Week 12 Prompt: Non-Fiction Matrix

Author: Corinne Hofmann

Title:  The White Masai

Publication date: 1998

Number of pages:  320

Geographic setting:  Kenya, Africa

Time period:  Late 1980's

LOC Subject headings:   Hofmann, Corinne

                                      Women, White -- Kenya -- Biography

                                      Masai (African people) -- Biography

Type:  Narrative memoir

Series notes:  There are two sequels that follow: Back from Africa (2003) and Reunion in Barsaloi (2007).

Book summary:  Corinne, a European entrepreneur, finds herself fallen hopelessly in love with a Masai warrior, so she leaves her home in Switzerland and relocates to Kenya to marry him and forge a new life.  She recounts the trials and triumphs of living in the African bush.  Ultimately, though having survived several life-threatening diseases and an arduous pregnancy, she flees her husband, who has become jealous and violent, and has begun to drink and use drugs, and returns to Switzerland to raise her daughter.   The "fish out of water" element to the story is enthralling reading.  

Reading elements:  

Pacing/setting: This is a fast-paced adventure/love story with fascinating details about home life in the African bush.  The author writes in a straight-forward way about her endless surprise at the strange and foreign customs she neglected to research before her adventure began.  She describes the gritty, uncomfortable living conditions, the unpredictable kindness of the locals, and the struggle to make ends meet in a place where poverty is crushing.  

Language: The author writes in a concise way, avoiding prose and flowery language.  Though not a diary, it reads like one. 

Characterization:  Corinne not only describes herself and her own motivations with great detail, she introduces us to her husband, Lketinga and family, and gives the reader an idea of their thought processes, as she interpreted them, and their customs and values.  Her description of Lketinga's slow transition from adoring husband to abusive drunk is compelling.

Annotation: A European businesswoman falls in love with a Masai warrior and moves to Africa to marry him and live in the African bush.  

Similar works:  

My Masai Life: From Suburbia to Savannah by Robin Wiszowaty (2009). A twenty-something, longing to escape the complacency of suburbia, travels to rural Kenya to live for a year as an adopted member of a Masai family.

Warrior Princess: My quest to become the first female Masai warrior by Mindy Budgor (2013).  The true story of a young entrepreneur who makes the spontaneous decision to volunteer in Kenya and, after living and working with the Masai, embarks on a quest to become the group's first female warrior. 

Married to Africa by G. Pascal Zachary (2009).  A former foreign correspondent describes how he fell in love with an African zoologist while working in Ghana, his subsequent immersion in lesser-known aspects of African culture, and their equally disparate married life in California. 

Western Genre Annotation

BLOOD MERIDIAN, OR THE EVENING REDNESS IN THE WEST
AUTHOR: Cormac McCarthy
GENRE:  Western; literary fiction; southern fiction

In a devastating epic, the fourteen year-old Kid, having left his drunken, abusive father, joins a brutal gang of mercenaries hired to kill Indians and terrorize the Southwest around 1850.  The riders move back and forth across Mexico and California, killing everything in their sights. The harsh landscape is its own character as the narrator describes in detail its savage assault on anyone who dares to traverse it.   More than that, man's cruelty to man is featured in all its glory as the gang massacres and pillages with horrible efficiency.  American westward expansion is portrayed as a blood-soaked, cutthroat nightmare in which death was almost preferable to life.  In a twist of the Western genre, the hero of the book, while perhaps the least repugnant of his compadres, is no hero. And his mission is not noble.  He'll be tempted by evil personified in The Judge, an immense, albino, hairless monster of a man.  Will he be able to resist the darkness? 

APPEAL FACTORS
Tone:  Atmospheric, bleak, disturbing, menacing
Writing style:  Gritty, lyrical, stylistically complex
Storyline:  Character-driven, open-ended
Character: Unlikeable

READ-ALIKES

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy:  This is much like Blood Meridian with its bleak, violent tones.  In the late 20th century, Llewelyn Moss happens upon a massacre and $2 million in cash and his decision to take it will plunge him and his family into a typical McCarthian nightmare.

The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman:  Follows the adventures of group of outlaws from their formation during the Civil War through a blood-soaked three decades to 1900.  This book has the same gritty writing and bleak tone, as well as unlikable characters that populate McCarthy's books. 

Savage Country by Robert Olmstead:  A widow organizes a buffalo hunt to pay off her dead husband's debts.  What follows is a dramatic story of survival in a harsh and inhospitable landscape.  This story contains the same gritty violence and character-driven story line as Blood Meridian.  Incidentally, Blood Meridian contains a scene relating to the horrific buffalo slaughters of the same time period.  

