seriously, this book is taking forever

I don’t know. I was roaming the library, and there was a copy of Foucalt’s (Foucult? Foucault. That looks right. I can’t even spell the title. yeesh.) okay, Foucault’s Pendulum that hadn’t been there before. Why did I check it out? Maybe kind of related to me re-reading the Golden Compass trilogy - I wanted to see again why it had failed to click with me. Is it me or the books, and was it a matter of timing; have I changed sufficiently so that now is the time to read this, not then. Anyways, so I checked it out. I seriously do not remember a blessed thing about the book, except that I had kind of skimmed big chunks of it and then felt like maybe i didn’t get it because I hadn’t been paying attention.

Right. So. I am paying attention. Man, this is taking for-fricking-ever. My level of interest has gone up and down. Right now I’d say it is fairly down - plot ain’t moving, just stuck on working out the intricacies of the Templar plot and how the Rosicrucians fit in etc etc... it’s like reading a thesis. A whacked out thesis. A whacked out thesis about something that is uninteresting to me. Anyways, it makes me feel like “Oh, I don’t have the classical education to appreciate this” but then, I don’t know if I care. I’m trying to think - there have definitely been books that made me wish I’d had the classical education to truly appreciate them, but this isn’t one of them.
Well, and I’m only 600 pages into it anyways (sigh). Can’t give up now. My impulse is to skip the exposition and pick out the very small bits of plot - I could finish the thing in an hour or less. But you know, that’s what I did last time. I am attempting to be stubborn on this one.

Um, I don’t know why I’m following up The Famished Road with this thing. The Famished Road, my people, The Famished Road is one of the best books I have ever read and will ever read. It is amazing. Since I moved to Kenya, some books have really knocked the wind out of me - made me sit down and catch my breath because I can’t believe how good they are. Not just that I see things somewhat differently because of the knowledge or point of view of the book - it’s that now the world exists with these books in them, and it is a deeper, richer, better world than I thought. I would say Snow, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Compass Rose, Gaudy Night, The Famished Road, and maybe The Interpreters have done that to me this past year or so. Yeah, some of them were re-readings, but they still did it to me.

I hear Ben Okri’s other books aren’t up to The Famished Road. So maybe that’s why I’m slogging through Foucault’s Pendulum now. Because it’s safe - a re-reading of something that wasn’t terrible the first time but was fairly empty of meaning for me. Want to come down gently off of The Famished Road.

Or maybe it’s just that the Nairobi library really does not have a stupendous collection of books. Well, I shouldn’t complain. It’s not so bad. And anyways, even though I don’t actually usually take principled positions, let alone act upon those principled positions - Not really – with libraries...I am sticking to public libraries. I am not turning to the ones where you have to pay to belong. Oh No, peoples. That just goes against the egalitarian beauty, against the whole point of libraries.

I know Tom Waits isn’t an author and his music isn’t a book, but sometimes I feel like it is anyways
Yep. His sentimental and his creepy are totally my sentimental and my creepy, although sometimes the mix between the two isn’t quite right for me. The album Alice is too extreme - the creepy is actually kind of scares me, and the sentimental is way too maudlin. But Blood Money? Beautiful. Perfection. The problems and the horrors of life looked at squarely without hope of some outside redemption, but including in that gaze the individual wonders and joys of life.
Anyways, no worries, I don’t subscribe to Tom Waits’ personal philosophy of life. I just really appreciate the opportunity to look at the world from his perspective.

small update - since I wrote the above, but before posting this, I have to admit that I started skimming. I don't know...they are figuring out the intricacies of The Plan and I just don't care. So much for stubbornness. Still, I got pretty darn far. For me.

April is the cruellest month...well, not really. Not in Kenya, at least. Different weather, you know.

