Laura/Oppie/L'opps

After I posted my review of The Making of a Chef, Olivia offered to do a book trade, as she wanted to read it, too. Did you know it only costs about $3 to send a paperback book across the country? The USPS is sort of amazing.

Anyway, I came home one day to find Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World. It follows the author, Rita, as she abandons her comfortable middle class lifestyle to be a nomad, traveling around the world, meeting new people, building new communities, and shedding her previous lifestyle.

Much of the book takes place in the 1980s, and as I read it, I was struck by how different the narrative might have been today. Without email and cell phone technology, Rita was so disconnected from her previous life. Today, I can’t imagine someone traveling without one if not both of these. Obviously, the jungle is still the jungle so it isn’t like there’s wifi there, but it seems like today, she’d have a much harder time simply letting go. The strings of her previous life would be pulling her back, much too strongly.

Rita is a great story teller, and I felt jealous of her adventures and total lack of fear in the larger world. While the book isn’t really a page turner (you’ll notice my pace slowed down here), it’s a worthy read and one that will stay with me for a bit I hope.

In the meantime, I need a new book to read. Any suggestions?

I’m seven weeks into 2010 and eight books into my challenge. One week ahead of schedule!

These two books could not be more different. The first, Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader For a Day follows Venkatesh as he gets more and more intertwined with Chicago’s Black Kings gang during the 1980s in Chicago. The second, Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife provides a fictionalized account of Laura Bush’s life, from the eyes of protagonist “Alice Lindgren.”

A little background: I spent six years in Chicago, four of them on the South Side. By the time I moved to Chicago, the Robert Taylor Homes has already been closed, and the city was in the process of tearing down Cabrini Green. I was also in Chicago when Freakanomics came out, and I remember both Leavitt’s celebrity on campus, and everyone’s fascination with the chapter on why drug dealers make only minimum wage.

Venkatesh’s work is fascinating — he calls it sociology, but I’d suggest it’s more anthropological in that’s it’s an intensive study of a civilization. That civilization happens to be public housing residents. He’s an adept story teller, and in many ways I felt like this book taught me more about urban poverty than anything I read in my African American studies classes in school.

On to American Wife. I’ve read Sittenfeld’s two previous books. Both of them — Prep and The Man of My Dreams — left me with a sort of melancholy feeling; this one was no different. I was worried when I picked it up, after reading the reviews on Amazon. Many were scathing. I think, for the most part, they must have come from Republicans, as I found the book fairly complimentary to Laura Bush.

The protagonist, Alice, is simply madly in love with her husband, Charlie. And because of this love, she’s able to accommodate his lesser qualities… his interest in his legacy; initially, his drinking; later, his born again beliefs; expectations of her, etc.

Reading it, I enjoyed the first few sections more than the latter. By the time they arrived at the white house, I’d lost my interest a little. I think it may be that the White House section is where it becomes less fictional seeming. There’s a 9/11, a Cindy Sheehan-esque character, etc. Sittenfeld is a deft storyteller though, and regardless of whether or not you like the Bush family, it’s a compelling read, at least for the first 400 (!) pages.