The reluctant e-book reader

I have managed to read three books in the last month. I was afraid I had become a bookworm who doesn't read, then I downloaded the Kindle App on my iPad and suddenly I am going through a book a week. I have become an e-book reader.
For most people who discovered the convenience of e-readers some time back this is not worthy of a blog post, but I resisted for the longest time to turn to the dark side - clearly I am still not entirely won over- and only in the last month have I begun to appreciate the convenience offered by technology.

I was quite happy to download my issues of Vanity Fair, National Geographic and a few other junk reads we won't mention. After all, this is how these publications were meant to be read. They are called glossies for a reason. Then I downloaded Breaking Dawn for my daughter (Ok, I sneaked a peak and according to my daughter that now makes me a a Twi-Hard). Suddenly I have ploughed through three books in a month. Given my constraints with time - or at least that had been the excuse up until now, I am thrilled.
But now I am back to paperback.

Novel Notation: THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides

Title: THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Genre: Novel

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

Published: 2011

The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides' first book and Middlesex, his second were both mysterious. The Virgin Suicides in its depiction of a family of three daughters growing up under the severely strict parenting of a Catholic domineering father- who all ultimately commit suicide left me with an unanswered- Why? A great review here. Middlesex was fairly straightforward, as the historical elements of the novel woven around the history of a Greek family leaving Greece, settling in the US and the discovery of the daughter that she is a hermaphrodite. This in itself a mysterious subject. I dare say this is my very abridged version of a book that won Jeffrey Eugenides the Pullitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Marriage Plot was different. A story of a love triangle between friends about to embark on their lives and futures after their graduation from college. A story of the unrequited love of Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies graduate for Madeleine, the central figure. Madeleine Hanna, an english language major and great lover of Jane Austen, is in love with and goes on to marry Leonard Bankhead, an intelligent science major and manic-depressive whose steady decline into his mania courses throughout the entire book.

Reading Rumination: THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Title: THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK

Genre: Short Stories

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published: 2009

I read this book in two days...I do enjoy short stories at times, it makes the progress faster and there is always the next story to look forward to if you are not particularly engrossed by one story. I first read Purple Hibiscus three years ago and fell in love with Adichie's writing. The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of stories previously published in various publications. It tells of immigrant Nigerians, professionals, students, wives carving their way in the land of opportunity, America.

The collection is filled with everything from the wife in a long-distance marriage realising that she is surely losing her husband to another woman in another country. 'The Shivering'  is story of a post-graduate student still pining after a lost love or the idea of her lost love, while sharing her woes with her Nigerian neighbour. 'The Arrangers of Marriage' and 'The Thing Around Your Neck' were reminiscent of some of the stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri in Interpreter of Maladies- the unease in a new culture, the desperation to fit in and the stories of immigrants clutching at their identity in the New World. 'The Headstrong Historian' had real similarities with Arthur Japin's 'Two hearts of Kwasi Boachi'- a historical fiction that told of the conflicts of the Slave Trade.

I will be reading more of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for as long as she keeps weaving the tales that she does.

Novel Notation: THE TIGER'S WIFE by Téa Obreht

Title: THE TIGER'S WIFE
Genre: Novel
Author: Téa Obreht
Published: 2011

In the Tiger's Wife, Téa Obreht retells the story of a tiger that escapes from a zoo during the Balkans war. Told through the protagonist, Natalia the story is both allegorical and entertaining enough. The sudden and strange circumstances surrounding the news  of her grandfather's death, a medical doctor like herself, leave Natalia following the path her grandfather may have taken in the latter days of his life as a way to try and uncover answers to the mystery around his death.

Novel Notation: LYRICS ALLEY by Leila Aboulela

Title: LYRICS ALLEY
Genre: Novel
Author: Leila Aboulela
Published: 2011

I am going to come across sounding unimaginative I know, but Lyrics Alley is lyrical. A slow-paced introduction to the extended dynastic Abuzeid family leads one to identifying with the characters almost immediately. Slow-paced as the introduction is, the turn of events as the plot gives way is anything but. Lyrics Alley reads both like historical fiction - which it is not, and the dramatic work of fiction you want to sink your teeth into.
The plot centres around Mahmoud Abuzeid, a Sudanese whose life is a mélange of cultures, traditional Sudanese and modern Egyptian. Torn between the two worlds, he remains unavoidably and staunchly tied to his origins and his family in Sudan yet socially ambitious and yearning for acceptance in his new world. It is a story of families, love and heartbreak.