The Cat Who Turned On and Off - some author who has sold a lot of books
Why has this series (murder mysteries, always “The Cat Who....”) sold so many books? Well, that is a pointless question. Because lots of folks like to read them. I, for one, have not bought any of the books. And now, having read one, I will continue to not buy any of them. If I need a good mystery, I will not go to this series. Maybe I would have liked it better if I had an affinity to cats, or mustaches, or middle aged male characters with mustaches prefer to date lithe young things at least 20 years younger than themselves.
I reckon I’ve been spoiled by Smilla and those GK Chesterton short stories and Dorothy L. Sayers novels. Ooh! Good mysteries are great; mediocre mysteries are pointless.

Anil’s Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
He wrote The English Patient, and while I don’t really remember the movie, I remember not liking the movie. I mean, it was a good movie, I think, but I didn’t like the characters and I didn’t like what happened to them. So even though it was recommended by Mai-Linh, she-who-recommends-magnificent-books, I just didn’t read it.
Then I was roaming the Literature section of the Library, and this book jumped out at me. I think it probably caught my eye because it’s a paperback with a colored cover, and many of the fiction books are old hardbacks, with the spine taped up with colored ducktape so that one often doesn’t know the titles by just looking. So I innocently checked it out.
The main character is a forensic pathologist who works on sites unearthing and identifying causes of death for victims of human rights violations. The main action takes place in Sri Lanka.
It is. Well. It is...magnificent, and harrowing, and upsetting, and uplifting. So upsetting that at times I didn’t want to keep reading; so well-written and compelling that I couldn’t stop reading.
Sometimes I wonder whether I have changed in the past 14 months, living in Kenya. It’s hard to tell - there’s no one around who knew me pre-Kenya and it’s hard to do self-examination when everyday life takes so much energy. But I can tell some of the ways that I’ve changed by my reaction to certain books and movies. I get upset, and it is different than before. I think in the past I was protected more by my lack of imagination. Or maybe not that, maybe just a comforting sense of distance. But now I don’t feel as much distance - it’s more immediate. It’s more real. Anything to do with political repression, with prison camps, with death. I don’t know why, eh? I mean, Kenya has a turbulent recent history, and there’s plenty of repression (economic and underhandedly political) these days, but I do not personally experience that. But even in my sheltered life here, death and suffering is closer to the surface, closer by to everyday life. So I am experiencing these books more closely, beyond the initial shock. But I think that’s okay. I mean, I don’t feel completely knocked off my bearings by it. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - I’ve always had a lot of respect for that book, for its story and the telling of the story, but I think this is the first time I’ve really believed it.

Malice Aforethought - Dorothy L. Sayers
Another early Lord Peter Whimsey book, and a darn funny one. I mean, I don’t know if it’s a funny book, but there are a whole lot of funny comments in it. Yeah, I think it is a funny book. Well, and a lovely mystery - more of a classic murder mystery than some of the others, and far more fun and interesting and better written than the classic classic murder mysteries. Yep.

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
Um, I don’t know. They are a good read. And I can see why lots and lots of folks love these books. They are well written, and really wildly creative stories that create alternative universes but still manage to be internally consistent, which is always a big plus. My supervisor at work lent them to me. She loves them.
I guess I just don’t take to epics. I don’t know why. With the exception of the Dark Tower series, that’s pretty epic I guess. And all those Clint Eastwood movies. And Harry Potter. But otherwise, I mean, like, the multiple generation stories - I don’t like reading stories that branch over 3 generations and you see the kids grow up and the blah blah blah. I know they are good and worthy to be read. Oh, and the Lord of the Rings. I read those when I was too young, but still. All those battles. Epic fights between good and evil. So maybe it’s the grand scope of these books that I don’t take to.
And when I say I don’t “take” to them, well, this is my second time reading them, and I stayed up way too late last night reading them. So it’s not that I don’t enjoy reading them. I just don’t take to it. I think I get tired of the characters. Lack of attention span? Difficulty staying engaged when there are battle-ish scenes? Definitely difficulty staying engaged during battle scenes. Maybe that’s my problem.
So it’s not the books, it’s me.

The Famished Road - Ben Okri
I never want to not be reading this book.