Reading globally

Recently, I discovered a challenge on Library Thing encouraging users to discover new books from the 192 countries recognised by the UN. Some users also included disputed territories such as Taiwan, Palestine/Occupied Territories, etc.

I tried to do an informal tally of the contries whose literature I had sampled, and was quite disappointed with the results. The list was overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon in taste, with a heaping cup of the Great American Novel, a few dashes of the Anitpodes and a generous serving of the UK (mostly England) thrown in to create a homogenous blend. The list, of course, had classification problems: how to define, for example, a novel written by an Ethiopian about the immigrant experience in America or pretty much anything written by a white South African. Similarly, how to deal with the Québec question, as Québécois literature is quite distinct (and quite superior) to its Anglo-Canadian counterpart, which is largely a subset of its hegemonic American cousin ("Southern Ontario Gothic" my arse). In the end, even giving myself maximum credit for the most extraneous of links, I still came of far short of where I assumed I would be.

Therefore, I want to make a greater effort to look beyond the US and the UK for novels. Particular dark spots include Asia and Central/South America, areas my reading has barely touched in 22 years. I read "The Good Earth" in junior high, but that once again presents a classification dilemma as it was written by an American missionary in China. I attempted "Soul Mountain" when it first came out in 2000/2001, but soon gave up somewhere around the time the narrator had his sixth or seventh orgy in the woods. I have only seen Vietnam and Korea through the eyes of American GIs, South Africa from the perspective of embittered Afrikaaners, and all of I have seen of the Occupied Territories are the fun-loving kibbutzes of Amos Oz. In short, the literature of the colonisers and the oppressors.

So, this is the list I will be working from, borrowed from the LibraryThing group, "Reading Globally":
AFRICA
Southern Africa:
1.Angola: Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela ***
2.Botswana: Maru by Bessie Head **
3.Lesotho: Chaka by Thomas Mofolo ****
4.Malawi: The Last of the Sweet Bananas by Jack Mapanje (poetry) ****
5.Mozambique: Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto ****
6.Namibia: The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas **
7.South Africa: Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton ****
8.Swaziland: A Time of Bliss by Martha Mphahlele *
9.Zambia: Bitterness by Malama Katulwende **
10.Zimbabwe: Year of the Uprising by Stanlake Samkange *

East Africa:
11.Djibouti:The Land Without Shadows by Abdourahaman Waberi (short
stories)***
12.Eritrea: Riding the Whirlwind by Bereket Habte Selassie ***
13.Ethiopia: The Thirteenth Sun by Daniachew Worku ***
14.Kenya: The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o *****
15.Somalia: From a Crooked Rib by Nurredin Farah ***
16.Tanzania: Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah ****
17.Uganda: Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa **

Indian Ocean:
18.Mauritius: Getting Rid of It by Lindsey Collen **

North Africa:
19.Algeria: Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus (short stories)
*****
20.Egypt: Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi***
21.Libya: Anubis: a desert novel by Ibrahim al-Koni **
22.Morocco: A Life Full of Holes by Driss ben Hamed Charadhi *****
23.Sudan: Minaret by Leila Abouleila ***
24.Tunisia: The Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi ****

Central Africa:
25.Cameroon: Dark Heart of the Night by Leonora Miano ****
26.Congo (Brazzaville): Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Labou
Tansi ***
27.Congo (Kinshasa): Full Circle by Frederick Yamusangie **
28.Gabon: Mema by Daniel Mengara ***
29.Nigeria: A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe ****

West Africa:
30.Benin: Snares Without End by Olympe Bhely-Quenum ***
31.Cote d’Ivoire: Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma ****
32.Gambia: Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster **
33.Guinea: The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye***
34.Ghana: Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo ***
35.Mali: Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem *
36.Senegal: The Belly of the Atlantic by Fatou Diome ***
37.Sierra Leone: A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (non-fiction) ***

AMERICAS

North America
39.Mexico: Tinisima by Elena Poniatowska ****

Central America:
41.Belize: Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell ***
42. Cost Rica: Years Like Brief Days by Fabian Dobles ***
43.El Salvador: Cuzcatlan, Where the Southern Sea Beats by Manlio
Argueta ****
44.Guatemala: The Mulatta and Mister Fly by Miguel Angel Asturias **
45.Honduras: The Big Banana by Roberto Quesada ***
46.Nicaragua: The Country Under My Skin by Gioconda Belli (non-fiction)
***

