Website for The Translator

After receiving a copy of The Translator by Daoud Hari from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, I reviewed the book here and also sent a copy of the review to Random House. I received a nice e-mail thanking me for taking the time to read and review the book. Random House has a website for the book, which will be in bookstores on March 18. Of course, the site has information regarding the book -- an interview with the author, pictures, an audio clip from the book, as well as a reader's guide and a teacher's guide is promised soon. What makes the site for this book special is the fact that there is useful information regarding the genocide in Darfur and ways in which we can help. Please take a moment and go check it out.

Reading Recap for January and February 2008

The following are the books that I've read for the year thus far. I think it's quite a diverse list (for me, anyway). It contains a couple classics, some genre fiction, some nonfiction, a couple arcs and some YA literature. Some of the books have been in my tbr pile, but others were chosen because they were part of reading challenges or for book discussion groups. Just for fun, the breakdown looks like this.

• Total number of pages: 5,194
• Number of fiction: 15
• Number of nonfiction: 2
• YA Literature: 4
• Reading challenge books: 2
• Book club/discussion group books: 3
• Arcs: 3
• For class: 6
• Books reviewed: 13 (links are to the original review)
  

The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2) by C. S. Lewis
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Essential C. S. Lewis edited by Lyle W. Dorsett
Pushing Up Daisies (A Dirty Business Mystery) by Rosemary Harris
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Tin Roof Blowdown (A Dave Robicheaux Novel) by James Lee Burke
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This weekend I'll finish up Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood for the the third installment of the Year of Reading Dangerously. I'm enjoying it so far, but I think I still like The Handmaid's Tale better. I have an Anchor Books edition, which is full of typos, which is driving me crazy. I'm also reading Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, which will probably take a while since I'm just dipping into it here and there. It's interesting to see what he was like as a little boy and what influenced him as a writer. It's kind of weird to be reading personal correspondence. I don't really write many letters, but if I did I'm not sure I would want them published after my death. There is something about it that seems wrong in a way. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I'm not very far into this collection of letters. Right now, Doyle is still a young boy away at school. He had a very annoying habit of writing entire letters without capitalization or punctuation, which makes them a little difficult to read. I've skipped ahead and found that he does indeed begin to use punctuation a little more later on. Thank goodness!

Weekend Reading

I feel like I've been in a "reading groove" here lately. I've been enjoying everything I've read and have been able to do quite a bit of reading. I've actually read 15 books since January 1, which puts me way ahead of my target of 50 books for 2008. Dare I dream of reaching 100? Let's not get ahead of ourselves! Life has a way of knocking me off track every now and then. But for this weekend, I have nothing planned. So, I plan on finishing The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, which is fiction and (you guessed it!) deals with some of the same themes that have been in his other writings. But, he's a really good writer and even though all of his books contain some of these Christian themes, the reader doesn't feel as if they're being preached to. On the contrary, the books simply make the reader think, which is always a good thing. This is a short book, so I hope to move on to some other reading. I have two arcs that I need to read, and I would like to start on Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, which is the March selection for the Year of Reading Dangerously challenge. I have soooo many books that I want to read, it's hard to choose. I haven't been talking much about all of the books that have been coming into my house, but rest assured there are enough to keep me busy. In fact, I'll have to live to be 150 as it stands now to get all of them read. Have a great weekend!

The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

I received this book back in January from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. It's taken me this long to read it not because it's a long book, in fact, it's quite short (less than 200 pages), but because it's difficult to read. It's heartbreaking and surreal. We hear a little about the situation in Darfur every now and then, but we remain safely removed. The book tells the story of what's happening to the people of Darfur as I write this. It's been going on for years, and the issue is extremely complicated with many different factions and rebel groups.

This book tells the story of Darfur through the eyes of Daoud Hari. He's lucky enough to have had a good education and can speak several languages -- Arabic, English and his native Zaghawa. After his village is destroyed, he decides to use his skills to become a translator for reporters or anyone else who is willing to go into Darfur to get the message out to the rest of the world. The message is clear -- there's a genocide of massive proportion being carried out in Darfur. This is not a war; this is not a civil war. This is a genocide. Women, children, and the elderly are brutally slaughtered as whole villages are systematically wiped off the map.

The world has been slow in sending help. There are refugee camps set up along the border of Darfur. However, these camps are not much safer than being in Darfur. It's crowded; there's not enough food, and it lacks adequate shelter from the harsh conditions. But worse than all of this, the women and young girls are extremely vulnerable. They're repeatedly raped when they're forced to hunt for firewood in the woods surrounding the camps.

"Three young girls in another tent also must gather firewood. The oldest of these is fourteen. The youngest, maybe nine, wears a dusty black shawl that covers her head like a hood to hide her face. She never looks up and it seems she is willing herself into the sand. They have been raped many times, but they need to go back again soon for more fuel. They cry to talk about it."

After many captures, beatings, and imprisonments, Daoud Hari finally escapes the region with the help of some of the journalists and officials he met from the U.S. and the U.K. He now lives in the United States and continues his efforts to bring attention to the situation in Darfur. This book is something that everyone should read. It's painful, but it sheds a brief light on a situation that demands out attention.

No Snow (again!)

