196 Books: Barbados

Fire in the Canes by Glenville Lovell

Here's Barbados!

Fun fact: Rihanna is from Barbados. Not so fun fact: it's been kind of slammed by Mother Nature lately. 

Here's the summary!

A new arrival on a Caribbean island dominated by the cane fields, fifteen-year-old Midra falls under the spell of the island prince, whose African ancestry brings Midra a revelation from the ancient past. A first novel.

That doesn't say much. Here's the summary I read when I picked this book...or maybe it was the only one I could find. I dunno. Here it is anyway:

"Caribbean stories are often filled with magic and mysticism. Glenville Lovell immerses readers in all these elements in his debut novel, "Fires in the Canes". Lovell brings to life the sleepy West Indian village of Monkey Road, 50 years after the end of slavery. Peata, a sensual and fun-loving woman, arrives with her beautiful teenage daughter, Midra, which starts a chain of events that forever changes their lives and those of the villagers . . . Lovell spins an interesting story, one that will make you think about how one incident can change the future".--"USA Today".

Ok. This was a good, quick, fun read. Without giving too much away, I was not prepared for all of the mysticism. It was going along like a normal, everyday life story and then BOOM--ancestor spirits. I kind of got into it though. One thing I did have a really hard time with was picturing in my mind's eye that this was taking place in like the late 1800s. Especially with the women; I could not picture them in the long conservative dresses of the time. I think it was because there was a lot of sex and debauchery, and you hear about that time being really prudish. But I guess if you really think about it there's always been a lot of sex, it was just maybe kept under wraps or just not talked about. It was very open in the story (that may be a consequence of it being written in 1995 though) and there's a lot of nakedness that people just kind of shrug off. 

I liked this book and I liked how it opened me up to a really different perspective on beliefs. I don't really have any ties to my past so the pride and love for the ancestors was neat. 

This one is kind of short and rushed, I apologize...but I gotta get to work and I like to get this out before I start the next book! Kbye!

196 Books: Bangladesh

Liberation by Humayun Ahmed

Here we have Bangladesh, with bonus fun facts! 

And synopsis, of course:
In this book, by means of an engrossing fictional story which skilfully incorporates various historical figures and many true incidents as well as the author's own personal experiences, fortified with excerpts from newspapers and other documents, Humayun Ahmed manages to produce a remarkably vivid and well balanced picture of the political events and bloody civil war which led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state in 1971. No other work on the subject has the same breadth of vision or the same power to absorb and engage the reader. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to explore the human reality behind the stark facts of the Bangladesh Liberation War. In the present translation Humayun Ahmed's highly accessible Bengali style has been recreated in modern colloquial English, making an easy read for Western readers. This edition also comprises explanatory notes to assist those unfamiliar with the cultural and historical background to the novel.


I was kind of nervous about this one because it was pretty long and the print was suuuper tiny, but it was a pretty good read so it wasn't so bad. Alright so it did take a while to read, but I also had parents' visits in there. Ok, you don't care. On to the book. 

About 70 pages in I had a big shock. I'm reading along, and all of a sudden one of the characters says he's going to college at the State University of Moorhead, North Dakota. Holy shit! THAT'S WHERE I WENT TO COLLEGE. Well, kind of. It's actually Minnesota State University, Moorhead in (obvs) Minnesota. It turns out the author went to University of North Dakota in Fargo, which is right across from Moorhead. I kind of wonder if he did it wrong on purpose. It was weird, but also pretty cool; I'm reading this book about Bangladesh a world away and found a piece of my own life. 

Next: war. In this book quest I keep reading stories about war. It's of course a huge part of history, but I find it equally fascinating and depressing. Although it has kind of gotten me wondering if I should start to look for books that focus more on the real history of a place instead of novels. This one also got me thinking about the crazy shit people do during war. How do people get turned into that? There was one part where someone was getting tortured...his torturer told him how that it doesn't work. And there have been studies that show the same thing: yes, people being tortured will say all sorts of things. But they'll say what they think the torturer wants to hear; whatever will make them stop. So why does it keep happening? I guess they just go completely insane. 

Apart from the raping and pillaging and war shit, I really liked this book. There were some really interesting stories, even if I had a hard time keeping some of the names straight. I really only have one hangup with it: it had a happy ending. And then he was like oh, just kidding, everyone died. Ugh.