Around The World For a Good Book selection for: Côte d’Ivoire
Author: Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie Title: Aya Publication Info: Drawn and Quarterly (2007)https://othemts.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php ISBN: 1894937902
Summary/Review:
This beautifully illustrated graphic novel is set in Yop City, a working class neighborhood in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970’s when the nation was prosperous and chic. Abouet deliberately sets out to tell a story about Africa that is not about poverty and warfare. The story is centered around the daily lives and flirtations of three young women. Of course there is some heavy stuff here when one of the young women becomes pregnant and is forced into marriage with the son of a wealthy Boss, but Abouet plays if off for comedy with the grown-ups as comic caricatures. . Oubrerie vibrantly illustrates this book bringing out the beautiful colors of the clothing and the city as well as the humanity of the characters. I learned about this book via The Hieroglyphic Streets, where you can find more reviews, and apparently there are sequels that are worth checking out too.
Recommended Books: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
Today I’m posting a response from an online friend that I had asked to review my new blog. Since I’m brand new to this stuff, I value the responses of anyone who cares to comment (trolls excepted), but comments from friends are especially welcome. I haven’t actually met Fred yet, but we’ve had a lively discourse over the past few months. He’s an 80 something supporter of all things liberal and a senior member of the Universal Unitarians, or something like that. I’m a 40 something Southern Baptist with a non-standard point of view, but have no doubt that I support the right to life for unborn children.
This is Fred’s response; please feel free to comment on this as well, the books, not the politics.
This Book Weasel/Dog Weasel Blog gives a whole new dimension to the author, and no end of difficulties in coping with her. Literate, witty, erudite, unpretentious and entertaining … not even remotely approaching the expected from a Southern Baptist basking in godly love and convinced that her fetus was talking to her seven minutes after conception.
(BookWeasel: Nearly true, I maintain that I knew I was pregnant with my only child very nearly from conception. Fred maintains that I’m a jibbering *&$^()#$ and wouldn’t recognize a fetus if it jumped up and called me Mama.)
It gives rise to about a million questions (marked down from 1.7 million questions), a sprinkling of which are:
* Why do you do it?
* What rewards are in it for you?
* What are your goals for it?
* Why is your name not on it?
* How do people know it is there?
* How many “hits” in any given period of time?
(BookWeasel: Excellent questions that I’ll ignore for now because it’s my blog and I get to play dirty.)
Ah, Chihuahuas. For four decades I co-existed in perfect civility with my next door neighbor, X, as he advanced from jail sergeant to long-time sheriff of X County. He died, and his widow moved, and soon we got The Neighbor From Hell, a social worker (I understand) who quickly alienated everyone on my block of X Avenue. Like turning in a neighbor for her 25 cats. Like calling the law when someone had an asthma attack and parked in her driveway. Like accusing my son of stealing stuff off her lawn, other neighbors of stealing other stuff. All of which is meaningless preamble for her (three) Chihuahuas From Hell, who go off regularly at 3 a.m. with yelps that sound as if one just set foot on a mouse trap. (We have a cat …)
(BookWeasel: It’s true that Chihuahuas, especially en masse, have a truly irritating yap. It sets up a resonance in the inner ear drum that can cause sterililty, toe fungus, and a craving for licorice. However, in respect for Fred’s cat (yuck), I’ll soon be reviewing a Terry Pratchett novel called ‘The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents”.)
I am overwhelmed by a sense of guilt on my non-book reading habits. I have an ex-nun’s history of god at my bedside, thinking that I ought to have some knowledge of the subject for my September sermon. I’m stuck in the first hundred pages. I got to the last chapter of Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” and just quit because a guy embracing those who’d wipe him (and ME!) off the map has a tent too big for MY tastes. I adore political humor – Molly Ivins, Art Hoppe, Al Franken … But mostly I stick to them thar librul periodicals – The Nation, Harpers, Mother Jones, The Progressive. Haven’t tackled a good novel in years. There’s also the half-hour-standing-at-a-Borders-counter read.
