serey in the smoky jazz clubs of Montreal and in his cramped yellow bedroom. But when the borders of Cambodia are reopened, Serey must risk his life to return home, alone, in search of his family.
A decade later, Anne will travel halfway around the world to find him, and to save their love from the same tragic forces that first brought them together. Written in tenacious, achingly tender prose, The Disappeared challenges our notions of how to both claim the past and move on after those we love vanish.
Part elegy, part love letter, part call to arms, this courageous novel is a soaring tribute to all those who have disappeared in the violent conflicts throughout history.
If you think this description sounds over the top, well, it’s not. This book is absolutely haunting. It’s both beautifully written and heartbreaking. And I’m not the only one who thinks so…My Friend Amy loved it, as well. I honestly cannot say enough about the writing. It’s so evocative and touching, and I’m not one to normally notice these things.
The book is written from Anne’s perspective, and it reads like a love letter to Serey.
You keep coming back to me in little bits of moving images, light on a winter wall. Come to the door, spirit I know, and I will stand and hold you. Come alive just one more time, let me feel your breath, Serey, let me hear your voice in song, let me wash away the pain. Come, and I will whisper your name to you one more time.
As Anne reflects back, she recounts the story of their love. But she also tells the story of Cambodia, its people, its culture and its history. And she talks of genocide.
The Khmer Rouge used words to kill the people. Touk chom nenh dork chenh kor min kat. Sam at kmang. They said these things over and over, To keep you is no benefit, to lose you is no loss. Cleanse the enemy.
These were phrases I had never studied.
And finally, Anne and Serey’s story is a tribute to both love and genocide. Not two things that normally go together, but Anne’s love for Serey will not die, and she refuses to let Serey and his life go unremembered. Thus, his story becomes the story of all victims of genocide, the disappeared of the title.
I do not understand the unfathomable love I feel for you. But I am in the place the old Gnostics call emptiness. If your face appeared around the doorway where I sit at his small desk, I would turn to you and say, Now I am awake.
The strangeness of my love for you is that it has made me dead in life and you alive in death. I am afraid you will disappear and no one will remember your name.
Please, read this book. It will break your heart, but you’ll forgive it because of the beauty of the writing and the things it makes you think.
One Amazing Thing
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
2010 (although the ARC was out in 2009)
220 pages
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FTC disclosure: This is an ARC, and it was sent to me by a fellow reader (thanks Diane!). The publisher and me? We never talked, we never met.
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Nine strangers are sitting in the basement of a building (the Indian visa office) when an earthquake strikes, leaving them cut off from the world. As the group alternately bickers and struggles to survive, one young woman challenges them each to share a story, “one amazing thing” from their lives. It is these stories that will bring the group closer together as their situation becomes more precarious.
The characters are all very different. Their only common denominator is they were there to obtain a visa to travel to India (or were Indian, and working in the office). There are the proper Pritchetts, whose marriage is obviously strained. Cameron, the natural leader of the group, struggles with health issues and emotional trauma. Young Uma is questioning her ability to love. Tariq is angry at just about everything. Punky Lily and her quiet grandmother Jiang remain largely in the background, but share compelling stories. And the office workers, Mangalam and Malathi teeter on the brink of an affair.
In a way, this is a bit like The Canterbury Tales, in the sense that we have a group of strangers telling stories. But this is a very diverse group, made up of a Muslim-American, an Indian-American, two Indians, two white Americans, one black American, one Chinese-Indian and one American-Chinese-Indian, if that makes any sense. Their different experiences and world views all factor into the group dynamics, as well as the stories they tell.
The stories were wonderful, and along with the group’s interactions, made for a fascinating story. Until the end. I wasn’t too fond of the end. I should go to the bookstore and check out the end in the published book…I suspect it’s the same, though.
Because the author is a native of India, this counts towards the South Asian Authors Challenge.
Because Diane kindly shared this ARC with me, I’d like to pass it on to one of you. Please let me know in the comments if you’re interested and I’ll draw a name later this week.
This is going to be a long post today. I’m sorry, but I’ve got a variety of things to chat about.
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We Have a Winner
First of all, I need to announce the winner of This Book Is Overdue. After consulting with my advisor (random.org), I’ve been told that Jenners from Find Your Next Book Here is the new owner of this delightful book.
Woo-hoo!! Congratulations, and please email me with your address.
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So How’re You Doing With Those Reading Challenges, Softdrink?
Thanks for asking. I decided it was time to sit down and pretend like I’m being organized about reading challenges. Let’s start with a look at the current challenges:
South Asian Authors: I just finished my first of three books for this challenge, One Amazing Thing. The review will post sometime this week. I’ve also started my second book, The Space Between Us, so I’m in good shape with this challenge. I’m also reading books that were already on my bookshelf, making this an especially successful challenge.
