Cammykitty's Summer Start 2024

I started participating in the Category Challenge back in the days when the number of categories matched the year and you had more categories you wanted than you were allowed. I've been gone though since before the pandemic. During the pandemic, I started a crabby thread over in the Quiet Corner basically saying lurk but don't you dare talk!

Well, now, lurk if you like, but I'd love to get comments too. I usually have more time in the summer than the school year, so I won't promise to always comment or visit back. Life frequently gets in the way.

I'm not sure my pic will work. I think it may be hiding behind a firewall, but it is me and my late Sage commemorating his 14th birthday. I am currently dogless, which for me is like saying I am a lost soul. Oh well, maybe one of the things we will discuss here is life after heart dog and the search for a new dog to love. As well as books of course. I want to document and discuss my books.

Category 1 World Traveler
I have been working on this for decades, but I plan to read a book from everywhere in the world. Rules are the author/poet/journalist must have been born in that particular country, although the country could've had a different name or different borders when they were born there. I now have books lined up for almost everywhere, even North Korea, but it will take me a lot of time to read so many books. I'm going to try to post a picture of where I have read already. I have a map that I keep updated, but it will be posted as a link as I complete a book. My biggest unfinished areas are Africa and former Soviet block countries.





1. Kingdom of AIDS by Marie-Louise Abia, Republic of Congo, Brazzaville
2. The God who Begat a Jackal by Nega Mezlekia Ethiopia
3. The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago Portugal
4. The Quarter by Naguib Mahfouz Egypt
5. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi Oman
6. The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan
7. The Missing File by D A Mishani Israel
8. The Desert and the Drum Mauritania by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk
9. The White Shroud Lithuania Antanas Skema
10. Sea Loves Me Mozambique Mia Couto
11. Pearl rule over 130 pages so it counts for challenge An Unlasting Home by Mai Al-Nakib Kuwait
12. Blue by Emmelie Prophete Haiti
13. Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd Palestine
14. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi book 1 Iran

Iran
https://visitedplaces.com/view/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&the...

Category 2
Off the shelf

I've gotten in the habit of reading audio or e books, which means my huge collection of physical books just collects dust. Time to read them and clear some of them out!



1. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
2. The Child Goddess by Louise Marley
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Category 3
Audio Books

These only include books I am reading for the first time. I often fall asleep to a very familiar audiobook such as the Hitchhiker's series or Discworld series because it allows my brain to focus, but I don't have to start at a certain place or end at a certain place to enjoy them. The books for falling asleep don't count. They are appreciated, but really they are like lullabies.



1. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Category 4

Libros en Espanol



Leyendo es mas facil que escuchando o hablando

1. Frida Kahlo y sus Animalitos por Monica Brown
2. Snapdragon by Kat Leyh
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5.

Category 5
Neurodivergences



I work in a school mostly with kids with autism. The brain is fascinating!

1. all but last 5 stories of Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology
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3.
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5.

7

8

Squirrel!



Any book that is a distraction and I gotta read it NOW!

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Comment away to your heartses contents

I'm going to start of this thread with an unusual book, The Kingdom of AIDS by Marie-Louise Abia from the Republic of Congo. It's unusual simply because it is a book in English from the Republic of Congo, and might even be the only one available in North America. My copy was published in Canada, and possibly originally in French but there are no translation credits that I could find although it had signs of being by a non-native speaker. Not bad, just a few weird near homophones and odd grammar things. Nothing that detracted from the work. It actually even helped create the voice of a Congolese woman.

I avoided picking up this book for a long time because of the title. Obviously heavy subject matter. That being said, the book was satirical, angry and funny enough to make it highly readable, and yes it did make me feel like I had traveled to the Congo.

The book is made up of three novellas, all confessions made to "Father Baba" in a sanatorium for people dying from communicable diseases. The priest decided to share them as cautionary tales. As for the tales, I won't say much other than manslaughter by AIDS.

My map so far: https://visitedplaces.com/view/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&the...

Welcome back! I am so excited to "see" you here. My condolences on losing Sage, that must be very hard. Happy reading!

Welcome back to the category challenge -- love your photo with Sage!

Thanks MissWatson and Christina. Good to see you both again! And I just talked to a friend who is planning a litter of pups in January. So that's a little excitement to mitigate the sadness.

Welcome back! I remember enjoying your thread in years past. Good to see you here.

I don't do the category challenge anymore, but I still follow the posts and I log my reading in Club Read.

Welcome back!

Welcome (back!) I already took a BB for your first book!

Welcome back to the category challenge and Hello from me.

Welcome back, I am looking forward to following along!

Squeee! It's so good to see so many familiar faces!

