How Do I
Bonnie's Picks
|
McCall Smith, Alexander The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs Fiction |
| In his hilarious follow-up to Portuguese Irregular
Verbs, the delightful McCall Smith does it again. In this latest
installment, hapless German philologist and world-renowned expert
in abstruse Portuguese grammar, Professor Dr von Igelfeld gets mistaken
for a veterinarian with a particular expertise in sausage dogs. In
an attempt to live up to the expectations of his American audience,
he declares in a speech, “If a dog has short legs, we have found that
the body is almost invariably close to the ground. Yet this does not
prevent the sausage dog from making its way about its business with
considerable despatch.” He supervises a veterinary student’s amputation
of a sausage dog’s leg, then interferes, leaving the dog with only
one leg. “He can roll. He will be able to get around by rolling.”
Read this little novel when you need a good laugh and aren’t in the
mood for something too heavy or profound. Recommended July 2009 |
|
|
Jenkins, Charles Robert with Jim Frederick The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea Nonfiction |
| This is the autobiography of an American soldier who
defected to North Korea during the Korean War and was a prisoner of
this bizarre land for 40 years. Jenkins gives a repentant account
of his desertion and the description of his time there would convince
anyone that he has paid his dues several times over. He lived a nightmarish
existence of never being able to trust anyone and was forced to memorize
propaganda, work for almost nothing, and live under the constant watch
of fake "wives" and "leaders" who observed and reported every aspect
of his life. Yet strangely, Jenkins' life is nowhere near as terrible
as the citizens of North Korea who starve and work themselves to death
in labor camps. Eventually Jenkins married Hitomi Soga, a Japanese
citizen who was kidnapped from her home country by Kim Il Sung's communist
regime, for the purpose of teaching Japanese to spies. After many
years the U.S. discovered that Jenkins was still alive. The Japanese
government confronted North Korea and Soga was returned to her home
country. Recommended May 2008 |
|
|
Grant, Richard God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre Nonfiction |
| This is the rollicking true adventure of a British writer
with a death wish who ventures into Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountain
range and mixes it up with mafiosos, Mormons, forgotten Indian tribes,
and finally murderous coke-crazed Mexican hillbillies bent on hunting
him for sport. Grant finds himself in a series of precarious situations
and writes a well-documented, honest look at various facets of the
sociology of the Sierra and his own inability to make sense of it.
Grant’s account is fascinating, hilarious and thought-provoking. This
rough-and-tumble read is for those seeking a great adventure who either
don’t have the guts or the vacation time to enter this forbidding
land themselves. Recommended May 2008 |
|
|
Guo, Xiaolu A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers Fiction |
| A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers,
by Xiaolu Guo, is the story of a young Chinese woman who discovers
loneliness, love, and self-actualization for the first time in London.
“Z,” as she calls herself, since she perceives her name as too difficult
for Westerners to pronounce, is the protagonist and narrator who finds
herself completely culture shocked and isolated in a country that
makes no sense to her. She writes in disjointed, sometimes garbled
English about her thoughts on her past in China, her feelings of being
“other,” and her lover, whom she refers to as “You.” This is where
Guo seems to bite off more than she can chew: her lover is not only
of a different generation, culture, and language, but he is also a
different sexuality. “You” is bisexual and is a sculptor of the erotic
male form who seems to spend more time wallowing in depression and
introspection to notice the blossoming Z in front of him. I found
Z to be needy and even a tad unlikable in the beginning, but as the
book progresses her English gets better, as does her understanding
of her own strength, power, and identity. Recommended December 2007 |
|
