I have a lot of thoughts about this book because I found it both enchanting and frustrating. Let’s start with the plot: We’re somewhere in Africa. The Nuru, a lighter skinned people, and the Okeke, a darker skinned people, are enemies. The Nuru are on course to exterminate the Okeke, following (what they think is) the guidance written in The Great Book. One Okeke woman is raped by a really terrible Nuru during a raping/pillaging raid. She escapes, giving birth in the desert to a baby girl whom she […]
Leopold’s Ghost Haunts Us All
This book will tear your heart out. It’s extremely well-written and extremely difficult to read. The bad guy basically gets away with it. The human rights activists/heroes are indeed noble, but most suffer greatly for their cause. It’s a terrible story, and it’s made more terrible by the fact that most people don’t know it even happened. In addition to, I think, the general lack of knowledge about Africa in the West, the efforts to forget Belgium’s atrocious history have been remarkable, effective, and ongoing. You can’t help but wonder how […]
Do you have a baby? Then you don’t have time to read this book.
Many (like, at least five!) friends who are also Parents of Babies recommended this book to me when they learned of my delicate condition: “This book is the only one that actually helped!” So obviously I picked it up. Baby Luxury is still in utero, so I’ll have to report back in December when I can tell y’all if the advice in this book works on an actual baby. Basically, Dr. Karp posits that particularly fussy (colicky) babies simply don’t have the skills yet to self-soothe. […]
This is not actually a book about birds.
Well this was a surprisingly delightful little book. Mr. Malik is a “short, round, balding brown man”–a sixty-something widower with a comb-over. After his wife’s death, on his doctor’s advice, he picked up a hobby: birds. Every Tuesday morning, he joins the East African Ornithological Society bird walk, led by Rose Mbikwa, Scottish widow of a Nairobi politician. Mr. Malik most definitely has a (quiet) crush on Ms. Mbikwa. One Tuesday, the showy and good-looking Harry Khan, Mr. Malik’s former classmate, shows up at the bird walk. […]
Breathing for Two
This is a wonderful short little book. I picked it up because Goodreads recommended it based on my reading history, and I’m glad I did. Wolf Pascoe is the pen name of an anesthesiologist (and blogger). In these 102 pages, he basically muses about his job. Anaesthesia has a long history, starting with Ondine of Greek mythology, but a relatively short modern history, starting in the 1840s with the use of ether. Pascoe starts with that and from there intertwines his poetic and philosophical musings with more concrete discussion (although […]
Stranded in Paradise (with gangrene.)
It’s 1945. The War is winding down, but there are still bases, well, everywhere, including in New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean. Because New Guinea is not the most exciting place to be, they host occasional morale-boosting airplane tours to “Shangri-la”–an untouched, pristine, and gorgeous valley in the middle of rugged, inhospitable mountains (on a rugged, inhospitable island), just recently discovered. In May, a plane carrying 24 soldiers and members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), crashed en route to Shangri-la. Only three survived. They have to […]
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