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I can’t think of anything super creative to write, so I will do this book report style tonight; at least it is writing! Have you read the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency books? If not, I highly recommend them. I am an admitted book snob, and the series looks, feels, and the public likes them at a level that makes me want to turn my nose up at them. But you know what? They are actually very, very good.
I don’t necessarily know how to describe the why behind this, but the books generally leave me with this peaceful feeling, they make me see that everything is going to be okay. How does the author do this? I am really not sure, but I love to read these books immediately before falling to sleep. They put a smile on my face and generally make for an awesome night’s rest.
So what’s the premise? Well, I’m glad you asked. The series is about a detective agency (duh.) in Botswana. At first I thought the series took place in the past, but it is set in current Africa. The detective agency is managed and operated by Precious Ramotswe (who is traditionally built, i.e., heavy; I love that phrasing!) and Grace Makutsi. Not a whole lot really goes on at the detective agency (not that that is a bad thing, and yes, they do solve some fairly big cases now and again); this probably adds to the peaceful feeling I get from the book. Also, the ladies drink a lot of tea, and drinking tea is always thought of as the best way to think.
Bad things happen in the book. Deaths, AIDs, poverty and hunger to name a few, yet the positive, respectful attitude of all of the characters definitely gives the reader hope. No matter what, things will be okay. Simply beautiful.
Okay. I feel like I have done enough of a book report for now. More later; maybe.
the other day. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where it came from, but I think it has the guts (the first paragraph anyway) to become something good, maybe even great. Give it a read to see what you think.
When Old Lady Sweet died they found a chest full of frozen tomatoes. Not canned, or quartered, or macerated in any sort of way, just whole Big Boys and Early Girls, some still on the vine, their skin shriveled and papery as lanterns. And they were solid; froze all the way through the consistency of croquet balls.
Clearing out the icebox and chest freezer fell to the man next door. Nathaniel had lived next to Miss Sweet for near thirty years, exchanging pleasantries, surplus casseroles and zucchinis (they both lived alone) and fruit cakes at Christmas. The tomatoes weren’t the strangest thing he’d seen. Peculiar, yes, but folks leaning that way always seemed a bit more interesting. He supposed that in a whirl of embarrassment she had bagged them all up and placed them in the freezer, not wanting to unload them on her neighbor already full to the gills with his own Nebraska Weddings—in his opinion, the only tomato worth giving a second thought. She couldn’t just throw them out now could she?
So there they sat. Frozen in threes and fours placed in paper sacks and stacked neatly in the left corner making a tower almost clean to the top. What was he to do with them? He knew damn sure he didn’t want to drop them—that would break your toe quicker than anything.
Today during the incredibly monotonous drive after work, I once again fell into a freeway coma. I was listening to Only by NIN (which is, I think, one of their best. Comes close to Head Like a Hole, Down In It, etc.) and my mind began to wander as it generally does during freeway coma time. I was thinking about seeing them at Voodoo Fest right after Hurricane Katrina. The event organizers gave all of the relief workers (and I don’t know who else) free tickets. It was awesome! They were incredible. Queens of the Stone Age rocked too. I thought about this band, and that band. The video for The Perfect Drug with its masterful rendition of Victorian/Gothic England, or at least my version there of; I swear that Rochester is about to top one of the moors in the video. (I could spend hours analyzing the video; absinthe, Orientalism, and so sexy.) Johnny Cash singing Hurt and making me bawl; and the video; ridiculously good, better even than the original (sorry guys). And how sexy Trent Lott had looked in person, now that he had been hitting the gym…
Trent who? Yeah. In my head I was calling him Trent Lott, Republican senator from Mississippi. I’ve had politics on the brain, but I didn’t think it had done any damage…
I will write about the books I am reading, or have just finished. I am always reading something. Right now, I am reading The House of Spirits. Lately, I have been on a Latin American/magical realism kind of kick; I just ploughed through One Hundred Years of Solitude for the third time. I love Marquez’s works. I think I have read them all, my favorite being Memories of My Melancholy Whores; fantastic. I like Allende because she reminds me so much of Marquez, in a lesser sort of way. There are so many instances in her books that I am struck by how similar the writing is; some of the plot lines are even the same, especially the grandmother making her granddaughter prostitute herself until she pays back all that the grandmother is owed theme. I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but the writing is SO similar.