Reading Rumination: SHANGHAI TANGO - A Memoir by Jin Xing

Title: SHANGHAI TANGO

Genre: Memoir
Author: Jin Xing
Published: 2005


This was a quick read in between the flurry of activity typical of this time of the year. Wishing I had an e-reader given all the books I want to read this Summer...Shanghai Tango is the memoir of a prima ballerina; Jin Xing who danced for the Shanghai Ballet and other prestigious Ballet Companies both in the US and Europe. It is a story told from a very detached voice about a young boy, who is recruited into the People's Liberation Army Dance Corps as a soldier and a dancer at the age of nine.
This celebrated, internationally-acclaimed dancer went on to become the first person in China to undergo a full sex-change operation. The narrative is factual even though the subject matter is potentially tragic. It tells of the emotional challenges the writer experiences as both a young man in the Chinese Ballet Corps, not yet fully aware of how different he is from his fellow dancers;  to his transformation into a female ballerina and mother. It is retold very objectively, almost too much so, as it skims over the real emotions about her post operation experience and fails to sufficiently delve into what life was like away from the glamour of the stage for her.

Novel Notation: THE MADONNA OF EXCELSIOR by Zakes Mda

Title: THE MADONNA OF EXCELSIOR

Genre: Novel
Author: Zakes Mda
Published: 2002

I read this again right after I finished Chicago, and had just started on The Immigrant by Manju Kapur -  which I have yet to finish. I often find myself in a reading rut where I tend to read books with similar themes and in the same genre at intervals that are too close together. After Chicago, The Immigrant started off feeling similar, which is the reason I have put it down for  a while.

The Madonna of Excelsior is a novel set in pre-democratic South Africa,in the early 1970s, when the then South African government's apartheid state and all its accompanying discriminatory laws were in full force. The Immorality Act, was one such law that forbade sexual relationships between black and white people. Set in the small town of Excelsior in the Free State - and based on a real-life trial in which nineteen citizens of the small town; from upstanding white leaders and pillars of the tightly-knit Afrikaans community to the black domestic workers that worked for them, were charged with contravening the Immorality Act.

Novel Notation: CHICAGO by Alaa Al Aswany

Title: CHICAGO

Genre: Novel
Author: Alaa Al Aswany
Published: 2008

In the aftermath of the recent uprisings in the Arab world, this was an informative read. One of the members of my Book Club made a comment recently about Egypt that I found to be accurate- especially regarding the World's perception of the Arab states that have just experienced the uprisings referred by some media as the 'Arab Spring'. "I feel like we have been lied to." She was referring to Egypt and I could not have agreed more. No, I do not  live under a rock and yes,  I was aware of the fragility of Egypt's democracy before the uprisings, but in relation to seemingly more despotic states, Egypt was at the periphery of wider political discussion. Or so I thought until the uprisings and subsequent resignation of Hosni Mubarak in February.

Chicago tells of a group of people living in Chicago post-911. It is a series of interrelated stories of both Egyptian émigrés and American citizens. Their interactions are woven around politics, race relations and sexual politics in a plot that reads like a potentially explosive political drama - but one that does not culminate in the ending I was anticipating.

On being well read

I came across this post on one of my favourite blogs and it roused something in me about, what truly makes one well read. I have always grappled with this even more so because in my formative years, high school and all though my undergraduate years I was exposed more to the Classics; from Shakespeare, Brontë and Austen, to the Huxleys, Wells' and Orwells of the literary world.

My foray into African literature came late in life - call it the result of a purely British school curricula and a lack of awareness of the literary treasures just beyond the borders of my country, but it was only in graduate school that my eyes were opened to a whole new world.
To many, with respect to what can be defined strictly within the confines of African literature - I am not well read, but I can hold my own when it is Western classics under discussion.

These days I favour the new writers; Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - not to say I still will not revert to Yeats or Keats or Whitman, or pick up Toni Morrisson, or James Baldwin when the mood strikes. I am still partial to Faulkner, Dahl, and have even dabbled in Kafka. My infatuation with Rohinton Mistry has been replaced with Khaled Hosseini and I still think Salman Rushdie weaves a good tale. Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee and lately Marlene van Niekerk inspire. As my reading list will confirm - these days it is everything I can get my hands on. Prolific reader? Absolutely. Well read? Am I?

So what does make one well read?

Reading Rumination: THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD by Elyn R. Saks

Title: THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD - A memoir of my schizophrenia
Genre: Memoir
Author: Elyn R. Saks
Published: 2007

I enjoyed this book tremendously and was also completely horrified by some aspects of it. Why horrified? The thought that one can go through the experiences that she went through; the misdiagnosis of her illness, the forced admission into mental hospitals and subsequent forced drug treatment - and all due to the fragile definition of what is defined as mentally stable. Mild depression or complete psychosis can, if there is no one there to speak up for you, earn you the type of treatment reserved solely for mentally 'unstable' people. Every time I gather with family and friends around a dinner table, I always insist that we all have a gratitude moment...the one constant for me is always 'I am grateful for my sanity'. I always either manage to elicit chuckles or curiously-raised eyebrows. And such is the reaction that mental health issues elicit wherever you are in the world. Elyn Saks takes the reader through a process of explaining what 'losing one's mind' truly means.