The Translator, a tribesman's memoir of Darfur - Daoud Hari

I picked this completely by chance. Most of the times, when I'm shelving books in work, I find books than catch my attention and I file them under my mental wishlist. This time, instead, I decided to just borrow it (and later buy it) and read it straight away.
I'm ashamed to say I didn't know anything about what happened in Darfur. I don't like reading newspapers daily because they depress me and they take a long time, too. I prefer to go into more depth by reading books like this one.
I was surprised to notice how readable it was. The writing was urgent, with no frills, but it was also lyrical at times. I'm guessing the editors had a bigger role than usual, but it's ok. It's the subject that matters.
Hari's voice is easy to follow and to like. He managed to strike some deep chords with me, while he talked about his family, how he returned to his village learning that it might be attacked in few days and how he led his people to safety. I saw how his tribe shared everything, even when they had nothing. It made me re-think about the extreme poverty of Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, and how lonely it compares to this.
But the atrocities they had to suffer are incomparable. It was a genocide and they let it happened. I was appalled to see just how little the International governments did to help them
But to hear how much Oxfam, Amnesty and other charities, made a difference, from someone who can testify in person, having witnessed the lack of basic resources that thousands of refugees endured, I decided I wanted to contribute as well. Just a little, but so I know I'm doing something. So as a new year's resolution, I'm going to donate monthly to Amnesty and, possibly to Emergency.

I recommend this book to anyone, but in particular to those like me who want an introduction to what is the Darfur's genocide, and those who like to hear things from people who experienced them firsthand.

other reviews:
Trish's reading nook
Natasha at Maw Books
Debi at Nothing of Importance
Wendy of Caribousmom
Literary Feline at Musings of a Bookish Kitty
3M at 1 More Chapter
Megan of Leafing through Life
Somer at SomeReads
Chris at Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt

I had no intention to read this. It had been sitting on the pile for more than a year, until I had enough and chose it for the non-fiction challenge. See, I moan about the restrictions of challenges, but sometimes they help overcome some unreasonable blocks about some books we've had for ages. Like Angela's Ashes. In my head I had the notion that it was gonna be an immensely depressive read. I've seen the movie a while ago, and it was, immensely depressive. All the blog reviews I had read agreed. Very sad, unbearable, even boring.
But they must have read a different book, because I ended up enjoying it very much, I even found myself laughing and smiling quite often. It must be because of the language. Even when it recounts the most incredible hardship, it always has its very Irish way of telling it.
You have to get used to it, though. Especially because the prose doesn't use any quotation marks, which I didn't find confusing, but might require some adjusting at the beginning. I thought it added to the musicality and the flow of the narration.
So, the book, as many of you might know, is about Frank McCourt's childhood:

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, ot course, a mirerable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood

Forget about plot. This is hardship after hardship, in Limerick in the 1930's. Drunk father, depressed mother, constant hunger. While I was reading it I kept thinking how lucky I was that I could eat anytime I wanted! Not something I will take for granted again.
The story recalls Frank's memories from when he was 3 and still in America, to the Limerick years of poverty and rain. McCourt's memories are incredibly detailed, even during the early years. Indeed, you could wonder how he knew that much at only 3. So, I just assumed that at least these early memories were partially fictionalised to fit the story.
I understand that reading about what it is about doesn't sound very appealing. Who wants to read about endless sufferance, dirty rags, cold winters and rainy summers? About queues at the dole, dead babies, stinky alleys and broken shoes? I wouldn't. But again, it's how you say it that counts, not what you say. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece of writing, but it was certainly entertaining.
Few examples: Grandam is a grumpy, hard soul, who never stops going on against protestants. But she managed to make me laugh when Frank's mother had just had yet another baby and there were fears it will die without being baptized.

Grandma is there to help and she says, That's right, no hope in heaven for the infant that's not baptized.
Bridey says it would be a hard God that would do the likes of that.
He has to be hard, says Grandma, otherwise you'd have all kinds of babies clamorin' to get into heaven. Protestants an' everything, an' why should they get in after what they did to us for eight hundread years?
The babies didn't do it, says Bridey. They're too small.
They would if they got the chance, says Grandma. They're trained for it.

Another favourite part of mine was Frank's composition called "Jesus and the Weather" which its last paragraph was:

It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him. The end.

The conditions in which Frank's family managed to survive were unbelievable. I'm not surprised he left the country as soon as he could and never wanted to come back. If even half of what he tells is true, it would have been enough to drive anyone insane, or bitter at least.
But there was often a comic side of their miseries. Once their house was so cold that Frank and his little brothers Malachy and Michael run out of wood and decided to burn the wall that divided the two rooms in it. When the rent man saw what happened he wasn't pleased:

He says , Great God in Heaven, where's the other room?
Grandma says, what room?
I rented ye two rooms up here and now there's one. And what happened to the wall? There was a wall. Now there's no wall. I distinctly remember a wall because I distinctly remember a room. Now, where is that wall? Where is that room?
Grandma says, I don't remember a wall and if I don't remember a wall, how can I remember a room?
Ye don't remember?Well, I remember. Forty years a landlord's agent and I never seen the likes of this. By God, 'tis a desperate situation altogether when you can't turn your back but tenants are not paying their rent and making walls and rooms disappear on top of it. I want to know where that wall is and what ye did with the room, so I do.
Mam turns to us. Do any of ye remember a wall?
Michael pulls at her hand. Is that the wall we burned in the fire?