(BookWeasel: I’ve been known to read the back of cereal boxes when nothing else was available.)
So there you go, expect to hear more from Fred as I sneak in the occasional weasel. Next up will be the book review of Maurice, a very smart cat who has figured out a financial scam involving a large group of traveling, also smart rats. There’s a not-so-smart kid that plays a pretty good horn, and plenty of gullible townies willing to pay to get rid of their Oh-So-Sudden rat problem. This novel is one of Terry Pratchett’s youth entries but don’t let that fool you, Sir Pratchett’s youth stories are some of the best fiction I’ve read without any condescending for a younger audience.
“The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents” is published by Harper Torch and takes place on the magical Discworld. It’s a departure from his usual Discworld characters so it stands alone and is a perfect introduction to the author for teen or adult.
In Maurice’s story, the rats have been hanging out behind the University of magic and the garbage left behind by wizards has some pretty strange side effects. Maurice didn’t get so smart from eating the garbage, he got smart from eating…. Let’s just say that Maurice is one very smart cat. In fact, he’s a little too smart for the villagers and gets up to some pretty illegal behavior. This con cat runs into a problem in his last town and the rats have to save his bacon. Good thing he has a few lives left, and that Death likes cats.
This book gets the Multiples Read, I’ve read it two or three times and will for sure go back for more. And I don’t even like cats.
Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, by Mirta Ojito. Penguin (2006), 302 pages.
There was so, so much I didn’t know about Cuba. Considering that the country is only ninety miles away and intricately tied in many historically significant ways to the U.S., this book really should be required reading in our schools.
As a thirteen-year-old in 1980 I had vaguely heard of a lot of boats full of Cubans heading for Florida, but I never understood the significance of this in the context of Cuba’s history, nor did I fully grasp the complexity behind more recent stories of individual Cubans such as Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year old forcibly removed from the closet by rifle-toting federal agents.
This is the type of memoir that is not merely concerned with the author’s life but also expertly weaves in a wealth of relevant nonfiction—in this case the Mariel boatlift of 1980, the history of Cuba, the plight—and successes—of Cuban immigrants in Florida, and the anguish and torment of families forcibly separated by politics.
This Pulitzer-prize-winning author excels at placing individual stories in historical context while simultaneously bringing the characters fully to life. It is a must-read.
EXCERPT:
“Listening attentively from her perch under a mango tree was Mercedes Alvarez, a twenty-two-year-old nurse who was five months pregnant and had her three small children—aged five, two, and one—with her…. It took the family about an hour to find a place where they felt they could squeeze into the crowd and spend the night. Mercedes held tightly to her children’s hands, fearing to lose them in the multitude. When they cried for milk, she gave them pieces of the crumbled cake and rocked them to sleep one after the other. Surrounded by their tiny bodies, she began to think of the consequences of what she had done…. It occurred to her that this might be a trap, that the government might send them all to jail. She was calmed somewhat by the realization that if anything happened to her, the government would still provide for her children’s health care and education. This paradox—that the same government she was trying to flee was also the one that she knew would take care of her children—made her question why she really wanted to leave her country….
Day and night, government-controlled radio stations droned over loudspeakers, urging the refugees to return to their homes, since Peru couldn’t do anything for them; they had to trust the Cuban government. Some people stuffed cigarette butts in their ears to drown out the noise. Portable bathrooms were installed around the perimeter of the compound, but some refugees refused to use them for fear they would not be allowed to get back inside the grounds, preferring to relieve themselves in plain sight of other refugees. The garden soon became a fetid cauldron where it was difficult to walk and impossible to lie down….”