Caribbean:
47.Antigua and Barbuda: Mr Potter by Jamaica Kincaid **
48.Bahamas: God’s Angry Babies by Ian Gregory Strachan ****
49.Barbados: In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming *****
50.Cuba: The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier *****
51.Dominica: The Orchid House by Phyllis Shand Allfrey ****
52.Grenada: Angel by Merle Collins ****
53.Haiti: Aunt Resia and the Spirits (short stories) ***
54.Jamaica: The Hills Were Joyful Together by Roger Mais ****
55.St Lucia: Omeros by Derek Walcott (poetry) ****
56.St Vincent and the Grenadines: Spirits in the Dark by H. Nigel
Thomas ****
57.Trinidad and Tobago: A House for Mister Biswas by V.S. Naipaul ****

South America:
58.Argentina: Winter Quarters by Osvaldo Soriano ****
59.Bolivia: Juan de la Rosa by Nataniel Aguirre ***
60.Brazil: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho **
61.Chile: My House is On Fire by Ariel Dorfman (short stories) ****
62.Colombia: In Evil Hour by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ****
63.Ecuador: Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza ****
64.Guyana: Tide Runnings by Oonya Kempadoo *
65.Paraguay: I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos***
66.Peru: Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa ****
67.Uruguay: Five Black Ships by Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon ****
68.Venezuela: Dona Ines Versus Oblivion by Ana Teresa Torres ****

ASIA

Middle East:
69.Afghanistan: Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi ***
70.Bahrain: QuixotiQ by Ali al Saeed **
71.Cyprus: Young Man Seeks Position: Good References by Loukis Akritas
****
72.Iran: The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat **
73.Iraq: Saddam City by Mahmoud Saeed ****
74.Israel: Two Tales by Shmuel Yosef Agnon (short stories) ***
75. Jordan: Inside the Night by Ibrahim Nasrallah ***
76.Lebanon: Women of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan al-Shayk ***
77.Saudi Arabia: Adama by Turki al-Hamad ***
78.Syria: Just Like a River by Mujammad Kamil al-Khatib **
79.Turkey: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk ****

Caucasus:
80.Armenia: Khent by Raffi ***
81.Azerbaijan: Ali and Nino by Kurban Said ***

South Central Asia:
82.Bangladesh: Lajja by Taslima Nasrin **
83.Bhutan: The Circle of karma by Kunzang Choden ****
84.India: All About H. Hatterr by G.V.Desani ****
85.Nepal: The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay **
86.Pakistan: Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan ***
87.Sri Lanka: Reef by Romesh Gunesekera **

Central Asia:
88.China: Red Azalea by Anchee Min ***
89.Kazakhstan: Abai by Mukhtar Auezov ***
90.Kyrgyzstan: The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz
Aitmatov ***
91.Mongolia: The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag **
92.Uzbekistan: The Railway by Hamid Ismailov ****

Far East:
93.Japan: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami ****
94.South Korea: The Reverse Side of Life by Lee Seung-U ****

South East Asia:
95.East Timor: The Crossing by Luis Cardoso ****
96.Indonesia: Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer ****
97.Laos: Mother's Beloved by Outhine Bounyavong (short stories) ***
98.Malaysia: Srengenge by Shahnon Ahmad **
99.Philippines: Waywaya by F. Sionil Jose (short stories) ***
100.Singapore: The Bondmaid by Catherine Lim ***
101.Thailand: Mad Dogs & Co by Chart Korbjitti *
102.Vietnam: The Family Wound by Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh *

Take a look it's in a book reading rainbow....

on the possibilities and conditions of lakshmi singh taking me as her young lover

i've been listening to npr on the internet at work (wnyc in particular, bigitup bigitup bigitup nyc, peace) and it makes the time go by hella fast. i start my mornings with the gentle pace of morning edition and marketplace, only to be drift away on a carpet of cerebral discussion and bland, non-offensive ethnic music courtesy of Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate with news bulletins from newsreaders with impossibly exotic names bearing witness to the rich ethnic tapestry of America like Soterios Johnson, Steve Innskeep and Renee Montagne (create your own npr name here: mine is Dapniel Lucerne, Adelle's might be Adrelle Chibougamau (not in Europe, but awesome and within the spirit of the game).

the highlight of my radio day, however, has to be soundcheck, a daily look at music with john schaefer (need to work on that name, man) that has filled in the gaps of my musical formation which has up until know consisted of a handful of songs on loop. through this show, i've discovered ted leo and the pharmacists, harlem, le poisson rouge (so hip they don't even have a website or any music on youtube!), jonathan coulton and a host of other bands with equally pretentious names and ironic instruments. really helps one get through that 2:00 slump in productivity (although, in all fairness, my entire day can often be described as one enlongated slump in productivity, a dilemma which my dockworking ancestors would have envied).

i do hope you are all well and reading this in good health.

