- John Banville, The Sea. Highly literary fiction, with an unpleasant narrator, who spins a melodrama about aging and memory that definitely I will re-read someday. Had a great discussion about it with book club partner readers. Filled with details and nuance.
- Percival Everett, James. A book that needed to be written. Easily read over a few nights. But once read, there would be no pleasure or profit from re-reading.
- John Banville, The Untouchable. Highly literary fiction, with an unpleasant narrator, who spins a melodrama about aging and memory that definitely I will re-read someday. Had a great discussion about it with book club partner readers. Filled with details and nuance. (Yup, repeated on purpose!)
- John Banville, Body of Evidence. I had to stop. Too unpleasant a narrator. Reminded me of Wasp Factory.
- Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time. Who did kill the brothers in the Tower? Richard? Or…. Fun detective novel as historical fiction, but the style definitely dated.
- Shirley Jackson, Flower Garden (short story). Yikes: a meditation on racism that cuts straight through the bullshit.
- Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces. I have a decent appetite for “physics explained to economists,” and this was pretty good!
- Beth Brower, The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. Excellent if you are 12 years old.
- Adam Gopnick, All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters. “Some words that my publisher thought we could make a tidy sum off, is more like it.” Learn a craft for the emotional satisfaction of improving at something. There, saved you time and money.
- Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay. A poorly written rehash of some of his main ideas (complexity and emergent properties). Perfectly fine as an entry text into his work. The writing is dialed in here.
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver. You can imagine Stephenson in a small home library, with old books about the 1600s everywhere, and manuscript pages scattered about, and every morning he randomly picks a few and then figures out how to insert into his narrative fictionalized version of the times. After a few hundred pages, most readers I am sure start thinking, “Why not just read Wikipedia? Or better yet, let me go browse in the old books section of my local bookstore.”
Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- COLAU’s latest newsletter with updates from August to December
- Some photos from Nyariga Community Library in Ghana
- Rapport de mission d’une équipe de ABVBF à Waly
- Visite du centre de lecture et d’étude de Béréba (CLEB)
- Don de livres par ABVBF à l’école primaire publique de Waly
- Sortie de la BMP: Ste Thérèse de Houndé, Burkina Faso
- Distribution des livres CMH aux élèves de l’école B de Koumbia, Burkina Faso
- Night activities at Sumbrungu Community Library, Ghana
- Gowrie-Kunkua night reading, Ghana
- Initiation aux jeux de mots croisés de 02 élèves du primaire à la bibliothèque de Koho
Michael Kevane 