Not read as many books as I'd hoped, but for the best reason - family visitors. I can't complain too much as they both bought books with them, which, as the weather seems to have turned here, will keep me occupied until the new school year.
Once again, I was trying to keep apace of my 1001 reading challenge, not doing badly despite distractions!
My favourite would have to be
Invisible Cities, which is a short book, but not a quick read. The prose is beautifully written, Marco Polo's musing on cities as told to Kublai Khan, though really he is describing one city and throughout time. I also read
Half of a Yellow Sun, a book off my long-term TBR pile and also one of World Book Night's 2011 selection, is not just a warts and all account of civil war, but also a history lesson. I really felt drawn in by her narrative style and the story she wove, the terrible realities of civil war and very human reactions to it, the positive and the negative. I also enjoyed
The Rainbow, which was strangely compelling, I say strangely because at times I wasn't sure what kept me reading. Curiousity maybe, interesting characters certainly, but also possibly because of the lack of external dialogue. I did find the reading exhausting, if that is the correct word, almost binging on a chunk of text, then having to put the book down to digest the narrative.
As is normal over the summer, I did read my fair share of thrillers,
The Ghost was the best of the bunch. The author takes as a starting point a ghost writer called in to help finish the memoirs of a former British PM, modelled on our very own Tony Blair. This is not non-fiction, but rather a story which takes its starting point in reality, covering many current grievences - the invasion of Iraq, the War on Terror, the use of torture, Guantanamo Bay, Britain's Pro-American stance under Blair.
The Righteous Men was also good, a thriller based around a Jewish tradition of Righteous Men. Much better than the Da Vinci Code which it has been compared to.
As for the rest, I got an Ian Rankin out the library,
The Flood, not a Rebus book, but one of his earlier works, with a view to bumping that series up my TBR pile when I get back to the U.K. I don't often get to read books set in the area around where I went to school, especially not one which shows this side of Fife life. Small town superstition mixed with the harsh reality of unemployment, Rankin brings many elements together which make up this gripping read.
The House of Sand and Fog stood up its reputation, surpassing the good film which I saw a few years ago. It is very tensely written, showing how a clerical error causes complete chaos for an American girl and an immigrant Iranian family. My brother brought a few books with him, all Latin America themed, I have read one so far,
Bitter Grounds, which follows three generations of women through El Salvador's bloody recent history. Well-written and informative.
Labels: 1001 Books, 11 in 11 Step Challenge, Latin America, WBN Challenge 2011
Journalist Garry Leech takes us through the history of the Colombian guerrilla group, emerging out of the La Violencia up to today. Told in chronological order, we can see that while the FARC has changed both in itself and in the perception of others - as best shown in chapter 5 : 'Narco-guerrillas' to Narco-terrorists' – the reason for its success appears to have remained constant, the government's lack of interest in the poorer areas of the country. Another important issue covered in the book is that of US intervention in Colombia, ostensibly due to the war on drugs.
The FARC is not something that is often covered impartially, so I found Leech's measured text refreshing, while he did not shy from informing the reader of the FARC's ruthless methods, he also showed us the wider Colombian context, one in which both government troops and paramilitary groups should also be held accountable for the vast number of killings and internal displacements.
While I have read quite a few articles about the FARC, I appreciated Leech's methodical explanations, starting with its beginnings and moving through its different important periods right up until the present day. By placing the FARC in context, both politically and socially, the reader is able to see how the guerrilla group has hung on in Colombia for half a century.
My main criticism would be its length, while it is great as an introduction, I would have liked to have gone into more detail, though this would be a good book for someone who wants to get an outline of the FARC. (