This review first appeared in March 2007
By Donna Long
Further to my earlier post on the commentaries of the Sahihain, this is a synopsis of an article by Shaykh Dr. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim ibn Ubaid (Professor of Hadith Sciences at Jamia Umm al-Qura, Makka) that was published in the Umm al-Qura Journal. The essay was titled: riwaayat wa nusakh al-Jami as-Sahih lil-Imam Abi Abdillah Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari.
As the title indicates, this essay seeks to list the many variant readings of the Sahih from its author.
It will interest any serious student of the Sahih al-Bukhari.
I recently read “Real Church: Does It Exist? Can I Find It?’ by Larry Crabb as part of the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers program.This was not the first book by Larry Crabb I have ever read. I have previously read ‘Connecting’ which is a great book about spiritual community. Larry Crabb’s insight is brilliant and refreshing. This book is no different.
Real Church is a transplant view of the western church through the eyes of the author, Larry Crabb. Crabb is open and honest about his current perspective on church. His perspective ia interesting but also a wake up call to those who live and breathe church life. Crabb begins with openly telling the reader he is bored and fed up with church. He is at a place in his life where going to church on a Sunday morning has no affect on his life in general. This is a man who longs for a deep life changing relationship and journey with God who has realized he cannot find that in most American or Western churches. Throughout the book Crabb identifies why he believes people still go to church, what he dislikes about church and then brings his thoughts together to describe to the reader what he wants in a church, how it is needed for his life and what he believes God intended the church to be characterized by.
Real Church is not bedtime reading. It is a collaboration of thoughts brought together by a man who has searched his soul and reading this book requires you to do the same. If you are happy with the status quo, do not read this book, but if you want your very core rocked, read this book. It is very evident that Larry Crabb is a man who has a deep desire to be close to God, he has just realized that the majority of churches cannot help him achieve the passion and longing his soul yearns for.
I did not find this book an easy read. It was not a book that you cannot put done. However, even though it wasn’t an easy read it was a book that has made me think more than any other I have read this year. Some of his terminology would not be understood unless you had been in church for many years, but I suppose this book was written for those who had been in church for many years. There was one particular thought Crabb tried to find answers to that had been almost laughing, agreeing and crying at the same point. This was the thought about addictions in our lives. Crabb explains that all of us are addicts and most of us are not addicted to God but to self. Most churches do not get us hooked on God, but they feed our addiction to self! Crabb says, ‘addicts to self don’t make good disciples of Jesus’ (p90).
This book is both theory and practical based. I would give this book four stars, the only reason I wouldn’t give it five would be because I didn’t think it flowed as well. However, I would recommend this book for any church leader. It will make you think, evaluate and even may bring you to your knees. I would also recommend this book to people who are bored with their church life, who are not getting anything out of church or if you just want to be refreshed by a leader opening his soul up to others in Christ like manner.
First up, I have two very strong objections to this book, a rewrite of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice into a rather juvenile goof.
Objection #1: Everyone knows Mr. Darcy is a werewolf. Come on, Seth. You screwed this up big time. If you were going to do this, you could have at least done it right. And now I’m to understand that someone else has written Sense and Sensibilities and Sea Monsters? No, no, no, a thousand times no! Here are the correct match-ups of Austen and monsters:
Pride and Prejudice and Werewolves
Emma and Zombies
Sense and Sensibility and Shapeshifters
Persuasion and Sea Monsters
Northanger Abbey and Vampires
Mansfield Park and Witches
Get it right, people!
Objection #2: Seth over-edited the beginning. Granted, Austen often starts slow, but in the early pages, Mr. Darcy makes these weird comments that make me think, “who is this guy, how did he get here, and why is he sitting around spouting random, out-of-context, rude remarks?” Fortunately, this is a temporary problem, and anyone familiar with Austen’s original story will be able to fill in the blanks. But still … the guy isn’t given his due as a werewolf, and then he’s also the weirdo in the corner who blathers autistically? Not right, Seth!
