Weaving the rainbow
Mini-reviews of the books I've read this year. This is a long post so beware.
Saturday (Ian Mcewan)Mcewan is often cited as Britain's greatest living writer but this book does not go a long way towards confirming this. Some of the prose is astonishingly beautiful, but the story is seriously lacking and eventually goes nowhere. It's a triumph of style over substance (Much like Arundhati Roy's The God of Small things)However you can't fault his writing abilities and there were times I had to underline passages because they hit me so hard. One of the best is his description of an anti-war rally in London (the book is set in the days before the Iraq war) where he contrasts the idealism of the protestors with their self-absorption. Wonderfully written, but no story to sink your teeth into.
The Graves are not yet full(Bill Berkeley)This was probably the second-best book I read this year and it came at a time when I was reading mostly grim material. The book is an energetic and insightul look into many African conflicts and how often they arise because of the perversive influence of one malicious, larger-than-life individual. Required reading although it is relentlessly grim throughout.
The Perfect ten(Richard Williams)This is a kind of love letter to that most feted species of footballer- the number ten. William's picks ten of the best number ten's (even though some of them didn't actually wear the number ten all the time- its more the philosopy of the position than the shirt number)He picks some obvious candidates (Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Baggio) and some less obvious ones (Francescoli, Gunter Netzer) An interesting read if you are a football fan. Quite often these football books remind you that football is a lot larger than itself- you cant tell the history of Brazil for example without reference to football. Likewise, you cant discuss Argentina's 1978 World Cup triumph without roping in the Military Junta that used the victory for its own devious means. Quite often football has been bedfellows with politics and history.
About a Boy (Nick Hornby)An article I read recently took a shot at Nick Hornby- actually the person who dissed him was none other than one of the men who deciphered DNA James Watson. The accusation was that people are no longer interested in knowledge for it's own sake and express their intelligence through an over-familirization of pop culture like Nick Hornby's characters. This fetishization of pop culture is not really evident in this book about a self-absorbed middle-aged man who becomes friends with a young, eccentric boy. It's charming like most of Hornby's work and a decent read.
The World according to Clarkson (Jeremy Clarkson)Most people know Clarkson as the presenter of Top Gear which tries to make a love of flashy cars even more testosterone-charged than it already is. However I don't like Top Gear so I think of Clarkson primarily as the witty Sunday Times Columnist. This book is a compilation of some of those articles and he really does the grumpy-old-man thing so well.
Glamorama (Brett Easton Ellis)I really expected to like this book especially because I had thoroughly enjoyed his most famous book American Psycho . Glamorama starts out well- a sort of post-modern and very surreal look at the life of a vacuous and self-absorbed male model. However the second half of the book takes a nosedive and becomes a stupid, uninteresting affair. A huge letdown. It was an interesting premise- the lead character inadvertently becomes involved in acts of terrorism commited by other models- and I liked the idea of terrorism becoming a sort of logical endpoint of the emptiness and zombie-like structure of fashion world. However Ellis completely mishandles it and resorts to being gratuitously violent. This book also contains some of the most disturbing passages I've ever read.
Eleven MInutes (Paulo Coelho) Without a doubt the worst book I read this year. I did a brief review of it in a previous post so I wont review it again, but what a terrible book.
Humanity: A moral history of the twentieth century (Jonathan Glover)I read this book at a point in this year when I was reading some very grim stuff but this one was easily one of the worst. It's a study of man's inhumanity to man and sheds a lot of light on how these things happen. Very strongly recommended but it makes for very grim reading.
The Superpower myth (Nancy Sodeberg)The author was an adviser to Bill Clinton and was a witness during some of the trying moments of his presidency like the Somalia debacle. Here she reveals what she thinks America's role in the world should be and it makes unhappy reading for today's neo-cons.
The Famished Road(Ben Okri)As with Glamorama, I really thought I would love this book. Considering it won the Booker Prize I at least thought it would be a decent read. It starts off well, but very soon it descends into babbling incomprehension and just sheer stupidity. Okri repeatedly uses surrealism as a crutch to hide his lack of ideas. It's an interesting story- a spirit boy decides to leave his world for good and become a mortal human being- but my God he squanders its potential. Second-worst book I've read this year.
Mass Hate: I forget who wrote this one and I'm too lazy to look it up but like Humanity, its a very grim book and if you get an epiphany out of this, it will almost certainly be along the lines of 'My God, we are fucked.' Not something that will ease you through the weekend but required reading nonetheless. It does exactly what it says on the tin and provides the dynamics of propaganda and hate speech and how it has fuelled so many conflicts.
