April Check-in: North Africa Reading Challenge

Sorry this check-in is so late. I forgot. However, I did read a couple of North Africa-related books this month. And I even reviewed one of them: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. I also read In the Country of Men by Libyan author Hisham Matar. I’ll try to get a review written and posted soon.

'africa-globe' photo (c) 2007, openDemocracy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/I (we) will be concentrating on reading about Northern Africa this year. It’s a good place to start because I think we could all afford to know a little more about this part of the world from which so much of our heritage comes and in which so much has been happening lately. In my template, there are eleven countries in Northern Africa: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. (South Sudan is a brand-new country in this region, and of course books set in South Sudan count, too.) The challenge is to read eleven books either set in this region or written by authors from this region in 2012. I hope to read read at least one adult book and one children’s book from each country. The children’s books may be more difficult to find.

You are welcome to try any one of the following challenges—or make up your own.

1. North Africa Tour: Read at least one book from each of the eleven countries in Northern Africa. Since the challenge runs for eleven months, this challenge would entail reading one book per month.

2. African Country Concentration: Read five books set in one of the countries of Northern Africa or five books by authors from one of the countries of Northern Africa. Example: Read five books by Egyptian authors.

3. Children’s Challenge: Read five to eleven children’s books set in Northern Africa. Adults are welcome to do this challenge either with a child or not.

The Northern Africa Challenge begins on January 1, 2012 and ends on December 1, 2012. If you choose to read eleven books for this challenge, that will be one book per month. You can still join. If you would like to join me in this challenge in 2012, please leave a comment. I will keep a list of challenge participants in the sidebar, and I will link to your reviews, if you write them and send me links, on my Africa pages. (If you already have book reviews on your blog related to Northern Africa, those books don’t count for the challenge. However, if you send me the links at sherryDOTearlyAtgmailDOTcom, I will add your reviews to my Northern Africa page.)

Did you read any books in April set in North Africa or written by North African authors? Have you reviewed those books on your blog? If so, please leave a link here so that we can share our journeys through the countries of northern Africa.

1. Semicolon (Scoop by Evelyn Waugh)
2. Falaise (Egypt: The Book of Chaos)
3. Megan (The Good Braider)
4. JoV (Desert by J.M.G. Le Clézio)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Tour of Texas Towns

Nimrod, Ding Dong,
Zipperlandville,
Needmore, Seymour,
Dime Box, Gill.

'Texas' photo (c) 2009, Calsidyrose - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/Dripping Springs, Argyle,
Red Lick, Thrall,
Rosebud, New Hope,
Zionsville, Rawls.

Sour Lake, Big Lake,
Runaway Bay,
Smiley, Snook, Shamrock,
Buffalo, Fate.

Nazareth, Noonday,
Oyster Creek,
Mount Calm, Moscow,
Trinidad, Wink.

North Zulch, Happy,
Lazbuddie, Crow,
Chester, Lovelady,
Lollipop, Grow.

Muleshoe, Oatmeal,
Eldorado, Maud,
Paradise, Eden,
Maybelle, Claude.

'TX base (portion)' photo (c) 2009, Justin Cozart - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/George West, Tom Bean,
Bug Tussle, Rusk,
Loco, Looneyville,
Noodle, Lusk.

Melvin, Marvin,
Jot’em Down, Joy,
New Home, Mountain Home,
Cut and Shoot, Troy.

Carthage, Dublin,
Naples, Brushy Creek,
Athens, Paris,
Maple, Caddo Peak.

Nameless, MaryNeal,
Circle Back, Draw,
Byspot, Cherokee,
Sacul, Recklaw.

Gun Barrel City,
Fly Gap, Rhome,
Okra, Placid,
Weeping Mary, Nome.

Strange names dot Texas map by Roy Bragg.

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Dystopian fiction. Matt Alacron was not born; he was harvested. He’s a clone with DNA from El Patron, druglord of a country between Mexico and the U.S. called Opium, where other clones called “eejits” work the poppy fields in mindless obedience and slavery. But Matt is different; El Patron wanted Matt to retain his intelligence and his ability to choose, for some reason.

The House of the Scorpion won the National Book for Young People’s Literature in 2002 and was a Newbery Honor Book in 2003. I was fascinated by Matt’s fight for survival and by his oddly familiar world in which drug lords rule and people are enslaved by power-hungry dictators who long for riches and immortality. Would that all of those people who gain a little power would, rather than seeking after more and more, pray the prayer of Solomon:

God: “Ask! What shall I give you?”
Solomon: “Therefore give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?”
God: “See, I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you. I have also given you what you have not asked: both riches and honor, so that there shall not be anyone like you among the kings all your days.”
I Kings 3

There is a God, and I am not He. To fear Him is the beginning of wisdom, and the characters in The House of the Scorpion needed desperately to hear and understand that lesson.

