The Elegance of the Hedgehog

#375
Title: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Author: Muriel Barbery
Translator: Alison Anderson
Year: 2006/2008
Publisher: Europa Editions
325 pages

Here I will beg to differ from many of my online friends and people whose opinions I admire. I was willing to live with the book's premise and the protagonist's unpleasantly classist world view. I was willing to suspend disbelief and manage the general preciousness of the characters. I endured scores of pages of tedious and sophomoric philosophical rambling. The payoff for this was the idea that it's okay to be dead if your heart is in the right place. Or maybe it's if you're enlightened. Or just a person who admires interior decorating. Unless you're a child. What looked like it might resolve in an interesting way turned out to be a one-trick pony. I'll get my wabi sabi elsewhere from now on.

Maldives Musings

#374
Title: Maldives Musings
Author: Liz Banks
Year: 2004
Publisher: Upfront Publishing
Country: Maldives
91 pages

I greatly admire small press and self-publishing. I think it's admirable. However, the author loses the editorial perspective that can turn a personal narrative into one of universal appeal. This is especially obvious in books whose conceit is "letters home." While they may have been meaningful and fascinating to the writer and recipients, they may lack general interest and necessary context. For example, I wrote about 400 letters home when I worked in another country. They're just not that diverting. Published as is, they would be tedious to read, even, perhaps, for those of us who were there at the time. If I were to edit them, retaining portions about my psychological and emotional development, events that might resonate for others, and non-idiotic cultural observations, I would have perhaps 25-50 potentialy compelling but disjointed pages of narrative and observations. That's not a good book, either. If I felt a need to retain the "letters home" format, my story might be served best by a pastiche that includes letters, journal entries, reflections, and a bridging narrative.

These speculations also constitute my advice to Liz Banks. I want to know about her experience in Maldives. I want to know what the experience meant to her. I want to understand the difference between her home culture and life in a very different country. Though sections of Maldives Musings present these topics, they are fragmented, and (because they are written to those at home) assume that I know what home is like, or what Banks is like. Because I don't, the funny parts often aren't funny, the observations that rely on cultural contrast sometimes are puzzling, and I'm left wanting to know much more about what she was actually doing on a typical day in her role as a midwife trainer with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). An editor could have helped Banks simply by asking questions.

This memoir will give you some insight into the culture and people of Maldives, but probably not as much as you hoped for when you picked it up.

Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East

    
#373
Title: Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
Author: Gita Mehta
Year: 1994
Publisher: Vintage
208 pages

Best read as a collection of essays on related themes, not a progressive essay in parts. Mehta's classic is still highly relevant, though perhaps less startling than it would have been on publication 30 years ago. Her primary topic is the atomizing and commodification of culture, illustrated by examples of both naive and pragmatic responses by Westerners and Indians. Most of the essays are well-written and enjoyable to read; some are too divorced by time and culture from their catalysts and are therefore less explicable. If I were teaching a cross-cultural sociology class, I'd use Karma Cola as a starting point.

The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Five)

#372
Title: The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Five)
Author: Rick Riordan
Year: 2009
Publisher: Hyperion
381 pages

A satisfying resolution to the 5-book series. Riordan wraps up the majority of loose ends while introducing a few good twists. Percy enters a new phase of maturity and sophistication, action is resolved, and the door is held open for another series.

American Nerd: The Story of My People

#371
Title: American Nerd: The Story of My People
Author: Benjamin Nugent
Year: 2008
Publisher: Scribner
225 pages

This memoir-cum-treatise is hard to classify because Nugent mixes genres. Part memoir, part sociology, part speculation, it does not cohere as much as this nerd reviewer would like.

Speaking of this reviewer, I must say that Nugent does a poor job of characterizing female nerds. I know that I'm a nerd because I was told so; just as Jews may agonize about whether they're really Jewish, and nerds may endlessly dissect their relationship to nerdiness, the bottom line is, when they come for the Jews, will they come for you? The answer is, when they come for the nerds, they will come for me, because the minutiae of determining nerd versus something else is a nicety of no import to Those Who Come for Nerds.

Nugent, by the way, dabbles in nerd-dom but attempts to renounce it and distance himself from it. What a nerd.

Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World

#370
Title: Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World
Author: Peter Chapman
Year: 2007
Publisher: Canongate
240 pages

Three stars for content, one star for writing style, so two stars overall. Chapman presents very interesting information rather haphazardly, leaving many questions unanswered. In addition, he's a pretty clunky writer. The reader has to work to follow his inexplicable mid-paragraph topic changes and unfortunate grammar.

The content is worth it, if the reader perseveres. Chapman provides some background on bananas' natural history and modern banana culture. He associates this with the history of the United Fruit Company, focusing on its agricultural practices (monoculture, pesticides) and political practices (monopolies, underhanded dealings, colluding with military forces to take over countries (whence, apparently, the phrase "banana republic"), and intimidation.

It's a useful story to consider as we examine the espoused and covert roles of the U.S. in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Chapman makes it hard to keep reading.

Told by Starlight in Chad

#369
Title: Told by Starlight in Chad
Author: Joseph Brahim Seid
Translator: Karen Haire Hoenig
Year: 2007
Publisher: Africa World Press, Inc.
Country: Chad
81 pages

Seid recreates fables--some religious, some moral, some just stories--from his native Chad. They were pleasant to read, and gave some background of the Chadian people. They are probably better heard than read. I wasn't especially engaged by this, but it was a nice change of pace.

Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan

#368
Title: Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan
Author: Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, Queen of Bhutan
Year: 2006
Publisher: Viking (Penguin India)
Country: Bhutan
223 pages

Part memoir, part travelogue, this book by the oldest of the four queens of Bhutan describes not only Wangchuck's life, but the history and contemporary cultures of Bhutan. In addition, she focuses on the difficult-to-attain balance between traditional ways and contemporary life. The road that allows remote villagers to get to market or medical care also brings exodus from the villages and the erosion of cultural values. Wangchuck's descriptions of spirituality were enjoyable and well-written, as were the sections describing her travels and the communities of Bhutan. I would have wished for more about how she felt about marrying the king, and more detail about that period of her life, but it may not be politic or culturally appropriate for her to tell that story.

City of Arches: Memories of an Island Capital, Kingstown, St. Vincent & The Grenadines

#367
Title: City of Arches: Memories of an Island Capital, Kingstown, St. Vincent & The Grenadines
Author: Vivian Child Year:
Publisher: Cybercom Publishing
Country: St. Vincent & The Grenadines
157 pages

Vivian Child, a medical doctor, wrote and illustrated a newspaper column on the architectural features, and sometimes history, of houses and other buildings in Kingstown on St. Vincent. Dr. Child has a particular interest in the form of the arches that fronted many of the early arcades. Her illustrations are both from life and from historical photographs.

I enjoyed reading this collection of newspaper columns as much for the stories about who owned the buildings and the uses to which they were put as for the lesson in island architecture. If I were to travel to Kingstown, I'd bring the book along for comparison.