“A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it it has been taught to sit up or lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folks are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they’ve got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don’t have one at all. It is the very […]
Memoir of the Warm Heart of Africa
This is the eighth of my 10 African books this year, and the first by a Malawian author–I couldn’t well leave Malawi off the list since moving here was what inspired me to read more African books in the first place! Samson Kambalu was born in in 1975 into a Christian family of eight, and spent most of his childhood moving among remote villages in Malawi. Kambalu tells his story in chronological anecdotes, mostly, including early memories of being plagued by parasites, poverty, malaria, jiggers and other hazards of a […]
1001 Nights, for Beginners
Engraved on the Eye is a collection of 8 short stories told in various settings of Fantasy Middle East, drawing on Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore. It’s an extremely quick read. The stories are entertaining and the characters are lively, jovial, and diverse. Every story has some sort of supernatural creatures; ghuls feature prominently, along with ghul-hunters, martial artists, gunslingers, supervillains, rogues, dervishes,bounty hunters, and shaykhs. As with many short story books, there’s a range in subject matter and quality. I particularly enjoyed Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride (about a gun-slinging Muslim wizard in […]
Not the best of all possible books.
After thoroughly enjoying Redemption in Indigo, I picked up Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds with high hopes. Unfortunately, my hopes were not met. The Sadiri are a proud, reserved race — positively Vulcan. Their home planet is destroyed suddenly and thoroughly. The survivors reach out to the indigenous humanoids of Cygnus Beta, many of whom have Sadiri ancestry and therefore would make suitable mates. Our heroine, biotechnician Grace Delarua, is assigned to work with Dllenahkh, a Sadiri councilor, on a mission to find […]