These two objections aside, this is a wonderful book. I loved it, I laughed at it, and I recommend it. Only a prig wouldn’t enjoy it. In fact, it was recommended by a woman I consider to be one of the most devoted and knowledgeable Jane Austen scholars not employed by a university. So buy it. Make Seth rich and further his career. The fact that he mucked up Darcy’s werewolfishness becomes a detail once you get into the story.
And as this blog exists for the purpose of warning people about books in which animals are harmed or neglected or otherwise meet bad ends, I have to get serious. There are lots of horses, and since they are often the key to people escaping the zombies, they are worried about and protected. That’s not to say there’s never horse on the menu in Zombieland, but it’s referenced, not shown. There are also deer, who are dear to the Bennet girls. They’re not harmed, either. So this book is SAFE for animal lovers.
Laurell K. Hamilton is my only indulgence into literary smut. Addictive in her production of novels with unfortunately similar plot lines, Hamilton has created not one, but two alternate realities that I cannot seem to extract myself from. The exploits of Anita Blake, vampire hunter follow the a fore-said protagonist through her trials as a vamp hunterwith a soft spot for vamps. And shapeshifters. And a few humans too. Not just any soft soft, the soft spot. Anita Blake is a succubus, and throughout her novels has hot, steamy, deliciously violent sex with man after vamp after shifter. And I mean “after” loosely. More often than not the men outnumber the girl. Now, I am clearly not the only female in the country to be turned on by Anita’s wonderfully wet world, as every novel LKH spits out is a New York Times Bestseller. This includes her other, less engaging series, the Merideth Gentry books. Now Merry, like Anita, gets an unfair amount of sex with an unfair number of unfairly attractive men. However, she does not kick nearly as much ass as Anita. Part of that may be because she is a fairly princess- an innately uninspiring position once a girl exceeds the age of six. It also may be due to the fact that the men Merry has collected are all cast from the same overprotective-warrior-man mold. The simple truth is once all of her yummy man meat has handled the situation, there’s just no more ass to kick. That weakness in character development and the monotony of her story line just doesn’t do it for me. I’d do Anita over Merry any day.
Anita’s most recent adventure, Skin Trade, was a long-awaited installment. I’m pretty sure no one could speak to me for two days while I devoured the literary confection. In the end I should have savored every wonderful, bloody chapter, because most of it had the consistency of a sugary cream filling. It read like most Anita novels, but certainly lacked some of the…spark…evident previously. I did enjoy my time with the always charming Edward, however deadly, creepy and insane he may be. He was one of my favorite LKH characters. Until sadly, he too was turned into a creme puff and invaded by emotion some volumes back, never again to be the chillingly cold, calculating killer that I knew and loved. In moments of bone-splitting, gut-spilling action the old Edward was certainly evident, flanked by every woman’s nightmare, Olaf the killer-cum-rapist. In Olaf, LKH lumped together everything a woman fears, and in some sort of cathartic culmination, he falls in love with Anita…in a creepy, I-want-to-tear-your-intestines-out-and-play-with-them kind of way.
Among all these charming men, the one I missed the most was the brilliantly bi-sexual Jean Claude, Master Vampire of St. Louis. Yet another of Anita’s rock hard (abs, or course) lovers, Jean Claude is by far the one I would lay my chastity (don’t laugh) down for any day. It seems that LKH has decided to develop the fringe characters, like Ed and Olaf, and the tortured vamp twins Wicked and Truth, instead of sticking with the big guns: the tormented, immortal pair of Asher and Jean Claude. Although I’m sure they got along quite well by themselves during Anita’s absence from their bed. An overall predictable, uninspiring installment of the Anita saga, Skin Trade had a mediocre plot line that drooped and sagged along the way due to poor character involvement. A reader of Anita novels desires a certain cast of characters, and this one just missed. Certainly worth the $7.99 price tag for a paperback, Skin Trade should be enjoyed while relaxing on the beach and enjoying a mojito. Just watch where that sand ends up.
