Luke's Book Corner
By Luke Smith
Like most PCVs in Rwanda, having an abundance of time on my hands has led to a somewhat unhealthy consumption of literature. With this consumption, a goal eventually came into view: 100 books by the end of service. This idea, however, began to consume me to such an extent that I started devouring literature, and, in the throes of belligerent literature binges from which I would wake, sprawled in my trash pit, scraps of pages stuffed in my clothes with ink-smeared hands and a bloody lip, the plots and purposes and characters of the books I’d consumed would be erased before the hazy hangover even began. Thus it was that I determined to begin writing a review for each book, or not really a review so much as a brief synopsis or analysis or praise to remind myself of whether or not this book was worth reading. This format of review, I soon found, could encompass numerous works into a paragraph or two, or in some cases into a single sentence. I realized, after several conversations with PCVs about the best books they’d read in country, that my paragraph reviews could in fact be useful to these same PCVs in determining what book to read next in lieu of lesson planning, and so the following paragraphs and sentences are these lists for a period of three months.
AUGUST
I read ten books in the month of August. Books I read this month that I would never recommend are as follows: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (Literally one of the worst books I’ve ever read, one of those man gets thrown into a crazy world he never knew existed, and no one ever explains anything but instead acts like he’s an idiot kind of stories. Also Gaiman loves descriptions and costume for no other reason than that he thinks it’s cool, stating something to the effect of “it is because I say it is” in an interview excerpt epilogue. This, as anyone with half a brain knows, is a trademark of wretched writing and pointless detail), and I Drink for a Reason by David Cross (Not a real book so much as stand-up routines that have been adapted into print. Also, Cross is a jerk).
Books I read this month that were awesome are as follows: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (Probably the most intelligently written of his books except for the constant narrative asides of “This was their first mistake,” “That was where he went wrong,” and “It would take ten hours for him to realize his error”), Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach (If you ever wanted to be an astronaut and are disappointed that you aren’t, this’ll help you to chuckle at those who committed to the dream while still admiring them), Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Post-apocalyptic and dystopian, but still hits so close to home that it’s painful. Well-written, modern, and accessible), and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Although it’s about vampires, this was the work that inspired the mythology of zombies, starting with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. It deals with every cool zombie motif you’ve ever seen, including the philosophical dilemmas of a survivor. It’s similar, at times, to Crichton’s work due to its scientific approach, but debunks most vampire mythology into a somewhat believable disease. While reading, you’ll be reminded of The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, every zombie movie you’ve ever seen, and even the vampirism film Daybreakers. Seriously better than the movie, too and vastly different, including the fact that the main character is white rather than Will Smith), The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (Not as good as I thought it would be as both Ian Ross and Tim Presley told me it was one of the best books they’d read here. The plot was a little too similar to Crime and Punishment for me to be impressed by the suspense, although it did make me nervous. I spent most of a day finishing the last 300 pages not because I couldn’t put it down, but because I wanted to finish it), and Sphere by Michael Crichton (I went on somewhat of a Crichton binge this month, but this book is well worth the day or so that it will take you to read it. Suspenseful, methodical, and beautifully sci-fi, it’s entertaining to the end, especially if you saw the movie as an eight-year-old, were terrified, and remember that the character ‘Harry’ is played by Samuel L. Jackson in the film adaptation, and thus imagine all of Harry’s lines delivered in classic Jackson one-liner style).
If you’re counting, you noticed that that was only eight books, so I suppose the last two would fit into the category of “Mehh” or “If you’ve got nothing better to do” or “if you just feel like a Crichton book” or “I was worried mentioning this would damage my credibility”: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Obviously I didn’t just read the conclusion of The Hunger Games trilogy, but the other two were in the month of July. Collins is no Orwell or Huxley or Atwood, but the themes in this dystopian trilogy cover those in the aforementioned authors’ works and beyond. They are young adult novels and thus the writing style is somewhat young adult as you would expect, but at the end of the day they’re just cool books), and Timeline by Michael Crichton (Definitely his worst of the three I read this month and also the longest. I’m pretty sure he just wanted to set a story in Medieval times and so made a plot involving time travel and archaeologists. Also the science behind the time travel wasn’t really clear to me, but perhaps Crichton is in the same echelon as Stephen Hawking and, although Timeline was written for the layman audience like A Brief History of Time, the science remains incomprehensible to the layman. Still, an entertaining read in the “Oh Michael Crichton…” kind of way, but the plot drags along because absolutely everything that could go wrong does goes wrong to an irksome extent).
