I moved! and I have a library card! and I work a block from the Kenya Reference and Lending Library! (January)
I feel so much more secure now that I have a library card and easy access to a library.
- the Stepford Wives -
Do you remember who wrote this? I don’t. Short and creepy. Really well done creepy. I didn’t see the new movie, but i know that it ends well and not all the women are murdered, so i don’t approve of it.
Whatever happened to the 1960s, when books and movies put forth stories with situations that didn’t end well, and they left it at that. I mean, sometimes things don’t end well. And most of the time they don’t end all happy or even end at all. Ooh. Now i feel like watching Bullitt. Steve McQueen!
- the Interpreters - Wole Soyinka
Sadly, this is the only Soyinka book that I can find in the library. Probably I need to look more - the other day i spotted 3 harry potter books - each one was the Prisoners of Azkaban book, and each one was in a different place on the “literature” shelf. One of them was right next to a treatise on socialism or something like that. Ah, the library. Anyways, this is the first book by an African author that i’ve read while in Kenya that I really enjoyed reading. Maybe because it takes place in Nigeria and not Kenya? I don’t know. But I really really enjoyed it - I really liked how it was written, and the characters are unique and believable and go through changes. I’m a fan! Wish they had more than one rotting copy (literally) of one book by Soyinka.
- Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers
Yeah! I just LOVE Dorothy L. Sayers! Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries! I just love them. According to my sources who went to Wheaton College, Sayers was Christian. So hooray for a Christian author who wrote excellent, character driven mystery novels and didn’t ever bang anyone on the head with theology! Also, this is a particularly good one, i thought. Really interesting. Especially if you’ve read other Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries.
And I would say it was that much more enjoyable and satisfying of a read because I found it at the library here, after wishing I could find some D. Sayers for about a year.
- Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
Yes, one of my favorites by far. Absolutely. Why do I love it? Oh, man. See, I’m not a Great Reader. I’m not an analyzer, really, and I’m not a deeper person for most of my reading. Mostly I read for the emotional response, for the very tangible and physical sensation that reading gives me (i hear reading for pleasure releases similar chemicals as Ecstasy in the brain of some folks, and if it does, then i am definitely one of those folks), for the sensation of being swept off my feet and not knowing where the current is taking me (and oh but Murakami is SO GOOD for that) and also for small small expansions of my very guarded and tightly wound universe. Because it’s hard for me to get out of the universe in my head (and maybe the books are partly to blame for that), and books - well written books - help me see out and expand my own paltry universe.
So, yeah, this book. This book most of the time you are being rushed along two parallel tracks and you don’t know where you are going. Then they merge and you still don’t know where you are going. And then it ends, and there’s this wonderful sensation of stopping and looking around and you aren’t sure where you are, but it sure is different from where you started and that alone is enough for me.
~~~official shout out to sasha for sending me his copy~~~
- Memory - Margaret Mahey
Thanks to Mai-Linh Hong for getting me started on Margaret Mahey. She writes such wonderful adolescent fiction, with messed up teenagers who have believably complicated and extraordinarily messed up families and situations. And most of the books take place in her home country of New Zealand, which is quite interesting. This one is not her best, but it’s still a great story.

working at ACORD, living at the Guesthouse and having a grumpy commute (December)
- The Wanderers - I forget the author. This is one of those Newberry Award books. It was at the Guesthouse library. I have to say - better than i would have thought! made me cry.
- The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass - Stephen King
Okay, part of me is embarrassed to admit that I’ve been reading this Stephen King series. The Wizard and Glass is what, the 4th? I think it’s the 4th. John has been reading the series, and then I bum them off of him. This was the best so far, but almost painful to read b/c you know it’s going to end badly somehow. Overall, I am enjoying the Dark Tower series. I mean, the central character is a Gunslinger, and however much i may disagree with the messages of those spaghetti westerns, i do enjoy Clint Eastwood. And I like the idea of how he’s constructed overlapping worlds and times that can interact. well, it’s fun to go along for the ride. Also, these do not fall under the “horror” category.
- 3rd Harry Potter -
The Mennonite Guesthouse library has it. Such a good one!
- The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco
Well, i spent money on this. I usually spend my 15 USD of “worker renewal” money on books. It’s my new luxury in kenya. I mean, I never ever bought new books in the US, but now sometimes I will here in Nairobi. So I bought this book NEW, because the back cover sounded just perfect for me. And i mean, i appreciated The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (okay, actually i don’t remember Foucault’s Pendulum at all. read it one summer during college, i think? vague, vague impressions). right, so i vaguely remember appreciating them, definitely didn’t get them per se - i mean, don’t know enough history or philosophy or physics to get them - but i enjoyed the Name of the Rose (that was during Portland, during the brief spell when i lived by myself. maybe it was a month? not even. but i sure did read that book. yep.) but still, i had this very strong feeling that there could be another Eco book that i would enjoy more. Like, another plot would do better for me. Well, that other book is not this book. It was a disappointment for me. Though i did learn more about Italy under fascism. Don’t think about that on an every day basis.

