Bookworms retired

It seems we have lost all our will to blog in English... however, I'll end up with the last bookreview in English, just because. So, here's an overview of the books we have read in the last section of our travel. Again, Spanish books took us at least 3x more time to finish.

Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
A profile of Florida orchid grower, breeder, and collector John Laroche. It seems there are a lot of people obsessed by orchids. Nice mix of different stories of orchid-collectors.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cronica de una muerte anunciado
Colombian tale of honour and revenge, described in a very slow and explicit way. Beautiful verbal painting of the world.

Koren Zailckas, Smashed - growing up a drunk girl
A girl who starts abusing alcohol from her 14th age onward and finds it very difficult to function without. Interesting and shocking too.

Bill Bryson, A walk in the woods
The author wants to walk the 2000+ mile Apalachian Trail, and fails. But he does write very nicely about the parts of the trails he does see, the people he meets, and long-hiking 'culture'. Fun, especially if you like hiking.

Phra Peter Pannapadipo, Phra Farang
Succesful businessman turns buddhist and moves to Thailand. Here he finds out that it is not very easy and sometimes being a buddhist monk is more mundane than he thought.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El colonel no tiene quien le escribe
Yet another slow and deliberate story by Marquez. A colonel has served in the army and is waiting for his pension... for the last 20 years. Every week he goes to the postoffice, but finds that noone has written him the long-awaited letter.

Kurt Vonnegut, A man without a country
Cynical observations about the state of the world. If you agree with him, quite funny and sad at the same time.

Maya Angelou, I know why the caged bird sings
Black girl grows up in the south of the United States. Incredible to read how segregation worked not so very long ago.

Margaret Atwood, The handmaiden's tale
Dystopian novel about a society where infertility is a great problem. People have sought their refuge in hard-core religion and bizarre institutionalised fertilisation rituals. It's a brave new 1984.

Rudyard Kipling, Captain Courageous
Rich spoilt brat falls from his luxury steamer and ends up in a fishing boat. Here he learns the value of honest hard work. Difficult to read.

Chinua Achebe, No longer at ease
Village man who has studied in England returns to Nigeria and finds out that he does not agree with the way his fellow countrymen run their country. Interesting.

Hermanos Grimm, Cuentos de Grimm
All the famous stories like Hansel & Gretel, Frau Holle, Bremer Stadtmusikanten... just slightly more challenging because in Spanish.

William Gibson, Neuromancer
Sci-fi classic still sounding futuristic after the fact. Gibson is often credited for inventing cyberspace. Not quite true, I believe, but certainly not a bad read.

Davar Ardalan, My name is Iran
Half-Iranian, half-American woman describes her families and their tries and tribulations going back and forth from Iran to the USA. Interesting, but unfortunately the author is also clearly of the opinion that her story is very interesting and her family quite unique, which makes her sometimes a little arraogant.

Michael Crichton, Next
A collection of stories about what can go wrong with commercialised bio/genetic engineering. Very interesting case studies, but not very well written and certainly not very coherent. Only read this if you are interested in the topic and potential problems arising.

Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Weird story about the sole survivor of a religious death-cult. The question is, whether he will commit suicide just like he was programmed to do. In the meantime he turns into a media celebrity and meets lots of weird people (which is typical Chuck Pahlaniuk style).

Toby Green, Saddled with Darwin
Young philosophy student tries to follow in the footsteps of Darwin's travels overland in Patagonia. Good travel book and interesting insights in the countries visited from a not-your-usual-tourist point of view.

Edgar Allan Poe, Stories
Dark and sinister (which is basically also dark). Slightly old-fashioned writing style (which is not strange, of course): often a lengthy introduction is given to make the story seem more enigmatic; however, these introductions often have little to do with the stories themselves.

Lana Citron, Transit
Chuck Palahniuk-type story about revenge and mistaken identities. Quite original.