Reading Reviews (Volume 2)

Vivi mi vida hasta este punto me atrevo a afirmar que no hay nada quitotesco ni romantico en querer cambiar el mundo. Es posible. Es el oficio de la humanidad se ha dedicado desde siempre. 

I've lived my life until the point in which I dare to affirm that there isn't anything quixotic or romantic about wanting to change the world. It's possible. It's the task to which humanity has dedicated itself since the beginning of time.
Giaconda Belli, El Pais Bajo mi Piel / The Country under my skin

The arbitrary view of individual responsibility-with the individual standing on an imaginary island, unhelped and unhindered by others- has to be broadened, not merely acknowledging the role of the state, but by recognizing the functions of other institutions and agents.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

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Apparently, I mostly just read books about war and traveling. And political imprisonment, although I haven't got back around to finishing Gulag Archiepelago. I'm trying to see if I can complete a highly unofficial Peace Corps challenge of reading 100 books during my service, up to about 19 right now. Given that I'm close to a 1/4 of the way there in terms of books, and only about 1/8 of the way into my service, it seems feasible. Although I think I handicapped myself with the 1000+ page books early on....

 -Infinite Jest- David Foster Wallace
Finally finished. CRAZIEST. BOOK. EVER. I have to say though, I felt that the ending was a little underwhelming...but over all, one of the most creative books ever written.

-Holidays in Hell- PJ O'Rourke
PJ O'Rourke's comedy can be really funny, but this book hit a sour note for me. It features vignettes of his travels as a journalist to war torn places, looking for humor...Let's just say we've come a long way since the 1980s (when this was written) in terms of political correctness. It just wasn't really funny although it was vaguely insightful. The basic premise of the book reminded me of a really intense Bosnian film- "No Man's Land"- possibly the movie with the darkest humor that I've ever seen.

More than a Native Speaker- Don Snow
This book is a beginning guide to teaching English abroad. It had some helpful suggestions on professional conduct as well as guided ideas for teaching each of the 4 skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing (listed in order of importance for language learning, according to the author). It also features an entire appendix of activities for teaching culture lessons. On the whole, I'd say it's a better read for the complete newbie or someone who's teaching lessons to advanced speakers, say business English or college students.

Development as Freedom- Amarthya Sen
A classic in economic development literature, that I probably should have read while ago, this a well- reasoned defense of why the ends are just as important as the means when considering economic development. Democracy, women's rights, social safety nets, equality don't necessarily have to be sacrificed to give people the means to acquire the type of life they desire, which Sen considers as the end goal of development rather than traditional rubrics, such as measuring increases in GDP growth. By considering how people can be made more free to pursue these ends, the focus of development work can be revolutionized.

To the End of the Land- David Grossmann
Echoing a reviewer, this is one of the best anti-war novels ever written. An Israeli mother, Ora, goes on an extended journey on foot in the Galilee and narrates her son's life to his estranged father, in the hopes that this will keep the son alive as he completes a military operation. Along the way are exquisite depictions of the relationships within families, between mother and child, between citizens in a state plagued by the uncertainty of terrorism, between (reluctant) oppressor and defiant subaltern.

Ora is a brilliantly written character...perhaps I found her relatable: she's a lefty for sure, but afraid to truly challenge the establishment/larger structures, a feminist, but uncertain of what that means for her daily life, outraged by the abuses of power she sees, but often inarticulate....

I thought the book did a good job implicating everyone in the violence of Israel/Palestine. While the Palestinian narrative is limited to Sami, Ora's cab driver, I think it lends the book authenticity, by not trying to narrate outside what the author intimately knows: the perspective of liberal Israelis who feel immense guilt over the way their country conducts itself yet feel powerless to change the larger dynamics at play.

A beautiful, intense, and riveting read.

 El Pais Bajo mi Piel (The Country Under My Skin)- Giaconda Belli
A fascinating account from a bourgeoisie poet who was involved in the FSLN (more familiar in America household as the Sandinistas) almost from its inception. It describes Belli's awakening as a feminist, her struggle to balance her motherhood with her work life, love, marriages and the fight for her country. Beyond the fascinating and still relevant questions raised by her personal life, it narrates enticing episodes about the revolution in Nicaragua for any Latin American studies nerds out there.

 Ficciones (Fictions)- Juan Luis Borges.
Exquisite. Intellectualism at its finest. Reflections on the nature of time, the boundaries of the physical world and imagination, the relationship between literature and the real world...wrapped up in relatively manageable short stories.

A Dead Bat in Paraguay- Roosh Vorek
I picked this up in the Peace Corps office because I was feeling nostalgic for South America, and I thought it would be about Paraguay, which is a country that really fascinates me...WRONG. This was the most pathetic travel adventure/memoir I've ever read. It was so bad that I started hoping it was a satire, but even that would be upsetting because if was satire, it was poorly executed. The only reason I continued to read this garbage was that I was stuck on the slowest moving bus ever and it was my only entertainment. The book consists of a microbiologist who quits his job to travel to all the countries in South America and "find himself." For him, finding himself turns out to be code word for sleeping with as many women as possible. Since he is a completely culturally innabropriate asshole (complete with your typical backpacker facial hair/diarrhea) and a generally bad person who doesn't seem to think women are people, he has a hard time getting women to sleep with him. Of course, he is far too clueless to realize that his own behavior is the culprit, and BLAMES the women for his inability to "find himself". The only redeeming quality of this book is the (sort- of) accuracy with which it describes hedonistic hostel culture, the way guide books standardize travel experiences, and the kind of people you might meet while traveling in South America. That being said, I've met WAY more interesting people on my travels...and I haven't traveled as nearly widely as he did. Just saying.

Anyways, if you're actually interested in Paraguay and looking for writing that doesn't make you want to punch fratty men in the face, read "At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig," an excellent history and travelogue of the country .

The Solitude of Prime Numbers- Paolo Giodano
A quick but haunting read, which occasionally hints at mathematical concepts in a way that makes the non-mathy person feel smart, I'm not really quite sure what to feel about this book. Written about the almost love affair/friendship over a lifetime between an anorexic photographer and a mathematician struggling with his past, it's chock full of beautiful and astute observations of human nature, yet failed to create characters that inspired compassion or let the reader inside their heads: the distance they felt from society was maintained towards the reader.

I wonder what it would have been like to read this in the original Italian. Also, I wish the picture of the author on the back cover had been bigger because he is shockingly attractive. Seriously.

Running with Scissors- Augusten Burroughs
Another memoir, this time dealing with extremely dysfunctional family circumstances, was simultaneously entertaining and horrifying, and demonstrates that people who are supposedly "sane" can be just as messed up as those who supposedly are mentally unwell.