Other novels about human clones and cloning:
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson.
Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin.
Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames.

Scrawl by Mark Shulman

Autobiography of a bully. Autobiography of an intelligent, articulate, overweight, and poverty-stricken bully.

Tod Munn has excuses for his behavior. He has, if not a “heart of gold”, at least, redeeming qualities. The voice in this first person novel, which mostly consists of the notebook that Tod must “scrawl” during detention, is the real attraction for the story. It’s a classic story of a bully tamed by self-examination and the love of a good woman. Well, love may be a strong word, but friendship anyway.

“Call me Tod.
Okay, no, I’m just kidding. That’s the first line from Moby Dick, all right? I always wanted to start a book like that. This is my first book, and I’m writing it for one reason only. Not for history and not for scientific research and definitely not to let out my inner demons. I’m doing it so I don’t have to pick up trash in the school courtyard like certain deviant so-called friends of mine who also got caught.
I am being reformed.”

Melissa at Here in the Bonny Glen suggested I read this YA novel; a long time ago she did, she did, and it was on the Cybils shortlist for YA fiction in 2011. I just got around to it in March while I was on blog break, and it was definitely a good read. I’m think it might be good to compare Tod Munn and Scrawl to Gary Schmidt’s Doug Swieteck in Okay for Now. I think liked the Gary Schmidt book better, but I didn’t read them at the same time. Both books were great reads and would appeal to boys in particular. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe I’ll buy copies of both and leave them around the house for Karate Kid to find. He needs to be reading something, and I find it difficult to capture his interest. One of these books might do the trick.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I do believe SFP at pages turned nailed this one. (You’ll only want to read her thoughts after you’ve read the book.) It’s a short book, a novelette really, but the ending isn’t . . . exactly. Hence the title.

The book is only 176 pages long, but it tells the story of Tony Webster’s life from his perspective, which it turns out is somewhat skewed. Maybe. Tony doesn’t “get it.” The book raises the possibility that we’re all like Tony, that our memories are unreliable and we really don’t understand each other or the events of our lives very well.

The Sense Of An Ending won the 2011 Man Booker prize for literature. I think it well worth the the time invested to read it and think about it.

“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves.”

“We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thougt we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient— it’s not useful— to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.”

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

The Expats by Chris Pavone

About a month after I read the ARC of this chick lit/spy novel, I heard an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered with author Chris Pavone. (According to the interviewer, it’s pronounced “pavoney”).

It seems that Mr. Pavone moved to Luxembourg where he became a “house-husband” and started writing a book that bored him just as much as housekeeping did. So, he decided to make the homemaker protagonist into a retired CIA spy, and the rest, as they say—well, if not history, at least it got more interesting.

So, the protagonist of this spy thriller was a CIA agent, but she’s hung up her spurs (and guns and spy stuff) and moved to Luxembourg to become a homemaker while her banker/computer security expert husband makes a mint helping secretive banks with their security systems. Kate sees little of her husband who works long hours, and she becomes bored with her life with little children. She begins to wonder if her past has come back to haunt her in the person of a couple in the “expat” community who seem to know more about her than they should.

The book has lots of twist and turns, as a thriller should. But something about it just didn’t draw me in the same way a Helen MacInnes novel always does (my gold standard for spy novels). Maybe it was the bored mommy angle that I didn’t like. The book was just good, not great.

Other blogger reviews:
Sam at Book Chase: “Seldom have I changed my mind about a book so many times before finishing it, than I did with Chris Pavone’s debut novel, The Expats.”

Read Around the World: “Well, you may take the girl out of the CIA but there’s no way you can take the CIA out of the girl. Pavone has created a spunky, devious, brave new heroine in Kate Moore and I don’t believe for a second that we’ve seen the last of her.”

World War One for Children and Young Adults

I read three novels in the past couple of weeks for children and young adults that were set before, during, and after World War I. I’ll have to say that each of the books was odd in its own way: odd prose style in the first, an unexpected twist that I almost didn’t see coming in the second, and anomalous angels in the third.

Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war. The writing style in this one is the strange part. At least, it read oddly to me. The sentences are short and choppy, Hemingway-esque, with a lack of transitions and analogies that I found disconcerting. At the same time, the sparse prose made me pay attention to each detail, so I can’t say it was ineffective—just odd. Here’s an example, chosen at random:

“Their first guests of the summer were Willy and his father. Willy had grown much taller. He was almost as tall as Guy, and thinner. He had a thin black mustache and looked older than seventeen. Seeing Wily’s mustache, Guy decided that he would grow one this summer.”

If I were writing the story, I would probably have combined some of those sentences into one more complicated sentence. But I’m not at all sure that my inclination to complication would be the better choice for this story. The book is short, 135 pages, but it tells a nuanced story of friendship over the course of several years and the effects of war on the relationships of three young people as they grow into adulthood during World War I.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Mr. Morpurgo also wrote War Horse, the book that formed the source material for the movie of the same name from last year. Both Private Peaceful and War Horse are set during World War I, and I plan to pick up the latter book from the library this afternoon. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book yet.

Private Peaceful focuses on the plight of British soldiers who were summarily tried, condemned and executed on the battlefield for cowardice or desertion during World War 1. Mr. Morpurgo gives some information in his afterword that I did not know about this practice:

“That a shameful injustice had been done to these unfortunate men seemed to me beyond doubt. Their judges called them ‘worthless.’ Their trials, or court martials, were brief, under twenty minutes in some cases. Twenty minutes for a man’s life. Often they had no one to speak for them and no witnesses were called in their defense. . . . The youngest soldier to be executed was just seventeen.

Successive British governments have since refused to acknowledge the injustice suffered by these men, and have refused to grant posthumous pardons—which would of course be a great consolation to surviving relatives. The New Zealand government have pardoned their executed soldiers; it can be done. The Australians and the Americans, to their credit, never allowed their soldiers to be executed in the first place.”

I thought the novel itself, the story of Charlie and Tommo Peaceful, brothers who went to war together, was well-written and absorbing. Mr. Morpurgo kept me guessing until the end, and one of the minor characters, Big Joe, was so well-drawn that I wanted him to have his own book. (Big Joe is the Peaceful brothers’ older sibling who is mentally challenged.)

I recommend Private Peaceful if you liked War Horse or if you just want to read a well-told tale of the difficulties of being a soldier on the front lines during World War I.

A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town. While the war forms a backdrop for this novel, it’s really the story of a Jewish family and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Fourteen year old Hannah is rather improbably sent out into the streets of Boston by her erstwhile guardian to keep her from catching the flu from her family members, and she ends up, again improbably, in Vermont. Hannah also sees angels.

It’s a good introduction to the time period and the prejudices of that era and the hardships of the Spanish flu epidemic. And the reviews at Amazon are for the most part highly positive. I just didn’t ever believe in Hannah or her cold impersonal guardian Vashti or her plight. And I thought the author cheated on the ending by making us believe one (tragic) thing and then pulling off a “no, not really” surprise. And the angels seemed out of place and sort of extraneous.

So, my favorite World War I children’s and YA novels so far are: Winnie’s War by Jennie Moss, The Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Laurence, and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. What about you?

Saturday Review of Books: April 28, 2012

“The business of fiction is to probe the tender spots of an imperfect world, which is where I live, write, and read.” ~Barbara Kingsolver

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

I finally got a chance to read this third book in the Penderwick series, and I can tell anyone who hasn’t already read it that it’s just as good as the first two books about the Penderwick family of four girls—Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty—having adventures and growing up.

In this particular installment of the Penderwick saga, Jane falls in love herself when she tries to write a romance for her bold protagonist, Sabrina Starr. Skye becomes the OAP (oldest available Penderwick sister) while Rosalind takes a vacation. And Batty collects golf balls, makes a new friend, wears a large orange life jacket through most of the story, and discovers her own special giftedness. Jeffrey, the girls’ friend from the first book, is back, and many of the adventures involve Jeffrey and his musical talents and his family trials and tribulations.

I truly think the Penderwick series is going to go down in history as classic children’s lit, comparable to Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books and Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy family series. I’ve picked a couple of samples of Ms. Birdsall’s spot-on depiction of sisters who really love each other, through thick and thin.

This paragraph is Skye, trying to decide what to do about Jane who has developed an unfortunate crush on a skateboarding BOY!

“Skye managed to get off the porch and outside without punching Jane in the nose and making it swollen all over again, and she was quite proud of that, at least. But now she was really concerned. How could she protect Jane from this idiocy? Wondering what Caesar or Napoleon would do in this situation was worthless. Skye needed a tree to kick now, immediately. Poor patient birch trees—this wasn’t the treatment they deserved. But kicking them calmed Skye down a little, enough to help her realize that she did after all have someone she could talk to about boys, crushes, and dancing with Popsicle sticks. Aunt Claire, of course. Skye apologized to the birch trees and began to plot how to broach these painful subjects without giving away Jane’s secrets.”