A Time for Machetes(compiled by Jean Hatzfeld)This is a compilation of interviews with genocide survivors and ten killers from the Nyamata region of Rwanda. The men were about to be released when Hatzfeld talked to them and they opened up to him. The result is the most chilling book I've read this year. I seriously had trouble sleeping after reading this and I almost wish I hadn't. It's just a long unblinking look into sheer evil and it's not for readers of a milder constitution. I'm not even sure whether to recommend this because it nearly traumatized me.
A Potrait of the artist as a young man (James Joyce)A lot of people call Joyce one of the greatest writers of all time. Many others call him pretentious or overrated. This novel will vindicate people who hold the former view. The story isn't gripping but the writing is absolutely magnificent. Some of the passages are just mind-blowing. One of the very few books I read this year with a pen in hand (Saturday possibly being the other one despite my reservations about its story)Occasionally I would wonder what on earth was going on- Joyce was a bit self-indulgent methinks- but at no point did I doubt the quality of the writing. People are blessed, but this is ridiculous.
Killing Pablo(Mark Bowden)This is quite simply the best book I read this year. It's about the hunt for Pablo Escobar who at the height of his power was the richest and most powerful criminal in the world before he eventually fell in a hail of bullets after people eventually got tired of his shit. Here was a man who quite literally held the entire country hostage and during his reign of terror, he killed 30 judges, 400 policemen, a presidential candidate, a Minister of Justice and an Attorney-General not to mention thousands of ordinary Colombians. Oh, and he was responsible for at least eighty precent of the cocaine that was flooding into the United States and in the process found himself as the seventh richest person on earth. This story reads as ten times more unbelievable than the most outrageous fiction but you simply couldn't make this up. Utterly, ridiculously compelling.
The white masai(Corinne Hoffman)A white middle-class Swiss girl gives up everything to leave civilization behind and set up camp in his village? Yep, it happened to this narrator. She is clearly insane, but it's a great read and the culture-clash angle is fully exploited. One of the funniest lines in the book is the one describing their first sexual encounter ("I nearly cried with disappointment" is her reaction)It all ends in tears of course and she flees back to Swirtzeland with her dreams crushed. Quite entertaining and often quite funny.
The world is flat(Thomas Friedman)I wrote a mini-review of this already so I won't do it again, but its a good read although as I mentioned before Friedman can be quite annoying and he barely touches on Africa in the book.
A short history of Tractors in Ukranian (Marina Lewycka)Don't be fooled by the title- this book is not about tractors (although one of the characters is writing a book about them)It's an amusing story about a Ukranian family's squabbles and the way two feuding sisters unite after their father becomes involved with a vicious gold-digger. Enjoyable and wonderfully unpretentious.
The Hammer of God (Arthur.C.Clarke)I like Clarke's work, but this isn't really one of his best efforts although it is an okay book. The story is familiar-an asteroid is on collision course for earth- and Clarke doesn't bring anything new to the table except admittedly a more practical and realistic way of dealing with the asteroid. Adequate.
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) Dawkins was once the superstar of the science world but has achieved more fame as an outspoken atheist. In this book, he attacks the belief in the existence of God from a scientific and logical perspective. You don't have to agree with him to appreciate the lucid arguments and elegant prose.
The Football report: A series of essays about football in the fifties and sixties and plunges the modern football world into a completely different world. Fascinating.
Guns, Germs and steel(Jared Diamond)Talk about an ambitious book- it's basically an overview of human civilization and why societies developed at different rates. Required reading and probably the third best book I read this year.
The Time Traveller's wife(Audrey Niffeneger)A very unconventional love story in which the lead character is a time-traveller who moves in and out of different periods of his lover's life. Welcome evidence that genuinely brilliant books can be bestsellers in this day and age.
When Victims become killers(Mahmoud Mamdani) I already wrote a mini-review of this earlier in the year- its the most pretentious book I've read in ages. Don't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Crow road(Ian Banks)Pleasant though occasionally dark story about a boy who returns to a small Scottish town for his mother's funeral and gets involved in all kinds of shenanigans. Good stuff.
Emergency sex and other desperate measures: Written by three former UN workers who worked in many of the world's most dangerous places in the nineties and needless to say came away from the experience completely disillusioned and with plenty of horrifying stories.
Saturday (Ian Mcewan)Mcewan is often cited as Britain's greatest living writer but this book does not go a long way towards confirming this. Some of the prose is astonishingly beautiful, but the story is seriously lacking and eventually goes nowhere. It's a triumph of style over substance (Much like Arundhati Roy's The God of Small things)However you can't fault his writing abilities and there were times I had to underline passages because they hit me so hard. One of the best is his description of an anti-war rally in London (the book is set in the days before the Iraq war) where he contrasts the idealism of the protestors with their self-absorption. Wonderfully written, but no story to sink your teeth into.