This was an unusual take on a Frida Kahlo book, a biography through her pets. Frida Kahlo y sus Animalitos told a cleaned up for kids version of Frida's life by comparing her to her many pets which included three Mexican Hairless dogs, two monkeys, a black cat and many more. It's a fun way to think of an art icon who is mostly remembered for her afflictions and her painful yet whimsical self-portraits. It is available in English too for anyone interested in Frida or Mexican art.

For those of you wondering what I mean by a cleaned up version, I'd recommend the movie "Frida" which I'm sure doesn't tell the half of it.

One off the shelves and soon to be in a local little free library! I had read reviews of this years ago on LT, picked up a cheap copy on sale at Half-Price Books and then didn't get into it. The list of suspects returning from a religious pilgrimage that the book starts with turned me off. I'm glad I gave it a second chance.

The novel is set just after Henry II caused, deliberately or not, the Archbishop of Canterbury's death. At this time a woman could be educated in Salerno, but that same woman in England might be mistaken as a witch. Adelia has been trained as a forensics investigator. Bodies speak to her, but not as they might a witch. King Henry II sends for some investigators to investigate the murder and disappearance of some children that has been blamed on the Jewish community of Cambridge. This book is rich with history, description, interesting characters. It's worth getting beyond the list of pilgrims into the rest of the novel.

Yes, I guessed the villain and the accomplice! Yeah me. I'm bragging. That said, it wasn't obvious. And I'd made a few other predictions that didn't turn out to be. I'm sure a lot of you have read this already, but for those of you who hadn't and don't mind when your mysteries aren't cozy, The Mistress of the Art of Death is highly recommended.

>22 cammykitty: Taking my first BB from you for this book.

>22 cammykitty: I liked that one too! Excellent work on guessing whodunnit.

>23 lowelibrary: Lowe I think you will like it. I don't usually read multiple books in a series but I'm tempted by that one.

>22 cammykitty: rp Have you read more of the Mistress of Death series? Do you recommend them and does it matter if you read them in order. I'm intrigued by the possibilities of an illicit love affair in the following books.

The God who Begat a Jackal falls charmingly somewhere between fairytale and magical realism. From Ethiopia, it tells a tale of feudal Ethiopia around 1700-1800 when the class system went lords, vassals, slaves with women also falling into those classes, but not really having any rights. In this, Aster, who is a magical creature in her own right, is born to Lord Ashenafi and of course he has to find a suitable groom for her. She, though, has found her own true love among the slaves tasked with guarding her.

I loved the beginning of this story, but about 2/3rds through, it began to sour for me. It might be that I read it at the wrong time. This is part of my world reading challenge, and most of the books I am finding from the less translated countries are war stories with or without love stories interwoven among them. While The God who Begat a Jackal didn't have the graphically realistic descriptions of violence that I can no longer handle, it had a high body count. Almost genocide levels. That said, the book was also a sarcastic and insightful critique of society, war and religion. So I do recommend this book, but not if you are looking for an escapist read.

My map thus far
https://visitedplaces.com/world/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&th...

>25 cammykitty: I read the second one and didn't like it nearly as much; I got impatient and started skimming halfway through. I didn't read the rest of the series, but I am a chronic reader of mystery series out of order so I would not dissuade you from reading them out of order ;)

27> Thanks RP. I'll bet there is a trend of 2nd book in a series not being as good as first. The poor author can work on the first book for 7 years, and the second book is often the first time they've worked on a publisher's schedule. Also, the first needs a little more world building and detail. I'll skip the 2 then and maybe return further in. I can be an impatient reader too.

>28 cammykitty: True of other art forms, too -- second movies, second albums, second plays. Another factor is that the first X is very often autobiographical; the second is where the writer has to start thinking outside their own direct experience and creating events and characters from scratch.

>Keith, so true! It's really hard to sustain the creativity needed to actually make a career out of any art.

The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago of Portugal was a charming historical novel of a true event, an elephant given as a gift to the ruler of Austria has to travel from Portugal through the alps to Austria. OMG, poor thing. On the way, no romance but yes a war! OK, a bloodless and humorous war, but I seem not to be able to get away from books that depict war. The character of the mahout, Subhro later named Fritz, makes the book for me. The constant contrast of his Indian upbringing with the expectations of the Catholic European society is hilarious.

I think I will read more Saramago, which is a change. My first experience of him was the movie adaptation, The Stone Raft which was perplexing but had a brilliant scene with Gibralter, and Blindness which I tried to read at the very beginning of the pandemic. Needless to say, I didn't get very far. The pandemic destroyed a lot of my enjoyment of books that involved communicable diseases, regardless of how inventive they were.

https://visitedplaces.com/world/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&th...

