Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

#282
Title: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Author: Omar Khayyam (1048–1123) & Edward FitzGerald
Publisher: Dover
Year: 1990
64 pages

I missed one back there, so here it is. This is not the edition I have; I may update later. The strongest convention is to package FitzGerald's first and fifth editions together; they form an interesting contrast.

Twilight

#281
Title: Twilight
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown
Year: 2006
498 pages

I am ashamed to admit that I really enjoyed this. In repentance, I will write a lesson plan that offers a critique of its gender relations. Still, I can't deny that it is appealingly written and has a compelling erotic undertone. This is, of course, disturbing in conjunction with the characters' behaviors, which oddly enough both replicate the cycle of interpersonal violence and yet, in its extended metaphor of humanity-as-virginity, shows the male vampire to be more moral and scrupulous than the young woman. In this I agree with Edward's assessment that Bella does not prioritize her own well-being.

After a few thousand pages of sequels, I might well tire of the narrator's petulance and the vampire's handsome, godlike attributes, as well as the ways in which the vampires consistently take control away from Bella. However, there's a lot that's funny and interesting, which goes a long way. There are a variety of not-too-important issues (for example, there's no evidence that Bella was clumsy prior to moving to Forks), but it still hangs together pretty well and should serve as mildly salacious beach reading.

Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

#280
Title: Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer
Authors: Rosita Arvigo with Nadine Epstein and Marilyn Yaquinto
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
Year: 1994
Country: Belize
214 pages

My edition has this title; the edition linked has a slightly different title.

This documentary memoir describes the author's intention to live off the land and practice non-allopathic medicine in Belize. There she met a Mayan healer, apprenticed to him, and carries on his work. It's interesting to watch her commitment to her life and profession in her adopted country grow. I appreciated her balance of syncretic spiritual and scientific aspects of her work, including those aspects where she acknowledges that she does not believe--a refreshing change in this genre.

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel

#279
Title: What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2006
Country: Sudan
569 pages

This is one where the audiobook was superior to the print book. I have tried several times to read this, but the sameness of the tone put me to sleep. Dion Graham's narration brought it alive.

To the question of whether this is fiction or non-fiction, Deng's story or Eggers's conceit, my impression is both/and, not either/or. Like many (auto)biographies, events are re-arranged and dialogues imagined in order to heighten tension and symbolic relationships. Here, Deng's story is told as a series of internal monologues directed to people he encounters in the course of about a day, which provides a structure on which to hang the theme that when people look at him, they do not see his experiences. This is certainly an artificial framework imposed by Eggers, but it provides a plot on which to hang Deng's story of his life in Sudan. This format allows types of exposition that straight autoibiography might not. Since Deng asserts in the introduction that the events are accurate, it may be best to treat this as what Audre Lorde calls "biomythography," with a healthy dose of ethnography.

Audiobook here.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life

#278
Title: First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life
Author: Eve Brown-Waite
Publisher: Broadway Books
Year: 2009
305 pages

Brown-Waite's account of her Peace Corps and CARE experiences starts poorly but is worth sticking with. Either that or skip to the Uganda section. The memoir reads like two memoirs written at different times and in different styles. The first section, on her Peace Corps induction and placement in Ecuador, is told in what attempts to be a humorous, snappy tone; it reads as immature, brittle, and conversational in a way that suggests that this is the part of the narrative that made her friends tell her that she should write a book about her hilarious experience. The second part, on Uganda, is more mature and considered and holds my attention. Brown-Waite emphasizes her whininess throughout, which contributes a constant, low-grade irritation to the story. She does not really answer the questions most interesting to me, such as whether her earlier anxiety and panic returned, and if not, how she understands this. I'd also have liked to know more about her relationship with her husband in the domain of foreign service. Did she want to go to Uganda? She seems to have consistently worked in social and human services, but the interior process--what she thinks and feels about it, why she's moved to do it, the effects of moving closer to her husband's world view--are largely unspoken.

I have a hard time identifying with the author, though we have some experiences and interests that are similar. However, for whatever reasons, my overseas service has been different from hers. I spent over a year without television, a car or bike, treats from the US, or new clothes. I ate vegetables and powdered chicken soup with rice because I had no oven and the meat looked creepy. I had no cappuccinos. I was also in a second world country, so the cultural contrasts were not as great. Sometimes that congruence was the problem, and I would make assumptions I wouldn't have made had it been more divergent. I'm not suggesting that I was better at having my experience than she, but rather describing it because I did not miss or fantasize about US luxuries, so it's hard for me to understand many of her areas of preoccupation.

A Photographic Guide to the Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and the Comoros

#277
Title: A Photographic Guide to the Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and the Comoros
Authors: Fanj Andriamialisoa, Ian Sinclair, & Olivier Langrand
Publisher: Struik Publishers
Year: 2006
Country: Madagascar
128 pages

This bird identification guide features large, clear photos and parallel text in English and French. (Yes, I also read the French.) The authors rely heavily on the word "unmistakeable," which is annoying but innocent. More problematically, some birds, which perhaps correctly pictured, appear different from their descriptions (for example, they are not the color given in the text).

Thirsty

#276
Title: Thirsty
Author: M. T. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Year: 2008
237 pages

Not a standard teen vampire book, though it starts out as if it were. Anderson depicts teenage angst well, though I did not find it as engaging as some of Anderson's other work. I may have reached a point of Anderson saturation for the moment. Some reviewers have claimed that vampirism here functions as an extended metaphor for being gay, and I read with this in mind but don't find the argument compelling. I imagine that this novel would serve as an anodyne for books like Twilight.