Peanutfied is back again
It's hard for a blogger to retire, especially when other bloggers are putting us to sleep with their song-by-song response to Dylan concerts. So in the interest of keeping up the intellectual level of cyberspace, I return.
With: some of my summer reading notes. I won't dump them all on you at once, just the June books. So, friends of peanutfiend, what are YOU reading?
June
Philip Caputo, Acts of Faith, about Americans and other outsiders during the war in southern Sudan. In some ways this is very typical—idealism mixed with cynicism, outside do-gooders who cause more harm than good, Westerners who never quite know what’s going on—and reminds me of The Darling, Poisonwood Bible, and lots of Nigerian novels about Western women who marry African men. But it’s so well written and complex-but-unified, that it manages to be altogether wonderful, as well as heartbreaking.
Uzodinma Iweala, Beast of No Nation. I’m not sure whether or not to call this a Nigerian novel, since I gather the author was not born there but his parents were. Anyhow he went to Harvard and while there wrote a compelling novel about the experience of the boy soldiers in some war like Sierra Leone or Liberia. The actual plot is less important than the atmosphere, for the author makes the reader feel she actually can understand what’s going on in the heads of the brutalized children in African wars.
Helen Humphries, Wild Dogs, about a group of people whose dogs have gone feral. The six people, whose dogs have been “released” by striking cruel lovers or family members, gather nightly at the edge of the woods to try to call their dogs back. Alice, the central narrator, is in love one of the others, a biologist who studies wolves. The rest of the group is a retarded girl, an elderly man, an abused teenage boy, and a creepy middle-aged man who lives with his never-seen mother. Beautifully written and moving meditation about love and about our relationships with dogs.
Kate Walbert, The Gardens of Kyoto. I loved this novel about World War II and its impact on a family. The narrative moves back and forth in time, starting when Ellen, just into her teens, falls in love with her cousin Randall, who will die at Iwo Jima. They have loved reading leaves he a book on Kyoto’s gardens, one of which has 15 stones but one is always unseen (this seems to be the theme of the book, the influence of absent people). The family is full of secrets and tragedies—one of Ellen’s sisters is abused and murdered, Randall had been illegitimate, Ellen falls in love with a man who thinks he’s corresponding with someone else, Randall’s home is a ghost-filled old house where runaway slaves were hidden—that unfold over the postwar period. Complex (the Ad Lib book group at Skidompha Library kept calling it “disjointed”) and moving.
With: some of my summer reading notes. I won't dump them all on you at once, just the June books. So, friends of peanutfiend, what are YOU reading?
June
Philip Caputo, Acts of Faith, about Americans and other outsiders during the war in southern Sudan. In some ways this is very typical—idealism mixed with cynicism, outside do-gooders who cause more harm than good, Westerners who never quite know what’s going on—and reminds me of The Darling, Poisonwood Bible, and lots of Nigerian novels about Western women who marry African men. But it’s so well written and complex-but-unified, that it manages to be altogether wonderful, as well as heartbreaking.
Uzodinma Iweala, Beast of No Nation. I’m not sure whether or not to call this a Nigerian novel, since I gather the author was not born there but his parents were. Anyhow he went to Harvard and while there wrote a compelling novel about the experience of the boy soldiers in some war like Sierra Leone or Liberia. The actual plot is less important than the atmosphere, for the author makes the reader feel she actually can understand what’s going on in the heads of the brutalized children in African wars.
Helen Humphries, Wild Dogs, about a group of people whose dogs have gone feral. The six people, whose dogs have been “released” by striking cruel lovers or family members, gather nightly at the edge of the woods to try to call their dogs back. Alice, the central narrator, is in love one of the others, a biologist who studies wolves. The rest of the group is a retarded girl, an elderly man, an abused teenage boy, and a creepy middle-aged man who lives with his never-seen mother. Beautifully written and moving meditation about love and about our relationships with dogs.
Kate Walbert, The Gardens of Kyoto. I loved this novel about World War II and its impact on a family. The narrative moves back and forth in time, starting when Ellen, just into her teens, falls in love with her cousin Randall, who will die at Iwo Jima. They have loved reading leaves he a book on Kyoto’s gardens, one of which has 15 stones but one is always unseen (this seems to be the theme of the book, the influence of absent people). The family is full of secrets and tragedies—one of Ellen’s sisters is abused and murdered, Randall had been illegitimate, Ellen falls in love with a man who thinks he’s corresponding with someone else, Randall’s home is a ghost-filled old house where runaway slaves were hidden—that unfold over the postwar period. Complex (the Ad Lib book group at Skidompha Library kept calling it “disjointed”) and moving.
posted by peanutfiend | 9:32 AM
2 Comments:
Putting us to sleep huh? That's it missy - a blog war is on.
Maybe bloggers have to be in the same age category to enjoy each other's blogs. I'm glad Peanutfiend is back, but s/he will put non-readers to sleep, too.
Gail
Post a Comment
<< Home