SEPTEMBER
In the month of September, I read eight books. Two of these were from the African Writer’s Series (AWS) included in the Mobile Library, Beyond the Horizon by Amma Darko, which I read mostly because her last name is Darko, and The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye, which I read because I wanted to know what the title meant. Darko and Kwakye are both Ghanaian authors, and both stories included the tragic lives of women who are treated as second-class citizen by their husbands, although Kwakye’s book was more about an individual man’s moral decline because of the influence of a powerful and manipulative drug dealer. Darko’s focus was the mistreatment of a wife by her selfish, misogynistic, loathsome husband, a truly tragic and devastating tale. Kwakye’s story, although similarly tragic at least has some humorous parts. A reader however constantly questions why the main character continues on his descent even while questioning his own vileness. I never quite figured out the meaning of the title, but I think it has something to do with the lies people tell themselves and those around them, to cover the evil they bring upon themselves when giving in to the flesh.
On a similarly depressing note, I read Candide by Voltaire, as edited by Norman Turrey. Though the copy didn’t say, it may have been abridged as it seemed rather short, and Turrey took the verb ‘edited’ rather than ‘translated’. Candide is basically Voltaire’s response to the philosophy of optimism, or the idea that regardless of what happens, things had to be this way because God is in control of everything, so why be upset. In the book lots of terrible things happen to lots of people for no reason.
I also read several books that were not depressing and were worth reading, not to say that the aforementioned aren’t, but personally, I find life depressing enough without wallowing in it too much: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (A good, quick read and much more interesting than I’d imagined it would be. Also, the reader gets major literary props for reading it, so why not pick it up?), Dracula by Bram Stoker (I read this after reading I Am Legend as I felt like getting to the origin of vampire mythology. It’s entertaining in a 19th century horror kind of way, but it’s not exactly a page-turner. Furthermore, Stoker tends to tell rather than show, an attribute exacerbated by the narrative format, which isn’t explained until more than halfway through the book, most of which is spent convincing characters in the story that vampires might exist. Van Helsing is in it though, although not nearly as much of a B.A. as you want him to be, and Stoker tries to make him sound like a foreigner, as he’s Dutch, a fact that screeches in the ears of a PCV already living in a world of broken English and made all the more obvious by Stoker’s periods of amnesia regarding Van Helsing’s foreignness, at which points he speaks in perfect English), Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (A quick and hilarious read well worth the afternoon it will take you to read it), A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Read as a remedy to an evening of Christmas nostalgia set off by a Christmas episode of Glee [yeah, I watch Glee]; this book is far better than any film adaptation, and no film adaptation truly captures it. Read it if you’re in a Christmas mood or feel like feeling depressed about not being home for Christmas. It works for both motives), and finally 50 Essays: a Portable Anthology as anthologized by Samuel Cohen (Lots of classic and modern essays in here to inspire, outrage, and entertain).
OCTOBER
October was a seven book kind of month, and it went a little like this: David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and Other Essays ( I read this book after Dan Kieselstein praised a hundred page essay within it about a usage dictionary, which was actually awesome. However, Wallace is one of those authors whose style, vocabulary, and meticulous attention to grammar make anyone reading him feel like an inept troglodyte), Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (This book is part of the AWS like Darko and Kwakye, and, as I read it at the beginning of October, just off of Darko and Kwakye closing out September, I had to put away the AWS for a while as they collectively, overwhelmingly depressed me [also, this one wasn’t as good as Kwakye’s or Darko’s]), David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Though I was originally attracted to this book because of a preternatural love for Corduroy and those few disciples who wander lonely, muddy roads after expulsion from villages refusing to listen to the corduroy gospel included in this book’s title, it’s also a hilarious read like all of Sedaris’ books that I’ve had the spleen-busting pleasure of consuming and boasts a few deeply emotional and moving passages as well), Max Brooks’ World War Z (Brought to you by the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, this is one of my favorite books read in country; it boasts phenomenal zombie fights, a global zombie plague with in-depth knowledge of military history and context in several countries around the world, and a format based on Studs Terkel’s seminal work Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do [seriously], and I’m pretty sure that, though most people would like to believe that Brooks is simply a creative if not ridiculous author, he actually suffers from an irrational fear of a zombie apocalypse and has written these books in order to educate the masses as to what they ought to do should it occur, so, for the sake of Brooks, educate yourselves. Also, even if you’re not on Mefloquin, you can expect epic zombie dreams for as long as you’re reading it), Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (A pretty legit sci-fi read and the inspiration for a lot of movies you may or may not have seen including Bladerunner and some others that I can’t remember at the moment but may later when I have internet), Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals (Pollan covers the epic journey from field or forest to dinner plate of processed, organic, beyond organic, and hunted and gathered food, along the way discussing the ethics, history, and philosophy of each dish and entertaining each discussion [including vegetarianism and veganism] with a cool and non-self-righteous head, simply asking ‘why?’ and following it to its logical end), and finally Fritz Fischer’s Making Them Like Us: Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s (As you may have guessed by the title, this books discusses the challenges faced by PCVs in the 60s and the politics of Peace Corps creation; however, Fischer is not an RPCV, so his conclusions about PCVs’ attitudes can be annoying. Additionally he offers no advice about alleviating the issues of Peace Corps or PCVs, almost all of which are still a part of Peace Corps today).