And here’s a totally different passage, different in tone and content, about the Penderwicks’ friend Jeffrey and his mentor playing music for them

“From Jeffrey’s clarinet poured a haunting, stirring melody, a soaring string of notes that floated out over the ocean. All alone Jeffrey played, his eyes closed in concentration, until it seemed that the song was ending. But then Alec’s saxophone joined the clarinet, and together the man and the boy again played the heart-stopping tune, note for note. The girls clung to each other, each one feeling as though she’d never really heard music before, and although the splendor of the music was almost too much, the players began yet once more, this time in rich harmony, finally ending with a flourish, so thrilling that when the music stopped, it seemed for a moment as though the world had to stop along with it.”

Now, that’s some fine writing. And the plot and characters are just as good as the writing. Just quit reading my pedestrian attempts to describe the Penderwicks books, and go read one, preferably starting with the first book in the series and then proceeding in order through the three books Ms. Birdsall has so far gifted us with. By the time you finish those, maybe there will be a fourth. I certainly hope we don’t have long to wait for another installment. (On her website, Jeanne Birdsall says it takes her three years to write a Penderwicks book and that there will be five books in all.)

Book 1: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and Very Interesting Boy Z-baby listens to The Penderwicks. Semicolon review of The Penderwicks.

Book 2: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street Reviewed by Sarah at Library Hospital. Reviewed by Carrie K. at Books and Movies.

Book 3: The Penderwicks at Point Mouette Reviewed by Amy at Hope Is the Word.

Amnesia Is In

What Alice Forgot by Lianne Moriarty

Alice Love is twenty-nine years old and pregnant with her first child. She and her husband Nick are deeply in love and very excited about their soon-to-be-born child. Alice’s older sister Elizabeth is her best friend, and life is good. The year is 1998.

But when Alice falls at gym and hits her head, something strange happens. She wakes up, not pregnant and not in 1998. It’s 2008, and Alice has lost the memory of the past ten years of her life. I liked the way this book, essentially chick-lit, ended. The ending was unexpected, and I was pleased with the choices the author made about her characters and their choices.

Of course, this novel made me think about memories, good and bad. Who are we without our memories?

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

In this amnesiac novel, Christine has lost more than twenty years of her life. She, too, was involved in an accident that caused her to lose her memory, but for Christine her ability to form and retain memories is impaired. She can remember what’s happened to her today, but when she goes to sleep and wakes up the next morning, her memories are all gone. Each day is a clean slate in which Christine starts out believing that she is still a twenty-something or even a child rather than a forty-five year old wife and mother. Christine’s husband, Ben, must remind her every morning who she is, where she is, and who he is.

“I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of recollection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not a accumulation of our memories?”

This second book is more of a thriller: Christine’s memory loss puts her in a situation that is not what it seems to be, and by the end of the book Christine is in serious danger of losing her life if she cannot find a way to access the memories that will enable her to distinguish between truth and lies.

I thought both of these were worthwhile, if you’re at all interested in the premise. I also found a couple of books at Amazon that would make good nonfiction companion reads to these two novels. I haven’t read these, but I would like to do so soon.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. “Foer . . . draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist’s trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author’s own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.”

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel. “Driven by vibrant curiosity, Kandel’s personal quest to understand memory is threaded throughout this absorbing history. Beginning with his childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, In Search of Memory chronicles Kandel’s outstanding career from his initial fascination with history and psychoanalysis to his groundbreaking work on the biological process of memory, which earned him the Nobel Prize.”

And here are some fictional “amnesia books” that I have read and can recommend:
The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan. YA fiction. Semicolon review here. Sequels are The Long Way Home, The Truth of the Matter, and The Final Hour.

Random Harvest by James Hilton. Semicolon review here.

A Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan. Semicolon review here.

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. Not exactly an amnesia story, but it reminds me of Hilton’s style somehow. Semicolon review here.

The Professor and the Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa. Semicolon review here. Engineer Husband is reading this one right now, and it’s one of my favorites. Math and memory loss.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. More modern and young adult-ish. Semicolon review here.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Also YA and more of a twenty-first century feel. Semicolon review here.

Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series features Mr. Monk as a late nineteenth century private detective suffering from amnesia. His assistant/love interest/foil is a nurse named Hester.

Any more amnesiac selections that you can remember?