Not Dead Yet

I had given up on this blog, and thought perhaps it was time to retire it.

I changed my mind.

I'm not ready to write this one off just yet. It's true that my Goodreads obsession has sort of filled the void, but my cousin said she had taken a lot of pictures of books that she would be willing to post. I too have some ideas for posts, such as "Pulitzers You can Take to the Beach."

Killing the White Man's Indian

By Fergus M. Bordewich...
a recent find at, of all places, the Peace River Center Thrift Shoppe.
I really enjoyed this one and learned some Native American history that I was unaware of. The author explored a variety of issues, including history, racial identity, reparations, tribal sovereignty.Of these I have always been intrigued most by the concept of tribal sovereignty. There are so many shades to how it can work. The work was well researched with lots of examples of how different tribes have lived and survived. There are heartbreaking stories as well. It is a topic that I wish more people would read about.

Reading About Reading

In my quest to talk about books, I have ended up reading about what other people are saying about them. This new hobby takes so much time I don't seem to have any left for reading books. I added a new link in "more things i read." I like her reviews and also Books 4 Breakfast has a long list of literary links that could keep a person blog hopping for days.

Moving Into the Book Club World

I've joined a couple of book clubs from goodreads.com. I've ordered one book, but think I'll go back to One Million Books at the Gadsden Mall to see if I can pick up the Delillo one. I've never read him before, so I might as well. Maybe having a couple of books going will keep me from turning on the TV. Last night I watched parts of 4 movies flicking through channels and woke up feeling gross.

Oh Where Have All My Favorite Blogs Gone?

I recently added Elyse Sewell's Live Journal to my list "more things I read." She takes great pictures of food. I found her through Sassmaster and used to visit occassionally.

I feel the need to beef up my list, because it has gotten shorter due to the discontinuation of some and to the new trend of making blogs private. My Tango Year and Superblogmuch were old favorites of mine, but I missed the invitation list. Joe had a good explanation for making his Appalachian Trail adventure private, but I have not heard any reasons from the others. I hope it's not because of annoying spammers. Anybody know what's up with this unsettling trend? Synonym Master, got any for "trend?"

Talking With Ghosts in Mexico

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo is an odd little book that I liked a lot. It begins with a son travelling to the village of his birth to meet his father to fulfill his dying mother's request. You think it's going to go one direction, and then it goes somewhere else. Even after you get used to most of the characters being ghosts and you start to get a hang of the time jumping, you have to pay close attention in order to keep up.

The book came out in Mexico in 1955 and was not particularly well received. While he'd written a book of short stories prior to Pedro Paramo, Rulfo never wrote another book. He did live to see it gain popularity and be credited with beginning the movement of Magical Realism. (I would credit that source, but I've already lost track of it.) I was kind of suprised by this because I think everything I ever read by a latin american author had surreal qualities. Maybe they were all later than 1955. I find myself wondering what Rulfo did for a living since he wasn't writing books. Looks like a trip to Wikepedia.

According to reviews, the later translation is far superior to the one I read which was translated by Lysander Kemp. I still liked the book a lot. I would even consider reading it again, but only because it is so short besides being good.

Betrayal and Heartbreak In Senegal

I picked up this book last fall in Laramie when I was knocking around town with Erika before our climbing adventures in Grand Junction and Moab. It appealed to me because it was only 89 pages long. I thought it would be a good book for the road, but I couldn't seem to concentrate well enough for it. Being lightweight helped it make the cut and the moves from SD, MI, FL, and MI again. Being sick in a motel room in Alabama allowed me the quiet I seemed to need to read it. I'm glad I did.

The book, So Long a Letter, by Mariama Ba, translated by Modupe Bode-Thomas, is written in epistolary style. It takes place in Senegal, I would guess in the late 1970's. Ramatoulaye, a recent widow, writes a very long letter to her lifelong friend, Aissatou.

From the first page:

If over the years, and passing through the realities of life, dreams die, I still keep intact my memories, the salt of remembrance.

I conjure you up. The past is reborn, along with its procession of emotions. I close my eyes. Ebb and tide of feeling: heat and dazzlement, the woodfires, the sharp green mango, bitten into in turns, a delicacy in our greedy mouths. I close my eyes. Ebb and tide of images drops of sweat beading your mother's ochre-coloured face as she emerges from the kitchen, the procession of young wet girls chattering on the way back from the springs.

We walked the same paths from adolesence to maturity, where the past begets the present.

My friend, my friend, my friend, I call on you three times.

Both women were educated, professionals married to men they loved. Both had their lives torn apart by polygamy. Their situations were not the same and their reactions differed.

Reviews of this book point out the highlighting of the inequality of women in Senegalese society and the mixing of european and traditional values. It does do this, but the real strength of the book is in the very human quality of the characters. They seem like real people with distinctive personalities, strengths and foibles. They are not cardboard cutouts used to make a point. In fact, I had sympathy for everyone, even the dweeb who abandoned his wife and 12 children to chase a young skirt, who happened to be his oldest daughter's best friend. Ok, I didn't have any sympathy for one particularly treacherous mother-in-law, and I did despise the mother that more or less sold her daughter off to the old guy, but I did have sympathy for her.

It was a good read and got me thinking about human relations in general and how life doesn't necessarily turn out how one expects, but how worth it it is.