MY TAKE

Boy, was I glad to finish this book!  The ghastly violence and horrific cruelty was almost too much to bear.  McCarthy managed to craft a lyrical image of hell on earth which while gorgeous in its prose, was sickening in its gore.  There isn't much of a story line except that the riders rode and killed and rode and killed and rode through the deserts and the mountains and through sand and through snow.  They came upon no less than eight massacred Mexican villages and visions of horrific brutality.  They hunted Indians and were hunted by Indians.  And the ending.  That ending!  I hated the book, but I had to love the beauty of McCarthy's writing.  His prose is unbelievably complex and many times I had to re-read a sentence several times just to understand it.  Had there been a real story arc and less horror, this would have been one of my favorites.  

This is not a typical Western.  Where Westerns usually feature a hero riding into town and saving the day or the lady, this book featured terrible people doing terrible things.  There are no good guys fighting the bad guys.  Further, while the landscape was drawn in detail as harsh and treacherous, McCarthy's landscape fairly throbs with menace.  The overall mood in the book is menacing and hopeless.  I would definitely not recommend this to a patron asking for a Western.  While it has Western elements and is listed in the Western genre, it's more of a literary novel.  Also, patrons should be made aware of its unremitting violence.

Week 11 Prompt: Audio Books and E-books

Remember when you were little and you just started to realize how much you loved turning the pages of that book about the bunny, the smell of the ink, the gloss of the paper?  Or how about when you were older and wore out your favorite book with so many re-readings that it fell apart in your hands?  For me, reading was always such a visceral experience.  I can still remember reading a book in the first grade and the feeling of pure joy that filled me.  Was it the physical appeal of the books that enchanted me?  It had to be, because I really can't remember what exactly I was reading.  I just remember the experiences vividly.  I wonder what voracious readers who read e-books feel?  Perhaps they remember the glow of the reader, the different fonts and text sizes they chose for each reading, the way touching the screen flipped the pages.  I suppose it's all subjective.  

Myself, I'll read a book off a roll of toilet paper if I have to, I don't care.  As long as the words are readable, I'm in. So, although I don't read e-books, I'm not against them in any way.  I would say that, as Dunneback mentions, not being able to flip around and read other passages easily is a very big factor for me.  I often go back and forth, especially in long, complicated books.  I recently was forced to read an e-book because the print version was out, and I really had a tough time being stuck where I was.  Maybe there's a way to easily navigate, but I'm a novice e-reader and I don't know what that is.  Also, I can see where people who are visually oriented would love the font and setup change abilities.  And I will say that it really does seem like the book goes faster on an e-reader.  Is it because you don't have the physical feeling of the book in your hands?  I don't know, but I think it's strange.

I haven't been a huge audio fan.  Sure, I've taken books on cd on car trips, but I found myself getting distracted and missing half the story.  But, I've never listened to a book and said, "I did not like that narrator."  Until podcasts.  I like to listen to podcasts when I'm going to sleep, and of course, short story podcasts are my favorites.  However...there are some pretty bad narrators out there and I now know that a narrator can ruin your experience.  Frankly, I haven't found a short story podcast that I really love, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!  But I digress.  My point is that as a readers' advisor, I know I'll need to get to know the audio books and their narrators, as it would appear that this is a huge appeal factor, whether it is their pacing of narration, characterization, phrasing, etc.  I mean, it's the same story as the print book, right?  The story doesn't change, but how it's presented is of paramount importance.  An audio book will make a story come to life with the right narrator.  

Book Club Fun

My library has a book club called “Books on Tap”.  It takes place on a Tuesday night, which is the one night I’ve worked for years, so I’ve never been able to go.  I got the night off to go for this piece and I had a great time!  We met at Wings Etc. and ordered drinks.  The library paid for appetizers, which was a real treat.  There were about 10 people there, some ladies in their 40s and 50s and retirees.   We chatted while waiting to begin, and I felt very comfortable.  The leader of the talk was an older woman who has been at the library 30+ years, a very friendly and knowledgeable lady. 

This book club is slightly different in that they don’t discuss a book every month, they discuss a genre.  My understanding is that they had difficulties choosing one book that everyone wanted to read, so they settled on genre and each person would read a book and then share it with the group.  In one sense, I feel this hinders really digging into a title and finding the insight that discussion can lead to.  On the other hand, hearing about several different books sounds interesting and everyone’s looking for a new book to discover!  The genre this month was romance.  I brought along an old favorite of mine, Trade Winds, by M.M. Kaye. 

