While I have been travelling, I have splurged on books. Two reasons, simplest is that I am waiting for flights for too long and the best shop in any airport is the bookstore. The other is I want to bring something home. I used to buy wall hangings, but there are only so many wall hangings I can put up and I have too many sitting in closets already. I usually get some chocolate or local treat to bring back to share, but that disappears very fast especially if it is fancy. Books seem practical and easy to transport. I want to have bookstores and decided that I needed to spend some money in them if I wanted them to flourish.
I have been buying books, but I am biased by ones that look cool. The better the cover, the more likely I am to buy it. I also am biased by size, I don't want a 1000 page hardcover tome that I won't finish even on a 14 hour flight to Addis. My usual genre is science fiction, and that dominates what I have on my kindle, but I have tried to branch outside of that genre.
Bookstore: Near the Zocalo and museum in Mexico City
Title: Asesina Íntima
Author: Bernardo Esquinca
Review: I bought both of the Spanish language books on this list when I was in Mexico City for a visit to CIMMYT purchased last year when I was doing a project review for Gates Foundation. I asked the owner of the bookstore for some recommendations for something that wasn't a translation of an English language novel, but also wasn't like Borges or "literature". I wanted something that was fun, or different. Both of his recommendations were different, but I wouldn't say either was fun.
I tried to like this book. It is the story of a middle aged wrestler that was convicted of murdering 40 women. This is based on a true story -
Juana Barraza Samperio. It is not a linear narrative, but more like versions of this story told from different perspectives. The first was my favorite, but I wasn't as interested in some of the other characters version of the events.
Would I recommend? Yes, but you would have to like true crime more than I do. This would be a great podcast. The audiobook could be amazing if you had different voice actors when the narrative voice shifts.
Bookstore: Near the Zocalo and museum in Mexico City.
Title: Trece Latas de Atún
Author: Bernardo Esquinca
Review: This was the shop owners second recommendation. I think this is the "fun" pick. It is short and also not a linear narrative. This feels like someone's diary, but it also is a bit like poetry or short stories. Some of it is true - biographical sketches from the life of Amandititita - Amanda Escalante Pimentel, daughter of Rockdrigo Gonzalez . He was a famous rock guitarist that died in an earthquake in Mexico City. Amandititita's music is a lot like this book - funny, punk, absurd, and angry.
I have read this through a couple of times. It is easy to fly through because each entry is short and the whole book is like 120 pages. I am not sure how this got published or what it is trying to say/do. Does it have a message? I don't know. It feels like reading a found diary.
Would I recommend? Maybe not. It is vulnerable, funny, emotional, and bizarre, but I am not sure it is something most people would like.
Bookstore: Kenya International Airport
Title: Death of the Author
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Review: Okorafor is one of my favorite science fiction authors. She has won a pile of awards. I highly recommend her Binti trilogy that is about an Himba girl that leaves Earth to attend an alien university. During the spaceflight, they are boarded and attacked by almost jellyfish like aliens that kill everyone else on board. She survives because the aliens react to her otjize - a clay and aromatic mixture that her culture wears on their skin and hair.
This book is probably still science fiction, but also somewhat autobiographical, but also not, and so is more contemporary fiction than classic sci fi. It isn't a book that could have been written before social media and the internet. It seems to be very aware that the reader is there in the story and aware of how the life of the author and all that we know or could know about an author gets mixed up in the story in the book.
Because the narrative is mixed up with current internet culture, it is a story of our time. I don't know what readers of 50 or a hundred years will think of it. It is about an author writing a book after her rise to fame. It mirrors some of the events that I can imagine from Okorafor's own life. Her struggles with her health, fame, internet backlash, family life in US and Nigeria. I feel like it is a very personal novel, maybe something that an author would write while procrastinating writing a contracted other book. I am glad she published it and I look forward to whatever she has next.
Bookstore: Edinburgh international terminal
Title: Companion Piece
Author: Ali Smith
Review: Like "Death of the Author", this novel's structure and story could not have existed without the contemporary internet. I had not heard of the author before and it is not a genre I usually like. It seems at times more like poetry than prose and the narrative is not always reliable or linear.
The editor must have struggled with this manuscript because it doesn't follow traditional writing conventions. Sometimes one sentence runs for an entire page. Punctuation is sometimes missing or seems like a poem with line breaks used instead of commas or periods.
The story starts when the main character is staying at her father's house, taking care of his dog, while he is in the hospital during covid lockdown in the UK. She gets a phone call from a college acquaintance that tells her about a strange experience while being held by customs in a locked room. She hears a disembodied voice that asks her "Curlew or curfew?" What does this mean and why the choice? There is a flashback to when they first met in college when the main character helped her understand and analyze an
ee cummings' poem. It reminded me of "The Chosen" when Reuven analyzes a difficult section of Talmud in front of his class. There are flashbacks to I think an imagined blacksmith girl that has a pet curlew during medieval, but the imagined character pays a real life visit to the main character, sleeping in the corner of her room and chastising her about how she is taking care of the dog.
If I taught a writing class, I think I would include this book in the class. I think it shows both how to address poetry and prose in a intellectual and emotional way. The covid lockdown storyline feels as surreal, and probably more cringe, as the medieval blacksmith and it would be interesting to see how students relate to that.