guesthouse days (October)
- Snow - Orhan Pamuk
I’ve already raved about this. I know he’s a very controversial figure in Turkey, and I am not saying that I was totally agreeing with everything that he sort of celebrates in the book. But I am saying that it is a beautiful book. Beautiful in its poetry and its depth and its characters. The kind of beauty that makes me feel better about the world if someone can write a novel like this.
- Tales from a Thousand and One Nights
Oh MAN! Did you know that Aladdin (with his magic lamp and all) is from CHINA? Yes, China. Also great stories like “The Historic Fart,” and countless instances of everyday mores and systems being turned on their head completely. Wow. A really fun and disorienting experience. Jim, my Country Representative, borrowed it and said he stopped reading it after the first 3 stories because they were “All the same.” We disagree on that point.
- Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong
I read the forward and had to lie down because i was reeling. Or maybe I was already lying down. In any case, I reeled. All sorts of historical and modern, political and social pieces started to fall into place. Why didn’t I know this stuff before?
The beginning and end of the book were the knock-out bits for me, but the rest (it really is a “short” history of islam, which i appreciated) was engaging and really drew me along as well.
- Voyages of Dr. Doolittle - Hugh Lofting
Hmm, apparently continuing my trend of reading books that include extremely Broad and quite Ridiculous caricatures of “other races.” Not as good as the initial Dr. Doolittle book, but with some good bits and sadly also some uncomfortable bits. According to the forward, the editors cleaned it up so as to make it less racist. At least traveling in a giant snail across the ocean floor and having a duck as a housecleaner - these are good things.
- Stamboul Train - Graham Greene
A really well constructed and well told story of what happens during a 3 day train ride from, ...oh, i forget where...to Istamboul. I hadn’t read any Graham Greene, so when things turn Upsetting I was totally taken by surprise, and ended up being all disturbed afterwards and dwelling on the characters and the events (and had to follow it up right away with the next book). Written back in the days when Jews were another “race.” Yes, those days. The fact that one of the main characters is Jewish is a major part of the book, as far as his motivations and physicality and also the way that the other characters react to him. It gets Extremely Old Very Quickly.
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Nonracist animals! These are the animals we like. Sure, the weasels and the stoats aren’t reliable, but even Rat is on friendly speaking terms with them most of the time. I’ve always liked this one, but with this reading what really popped for me was that the characters are extremely sympathetic and relatively complex, and also there is a very internally consistent set of mores by which the animal kingdom operates. Man, I certainly appreciate an internally consistent constructed world.
- Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
Oh, it’s good, it’s just upsetting. Or maybe it was upsetting because of my state of mind when i read it. Really vibrant characters that shine out of relations of every-day life in India and America, but I missed the “subtle humor” that the back cover promised - it was just depressing to me.

mysteries on the beach (October)
- Brother Cadfael (3 mysteries) - Ellis Peters
Medieval monk who grows medicinal herbs in the monastery, used to be part of the Crusades, and now solves mysteries. You know, if you read 3 of these in a row, you can start kind of predicting what’s going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Brother Cadfael, but in the future I will take my time in between reading them.

- Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
I was going to highlight this one, but I just can’t because the beginning is So Disturbingly Racist it’s hard to stomach. After the first 20 pages or so, there aren’t any more black people in it, and it turns into a really interesting and complex hardboiled detective story. Really excellent plot construction and I totally get into the writing even though a lot of it seems quite ridiculous on its own. The man likes his metaphors. But the beginning...it is not a pretty thing.

- Burglars Can’t Be Choosers - Lawrence Block
Used bookstore! There’s a fairly good used bookstore here in Nairobi, at one of the ex-pat malls that make me fairly nauseous. Anyways, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough books from the guesthouse library to take on vacation, so I hit up the used bookstore. I had read some of these burglar books before - the main character is a burglar who is a likeable chap, and in the later books is an ex-burglar who runs a used bookstore. Well, this is the first of the books, and it’s just not quite as good. Burglar isn’t quite as entirely likeable. But still, not bad.

books during stressful times in Kahawa Sukari (June, July, August, September)

- Outcast - Rosemary Sutcliffe

- The Giver - Lois Lowry
I didn’t read this as a child, and I can’t imagine how I would have taken it then. I first read it in Montreal, when I was staying with Rebecca for the summer during law school. Oh MAN it’s so well done. I love books that create scenarios with slightly alternate realities and then explore them in a way that delves into aspects of human nature.
That was a stupid sentence I just wrote. But it’s still true. Like Ursula K. LeGuin. Man, when I read her books I remember why “science fiction” has the power to change a reader’s reality.

