The Places in Between

#469
Title: The Places in Between
Author: Rory Stewart
Publisher: Harcourt
Year: 2004/2006
308 pages

One wonders why Stewart took off across Afghanistan by foot, in winter. Yes, he says that he was walking across that swath of Asia and had to go back to fill in the part he missed, but never really says what the walk meant to him. Knowing its meaning might have mediated this and other readers' sentiment that Stewart's journey was conducted in a foolhardy manner. I think walking is sufficient unto itself, and requires no particular explanation. However, Stewart's timing and season put him at risk, and perhaps others as well.

That said, I can't agree with some of the criticisms I've read that all boil down to accusations of cultural improficiency. What's missing from Stewart's narrative that might have helped is more explanation of how the Taliban period and war many have changed some of the local customs. His attempts to accomplish this wind up sounding like querulous comparisons with other countries.

This is a narrative by a young person. I would like to see a comparable trek and story by Stewart 20 years later. In addition, it is a man's narrative. Rita Golden Gelman notwithstanding, in much of the world, a woman walks alone at peril. If she arrives unmolested or unarrested at a village, where will she stay? Not the headman's place, which would be inappropriate. Not at the mosque, or the wat--that is where men stay the night. While I don't fault Stewart for not articulating his privilege to complete such a journey, what I most take from this book is how little autonomy women have in much of the world.

Qatar

#463
Title: The Emergence of Qatar: The Turbulent Years 1627--1916
Author: Habibur Rahman
Publisher: Kegan Paul
Year: 2005
Country: Qatar
312 pages

Despite 300 years of turbulence, this is a slog. There are around 260 pages of declarative statements punctuated by names. There is little in the way of dramatic tension or causality, but rather a begat-style unspooling of and then, and then, and then with little in the way of because. It's like a horrible dry pastry that crumbles into stale arid crumbs because there's nothing juicy enough to hold it together, like an adjective. That Qatar is strategic and its waters full of pearls is recorded but alas, much explored. The dull recitation of event then event then event makes me glad that I've read so many histories that were vivid and engaging.

It wouldn't be so bad if I were a Qatari town limits buff, but a lot of it reads like this (actually, a lot of it is less interesting than this):

Although it was anticipated by Lieut. Arnold Burrowes Kemball, officiating Resident (April 1843 to December 1843) that bin Tarif would stay at Bahrain and gain supreme authority there because of his strong personality and support from a large number of people in Qatar as well as in Bahrain, he instead went directly to al-Bida in May 1843 to establish Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa, brother of Shaikh Mohammad bin Khalifa, as the in-charge of al-Bida and made the necessary arrangements to transfer his residence from Qais island to al-Bida. (p. 50)
 

While I love to follow the exploits of  those wacky bin Khalifa brothers, the prose is tedious, and unleavened by much in the way of explanation: Why did the popular bin Tarif leave Bahrain to set up Ali in al-Bida? This and other mysteries remain unanswered.

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present

#462
Title: Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher:
Year:
285 pages

This collection of short stories shows Doctorow at what I think he does best: Taking an idea about technology or social interaction and playing with it by means of fiction. This is a strong volume that shows what he can do.

Graceling

#461
Title: Graceling
Author: Kristin Cashore
Publisher: Graphia
Year: 2008
473 pages

A fine young adult fantasy debut with believable characters, an interesting story, generally good writing, and a strong female protagonist. The love story is well-integrated with the action, and the mythological/folk resonance seems natural, not forced. It dragged a little about 3/4 through, but for the good reason that a long, difficult journey was depicted. The characters, while larger than life, don't feel cartoony. The dangers feel dangerous, and the pleasures pleasant. I hope the rest of the trilogy is as good.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

#460
Title: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor
Year: 2003
208 pages

I enjoy Doctorow and find him easy to read. The early novels, of which this is the earliest, read like expanded short stories in that there is a basic premise that unfolds with extra detail but not extra complexity. This works in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is about control in several manifestations. The most obvious is the focus of the plot--control over a future Disney World. Doctorow jumps right in and builds convincing worlds without excessive exposition, which is refreshing. The novel seems a little thin at times, perhaps because the narrator's interiority is less well drawn than the scenery and relationships. Still, an entertaining debut.

Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar

#468
Title: Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar
Author: Emily Ruete [Sayyida Salme]
Publisher: Dover
Year: 1907/2009
Country: Zanzibar (semi-autonomous region of Tanzania)
298 pages

Though you wouldn't know it from this memoir, Ruete left Zanzibar not because of political machinations but because she became pregnant. This missing fact goes a long way toward explaining the otherwise rather inexplicable internecine strife that followed her flight to Europe. Politics do play a role before and after this event, but because she is explicit about the relationships between people and states, these intrigues make much more sense.

Ruete describes her childhood and early life in Zanzibar. This is generally clear, thorough, and visually evocative. These sections are particularly interesting, though the entire book is engaging.

The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever

#467
Title: The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Publisher: Dodo Press
Year: 1843/2009
40 pages

I'm on a disease and public health kick, and I love me some Ignaz Semmelweis, so I was pleased to find this monograph by Oliver Wendell Holmes,arguing for the contagiousness of puerperal fever some years before Semmelweis. Both men were ridiculed and ignored, leaving it to Louis Pasteur to demonstrate convincingly and to public acclaim that medical personnel were transmitting germs from patient (or corpse) to patient. Holmes uses cases and anecdotes to bolster his argument, making this a vivid and interesting monograph.

Venereal Diseases in New Zealand

#466
Title: Venereal Diseases in New Zealand
Author: Committee of the Board of Health
Publisher: General Books
Year: 1922/2010
84 pages

In the midst of teaching my HIV courses, it's pleasing to know that in the New Zealand of 1922, there were three venereal diseases, "syphilis, gonorrhoea, and chancroid." It's not true, but in its way it is a comforting fiction. This historical report is interesting from the perspective of examining public health data and policy from another time and country. Most of the language and many of the recommendations seem quite contemporary, which may be as much of an indictment of the U.S.'s health policies as praise for New Zealand's modernity.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella

#465
Title: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Year: 2010
178 pages

Bree is one of the "young" Seattle vampire horde that battles the Cullen coven in Eclipse. She is a Mary Sue character; it seems like every vampire is darned nice and rational if we see the world from his or her perspective. I have no argument with this, except that it suggests a different world than the one Meyer asserted existed in the Twilight novels. It can be said of Bree that in comparison to whiny, self-absorbed, problem-causing Bella, she is alert, resourceful, and low-maintenance, even if she, too, falls instantly for a sparkly vampire boy. I leave aside, and to the reader's imagination, how, if vampires kissing each other equals unyielding stone on stone, they manage to have sex, or put on clothes, play piano, or pick up a pencil to do their homework when they pretend to be in high school.

Eastern Standard Tribe

#464
Title: Eastern Standard Tribe
Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor
Year: 2004
224 pages

Another lightweight but enjoyable early novel from Doctorow. The main conceit, that there is tribal affiliation among people in the same time zone (and hence, same circadian rhythm), is interesting but not given the role or exploration it deserves. The plt, which some reviewers have called "complex," seems not complex but slightly convoluted. Though the secondary characters are depicted with enough personality cues that they can be told apart, the narrator's tone is that of the previous novel. The ideas are interesting, but the story isn't as interesting as it could be. Don't get me wrong--I liked this, but it's another short story on steroids, lacking the depth and complexity Doctorow brings to later novels.

Specimen Days

#459
Title: Specimen Days
Author: Michael Cunningham
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Year: 2005
318 pages

Out of order, but I'm sure nobody cares but me. Read as an unabridged audiobook. Cunningham is an author who makes me wish I were taking a class on the novel so I'd have reason to engage with his work more critically. I hardly know what to say about this, except that although the structural play was sometimes a hammer when a feather was called for, this is one of the most engaging and pleasing novels I've read recently. The novel is composed of three related stories (a quick perusal of Cunningham's oeuvre shows that he likes to work in threes). Unlike The Hours, these three stories are not interwoven but presented chronologically. They are related by characters of the same name, several objects, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which serves both to advance the plot and as a chorus to comment on the action and characters. The first story is a bleak tragedy of the early industrial era, with ghosts; the second is a contemporary cop story, with terrorists; the third is a post-lapsarian dystopian tale, with androids (or possible cyborgs, though androids seems technically more correct) and aliens. Throw in some Whitman and you've got a very interesting novel about identity, ecstasy, and what it is to be human. The audiobook, ably narrated by Alan Cumming, is available at http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9781593

976897-0

Thirteenth Night (Fools' Guild Mysteries, #1)

 
#458
Title: Thirteenth Night (Fools' Guild Mysteries, #1)
Author: Alan Gordon
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year: 1999
243 pages

Gordon imagines Feste, the fool from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, as a member of an elite guild of fools who, like the Illuminati (but much more amusing) influence European politics and, in this case, investigate a murder. Gordon's wordplay is quick and references Shakespeare's without interfering unduly with flow of the story. The plot is slightly convoluted, reminding me that if I were ever to murder someone, I would do better to strike quickly (as, Voldemort: "Kill the spare") than to prioritize exacting an imagined sweet revenge by means of twists, artifices, and a lengthy soliloquy to the victim re: why I delight in doing what I am about to do. This is the undoing of many nemeses of Bond, as well as Sideshow Bob, and the murderer here does not transcend its narcissistic lure.

Trans-Sister Radio

#457
Title: Trans-Sister Radio
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2000
368 pages

Bohjalian has tried, but he doesn't know from the transsexual experience. This reads a lot the way old lesbian/gay novels did in the 70s and 80s, where the emotional focus (and sometimes the whole plot) was about coming out. While the trans protagonist goes beyond coming out here, the emotion of the story sticks there and can't really move on. This could work okay, but all of the narrators have interchangeable voices, language, and preoccupations. I would sometimes lose track of whose chapter it was.

I don't doubt that Bohjalian read work by and talked with trans people. Still, the dialogue rings disturbingly false. I recently described and quoted some of it to a trans friend, who burst out laughing. When I described how much focus all the characters have on the trans character's penis, and that "penis" was the word used, he laughed even more. When I remarked, "When I talk with MTFs, they tend to say--" and we both finished, ."--'that thing'!" Read Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders for a true and much more compelling story.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide

#456
Title: Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide
Author: Peter Allison
Publisher: Lyons Press
Year: 2007
Country: Botswana
246 pages

An enjoyable account of being a safari guide in Botswana. This is a series of anecdotes, and not particularly a psychological narrative--that is, there is no particular moral or developmental outcome. I enjoyed it for the descriptions of animal and tourist behavior. I'll still read something by Bessie Head to get a better sense of the people of Botswana.

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

#455
Title: A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2009
272 pages

Considerably less playful than Burroughs's earlier memoirs, A Wolf at the Table paints a portrait of his father as an inexplicable, dangerous alcoholic. That's a pretty complete summary of the book--the rest is detail. As I was reading Burroughs's description of his family's home in Amherst, I pictured the home of some of my relatives in about the same year. It turns out that they lived pretty near each other, which confirms that Burroughs can evoke a landscape as effectively as an emotion.

An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography

#454
Title: An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
Authors: Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2006
Country: Rwanda
207 pages

Rusesabagina is the Hotel Rwanda man, and this is his account of his life and role in protecting people from the genocide. Rusesabagina describes village life during his childhood, his career in hotel work, and the events that erupted into warfare and slaughter. He sees his actions as an extension of his ethical responsibilities as a hotelier, which I liked very much.

The Necromancer (Nicholas Flamel, #4)

#453
Title: The Necromancer (Nicholas Flamel, #4)
Author: Michael Scott
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Year: 2010
416 pages

The twins discover that you can't go home again, or at least, if you go home again, home will be full of monsters. Meanwhile, the fellowship separates and recombines across continents andtime. There's a good balance of story arc with side stories, and I hope that Scott can pull it all together at the end--he's cast a wide net. Characterization is a bit flatter than in the first three books, but as it was flat there as well, it's a difference of degree, not quality.

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu

#452
Title: Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu
Author: J. Maarten Troost
Publisher: Broadway Books
Year: 2006
239 pages

Much better than the author's The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, which featured neither cannibals nor sex lives. Troost indeed gets stoned (on kava), though perhaps one might suggest "indigenes" rather than "savages." This is a slicker narrative than Cannibals, and not as interesting. I would still rather know what Troost's wife is doing than what Troost is doing, but she's largely absent in this memoir/travelogue as well.