The Graves are not yet full(Bill Berkeley)This was probably the second-best book I read this year and it came at a time when I was reading mostly grim material. The book is an energetic and insightul look into many African conflicts and how often they arise because of the perversive influence of one malicious, larger-than-life individual. Required reading although it is relentlessly grim throughout.
The Perfect ten(Richard Williams)This is a kind of love letter to that most feted species of footballer- the number ten. William's picks ten of the best number ten's (even though some of them didn't actually wear the number ten all the time- its more the philosopy of the position than the shirt number)He picks some obvious candidates (Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Baggio) and some less obvious ones (Francescoli, Gunter Netzer) An interesting read if you are a football fan. Quite often these football books remind you that football is a lot larger than itself- you cant tell the history of Brazil for example without reference to football. Likewise, you cant discuss Argentina's 1978 World Cup triumph without roping in the Military Junta that used the victory for its own devious means. Quite often football has been bedfellows with politics and history.
About a Boy (Nick Hornby)An article I read recently took a shot at Nick Hornby- actually the person who dissed him was none other than one of the men who deciphered DNA James Watson. The accusation was that people are no longer interested in knowledge for it's own sake and express their intelligence through an over-familirization of pop culture like Nick Hornby's characters. This fetishization of pop culture is not really evident in this book about a self-absorbed middle-aged man who becomes friends with a young, eccentric boy. It's charming like most of Hornby's work and a decent read.
The World according to Clarkson (Jeremy Clarkson)Most people know Clarkson as the presenter of Top Gear which tries to make a love of flashy cars even more testosterone-charged than it already is. However I don't like Top Gear so I think of Clarkson primarily as the witty Sunday Times Columnist. This book is a compilation of some of those articles and he really does the grumpy-old-man thing so well.
Glamorama (Brett Easton Ellis)I really expected to like this book especially because I had thoroughly enjoyed his most famous book American Psycho . Glamorama starts out well- a sort of post-modern and very surreal look at the life of a vacuous and self-absorbed male model. However the second half of the book takes a nosedive and becomes a stupid, uninteresting affair. A huge letdown. It was an interesting premise- the lead character inadvertently becomes involved in acts of terrorism commited by other models- and I liked the idea of terrorism becoming a sort of logical endpoint of the emptiness and zombie-like structure of fashion world. However Ellis completely mishandles it and resorts to being gratuitously violent. This book also contains some of the most disturbing passages I've ever read.
Eleven MInutes (Paulo Coelho) Without a doubt the worst book I read this year. I did a brief review of it in a previous post so I wont review it again, but what a terrible book.
Humanity: A moral history of the twentieth century (Jonathan Glover)I read this book at a point in this year when I was reading some very grim stuff but this one was easily one of the worst. It's a study of man's inhumanity to man and sheds a lot of light on how these things happen. Very strongly recommended but it makes for very grim reading.
The Superpower myth (Nancy Sodeberg)The author was an adviser to Bill Clinton and was a witness during some of the trying moments of his presidency like the Somalia debacle. Here she reveals what she thinks America's role in the world should be and it makes unhappy reading for today's neo-cons.
The Famished Road(Ben Okri)As with Glamorama, I really thought I would love this book. Considering it won the Booker Prize I at least thought it would be a decent read. It starts off well, but very soon it descends into babbling incomprehension and just sheer stupidity. Okri repeatedly uses surrealism as a crutch to hide his lack of ideas. It's an interesting story- a spirit boy decides to leave his world for good and become a mortal human being- but my God he squanders its potential. Second-worst book I've read this year.
Mass Hate: I forget who wrote this one and I'm too lazy to look it up but like Humanity, its a very grim book and if you get an epiphany out of this, it will almost certainly be along the lines of 'My God, we are fucked.' Not something that will ease you through the weekend but required reading nonetheless. It does exactly what it says on the tin and provides the dynamics of propaganda and hate speech and how it has fuelled so many conflicts.
A Time for Machetes(compiled by Jean Hatzfeld)This is a compilation of interviews with genocide survivors and ten killers from the Nyamata region of Rwanda. The men were about to be released when Hatzfeld talked to them and they opened up to him. The result is the most chilling book I've read this year. I seriously had trouble sleeping after reading this and I almost wish I hadn't. It's just a long unblinking look into sheer evil and it's not for readers of a milder constitution. I'm not even sure whether to recommend this because it nearly traumatized me.