O.K., I thought I would be home this weekend wrapped in a blanket reading by the fireplace as snow lazily drifted outside my window. Well, so far all we have is rain, and I'm at work with no fireplace and no cozy blanket. However, I do have lots of books (one of the perks of working in a library!). Hopefully, the snow is on its way. But we've had several false alarms here of late, and I'm losing what shaky faith I had in the art (or is it science?) of weather prediction.

This is the third Early Reviewers book that I've received from LibraryThing. I actually read this one and got the review posted on LibraryThing in a timely fashion. At first glance, I put this book into the same category as Carolyn Hart's Death on Demand series and Maggie Sefton's Knitting Mysteries. In this type of mystery, the author intermingles details regarding a particular hobby such as reading in Hart's books and knitting in Sefton's books in with the mystery. The comparison is fair because this book contains a mystery or two and is intermingled with descriptions of plants and gardening.

Paula Holliday, originally from New York, is a thirty-something single woman who is starting a new gardening/landscaping business in Connecticut. Of course there is the usual murder and mayhem you would expect to find in any mystery book. In her first big job, Paula stumbles upon the preserved corpse of a baby in the garden of one of the town's most respected citizens. Of course, she sets about trying to solve this mystery much to the dismay of the local police. But, it doesn't end there. The sleazy owner of a nursery in town winds up murdered, and Paula thinks the body she found is connected to the murder in some way. As she investigates, strange things begin to happen, and she finds herself in trouble with the police and possibly in danger herself.

I really wanted to like this book as much as I've enjoyed the books by Sefton and Hart. Unfortunately, I didn't. The book was pretty good, and I probably would have liked it better if I were the least bit interested in gardening. As my yard will attest, I usually find other things to do with my time (usually reading and knitting). But, I found some problems with the book. Some of it was simply not believable for me. The actions of the characters didn't ring true and sometimes seemed forced.

I think anyone who likes gardening and this type of amateur sleuth mystery would probably enjoy this book, but don't expect too much. Hopefully, the books that follow in the series will get better.

Class is in Session

I'm back in class -- well, sort of. I've decided to audit a class this semester taught by Dr. Jim Gulledge here in the library. The class is The Works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. I'm really excited about this class after the first meeting yesterday. The class is small, about 18 students, and the setting is intimate, which is a pleasant way of saying that we're crammed into a tiny room on the third floor of the library. After reviewing the syllabus, I can honestly say that I'm glad that I'm auditing the class. I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up and work full-time and take care of everything else in my crazy life. As you might expect with these two prolific authors, the course is extremely reading-intensive, which suits me just fine. In fact, I just returned from the bookstore where I picked up several of the books that are required for the course. The Essential C. S. Lewis, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett, The Tolkien Reader by J. R. R. Tolkien and Beowulf: A Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney and edited by Daniel Donoghue. In addition to these, we'll be reading The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and three of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia series by Lewis -- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Magician's Nephew, and The Last Battle. I know I may be the last person on the face of the planet who has not read The Lord of the Rings. The closest I've come is watching the movie, which I did enjoy. So, I'm looking forward to finally reading this book.

I know I'm weird when it comes to things like this (my children remind me of this fact quite often!), but I'm like a kid in a candy store when I go to pick up books for a class. I love school. I always have. I think that's part of the reason I ended up as an academic librarian. This is as close as it comes to getting paid to go to school, which happens to be my ultimate dream. I graduated with my MLIS in 2005 and haven't taken any classes since, which is the longest that I've been out of school since 1998. I was beginning to have withdrawals. Luckily one of the benefits of being an employee in most colleges and universities is the opportunity to take classes free. So, until someone hires me to be a full-time student, I will probably continue to take classes that pique my interest in order to stave off those pesky withdrawal symptoms. So, you'll probably be hearing updates about the reading for this class periodically throughout this semester.

I should finish my latest Early Reviewers book from LibraryThing, Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris, this weekend. I also hope to make some progress on Great Expectations, which I'm supposed to have read by the end of the month for the Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge. My face to face book club meets on February 7, and we'll be discussing The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks. So that will be next on the reading list. Of course, that is after I do the reading for my class.

Have a great weekend!

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

(I received this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program. The book that I received has a different cover, which I like better.)

Let me preface this by saying that I don't read very many short story collections. So, I didn't really know what to expect from this book. However, I knew from the very first story that I was going to enjoy this book. I especially like the way that the author loosely ties all of the stories together using the title character, Olive Kitteridge. This allows the reader the opportunity to see how differently people perceive themselves and others. The stories also progress over time. In the first story, Olive is a working mother, and in the last several stories, she is in her 70s and has lost her husband.

Though Olive is featured in each of the stories, she is featured more prominently in some, and these turn out to be my favorite stories. It would be difficult for me to pick a favorite story, but I think "Security" would have to be one of my favorites. In this story, Olive goes to visit her only son and his pregnant wife in New York. Olive feels very out of place and is devastated to learn that Christopher has issues with her and the way he was raised. The visit ends with Olive and Christopher having an argument and Olive leaving earlier than planned.

It's true that on the surface Olive seems to be an unpleasant person who speaks her mind without regard for the feelings of others. However, I think that the author does a good job of showing the complexities of this character. I feel like much of her brusqueness comes from insecurities. But for all of her rudeness and harshness, she does show kindness in unexpected ways.

Overall, this is a really great book of stories that does indeed read like a novel. I would highly recommend it. Thanks LT for this early reviewers program!