Symphony No. 9 (Scherzo)

for nearly two months now i've been slogging through orhan pamuk's "museum of innocence", a 500-something page clustercuss about star-crossed Turkish cousins (only not really, something about a distant relative by marriage and a beauty contest gone horribly wrong), one of whom is an adulterous heir to an industrial firm. it's definitely made me more aware of turkey, a country i had honestly never really considered as anything beyond an honourary "stan", but it's been torture to get through. i am convinced that someone is pasting pages into the book's spine as i sleep. or perhaps the book is engorging surrounding books while i am not looking, resulting in an odd hybrid between a parody of turkish postwar secular values and Jean Chrétien's 1984 memoir, "straight from the heart".

i am resisting the urge to give up on the book by sending it into a dusty exile only to be picked up years later in haste as i rush out to an event where reading material is obligatory: a weekend afternoon in the park, a shift at the library during exam time, lunch with Adelle (JUST JOKING! JUST JOKING!) and only to discover that it is brilliant and that i was a fool for giving up on it just before things started to get good.

i have, however, moved on to other literary pursuits but there's nothing that captivating. ian mcewan's "saturday" is quite fun, but little more. it's the literary equivalent of an ice cream sandwich: pleasant on a hot day, familiar, even reminiscent of one's childhood, yet forgotten as soon as it's done except for the residue left on one's fingers.

now that i've finished mixing metaphors like a magic bullet, i'll be off.

as long as i can remember, i've been trying to get past post-modernism and post-modernity

hello, internautes! what's doing, what's happening?

my goodness, more than a year since i've updated this. i knew this would happen; i hate writing blogs. i should, however, get in the practice of writing more often.

i'm working at AINC at enjoying it quite a bit. i hope it will land me a sweet cataloguing job on campus during the school year and an even sweeter library job after. i've looked into the possibilities of working at a library in one of the territories, where they is quite a bit of demand for librarians who are willing to face the brutal winters and $10 boxes of spaghetti.

the other option is to take advantage of my EU citizenship and work there. Amnesty sometimes posts job listings which look awesome, even though the pay is quite low for living in London. my savings would be non-existent, but i would get to weekend in Paris and be able to receive dutch language radio stations and eat sandwiches at pret à manger and eat exotic crisp flavours and take the guardian over a cup of adult coffee every morning (a most welcome change from the maroon-coloured swill that passes for coffee here).

the other option is dublin, which would probably be easier with the whole EU thing, but its economy is wonky.

in other news, here are some new expressions i've learned since working at AINC:

"a dog's breakfast": a mess, a shitstorm, etc.

"a bun fight": a bureaucratic struggle for power or, frequently, a bureaucratic struggle to evade responsibility for a menial task (i.e. emergency preparedness)

"taberouette", "tabernouche", etc

"brouiller comme une vache": to bawl like a cow. how québécois de souche.

"you promise to faithfully accomplish the orders given to you by your hierarchical supervisor(s) as long as they do not expressly contradict Canadian and/or provincial law or the public interest": one of many promises I had to sign that almost certainly led to me wavering Constitutional rights.

11 may

not much new.  to rest my eyes from cataloguing, i've taken to reshelving books and i quite like it.  today, i catalogued a book by any rand and i was tempted to give it a subversive dewey number, but i resisted.  still, a strong argument can be made for putting "the fountainhead" under the occult.

all in all, i am quite enjoying my job and while i'm not looking forward to learning cataloguing at u of t in the fall, it's giving me hours of fun right now.  and i'm pretty sure that's what melville had in mind.

beginnings

So this is my first post.  Yes, that looks much better in verdana.

In doing research about Librarianship and programmes in Library Science, the most informative resources i've found have been personal blogs by current MLIS students. These blogs have given me a great idea of what to expect this September as I enter the Information Science programme at the University of Toronto.

This summer, I am volunteering at two local libraries in Quebec City to get an idea of the field and (hopefully) a basic idea of some of the issues I'll be dealing with next school year.

The whole blogging thing is a bit new to me.  I've read tonnes of entries over the past few years, from the blog that helped introduce me to library science to my current daily must-read and everything inbetween.  Whatever my interest of the movement, I've sought a closer connection to it through the blogosphere.  Here's hoping that my venture into its ever-increasing library component will be the most fruitful yet!