- The Bridge - Ian Banks
Banks wrote the Wasp Factory, which I don’t recommend - it’s a masterful book that is a scarring experience to read and, really, you don’t need to go through it. I know I didn’t. (Actually, my housemate in Portland, Joanna, had introduced me to his book Crow Road, and it was just lovely. So I kept ordering Wasp Factory from the Portland library to my branch, picking it up and immediately putting it in the “return” chute because it looked too disturbing. But I kept being drawn to it. Anyways, as I said, it’s really well imagined and pieced together and told, but not something I would recommend).
So, this one is a masterful book too, and I really enjoyed it for the most part. I wouldn’t recommend it widely because it does have some disturbing scenes, but I really liked the weaving together of realities (main character has a car accident and wakes up on the Bridge as an amnesiac patient in a socially stratified society that isn’t aware of a reality beyond the Bridge).

- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
I still prefer When We Were Orphans and Remains of the Day. If I was comparing this one to those books, I wouldn’t be bolding it. But comparing it to other books in the world, it’s way up there. I mean, it’s an Ishiguro book, and dang but he knows what he is doing. He creates a world just a bit different, just a slight difference, and explores its implications beautifully.

- Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow - Peter HØEG
so good. This is the British translation of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Maybe it was the first translation? The whole book isn’t as different as the title (this title is closer to the Danish title...based on my excellent Danish reading skills), but there definitely are some different word choices and even changes of tense that creates a slightly different experience.
Still the most absorbing and engaging book for me. The first time I read Smilla I was in my first semester of law school. The day I finished reading it, I looked out the window and I knew that, not only was I different, but the world was different. It was a world with this book in it, with these characters, with this level of storytelling. It stretched my expectations for literature and for myself.

- Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
No, seriously, do you know about these stories? I sure didn’t. They are So Good!! Father Brown is an English Anglican priest and he solves mysteries of a sort. What a great character! My new favorite religious crime-solving character.

- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Still good. A slightly different experience for me each time I read it. Sometimes I’m annoyed with some of the characters, sometimes I’m just swept away. I think this time I was just numb in general.

- The Stand - Stephen King
Well, I’ll say this. I was really, really stressed out and low when I read this, and I read it Very Quickly. And it is Long. And I am quite grateful that I had it during that time, because if I hadn’t had a 1700 page book to read that week I might have just fallen apart all together.
That said, my standards for post-apocalyptic scenarios has been set far higher now that I live in east Africa. King’s depiction of an America whose population has been decimated by a government designed plague doesn’t cut it.

books during language study (May)

- Kneeknock Rise - Natalie Babbitt
- Rubiayat - Omar Khayyam

- Eva Luna - Isabel Allende
This was a thin time for books. But wow-ie, this sure was a fun one! I love the characters and the atmosphere of the book, and the idea that we can remake reality with our narrative abilities.

- Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
More disturbing than I thought it would be.

books while i kept thinking “Oh My! I Am In Kenya!” (March, April)

- The Wedding Goes On Without Us - Ray Downing
This is the first book that I read in Kenya. The author reflects on experiences in his on-going journey of attempting to practice “poverty medicine,” in New York City, rural Appalachia, Kenya, Sudan, and Tanzania. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in reflecting upon what it means to truly engage in their chosen profession, and especially for those who are working in any kind of cultural setting other than the one in which they grew up.

- The Constant Gardener - John LeCarre
No, I didn’t see the movie. I’ll probably read it again some point down the line, now that I’m more familiar with Nairobi and Kenya, since apparently that’s one of the great things about it. Well, I thought it was an interesting plot.

- Wangaari Maathai’s Green Belt Book
Not really worth reading. But I hear the new autobiography is better.

- Stone for a Pillow - Madeleine L’Engle

- Grain of Wheat - Ngugi Wa Thiongo

- She Ate of the Female Cassava

- The Spiral Staircase - Karen Armstrong

- The Book of Flying - Keith Miller

and now i've started a blog, but all my postings are not on this computer. so i'll just have to get on that next week when i'm back in the office. hmm. not a very auspicious start to a blog.

I don’t know why i’m starting ANOTHER blog. it’s not like i’m doing a great job of keeping up on the first one. but this is something i actually have been writing to myself about, and thought i might share. BOOKS! books that i’ve read during my time in kenya. i don’t know why i started doing this. but i’m glad i have. it isn’t all the books i read, but it’s most of them i reckon. i think having a library card got me all excited about keeping track of them again, and initially i was excited about keeping track because the books i read were some of the only things that were life-giving in my life.

bold are books that i really loved.
italicized are books that i was re-reading.

what do you think of these books? have any books you’d like to recommend to others? me, i like knowing the books that people are reading. so what books are you reading?