The meeting proceeded as you would imagine.  Each person would introduce themselves, tell us what book they brought and then launch into description of the book.  Everyone listened politely and interestedly, and then asked questions about the plot and characters and a short discussion ensued depending on where the comments led.  The leader didn’t have a script or schedule of questions that needed to be answered; each presentation proceeded organically.  It was interesting in that the other participants usually jumped in with questions and comments; the leader really didn’t need to lead anything.  It was a really talkative and curious group.  Another thing that struck me as cool was that most of the members had their synopsis of their books written down so that they remembered the most important parts of the book AND the small details that fleshed the book out for the rest of the group.  I was engaged in each presentation even if the book didn’t initially sound that interesting. 

Each person had the floor for about 10-15 minutes.  Everyone seemed comfortable and enthusiastic.  There were obviously some folks that had more questions than others, but there was no one who hogged the spotlight or made an ass of themselves, thank goodness.  I came away with a greater interest in a genre I’m not super fond of, and I made a few friends.  Next month, the genre is historical fiction, which sounds like a good one. 

In the end, I had a great time and am even considering changing my work schedule to attend again!  It was an interesting twist on your normal book club discussion which has its pros and cons.  I would suspect that hardcore, traditional book club enthusiasts would find the format somewhat off-putting, but there is no formula for what a book club is supposed to do, and it made me want to attend again, so that’s a good thing! 

Special Topic: Erotica in Public Libraries

Erotica has been around a long time, but hasn't had a real presence in American public libraries until very recently. Even though the ALA passed the Library Bill of Rights in 1939 to ensure that libraries would be free of censorship, librarians felt it their duty to spare innocents from "vicious" or scandalous material. Up until 1960, there were few sexually explicit materials found in libraries except reputable sex education books that were for adults only. Librarians had to decide if it was worth the public outcry to include items like Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and Miller's Tropic of Cancer. After 1960, more explicit materials were available and social mores loosened a bit and libraries quietly added erotic romances to their collections like V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic series, My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, and Scruples by Judith Krantz. In the 90’s, Madonna’s Sex was published and created another firestorm of controversy. Librarians debated hotly about its value to the library – was it art or pornography? It was mostly rejected as pornography, but today it is one of the most sought after out-of-print books ever released and according to Wikipedia is “considered a bold, post-feminist work of art”.

 50 Shades of Grey changed all of that. Despite the fact that it was 2012, it created a firestorm of controversy as librarians struggled to define the difference between erotica and pornography. There were actually libraries that refused to order the trilogy citing poor quality and pornographic elements, despite overwhelming public demand. Alas, those libraries eventually had to concede and order the books anyway. Libraries are moving to user driven collection models, so what the patrons want, they get. A current check of the catalogs of those holdout libraries in 20012 shows that they now have copious erotic literature offered up. It appears that currently, sexually graphic materials in the public library is a non-issue.

 Erotica is a sub-genre of romance and frequently is interchanged with erotic romance. There are differences, however. Erotic romance is centered upon relationships and includes explicit sex. Readers expect a "happily ever after" with these books. Erotica focuses on sex. There may or may not be a clear storyline or relationship. But there will be graphic sex. Amazon currently ranks Madison Faye, Alexa Riley, Sam Crescent and Adrian Amos as the 5 top-ranked erotica authors, but it is unclear whether these titles are erotic romance or actual erotica. Katie Dunneback's rundown of top erotica authors in Library Journal (2013) also includes erotic romance authors, so it's unclear where the difference is there, as well. Because of all this confusion, it's important that the readers' advisor know their erotic materials well. Katie Dunneback suggests several anthologies to read to get acquainted with the genre: Best Women’s Erotica 2011, Alison’s Wonderland, and Herotica: A Collection of Women’s Fiction. Further, during the RA interview, the librarian should get a good read on what exactly the patron is looking for. There are many types of erotica available including m/m (male/male), f/f, bdsm, non-consensual sex, and many levels of explicitness. Lists of titles and read-a-likes should be available for those who are too embarrassed to ask directly. Although there will always be someone who complains, libraries should foster an atmosphere of non-judgement and quality service. Dunneback, Katie (2013). Erotica’s full frontal shelving – genre spotlight. Library Journal,(138)3.


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