Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
Haven't posted for awhile on this thread, but I have been reading. This brings my total up to 17 books this year, 13 of which are challenge books.
Here are the reviews:
Run for the Border (Also Face Your Fears and Freebies—from our then-local little free library): The Mapmaker's Wife by Robert Whitaker: This is the sort of history that focusses on a little-known event and uses it to illumine its time and place. Two events, really. In 1735, a group of French scientists sailed off to South America to measure the equator in order to determine the size and shape of the earth. While there, one of the members of this party married a Peruvian noblewoman. They got separated for more than two decades, and then the wife, Madame Isabel Godin, received word that her husband was awaiting her down the Amazon. So she went. With her brothers and a couple of nephews and some servants and a slave or two. They end up stranded on a sandbar. The slave (Joaquin) went off in their surviving canoe to roust up a rescue party. All the rest of the party died before help arrived...except Isabel. She and her brothers and nephews had set out into the jungle, trying to walk to their destination. After her brothers died, Isabel, who knew Quechua, continued and ran into two indigenous couples. And so, she became the first non-indigenous person to survive a solo trek into the Amazon jungle (i.e. not by boat). She was reunited with her husband, and she set in motion all forms of freedom for Joaquin, who also survived, but had been imprisoned. Isabel became famous in her day, and a school in Riobamba (where she lived much of her life) is named for her.
Now this is a hugely inspirational story that sprawls across two continents (Europe and South America), vastly different terrains (the Andes and the Amazon), and vastly different cultures (the Enlightenment scientists, the Spanish & Portuguese colonists, and Indigenous communities). I grateful to finally read it.
It was not, however, always an easy read. For one thing, I hate reading about torture, and the author and the Mapmakers who took notes pulled no punches in describing what the Spanish and Portuguese did to the Indigenous peoples. What Isabel and her retinue endured once they were stranded also amounts to torture, and the author pulls no punches about this either.
Much of the book is about the science of cartography. Unfortunately for me, I have a problem grasping how anything mechanical works without pictures... preferably with hands on activity. The result is that some of the early scientific chapters were heavy going. But again, this book was worth the effort.
Vast Critical Acclaim: Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout: Strout used this Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories to investigate the backstories of secondary characters while she was writing My Name Is Lucy Barton. The writing is excellent in the spare and accessible way favored by authors of short stories set in the Midwest. Which this is. I'm not surprised it won the Pulitzer.
But it doesn't fire me with any desire to read My Name Is Lucy Barton, which I don't have and haven't read. I found some of the characters worse than loathsome. It's a good thing this is a short story collection, because I wouldn't have wasted my time reading a whole book about a woman who helps her husband rape their houseguests.
But there are moments of grace. Notably, the ending of the last story comes close to redeeming the rest of the book. Nonetheless, I'm glad it's over.
Another's Mother Tongue (German): The Book of Dreams by Nina George, translated by Simon Pare: What gorgeous, heartfelt writing! A deeply felt and conceived and executed look at where a person might be when they're in a coma. Which could have been exhaustingly dull...but isn't. The characters ring true.
Some actions don't seem plausible. When medical people are working, they usually throw you out of the room, if you're not the person they're working on. Also, this isn't the book for people who have a hard time with shifting realities, timelines and planes of consciousness.
But for someone like me, this is one of the best books I've read all year. Two days ago, I went and got as many of her other books as I could find.
Bits and Pieces: The Accidental Dictionary by Paul Anthony Jones: I started reading this book out loud to Mr. Siri, one entry at a time, late last year. It lends itself to that sort of reading. The "dictionary" entries are actually little essays about how & why some words change their meanings dramatically. Some are more interesting than others, and since the author is British, some of the meanings (and even one of the words) aren't what we'd use in American English. (The word Americans don't use is bumph, which originally meant toilet paper and now refers to trashy novels in British English.)
We enjoyed the book and would recommend it. With one caveat. Don't read it all at once. Bits and Pieces is the way to go.
Year of the Ox (Also Laughing Matters): Ten Little Herrings by L.C. Tyler: I enjoyed this sequel to The Herring Seller's Apprentice more than I did the first book. Much funnier. Think Agatha Christie performed by the Marx Brothers.
But I don't think I'll read the rest of the series. Elsie and Ethelred have each killed the other (the way authors do kill their subjects) once. It's obvious that the pattern will continue. So, I'm bowing out of reading more.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal
