Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
By Helen Fielding

This was a very disappointing book. I loved Bridget Jones’ Diary and thought Fielding’s writing style was hilarious - I literally laughed out loud while reading that book for the first time. I suppose in light of the success of Bridget Jones she wanted to try to writing something that wasn’t exactly the same, but I think that with this book she’s gone too far a field of what it is that she does best.

What we loved about Bridget Jones as a character was her ordinariness – her relatability. Olivia Joules, the character in this book, lacks that quality. Olivia Joules is a free-lance journalist, flying around the world to exotic locations to write magazine articles. We’re supposed to believe that she’s good enough to continue getting work, and yet we’re told that her recent work has been unbelievable and she’s accused by one of her editors of having an overactive imagination. (For what it's worth, I would have titled this book "Olivia Joules and Her Overactive Imagination".)

She’s sent to Miami to cover a cosmetics launch and her imagination is engaged by a handsome French producer whom she believes to be Osama bin Laden undercover. The plot just spins off from there become more and more implausible as the book progresses. Olivia is portrayed as an irresistible temptress and she’s seducing men left and right. Fielding describes Olivia’s humble beginnings (from small town in England, used to be a bit overweight) in an effort to make her more likeable, but it really didn’t work.

None of the relationships in the book were well developed enough to be believable and the plot was absolutely absurd. What made it most disappointing is that we know what great stuff Fielding is capable of. Hopefully the commercial failure of this book will force her to go back to writing about ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems with her signature hilarious style. I don’t want to see a single CIA agent in her next book!

I gave this book my lowest rating - I don't even have a half-book rating, although if Helen Fielding writes a sequel to this book I will definitely have to develop one!

Gap Creek

Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage
By Robert Morgan

I’ve got two books to post for today because I had a two and a half hour train trip yesterday, so I read one book on the way there and another on the way home. The books were chosen on the basis of being small enough to fit both into my purse and still leave room for lip gloss and sunglasses.

Although I never read a book simply because it’s an Oprah book club selection, I’ve always really enjoyed all of the books she recommends. When I see the Oprah symbol on the front cover I think of it as a guarantee that the book won’t suck. I have to say that Gap Creek is the first Oprah-endorsed book that I have really not liked. First off, I had an uncanny sense while reading this book that I’d already read it, although I know that I haven’t. I think it just really reminded me of Jewel, by Bret Lott (another Oprah book, incidentally), which I read fairly recently.

I found Morgan’s use of dialect when writing from the first-person perspective of Julie, the protagonist, to be distracting and tiresome. The book is titled Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage, which I don’t really think is an apt title because it implies that the relationship between Julie and her husband is the focus of the book. In reality, Julie is the focus of the book, although her husband is a significant character. Most of the other characters in the book are really despicable, including Hank, Julie’s husband. Morgan tried to end the book on a hopeful note, but I just didn’t buy it. He’d painted such a bleak picture of Julie and Hank’s life together that it seemed unlikely that anything would ever change between them.

What Gap Creek lacked in character development it made up for in its detailed description of the hardships of life in the late 1800’s in rural America. Each obstacle or struggle seemed to be resolved in the same way – Julie would display amazing courage, strength and endurance and she would overcome. It got a bit old for me.

Ordinary Life

Ordinary Life
By Elizabeth Berg

Okay, I know this is the third Elizabeth Berg book I’ve read this month, but I really like her. I’m going to have to start pacing myself though, because I think there’s only a few of her books left that I haven’t read yet. Just thinking about that gives me a bit of a tight feeling in my chest….

This is a book of short stories, which I was a bit skeptical about at first, since it isn’t my favourite genre. I find it’s tough to really connect with the characters and plot in only a few pages. These stories put me in mind of looking at a stranger’s photo album. Each story is a like a little intimate glimpse inside of someone’s life. In these stories Berg expertly captures the joys and tragedies that are the stuff of everyday life in a way that highlights the moments of transcendence that we all experience in our lives. As Berg notes in the Author’s Note at the close of the book:

These stories are not perfect either, but they are the best I could to to
portray certain life events, to illuminate certain ways of thinking, to
illustrate the way we can get from here to there, to document some interesting
insights. More than anything, they are meant to celebrate the extraordinary
moments and events that make up ordinary life.

If you like Elizabeth Berg, you’ll enjoy these short stories. I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed as each story ended though, as if I’d been given just a taste and left wanting more.

The Bully of Bentonville

The Bully of Bentonville: The High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices
By Anthony Bianco

This book is a critical look at the economic impact that Wal-Mart has had on American society. I initially picked up this book because my mother had recommended a documentary film about Wal-Mart to me. I couldn’t find the film anywhere, but still thought it was a subject I wanted to know a bit more about.

The Bully of Bentonville is a fairly dry read. Bianco describes the history of Wal-Mart’s emergence as a corporate super-power in great detail, which is fairly interesting. However, a lot of the book is concerned with the history of the corporation’s leadership over the past decades, which really didn’t interest me much at all.

I started this book with a fairly open mind. I’ve never agreed with those people who seem to hate Wal-Mart on principle because it is emblematic of big box stores in general. I certainly wouldn’t say that I like what big box retailing has done to the urban landscape of Canadian cities, but I don’t think that we can hold a single corporation responsible. Wal-Mart exists because billions of people make the conscious decision to shop there every single day. It may be true that Wal-Mart is responsible for the decay of downtown retail that used to be the heart of many cities – but, that is a responsibility that each of us is complicit in every time we shop there.

I think a lot of what people negatively associate with Wal-Mart (such as importing most of its products from China) is actually a product of the globalization of our economy. In that respect, Wal-Mart is doing what other American corporations (GAP, Nike) have been doing for decades – they’re just doing it better and on a much larger scale.

However, Bianco did open my eyes to Wal-Mart’s legacy of abysmal labour practices, of which I really hadn’t been aware until I read this book. Wal-Mart is one of the largest single employers in the United States, but it has a 50% annual employee turnover. The fact that ½ of the company’s employees quit every year speaks volumes about the wages, benefits and working conditions that Wal-Mart offers. They also have a very bad track record in respect of their discriminatory treatment of female (who are paid less and promoted less often than their less experienced male counterparts) and minority employees. They are also violently anti-union, because they are only able to offer low prices if they keep their employees’ wages as low as possible. In this respect, they benefit from their high employee turnover because they are able to avoid pay increases associated with long-term employees.

Some might argue that Wal-Mart is just a company trying to make a profit for its shareholders, and we can’t expect it to behave any differently than it does. Why should Wal-Mart be held to higher standards? Well, I think that Wal-Mart has become so huge and so successful that it ought to be held to higher standards. But – and here’s the catch – consumers are the only ones with the power to do that because money is the only language that Wal-Mart speaks. Unfortunately, most people seem content to complain about Wal-Mart and what it’s doing to the economy and the landscape of our cities, but when they need a new garbage can it’s the first place they go.

I enjoyed this book and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in becoming a more educated shopper. There was one particular quote in the book that sticks with me, although I forgot to mark the page, so this is from memory: If price and profit are more important than principle, you’re prostituting yourself. I, for one, will not be prostituting myself again in the aisles of Wal-Mart!

The Year of Pleasures

The Year of Pleasures
by Elizabeth Berg

Well, I’ve always openly admitted my adoration of Elizabeth Berg. But “The Year of Pleasures” is my favourite of her books by far. I didn’t read it as much as I savoured it – I was keenly aware with every page turn how close I was getting to the end and I consciously read a little slower than usual to prolong the experience.

This book is about Betta, a woman in her mid-fifties who suddenly loses her husband, John, to cancer. John makes Betta promise him that she will find joy in her life even after he’s gone and that she’ll realize their dream of leaving the city for a small town. Betta struggles to keep her promise in the face of her overwhelming grief. She leaves Boston and buys a big old house in a small town. She begins a new life alone and negotiates for herself how to simultaneously hold onto John and also how to let him go. Betta gradually recognizes that happiness isn’t always something that just happens to you, but that you must seek it out. So Betta begins to seek out happiness in her life; she nourishes new friendships and rekindles old friendships.

Berg’s portrayal of a woman trying to create that most difficult thing – a joyful life – despite her tremendous loss is very moving. This is a beautiful novel about learning to cherish the small pleasures in life.

The English Teacher

The English Teacher
By Lily King

This is Lily King’s first novel. The English Teacher is an insightful novel that details the struggles of Vida Avery, an English teacher at a small private school. Vida is a single mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, Peter, whose parentage she has never spoken of. Vida’s quiet and reclusive life is changed forever when she accepts the marriage proposal of a widower with three children.

When Peter and Vida are suddenly thrown together into a larger family their own sense of themselves as a family in their own right is destroyed. Vida is seemingly unprepared for the emotional intimacy of marriage and is unable to cope with her new husband’s expectations of her. She withdraws from Peter and her husband, starts drinking heavily, and her life begins to echo the novel she is teaching to her students – Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

This is a suspenseful and perceptive novel, all the more impressive because it is King’s first. I see from the dust jacket that she’s written another novel called “The Pleasing Hour”, which I will absolutely be adding to my reading list.

Darwin's Nightmare

Darwin’s Nightmare
By Hubert Sauper

As part of my ongoing efforts to keep my brain from atrophying from misuse, I’m trying to read more non-fiction and also watch more documentary films. This is another post about a film rather than a book. While I’m sure no one is interested in my thoughts on the newest Jennifer Aniston film, I do feel like I’d like to share some of the amazing films that I’ve discovered. Since we rarely get to see any advertisement for these films, I only hear about them through word of mouth. So, I’d like to make my contribution to the word of mouth about Darwin’s Nightmare.

This is a film about people and fish.

Darwin’s Nightmare is a documentary filmed in Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria, the largest freshwater lake in the world. Sometime in the 1960’s a new species of fish, the Nile Perch, was introduced into Lake Victoria. The Nile Perch is a natural predator and soon changed the ecology of the lake forever, virtually wiping out all the native fish species. However, the Nile Perch also developed into Tanzania’s largest industry and fish factories sprung up all along the shores of Lake Victoria. Today, Nile Perch is the country’s single biggest export and huge cargo plane-loads of fish are exported to Europe from Tanzania everyday.

Darwin’s Nightmare explores the environmental, economic and social impact of this one fish on the land and people of Tanzania. Tanzania is a country plagued by poverty, an epidemic of AIDS and civil war. The film explores the complex relationship between this fish, an exploitive fishing industry and the society of fisherman, prostitutes and orphans that have resulted.

Here’s what the filmmaker, Hubert Sauper, had to say about the project:

In DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish
and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening
allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of
movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas,
and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil. Most of us I guess, know about the
destructive mechanisms of our time, but we cannot fully picture them. We are
unable to "get it", unable to actually believe what we know.

It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into
servants and whores. Hearing and seeing the same stories over and over makes me
feel sick. After hundreds of years of slavery and colonisation of Africa,
globalisation of african markets is the third and deadliest humiliation for the
people of this continent. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third
world (that's three quarters of humanity) is creating immeasurable future
dangers for all peoples.

(from the official website: http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/)

This was a deeply disturbing and memorable film. Sauper is able to establish very intimate connections with his subjects, and his depiction of their lives is compelling and unforgettable. Sauper tells this story by interspersing different narratives and leaving the viewer to form his or her own conclusions about their interconnectedness.

The Red Tent

The Red Tent
By Anita Diamant

The Red Tent is one of those books that I’ve heard great things about and have been meaning to read for years, but just never got around to. However, this May long weekend was rainy, windy and cold - and inspired me to spend much of the weekend indoors. Yesterday morning I finally curled up in front of the fireplace with The Red Tent and I was not disappointed.

The Red Tent tells the tale of Dinah, a biblical figure. The book’s prologue hints that Dinah is mentioned only briefly in the Bible, which focuses (surprise, surprise) on the exploits of her father and brothers.

Diamant paints a vivid, rich and often brutal portrait of life in biblical times. Her sweeping narrative tells Dinah’s life from before her birth to her eventual death. The red tent is a symbolic location in the novel, a women-only space to which the women of Dinah’s tribe retreat monthly to celebrate their femininity. Within its fabric walls, Dinah learns the stories and traditions of her family.

I really enjoyed this novel and read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Diamant’s The Red Tent is escapist fiction at its finest.

On Six Continents

On Six Continents: A Life in Canada’s Foreign Service 1966-2002
By James Bartleman

This book is a memoir of James Bartleman’s four decades of service with the Canadian Foreign Service. He recounts a career that took him from Ottawa to New York, Columbia, Bangladesh, Brussles, Cuba, Israel, South Africa, Australia and finally back to Canada as Ontario Lieutenant-Governor.

Bartleman offers a behind-the-scenes look at diplomacy and the evolution of Canadian foreign policy from the Cold War era to today. The book follows Bartleman from his impoverished childhood in Port Carling, Ontario throughout his remarkable career, which included meetings with such historic figures as Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. Bartleman’s writing style is direct and honest, sometimes self-deprecating and often funny. I found On Six Continents to be enjoyable and inspiring.

Everyone Their Grain of Sand

Everyone Their Grain of Sand
(2005) Beth Bird

Although this is a bit of a departure from the overall theme of my blog (books), I wanted to share my thoughts on this documentary film that I watched last night. This is a film about Maclovio Rojas, a small community outside of Tijuana, Mexico. The film documents the community’s struggles against the state government in order to secure basic services – running water, roads, a school – for their community. Ignored by the government – who prefers to lease land to large multinational corporations - the people of Maclovio Rojas organize and work together on development projects like building a school and tapping into the nearby aqueduct to get access to clean water.

Filmmaker Beth Bird follows the progress of this impoverished community over a period of three years. During these three years the community faces repeated setbacks, like the arrest and imprisonment of their leaders, and hard-won victories, such as the first graduating class at the school they build and staffed themselves. This film is a fascinating look at the true grassroots activism and the social, economic and political impacts of NAFTA and economic globalization on the spirited people of this amazing community.

What We Keep

What We Keep
By Elizabeth Berg

At the risk of sounding unabashedly biased, I love Elizabeth Berg. I have immensely enjoyed every one of her novels, and I’m pleased to see that there are still a few I haven’t read yet. I would describe her novels as intimate and personal portraits of ordinary lives. What makes Berg’s novels extraordinary is her ability to create nuanced and authentic characters. In the simplest terms, her books are about the complexity of human relationships. Her characters are compelling and complicated, and Berg demonstrates amazing insight in ways that always resonate with me. As I read her books, I always have moments when I think “I, too, have felt exactly like that.”

“What We Keep” is a novel about a woman (“Ginny”) struggling to come to terms with the very complex relationship she has with her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in 35 years. The book alternates between Ginny’s memories of her childhood and her present life as a woman of 47. What I liked best about “What We Keep” was the relationship between Ginny and her sister. Berg beautifully captured the simultaneous closeness and tension of their relationship. This is a lovely book.

Pink Blood

Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada
By Douglas Victor Janoff

This book looks at homophobic violence in Canada since 1995. A consistent theme throughout is the failure of hate crimes legislation in Canada to capture, address and respond to instances of “gay bashing”. Janoff argues that police almost always refuse to categorize violence against gays, lesbians and transgendered persons as “hate crimes.”

While I think that Janoff makes some compelling arguments – especially about the need for better education and training for law enforcement officers – I have trouble with his position on what should be considered a hate crime. The premise of a “hate crime” is problematic for me because I don’t think it’s ever possible to objectively assess an offender’s subjective motivation for committing a crime.

Let’s say that a gay man is leaving a gay bar in the early morning hours - he’s followed by three men who yell obscenities at him, disparage his sexual orientation and violently assault him while he’s walking back to his car. This is clearly an incident of “gay-bashing” – but is it a hate crime? Janoff would say yes, and I’d tend to agree. Now, what if our victim is a heterosexual woman instead? Is this a hate crime? What if she’s raped, now is it a hate crime? Surely misogyny is just as hateful as racism or homophobia?

I think Janoff casts his net too broadly – he wants to see most crimes where the victims are gay, lesbian or transgendered categorized as hate crimes. I simply don’t see that as useful, anymore than categorizing all crimes against women as hate crimes would be useful. Further, in the majority of the violent crimes that Janoff studies in the book with gay, lesbian or transgendered victims, the victims knew their attackers. In fact, they often had sexual relationships. Is it really a hate crime when a gay man is killed by a lover or former lover? I don’t think that it is, any more than when a heterosexual woman is killed by a lover or former lover.

One of the things that I found very interesting in the book was the following set of statistics about the number of queer-bashing cases reported in Canadian cities between 1990 and 2005:

Toronto/Mississauga 70
Greater Vancouver 57
Montreal/Longueil 25
London 24
Other parts of Canada 168

I was shocked to see that London (quite a small city with just over 350,000 residents) had nearly the same number of incidents of queer-bashing as Montreal (which had a population of 1.5 million in 2001). I grew up in the London area and have lived here for nearly four years now and I was extremely surprised to see this statistic. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised given London’s embarrassing history of very public homophobia. I’m referring to the refusal of London’s mayor in 1997 to proclaim a gay pride day – supported I might add by City Council by a vote of 14-5. The matter was eventually referred to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal which determined, of course, that the conduct was discriminatory and ordered the city to make the proclamation.

Here’s a link to a summary of the Board’s decision: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/english/cases/summary-1997.shtml

Here’s a Wikipedia entry on our most infamous mayor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Haskett

This book was interesting, although a very dry read. Janoff was liberal with the statistics and, in my opinion, made way too many references to studies and papers by other authors. It read kind of like a doctoral thesis to be honest. Well researched and thought provoking, but not exactly riveting.






Okay - this has been a really heavy reading week - even for me! Next I'm going to read something that doesn't require so much thought and is bit less depressing. I just noticed that most of the books I read this week deal with death and violence. (Okay, the vampire book dealt with death in a light-hearted way - but still). My next book will be something pleasant - I promise!

Country of My Skull

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa
By Antjie Krog

This is a first-hand account of a South African radio journalist who is assigned to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995 to investigate the atrocities that had occurred in South Africa under apartheid. The Commission was tasked with hearing the testimony of both victims and their oppressors, who had applied to the Commission for amnesty for their crimes.

Krog’s account of the hearings is intensely personal and makes explicit the message that the personal can never be separated from the political. The book is filled with first-hand accounts of the violence and horror of the apartheid regime. Krog deftly demonstrates the power and limitation of story telling as a mechanism for finding truth. Her writing is compelling and lyrical and she coveys to her readers the enormity and impossibility of the Commission’s task.

This is a fascinating book in terms of its content, but it is also beautifully written. I’ve been reading a lot more non-fiction lately than I normally do, and I have developed a stronger appreciation for non-fiction that is well written. The subject matter of this book was more impactful for me because Krog’s writing style is so emotive. One of my favourite passages in the book is this one, which really has nothing to do with apartheid at all but speaks to the author’s personal experience as a South African living through the Commission hearings:

We lie on our backs in the autumn. The leaves sift like coals from the burning
trees. Your voice smells of bark. “Come with me…” The flaming season plunges
into us. And it lies heavily on my arms – this late inopportune lust to abandon
what is seen to be my life.

Before picking up this book, I knew absolutely nothing about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Reading this book has inspired me to learn more. I’m interested not only about the work of the Commission in South Africa, but I’m intrigued by the idea of reconciliation as a something that can be achieved through the process of story telling. It seems to me that implicit in the creation of the Commission is the acknowledgement that the criminal justice system is inherently inadequate to redress crimes of the kind of widespread complicity that marked apartheid rule in South Africa. The Commission was a very public and very political way to try to accomplish things we think of as intensely personal – healing and forgiveness. It seems impossible, almost laughable, to undertake the task of healing an entire nation of people after decades of divisive apartheid rule. But to do nothing is even more impossible, no?

Here is the Commission’s website if you want to know more: http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/

Race Against Time

Race Against Time
Stephen Lewis

Race Against Time is a collection of Stephen Lewis’ 2005 Massey Lectures. Lewis explores the promise and the limitations of the Millennium Development Goals for Africa. For more information about the MDGs, check out the UN's website: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

These lectures look at poverty, education, AIDS, and the legacy of structural adjustment along with other challenges facing Africa in the 21st century. This is a fascinating book and is required reading for anyone who wants to know more about the humanitarian crises in Africa.

Undead and Unappreciated

Undead and Unappreciated
By Mary Janice Davidson

I know, I know – reading this kind of stuff will rot my brain. But who can resist an undead heroine with a shoe fetish? This is the third book I’ve read from the “Undead” series, which I’d describe as “Shopaholic meets Buffy”. When I googled this book it came up as belonging to the “paranormal romance” genre. Who knew there were enough vampire/werewolf romance books out there to constitute an entire separate genre?

Metro Girl

Metro Girl
By Janet Evanovich

Ok, so I enjoy Janet Evanovich – especially the Stephanie Plum books.

(Dear Janet, Please write more Stephanie Plum books. Yours truly, Girl, reading).

Anyway, this book was light and entertaining and had all of the trashy, delightful qualities that I look for in these kinds of books. If Stephanie Plum books are diet Coke, Metro Girl is store-brand diet soda. Also, I find her books are becoming too formulaic (sassy bumbling heroine + macho, over-protective love interest + quirky crime-fighting side-kick(s) + mystery/missing person + bad guys), but I’ll likely keep reading them so long as she keeps churning them out.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

I actually bought this book for a friend for her birthday before I’d even read it, because I’d heard such good things about it, and she loaned it to me after she’d read it.

This novel is set in Kabul, Afghanistan. At its heart, it is a story about the friendship of two outwardly different boys growing up together in pre-war Afghanistan. The book’s most compelling and recurring themes are shame, power and identity. Amir’s existence at the outset of the novel is a charmed one – he lives a life of economic, social and ethnic privilege in Afghan society. Amir’s childhood is coloured by a strained relationship with his father and feelings of isolation. He prefers books to soccer and he struggles to reconcile his own sense of self-worth with the messages of his inherent ethnic superiority that he is bombarded by. His eventual complicity in the growing ethnic tension and violence culminates in a betrayal of his friendship with Hassan.

I found this book compelling and emotionally engaging. While I didn’t read the whole thing in one sitting, I did finish it in a day. It is a book that I’ll remember and reflect on long after I’ve read the last line, which is a compliment of the highest order.

Like most of the books I have been drawn to recently, this book speaks powerfully about reconciliation – about how we live today with the mistakes we’ve made in the past. I think the relationship between Amir and Hassan offers us a parable for the ethnic tension that plagues Afghanistan.

Although there are no similarities in place or time, this novel reminded me in some ways of Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies, a book I enjoyed immensely when I read it years ago and which I think I shall revisit soon.

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families
Phillip Gourevitch

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the terrible events in Rwanda in 1994. This book explores the complexity of the genocide in Rwanda with insight and sensitivity. Until I read this book I didn’t fully appreciate how little I knew about what had happened in Rwanda, nor did I appreciate the response of the rest of the world to those events.

In 1994 I was still in high school and knew nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. Like many 17 year olds, I was self-obsessed and apathetic about world politics. What astonished me most about this book was that the rest of the world seems to have shared my teenaged-attitude towards Rwanda in 1994.

Gourevitch also writes at length about the huge refugee camps in the countries bordering Rwanda that were a product of the genocide. His discussion of the significant and complex role that international humanitarian aid agencies played in the creation and survival of these camps is fascinating.

Season of Blood

Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
by Fergal Keane

Season of Blood is an outsider’s intimate experience in post-genocide Rwanda. Keane is a BBC journalist who travels to Rwanda in the late spring of 1994. What I enjoyed most about this book was the simplicity of the narrative style. Keane recounts his experiences in Rwanda with vivid and detailed observations and the book has an episodic quality. The book does not sensationalize and he resists making judgments or conclusions about what can only be described as the horrifically complicated situation that existed in Rwanda at the time of his visit.

I read this book only a few days after finishing We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, by Phillip Gourevitch. I enjoyed Season of Blood, but I’m not sure I would have appreciated it fully without the larger context provided by the Gourevitch book.

Resistance

Resistance
by Anita Shreve

I’ve read several of Anita Shreve’s books in the past year. A few of her books I really liked (Sea Glass, The Weight of Water), but others I’ve had a lukewarm response to. This books falls into the latter category.

This is a love story set in Belgium in WWII. I found the story predictable and not particularly engaging. I doubt I’ll ever think about this book again, but I will keep reading Anita Shreve and hoping for another treasure.

Future: Tense

Future: Tense
by Gwynne Dyer

This is one of the best books that I have read in a long time. Dyer’s journalistic writing style is both accessible and engaging. Future: Tense is a fascinating look at the American invasion of Iraq and its implications for the international community. Dyer reinforced my healthy fear of American foreign policy as one of the scariest things in the world.