>31 cammykitty: Saramago is one of my favorite authors! I almost read The Elephant’s Journey for a BingoDog square (until I read something else that coincidentally ticked that box), but I’m definitely going to get to it soon.

32> Charon, let me know what you think of it when you get to it. I love the metafiction voice... they would've called it ____________ but I don't think _________ was invented then.... etc

So what is your favorite Saramago?

The Quarter is a collection of posthumous stories by Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. The collection also includes his interesting prize acceptance speech. He was Egyptian, and said in his speech that he was the first or one of the first representatives of "the third world" to receive the Nobel Prize. That surprised me and kind of hurt me because I don't think of Egypt as third world. A history that includes the pyramids, Tutankhaman's treasures and Ahkenaton doesn't feel like it could be third world to me, but he wouldn't have said it if he didn't feel that his countrypeople were treated as second class world citizens.

Mahfouz has also been a victim of fatwa, which means he has written or said something that is so "heretical" that an Imam put him on a hit list. I know part of his heresy was in opposing the fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

The stories were all about different people who lived in the same neighborhood, the Quarter, in Egypt. What is common in these stories: All involve a problem that eventually involves the Head of the Quarter and often the Imam too. Sometimes they involve themselves. Often times, they just pass judgement. As far as common setting, there is a cellar where unfortunates have lived in from time to time. The cellar is right below the old fort. The old fort is said to have demons that certainly can be heard from the cellar, and can drive cellar dwellers mad.

With all that lead up, I expected these to be stories that were daring and challenged society. Some certainly did. Maybe they all did. Maybe I don't know that culture well enough to know what is a challenge and what is not. Some of the stories, I wondered what I was missing. The endings just fell flat for me, and I know he is a good enough writer that nothing should have fallen flat. I may try a better known work of his later. His acceptance speech makes me certain that his reputation is deserved. I just haven't found the key to his work yet.

https://visitedplaces.com/world/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&th...

>33 cammykitty: My favorite has to be my first: The History of the Siege of Lisbon. But it’s a close tie with The Cave, All the Names, and Death with Interruptions.

>35 Charon07: thanks Charon! I'll give those a try.

>31 cammykitty: That is on my TBR pile. I think I will move it up!

>37 Tess_W: Tess, I think you will like it!

Wow, I hardly know how to talk about this book. The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan by journalist Bagila Bukharbayeva is a good but painful read. The post Soviet government of Uzbekistan viewed almost all religions as a threat, so when the author's childhood friends began disappearing or being arrested and tortured for teaching or learning Islam, she returned to her country to investigate. She follows several people, reports on many interviews, witnesses a protest turned "uprising" first hand. What she sees is a failing state, where bribes are required to do anything with the government, where trials are in secret, where people are arrested over testimony achieved through torture. Even with all these obvious human rights abuses to report, she doesn't forget to include the human side, what living with all this does to the family.

https://visitedplaces.com/world/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&th...

I'm a Louise Marley fan after I crashed her table at Wiscon years ago and she was very pleasant. She humbly described what she wrote to me and I had to use that line "I haven't read any of your books, but will have to look for them now." Louise is very talented and writes in multiple genres. None of her books are like other books she writes. On top of that, she has also been a professional musician.

The Child Goddess did not disappoint although I would have named it The Child Saint. Isabel is a Preist in the Order of Magdelenes and she is tasked with being a child's guardian. This child, Oa, has been taken illegally from a planet colonized 300 years previously. The planet has been assumed uninhabited, and is revisited for valuable natural resources. Oa appears to be 10 years old, yet she teaches herself English rapidly. However, her English is too limited to explain her life on the planet, or to explain where the adults are.

D.A. Mishani's The Missing File Isreal shows a very different Isreal than Haji Jabar's Black Foam. Mishani shows Isreal by car, Isreal through an office window, Isreal as home. Jabar shows dusty streets, a mix of religions, economic disparities, small one person shops, drugs. It's kind of ironic that the crime novel, Mishani, shows a much cleaner version of Isreal than the immigration novel, Jabar.

As for The Missing File, it is a police procedural reminiscent of Columbo, only in Columbo, you know who did it right away. In The Missing File, not so much. What makes this novel work is the characterisation. I enjoyed the read, but probably won't read more in the series. The end was a groaner for me.

I really enjoyed The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk but don't really know what to say about it without giving spoilers. The book is from Mauritania, which includes people of the Sahara. A young women runs away from her Bedouin tribe and she takes the heart and soul of the tribe, the drum, with her. She knows they will kill her to get the drum back, so she goes to the cities to hide and to look for someone who has been hidden from her. Tense story, filled with culture clash. Highly recommended.

https://visitedplaces.com/world/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&th...

You know what the White Shroud from Lithuania is about. Antanas Skema writes about Antanas Garsva who grew up in Lithuania as a promising poet, but after WWII emigrated to New York City where he makes a living as an elevator doorman. Yes, his whole life passes before him.

I didn't love the book as much as I would've liked to. It was very literary, very avant, very tongue in cheek. Garsva is a "Neurasthenic" which in this book doubles its meaning as weak minded/mentally ill and poet/artist/intellectual. Yet I felt like much of the book was going over my head, like I wasn't understanding the tone of it. It had many, many footnotes, and lots of passages in Lithuanian, Polish or Latin. Lithuanian folksongs were scattered through the book as well as allusions to world classic novels and mythology. It felt a little like being dropped into a city without the knowledge of where to find food, what musical scale the music was written in, and what body language meant. In other words, I'm not Lithuanian and don't know much about them except what Russia did to them, so I don't think I had the background to get the most out of this book.

I'm sorry. I waited too long to write my review of Sea Loves Me by Mia Couto from Mozambique. It is a selected works collection that includes 5 books. I only read the last of the five, also called Sea Loves Me, because it was just too much all at once. Short stories. Most of them were quirky, fantastical with a good punch at the end that was worth waiting for. You didn't have to wait long. Except for the novella "Sea Loves Me", none of the stories was over 5 pages. Definitely worth picking up if you have a few minutes.

The Pearl Rule: Read 50 pages and then drop the book if you aren't enjoying it. Subtract a page for each year your age is over 50.

Even if it is part of a challenge. Even if it is part of a country challenge and so far the only translated book you have found from that country. Kuwait, I'm looking at you.

I can not read another saga of the unhappy women in a family making choices that they know will continue to make them unhappy just for the sake of an older unhappy woman in the family. Granted, I'm sure this isn't the only kind of book written by Kuwaitis, and part of the problem is what US editors think people in the US want to read, but An Unlasting Home by Mai Al-Nakib is too much like the book from Oman that I slugged all the way through which left me wondering whether or not the female author was deliberately depicting internalized misogyny. I went well beyond the recommended amount per Pearl in An Unlasting Home. It isn't misogynistic like the book from Oman, but the book is making me unhappy, and not in a good that's so sad way, or in a how horrible but I need to know way. It's more in a what's on TV way.

Sorry if you read this non-review! I'm just recording my own rant to myself.

Blue by Emmelie Prophete from Haiti was kind of a meh for me. It was more of a long prose poem than a novel. It had some memorable descriptions in it and some beautiful writing, but all through it the main character said she hated Haiti, loved airports, loved coffee, but her mother didn't really exist although clearly she did etc. The novel chased the death of three sisters, two of whom died in exile. It felt like there were a few deliberate holes/blind spots in the middle of the novel; ie the violence and poverty of Haiti, her mother's life, and the narrator's life. If you like atmospheric, plotless novels, this is for you.

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh is a graphic novel in either Spanish or English, originally printed in English. You can tell because in a few places they forgot to translate "huff" or words on store signs etc. It's about a tom boy who discovers the local witch is not a witch, but an eccentric person who knows a lot of veterinary procedures and makes a living by putting animal skeletons together and selling them. Our tom boy's name is Snapdragon and her best friend is a young trans girl. And there is a romance in here, but not involving Snap. This novel was a nice change of pace for me, but I'm not going to run out and get the next book in the series.

Rifqa is a book of poems about Mohammed El-Kurd's Palestinian grandmother, Rifqa, pictured above. Powerful.
Here's an excerpt from "Portrait of My Nose"

I have my grandmother's
and my grandmother had pride
favored functionality
She was never a
nose away from anything
but jasmines.

I enjoyed the first half of Spectrum, although many of the stories didn't seem that autistic to me. Some definitely did, but some were just horror stories written by autistic authors. They were very different, very creative but toward the end of the anthology, I was getting too grossed out. LOL, they promised! I might finish reading the anthology later, but I think it better get back to the library in time for Halloween preparations.

Some varied reading! I took a few BB's for Mozambique and Palestine.

Thanks Tess! I haven't been here for a while. Haven't been reading that much new stuff, but have been listening to comfort audiobooks like Hogfather

I know I'm the last person in the world to read Persepolis. It is pretty intense, and another reminder that countries are not monoliths and war is a thousand times more complicated than the 6:00 news.

https://visitedplaces.com/view/?map=world&projection=geoOrthographic&the...