I read ten books in the month of August. Books I read this month that I would never recommend are as follows: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (Literally one of the worst books I’ve ever read, one of those man gets thrown into a crazy world he never knew existed, and no one ever explains anything but instead acts like he’s an idiot kind of stories. Also Gaiman loves descriptions and costume for no other reason than that he thinks it’s cool, stating something to the effect of “it is because I say it is” in an interview excerpt epilogue. This, as anyone with half a brain knows, is a trademark of wretched writing and pointless detail), and I Drink for a Reason by David Cross (Not a real book so much as stand-up routines that have been adapted into print. Also, Cross is a jerk).
Books I read this month that were awesome are as follows: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (Probably the most intelligently written of his books except for the constant narrative asides of “This was their first mistake,” “That was where he went wrong,” and “It would take ten hours for him to realize his error”), Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach (If you ever wanted to be an astronaut and are disappointed that you aren’t, this’ll help you to chuckle at those who committed to the dream while still admiring them), Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Post-apocalyptic and dystopian, but still hits so close to home that it’s painful. Well-written, modern, and accessible), and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Although it’s about vampires, this was the work that inspired the mythology of zombies, starting with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. It deals with every cool zombie motif you’ve ever seen, including the philosophical dilemmas of a survivor. It’s similar, at times, to Crichton’s work due to its scientific approach, but debunks most vampire mythology into a somewhat believable disease. While reading, you’ll be reminded of The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, every zombie movie you’ve ever seen, and even the vampirism film Daybreakers. Seriously better than the movie, too and vastly different, including the fact that the main character is white rather than Will Smith), The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (Not as good as I thought it would be as both Ian Ross and Tim Presley told me it was one of the best books they’d read here. The plot was a little too similar to Crime and Punishment for me to be impressed by the suspense, although it did make me nervous. I spent most of a day finishing the last 300 pages not because I couldn’t put it down, but because I wanted to finish it), and Sphere by Michael Crichton (I went on somewhat of a Crichton binge this month, but this book is well worth the day or so that it will take you to read it. Suspenseful, methodical, and beautifully sci-fi, it’s entertaining to the end, especially if you saw the movie as an eight-year-old, were terrified, and remember that the character ‘Harry’ is played by Samuel L. Jackson in the film adaptation, and thus imagine all of Harry’s lines delivered in classic Jackson one-liner style).
If you’re counting, you noticed that that was only eight books, so I suppose the last two would fit into the category of “Mehh” or “If you’ve got nothing better to do” or “if you just feel like a Crichton book” or “I was worried mentioning this would damage my credibility”: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Obviously I didn’t just read the conclusion of The Hunger Games trilogy, but the other two were in the month of July. Collins is no Orwell or Huxley or Atwood, but the themes in this dystopian trilogy cover those in the aforementioned authors’ works and beyond. They are young adult novels and thus the writing style is somewhat young adult as you would expect, but at the end of the day they’re just cool books), and Timeline by Michael Crichton (Definitely his worst of the three I read this month and also the longest. I’m pretty sure he just wanted to set a story in Medieval times and so made a plot involving time travel and archaeologists. Also the science behind the time travel wasn’t really clear to me, but perhaps Crichton is in the same echelon as Stephen Hawking and, although Timeline was written for the layman audience like A Brief History of Time, the science remains incomprehensible to the layman. Still, an entertaining read in the “Oh Michael Crichton…” kind of way, but the plot drags along because absolutely everything that could go wrong does goes wrong to an irksome extent).
SEPTEMBER
In the month of September, I read eight books. Two of these were from the African Writer’s Series (AWS) included in the Mobile Library, Beyond the Horizon by Amma Darko, which I read mostly because her last name is Darko, and The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye, which I read because I wanted to know what the title meant. Darko and Kwakye are both Ghanaian authors, and both stories included the tragic lives of women who are treated as second-class citizen by their husbands, although Kwakye’s book was more about an individual man’s moral decline because of the influence of a powerful and manipulative drug dealer. Darko’s focus was the mistreatment of a wife by her selfish, misogynistic, loathsome husband, a truly tragic and devastating tale. Kwakye’s story, although similarly tragic at least has some humorous parts. A reader however constantly questions why the main character continues on his descent even while questioning his own vileness. I never quite figured out the meaning of the title, but I think it has something to do with the lies people tell themselves and those around them, to cover the evil they bring upon themselves when giving in to the flesh.