A Potrait of the artist as a young man (James Joyce)A lot of people call Joyce one of the greatest writers of all time. Many others call him pretentious or overrated. This novel will vindicate people who hold the former view. The story isn't gripping but the writing is absolutely magnificent. Some of the passages are just mind-blowing. One of the very few books I read this year with a pen in hand (Saturday possibly being the other one despite my reservations about its story)Occasionally I would wonder what on earth was going on- Joyce was a bit self-indulgent methinks- but at no point did I doubt the quality of the writing. People are blessed, but this is ridiculous.
Killing Pablo(Mark Bowden)This is quite simply the best book I read this year. It's about the hunt for Pablo Escobar who at the height of his power was the richest and most powerful criminal in the world before he eventually fell in a hail of bullets after people eventually got tired of his shit. Here was a man who quite literally held the entire country hostage and during his reign of terror, he killed 30 judges, 400 policemen, a presidential candidate, a Minister of Justice and an Attorney-General not to mention thousands of ordinary Colombians. Oh, and he was responsible for at least eighty precent of the cocaine that was flooding into the United States and in the process found himself as the seventh richest person on earth. This story reads as ten times more unbelievable than the most outrageous fiction but you simply couldn't make this up. Utterly, ridiculously compelling.
The white masai(Corinne Hoffman)A white middle-class Swiss girl gives up everything to leave civilization behind and set up camp in his village? Yep, it happened to this narrator. She is clearly insane, but it's a great read and the culture-clash angle is fully exploited. One of the funniest lines in the book is the one describing their first sexual encounter ("I nearly cried with disappointment" is her reaction)It all ends in tears of course and she flees back to Swirtzeland with her dreams crushed. Quite entertaining and often quite funny.
The world is flat(Thomas Friedman)I wrote a mini-review of this already so I won't do it again, but its a good read although as I mentioned before Friedman can be quite annoying and he barely touches on Africa in the book.
A short history of Tractors in Ukranian (Marina Lewycka)Don't be fooled by the title- this book is not about tractors (although one of the characters is writing a book about them)It's an amusing story about a Ukranian family's squabbles and the way two feuding sisters unite after their father becomes involved with a vicious gold-digger. Enjoyable and wonderfully unpretentious.
The Hammer of God (Arthur.C.Clarke)I like Clarke's work, but this isn't really one of his best efforts although it is an okay book. The story is familiar-an asteroid is on collision course for earth- and Clarke doesn't bring anything new to the table except admittedly a more practical and realistic way of dealing with the asteroid. Adequate.
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) Dawkins was once the superstar of the science world but has achieved more fame as an outspoken atheist. In this book, he attacks the belief in the existence of God from a scientific and logical perspective. You don't have to agree with him to appreciate the lucid arguments and elegant prose.
The Football report: A series of essays about football in the fifties and sixties and plunges the modern football world into a completely different world. Fascinating.
Guns, Germs and steel(Jared Diamond)Talk about an ambitious book- it's basically an overview of human civilization and why societies developed at different rates. Required reading and probably the third best book I read this year.
The Time Traveller's wife(Audrey Niffeneger)A very unconventional love story in which the lead character is a time-traveller who moves in and out of different periods of his lover's life. Welcome evidence that genuinely brilliant books can be bestsellers in this day and age.
When Victims become killers(Mahmoud Mamdani) I already wrote a mini-review of this earlier in the year- its the most pretentious book I've read in ages. Don't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Crow road(Ian Banks)Pleasant though occasionally dark story about a boy who returns to a small Scottish town for his mother's funeral and gets involved in all kinds of shenanigans. Good stuff.
Emergency sex and other desperate measures: Written by three former UN workers who worked in many of the world's most dangerous places in the nineties and needless to say came away from the experience completely disillusioned and with plenty of horrifying stories.
posted by Minzo at 6:19 AM
4 Comments:
I chanced on this blog, literally!
We must have been on the same book movement! I've read six of those books since the start of the year.
Great blog you have here!
Yay! At last someone who agrees with me that Mamdani isn't the genius the Ugandan press claims he is. Now I can die in peace.
Totally hated the book as well. What a total waste of time.
Missed this blog, been offline too long. Hope all is good, I am going to buy "Time for Machetes" and the pablo escobar one, those caught my fancy.
About coming to Africa, I don't know what my future holds right now,life after graduation truly feels like a balancing act on a prosthetic leg, but come october,I'll definately know
If you ever do hit the showers, say a prayer for me, miss you punk!
You and Rama must be blazing kigali, is he in Rwanda yet?
You inspire me, M.
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