The thing that I like the best about both Allende and Marquez is the way that their writing makes me feel. It is hard for me to remember distinct details from either of their writings, but this is due to the soothing, melodic way of their writing. Both writers use magic and an alternate reality. When I read their books, I feel that I am there. I am lulled into the worlds of Allende and Marquez, and everything is wonderful. I love nothing better than to read one of their books, even only a few lines, while taking a bath and then fall into bed for a lovely night’s rest. Both of these authors allow me to do something I can do with no other; I can pick up any writing by either of them, and read only a few lines, words even, and be transported into that world, relaxing my real world’s troubles away, calming me, pacifying me. They are the only two (well for the most part) that I can read again and again.
On a completely different note, I have just finished The Eyre Affair and Into the Wild. I was so excited to read The Eyre Affair and have been since the novel came out a few years ago. The novel started out fabulously; plenty of literary allusions, as the name promised, and great characters, but in the end, I found the female lead’s character a bit lacking, but I think this was due to the author being a man; sorry, men often can’t get women right. And, by the middle of the book the novelty wore off and I was a bit bored. It was a story like so many others in the end; although quite cleverly done.
I picked up Into the Wild at the Seattle airport, bored with the above book. I have to say, I don’t generally buy popular books like this, but (alas!) I was sucked in by Eddie Vedder’s fantastic rendition of Hard Sun (here comes the junior high crush again!) and the fact that Sean Penn had everything to do with the movie version of the book. I read the book in a day or two, and couldn’t put it down. The writing wasn’t necessarily fantastic, but the story was so good. Alex/Chris is so real (I know he was real). I saw so much of myself and someone I love in him. He was a passionate young man who took his extreme feelings to the ultimate end. This is what can happen if we don’t lead a balanced life.
For a very long time, I tried to stay away from books that Oprah had as part of her book club. In the beginning, she would only do works by living writers, and this pissed me off to no end. Recently though, she has been including some of my favorite books. I remember the first (I think) work by a dead author that she covered, Anna Karenina. How can anyone not love this book? It is definitely one of my favorites. And now, she is doing a second book by Marquez; bravo! East of Eden (a book that actually made me contemplate moving to Salinas) is another good book she picked. Just thought I would throw that in there. I love John Steinbeck too! And Cather, and Hemingway, and Abbey, and almost every other author except Shakespeare. (Would you believe I actually made it through school, as an English major no less, without taking a single course about him? Hooray for me!)
I know. Not New Orleans. One day, I want to go through and clean out all of the posts like this, leaving behind those strictly related to Louisiana. But for now, since only non-New Orleans things are about all that I can write, they will stay.
Yesterday I wrote about the strange feelings brought on by seeing any sort of image, sound, photograph, movie, what-have-you, of someone who is no longer alive. When I got into my berth (rack maybe? we’re talking submarine/train style sleeping) last night, I flipped on my battery powered camper light and started into One Hundred Years of Solitude (for the third time!). The first paragraph I read dealt with the daguerreotype machine Melquiades brings with him to Macondo. Ursula will not have her photograph taken because “she did not want to survive as a laughingstock for her grandchildren.”
The writing surrounding the daguerreotype echoes much of what I wrote, or rather I echo the book; Marquez wrote this novel nearly ten years before I was born, and he may have unleashed the idea from his brain many years before that. It was coincidence that I read this segment after I published my post. But then again, I had read the book twice before, so perhaps, no, certainly, Marquez’s writing was somewhere in the back of my brain, coloring my thoughts about images, without my conscience even realizing. More to think about.
A note about me: The mainspring behind my desire to improve my Spanish skills, is so that I can read all of Marquez’s works as they were originally written, in their original language. They are lovely in English, but I am sure I will find them stunning in their original tongue.
