American Dervish

This is my book club pick for July, and I was excited because I voted for this book.  This is the first time I voted for a book and it was selected so even though it's April, I read it now.

It took me a little while to get through the book and I did find myself skipping some of the parts where the Quran is quoted.  This wasn't because I have a grudge against the Quran.  It's because I routinely skip passages in books that quote poems, song lyrics, scripture, etc. Literally my eyes glaze over and I move on because I want the narrative to flow and for some reason these things don't generally add anything to the narrative for me. But I digress.  Once the action picked up and we find ourselves getting to the crux of the matter in the book, I couldn't put it down.  Today I was on page 100 and told myself getting to page 200 would be my goal for today.  Well here I am several hours later having completed all 352 pages of the book.

The story centers on Hayat, an 11-year old boy, who is part of a dysfunctional Pakistani Muslim family.  A family friend comes to live with them because she is under threat of having her son taken away from her in Pakistan. When she comes to live with them, Hayat is introduced to the complicated world of religion.  Since he is a young boy he doesn't fully understand all of the intricacies and tends to believe whatever anyone tells him.  This family friend, who is faithful and beautiful, mesmerizes him.  When she begins showing interest in a Jewish man, Hayat does something hateful and changes the course for everyone involved.  I enjoyed the book once the story got going, not just for the story, but also for how the story was presented pretty objectively.  The author posits that there is no single right religion and describes how impressionable young kids can be swayed into beliefs that they are not ready to handle or understand.  After reading this book, you may find yourself thinking about the consequences of belief that occurs out of context.

Ghana Must Go

One of my online book groups selected this book for April.  You already know my usual routine, check the library, get it if it's in my local branch, or have it transferred from another branch for pick up at my local branch.  When I checked the online catalog there was one copy in the South Philadelphia Branch.  I live in West Philadelphia and I hate the train here.  For a book, though, I'll brave the personal hell that is SEPTA and cross the city (2 trains!).  Anyway, the point is that I went the extra mile to get this book physically in my hands on the same day I knew it was available.  So naturally I dove right into it.

The story centers on the death of a family patriarch, Kweku Sai.  He and his ex-wife, Fola, are African immigrants who met in America, married, and had four children. His death forces his ex-wife and his children to come together and, of course, bring all their unresolved issues with them as well. The book is divided into three sections. I found the first section very difficult to focus on and to read in general.  This was mostly due to the writing style. Selasi has never met a set of parentheses that she didn't like.  There are some very long involved sentences that are made more convoluted with the addition of parenthetical information.  It took me about sixty to eighty pages to get used to it.  I would find my mind drifting off into space frequently.  I also, initially, didn't know why I should care that this patriarch died. What he did to his family is revealed as the story unfolds. Then it makes sense why this death is so deeply emotional.

Once all the characters were introduced and I had a solid grasp on their role in the story I was hooked.  The entire novel gained some momentum and I couldn't put the book down.  The four children are greatly flawed in their own personal ways.  Yet they are all trying to be the model citizen/child/student/achiever.  Two of the children hold an awful secret that, when spoken, provides a much needed breakthrough for several characters. If you read carefully you will have a vague idea of what the secret is, although the specifics may not be what you thought.

By the end of the book, I had come to enjoy the writing as well as the story.  I liked the slow unfolding of the story. Although I questioned many of the decisions made by the characters in the book, I suspended disbelief and went with it. I'm glad I did.

Fahrenheit 451

This wasn't a book we read in high school or college.  I do remember hearing about it being controversial at times so maybe that's why it didn't make the cut in Ohio. *shrug*

Anyway, I picked it up at the library this week and read it.  I never really knew much about the plot.  I only knew it had something to do with fire and book burning.  Well come to find out it's about the future, but the future is NOW.  The book was written in the early 1950s and describes a future where people are so entranced with television and media that they no longer read books. In fact, books are illegal. Knowledge and discussion is frowned upon.  It's gotten to the point where if someone is suspected of having books in the home, the fire department is called and the firemen actually burn the house down.  Yes, in this world firemen start fires instead of extinguishing them.  Well, our protagonist is a fireman who has been secretly hiding books in his home.  He begins to question the world around him and this gets him into all kinds of crazy trouble.

I think if I read this in high school or college I wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate it.  We are being consumed by television and media. Before getting rid of it, I used to zone out in front of my TV for hours with the best of them. Then I would rub my weary eyes at the end of a Saturday and wonder where the time went.  A perfectly good day.....wasted. The older I get, the more I realize how this lack of original thought and discussion is affecting our society in a negative way. We're simply becoming one large mass of group-think much like the society in this book. It's eerie to see that sixty years ago it was imagined that this was the road we were headed down.

This is a classic that I would definitely recommend because it is dead-on with the depiction of our dystopian 21st century and it advocates a questioning intellect.