I can't help but laugh. The book is full of these tragicomic situations, which make the unbearable even funny, sometimes.
Ok, I didn't find it impossible to put down, but when I did pick it up I enjoyed it. i didn't expect it to, so it was a very pleasant surprise, which should teach me something about prejudices and expectations. Only, I know I would make the same mistake again. It's just too good to be surprised sometimes.

other blog reviews:


Peruse Peach
Well above average
Trish's Reading Nook

Let me know if you've reviewed it too and I'll add it to the list!

The Complete Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

I've been trying to catch up with my reviews and with the blogging activities in general but since I've come back from holidays I've been so busy, and tired, and then busy again that I still haven't found time to even develop my holiday pics, let alone write proper reviews of the books I've been reading. Even now I have so many things I should do...I'm so stressed!!! anyway, this is supposed to be a review, so here it goes.

I had heard about Persepolis before its film came out. It was mentioned now and again by those graphic novels connoisseurs as a must read, a pillar of the genre, a masterpiece. But it never occurred to me to go and look for it, till the movie was made.

Now that I've read it all I can say is "Wow, what a page-turner!" I know, it's very generic, and it doesn't say much about the book, but that's the first thing that came to my mind after finishing it. Anytime I was reading it on the bus I was at risk of missing my stop, because I was so deeply immersed in it. I never imagined a biography to be so captivating.
The edition I have includes both part I and part II, so it was an uninterrupted journey into Satrapi's life.
In my total ignorance about Iran's history, I didn't know anything of the Islamic revolution and its consequences. About the repression, the tortures, the fear that was part of people's everyday life. One thing is reading history books (which I don't do anyway) and another is reading a memoir of someone who experienced those years personally. I have a tendency of identifying with the stories and the characters I read about. I did the same with this book, and it was extremely emotional.
But don't make mistakes, this is far from being a heavy read. It was tough, it made me shiver and it made me angry, but it made me laugh out loud too. A lot. The shocking and the funny was perfectly balanced and that, I think, is what makes Persepolis unique.
It helped that Marjane was raised by a very liberal family, with a socialist background and an independent way of thinking. It showed the stark contrast between what was going on outside, where you could have been arrested for wearing make up, and inside, where people were risking their lives to throw parties or listening to rock music.

Unfortunately I've left it too late to write a review that would actually make justice to this wonderful book. All I know is that it was one of my favourite reads of this year, and that I couldn't recommend it more. Even if you think you wouldn't be interested, try and read the first few pages. I bet you'll be hooked before you know it.

Other blog reviews:
Thoughts of Joy (part I)
B&B Ex libris
The Book Nest (Part I)
An adventure in reading
Things mean a lot
The Hidden side of a leaf
Rhinoa's ramblings
ReadingAdventures
Katrina's reads
It's all about me

Letters to a Young Gymnast - Nadia Comaneci

This book has a special meaning to me, because I was a gymnast myself and even if I never reached high levels, I’ve always enjoyed it immensely. When I was 12 I watched for the first time the film “Nadia”, about the life and success of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci. The movie was on this videotape that was passed on among us little gymnasts and every single girl in the gym thought that Nadia was her hero. I did as well. I don’t know how many times I watched it before bringing it back, but I thought about every scene, and sang the music that plays during her legendary uneven bar exercise at the 1976 Olympics, and dreamed about being her, for months and months. It was only after many years that I first watched a real video of her on tape. Short after I bought my first computer and learned how to surf the Internet, I began to trade gymnastics competitions on tape with people all over the world and one of the first competitions that I requested was the 1976 Olympics. It’s a rather boring tape, with no commentary and piano music played for the whole duration. But it still retains its magic, because it was THE competition. When Nadia became legend by earning a perfect 10 for the first time in Olympic history. Not just once, but seven times.

This book is her story, told by her, in the form of a long letter to an imaginary young fan asking for advices. She talks about everything, from her birth, to her childhood, to her first steps in the gym with legendary coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi. She speaks matter-of-factly about her victories and recounts passionately about her defection from Romania in 1989. She answers all the questions that are usually asked to her with honesty and patience. How her life changed after her success, if the stories about abuses from her coach are true, if she was starved by him, if she really tried to kill herself. She answers everything, even though I had the feeling she is not really telling everything, which is understandable. She denies that she attempted suicide, as told in the movie, and that leaves me a bit puzzled, because how could they have make up such a story if none of it was true?
But it was interesting to get an insight perspective from the very person who’s been my hero for so long. I didn’t know anything about her after her last Olympics in Moscow in 1980. That she lived a miserable life under the Ceausescu’s regime, and that she was eventually forced to defect. That she escaped in the night, on foot, with a group of strangers, and that she crossed the Hungarian border scratching herself on wire-fences, risking to be shot anytime by the Romanian police. That was very interesting, and scary.
We’ve lived very different lives, we have very different personalities, but we share one thing, and that is our love for gymnastics. She had the chance to shoot for the moon, I didn’t. But I understand when she says that her hard work didn’t feel like sacrifice, that she loved everything she did in the gym, not because she wanted the medals, but because she loved the feeling of flying in the air, of stretching her body towards impossible moves.

I dreamed of learning new skills. I never saw the bigger picture of international success and fame. I dreamed of running and twisting and double somersaults, and that nothing could tether me to the ground because I was born to fly.

She didn’t give up her childhood, she lived it just like she wanted to.

I enjoyed reading it, even though I suspect she had some help writing it. Her English is a bit too good, and too literary to be truly hers, and that didn’t feel completely real. Beside that, it really is a mandatory read for any real gymnastic fan.
For all the others, I know you might feel left out. So I will add this video, to help you understand what I’m talking about. Enjoy :-)