Women Unbound: I committed to the Suffragette level (8 books, at least 3 non-fiction). I think I’ve more than completed this challenge…the thing is, I keep finding more books I want to read! So don’t be surprised if I pretend I’m still participating. Here’s what I’ve read:
O.A.T.E.S.: The idea here is to read books by Oates, Atwood, Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway and Steinbeck. I signed up for Rolled Oates, or two books, and I’ve finished. Yippee! I actually read 2 books by Atwood, The Penelopiad and The Year of the Flood, and one Steinbeck, East of Eden, so I’ve fulfilled my pledge to read two books.
The NY Challenge: My own challenge, and I haven’t even started the one book set in NY I need to read. This is why I set the requirement at one book.
I’ve been trying to resist, but there have been a few new developments that I just can’t resist:
Lu at Regular Rumination will be Exploring American Authors this year, and I’m going to join in. I’m going to try to read one book a month by an American author not from Canada or the US. Which isn’t to say I don’t love Canadian authors, ‘cause I do. It’s just that I already read Canadian authors. It’s the Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, Honduran, Peruvian, (you get the idea) authors that I tend to ignore. This isn’t really a challenge, more like an informal read-along, which is just perfect for me.
Carrie at Books and Movies is hosting the Ireland Challenge. Since I’m Irish waaaaaay back in the family tree, and my dad was born on Saint Patrick’s Day, I just can’t say no (and in my mind those are perfectly logical reasons for joining a challenge). Some possibilities for this challenge are Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show, The Irish Country Doctor and How to Paint a Dead Man, all of which are currently residing inside of my house. How convenient. Oh, and I’m going with the Shamrock level, which is 2 books.
Also,Trish of Trish’s Reading Nook is hosting the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. I’m sure I can squeeze this one in. I’m going to use it to try and finish some of the non-fiction books I’ve started but have yet to finish. Please don’t make me name them…just know that there are plenty sitting around the house.
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Because the World Needs More Challenges
Okay, not really, although I’m sure there are some junkies out there looking to score. So just for them, I have a few things of my own in the works. Inspired by Ti at Book Chatter’s Moby Dick Monday (at which I totally failed), I’ll be doing a Wuthering Heights Wednesday read-along sometime soon. It’s tentatively planned for April, I just have to figure out how it’ll work. I’m also planning a quirky year-long international literature challenge, but that won’t kick off for a few more months. But if I put it down here, then it’s gotta happen, right? So stay tuned.
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Books! For You! (maybe)
Are you still with me? I also have a few books in need of new homes. These are all previously read, but I promise they’re in good shape. If you’re interested in a book, let me know in the comments. First come, first served, and one per customer, please.
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The End
Whew. I think that’s it.
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
Susan Jane Gilman
2009
304 pages
Last year when this book was first published I saw all sorts of reviews and thought… “Meh. China. Not interested.” Because China is one place I have no interest in traveling to. Call me eurocentric, but when I think about places I want to travel, I think of Ireland, and England, and Croatia, and Czechoslovakia, and Canada, and lots of places in the US, and if I’m really feeling adventurous, Mexico (because Hamburger thinks the cheaper the better, and if I ever travel to Mexico again I just know I’ll be sharing a room with a cockroach, and that’s so not my idea of a good time…and there’re a few cockroach scenes in this book that support this).
But then I read Dawn’s review and she included a few quotes from the book and I thought, “Hey. I like the way Gilman thinks. Maybe I should read this one after all.” And so I did. And it was totally worth it.
After college graduation, Susan and Claire, two casual college friends, decide to backpack around the world. They start their trip in China, which in 1986 had just started to allow tourists, and then the plan was to work their way west. Unfortunately, after a few weeks in China, Susan started to notice Claire was acting a bit paranoid. At first she explained away her observations with excuses like Claire just needed some alone time. However, it soon becomes very apparent that Claire was experiencing some sort of mental breakdown.
Since I’ve done the student backpacking trip (7 weeks through France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, (staring at the Yugoslavian countryside from the train because we had no Visa for Yugoslavia, and I just dated myself), Hungary, Austria and Germany (whew) I must say I spent most of the book feeling very grateful for the sanity of my college roommate, who was an awesome traveling partner, and with whom I’m still on speaking terms (although infrequently, as we now live in different states). My 40 year old self was appalled by some of the decisions that were made, although if I think back to my 21 year old self, she wouldn’t have been quite so shocked.