On a similarly depressing note, I read Candide by Voltaire, as edited by Norman Turrey. Though the copy didn’t say, it may have been abridged as it seemed rather short, and Turrey took the verb ‘edited’ rather than ‘translated’. Candide is basically Voltaire’s response to the philosophy of optimism, or the idea that regardless of what happens, things had to be this way because God is in control of everything, so why be upset. In the book lots of terrible things happen to lots of people for no reason.
I also read several books that were not depressing and were worth reading, not to say that the aforementioned aren’t, but personally, I find life depressing enough without wallowing in it too much: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (A good, quick read and much more interesting than I’d imagined it would be. Also, the reader gets major literary props for reading it, so why not pick it up?), Dracula by Bram Stoker (I read this after reading I Am Legend as I felt like getting to the origin of vampire mythology. It’s entertaining in a 19th century horror kind of way, but it’s not exactly a page-turner. Furthermore, Stoker tends to tell rather than show, an attribute exacerbated by the narrative format, which isn’t explained until more than halfway through the book, most of which is spent convincing characters in the story that vampires might exist. Van Helsing is in it though, although not nearly as much of a B.A. as you want him to be, and Stoker tries to make him sound like a foreigner, as he’s Dutch, a fact that screeches in the ears of a PCV already living in a world of broken English and made all the more obvious by Stoker’s periods of amnesia regarding Van Helsing’s foreignness, at which points he speaks in perfect English), Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (A quick and hilarious read well worth the afternoon it will take you to read it), A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Read as a remedy to an evening of Christmas nostalgia set off by a Christmas episode of Glee [yeah, I watch Glee]; this book is far better than any film adaptation, and no film adaptation truly captures it. Read it if you’re in a Christmas mood or feel like feeling depressed about not being home for Christmas. It works for both motives), and finally 50 Essays: a Portable Anthology as anthologized by Samuel Cohen (Lots of classic and modern essays in here to inspire, outrage, and entertain).
OCTOBER
October was a seven book kind of month, and it went a little like this: David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and Other Essays ( I read this book after Dan Kieselstein praised a hundred page essay within it about a usage dictionary, which was actually awesome. However, Wallace is one of those authors whose style, vocabulary, and meticulous attention to grammar make anyone reading him feel like an inept troglodyte), Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (This book is part of the AWS like Darko and Kwakye, and, as I read it at the beginning of October, just off of Darko and Kwakye closing out September, I had to put away the AWS for a while as they collectively, overwhelmingly depressed me [also, this one wasn’t as good as Kwakye’s or Darko’s]), David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Though I was originally attracted to this book because of a preternatural love for Corduroy and those few disciples who wander lonely, muddy roads after expulsion from villages refusing to listen to the corduroy gospel included in this book’s title, it’s also a hilarious read like all of Sedaris’ books that I’ve had the spleen-busting pleasure of consuming and boasts a few deeply emotional and moving passages as well), Max Brooks’ World War Z (Brought to you by the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, this is one of my favorite books read in country; it boasts phenomenal zombie fights, a global zombie plague with in-depth knowledge of military history and context in several countries around the world, and a format based on Studs Terkel’s seminal work Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do [seriously], and I’m pretty sure that, though most people would like to believe that Brooks is simply a creative if not ridiculous author, he actually suffers from an irrational fear of a zombie apocalypse and has written these books in order to educate the masses as to what they ought to do should it occur, so, for the sake of Brooks, educate yourselves. Also, even if you’re not on Mefloquin, you can expect epic zombie dreams for as long as you’re reading it), Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (A pretty legit sci-fi read and the inspiration for a lot of movies you may or may not have seen including Bladerunner and some others that I can’t remember at the moment but may later when I have internet), Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals (Pollan covers the epic journey from field or forest to dinner plate of processed, organic, beyond organic, and hunted and gathered food, along the way discussing the ethics, history, and philosophy of each dish and entertaining each discussion [including vegetarianism and veganism] with a cool and non-self-righteous head, simply asking ‘why?’ and following it to its logical end), and finally Fritz Fischer’s Making Them Like Us: Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s (As you may have guessed by the title, this books discusses the challenges faced by PCVs in the 60s and the politics of Peace Corps creation; however, Fischer is not an RPCV, so his conclusions about PCVs’ attitudes can be annoying. Additionally he offers no advice about alleviating the issues of Peace Corps or PCVs, almost all of which are still a part of Peace Corps today).