Anyways, I seem to be digressing more than usual in this review. Besides the fact that Claire’s increasing paranoia makes for an interesting story, and if you’ve ever done the student travel bit parts seem distressingly and comfortably familiar, and the people they meet are fascinating, Gilman has some fantastic observations about travel. Here are a few:
For perhaps the first time in my life, it became viscerally clear to me just how little I mattered, just how much I was not the center of the universe. It was like a swift kick to the gut. p. 13
…travel is a bit like the Internet – there’s a protective anonymity to it. Cast into a situation with people you never have to see again and shielded from repercussions, you turn brazenly candid. p. 41
Being a tourist, I was beginning to see, meant being infantilized much of the time. All power is contextual. Take a brain surgeon in Uzbekistan and stick him in Manhattan; take the toughest homeboy from Compton and leave him in Tuscany. Drop any of us, anywhere, in an alien environment, and you’ll see our IQ plummet. “IS THIS THE BUS STOP?” we holler at strangers, while dementedly pointing to the bus stop. To buy a sandwich, we’ll pantomime chewing. This is why, I suspect, so many otherwise decent people back home behave like assholes abroad: There’s nothing quite like feeling helpless to turn you into a world-class control freak, to make you forget your manners and throw a tantrum if your room isn’t ready and there’s no ice in your drink. In a strange environment you feel like a baby, and you’re often treated like a baby, and so you act like one. pp. 59-60
Soon we were all vying to establish our backpackers’ street cred, to prove how intrepidly we’d been traveling, how much discomfort we’d incurred at how little expense. The irony of this was wholly lost on us. We were too young and myopic to recognize the perversity of a logic that equates voluntary deprivation with authentic experience. We thought that by wearing burlap pajamas, contracting intestinal parasites, and opting to ride in third class with ‘the people,’ we were somehow being less Western and more Asian. pp. 147-148
If you like travel memoirs, I’d highly recommend this one. It would most definitely go on my list of bestest travel books, if I had such a list.
It’s also a great book for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge. Two young women backpacking in China? It doesn’t get much more unbound than that! For a variety of reasons, their trip took an amazing amount of guts and fortitude. And rumor has it, one of Gilman’s other books, Poufy White Tiara, would also make an excellent book for the challenge. I see that one in my future, too.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
February 2010
384 pages
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FTC: This one came from the bookstore, so nothing to confess here, move along.
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If you read one non-fiction book this year, make it this book.
Seriously.
At first, I was a little leery of this book, but only because of the science. I pretty much consider science to be Boring. But this book doesn’t read like a science book. It hardly reads like non-fiction. Skloot focuses on the people, and in doing so, she tells the story of Henrietta Lacks AND her cells.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks was 31 years old, mother to 5 children, and wife to David Lacks. The Lacks family was descended from both slaves and slave owners. The extended family grew up together, working in the tobacco fields. Henrietta and David were first cousins, both raised by their grandfather in an old slave cabin. In the 1940s David left for Baltimore, to find work in the shipyards, and after a few years, Henrietta and the children were able to join him.
However, by the late 1940s, Henrietta knew something wasn’t right. She felt a knot on her womb, and eventually went to Johns Hopkins. This was a huge step for Henrietta, as Johns Hopkins had a shady reputation among the poor black population of Baltimore. People believed that the hospital would snatch children off the street for use in medical experiments. However, it was the only option available to Henrietta.
Diagnosed with cervical cancer, Henrietta underwent treatment (radium tubes sewn into her vagina, followed by radiation treatments that scorched her skin). Initially, the doctors thought that the treatments were successful, but the tumors soon spread and Henrietta eventually died a very painful death from uremic poisoning (due to the tumors, she couldn’t pee, meaning the toxins built up in her body).
During the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, cell research was taking off. Henrietta’s doctor took a sample of her cancer cells. These cells became the first cells to be kept successfully alive in a laboratory. What’s more, they reproduced. The HeLa cell line, as it became known, is still used in medical research today. Henrietta’s cells have travelled the globe (and into space), and were used for research when developing the polio vaccine, in cancer research, and in cloning.
However. And this is a huge however. Neither Henrietta nor her family ever knew that her cells had been “harvested” for research purposes. When her grown children finally heard that their mother’s cells were immortal, they were outraged. And it reinforced the idea that Johns Hopkins was the enemy.
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot tells Henrietta’s story through her children’s search for understanding. Skloot had long been fascinated by Henrietta Lacks, ever since she had heard a brief mention of her in a community college class taken as a high schooler. Skloot spent years researching Henrietta Lacks, and convincing her children that she meant no harm in digging into their mother’s past.
While the book focuses on the people (the Lacks family, as well as the doctors and researchers involved), it raises excellent questions about medical ethics. Besides Henrietta’s story, it touches on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and other individuals who have been unwitting victims of scientific research. It also ventures into the murky area of who owns cells.
This is a fascinating book, as it provides a look into how the scientific study of cells brought about both good (scientific advances) and bad (the trauma and misunderstanding brought upon a family who knew nothing about what happened to Henrietta’s cells).
While Henrietta certainly didn’t intend to become a medical pioneer, that’s what ended up happening with her cells. Her contribution to science and history is enormous, and she definitely deserves her spot in the Women Unbound Reading Challenge.
Today I’m over at Rebecca’s blog, Lost in Books, answering 20 Questions. Go check me out.
And if you still have questions, come back here and ask away…I might just answer. 
My name is softdrink. Or fizzybeverage. If you're feeling formal, you can call me Jill. But if you hang out long enough, you'll discover I'm not all that formal.
I live on the Central Coast of California with my boyfriend of 18 years (yes, that makes me feel old and no, we're not getting married), hamburger. Get it...hamburger and softdrink? Aw, come on, admit it, you have a cutesy name, too.
My favorite things are books and travel. So that is mostly what I write about. The rest of it is just crap.
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish. ~S.I. Hayakawa
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
~St. Augustine
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
~Mark Twain
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