Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

I’ve been on a bit of a “plague kick” lately, having just read Mary Shelly’s The Last Man and watched 28 Days Later, and think, after reading The Rag Doll Plagues by Alejandro Morales that perhaps it’s time to take a break and read some lighter subject matter.

The Rag Doll Plagues is broken into three narratives that each resonate in both narrative voice and plot. The first story takes place in colonial Mexico, where a mysterious plague called “La Mona” turns thousands into what the chief colonial physician alternatively describes as “bags of pus,” “blood sausages,” or “the living dead.” Unfailingly lethal, La Mona is described as a “just” disease because it takes the lives of the poor, the rich, the indigenous as well as the Europeans (who overall tended to import diseases to the “New World” at and after Contact). The second narrative takes place in Orange County, CA in the 1980s during the initial AIDS outbreak. Narrating this tale of disease and the social forces which both structure its spread and containment is another doctor, Gregory, trying to suture the wounds of gangland violence and AIDS-doomed hemophiliac wounds of his wife, Sandra. The third tale takes place in a relatively dystopic twenty-second century Los Angeles-Mexico City industrial corridor of the “Triple Alliance” (think NAFTA or something like it fully merged Canada, the US, Mexico, and a spike of Chinese ex-patriots inhabiting all three nations). Gregory, the grandson of our last Gregory, is a doctor who finds that Mexican residents of Mexico City have somehow evolved or mutated to resist the “hyperbolically polluted” Mexico City and that simple blood transfusions using Mexican blood can cure the new myriad diseases caused by the pervasive industrial waste that has marked the twenty-first and second centuries as a time of “ecological disaster.” The race to commodify Mexican blood, which Gregory wryly notes is by no means a new pursuit, is on!

So… yes, this is a wild book full of blood, gore, and also love, humor, and social-political commentary. At the heart of each narrative is the story of widespread environmental injustice, as racist and profit-driven political systems construct terrible infrastructure which either directly brings about the plague in question or exacerbates its virulence. The scientific acumen of the doctor-narrators is challenged and exposed as but a limited tool against the monsters which perhaps can only be tamed with socially and environmentally equitable political structures. It is a gruesome and disconcerting novel that takes on the transhistorical sweep of a horrific dream you know, at some level, you already wake and sleep through today.

Rating: “The kind of infectious you want to spread around” — quote from the Christopher Guest film, A Mighty Wind.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by:  Shane D. Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended

Achebe’s fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah takes place in a fictitious, recently decolonized West African nation named Kangan. Kangan geographically resembles Nigeria, in that its south is typified in the novel by lush tropical jungles while its northern province is blasted by the same Harmattan that blows over Sokoto, Kano, and Maidiguri. Kangan’s political life is also modeled on Nigeria’s successive military coup d’etats in the 1970s and 80s (and as it turns out, post 1987), and the novel follows the tragic fates of four Kangan civil servants: Chris, Ikem, Beatrice, and “His Excellency,” Sam, during a horrific drought and the civil unrest which accompanies the forces of nature.

Each of these characters, minus Sam, takes a turn at narrating this story of political malfeasance and intrigue, and each narrative leapfrogs or backtracks on the others in time and space, making Anthills at times a difficult plot to traverse. What is clear from the beginning is that Sam, the almost unwitting president, has begun to cling to power and take personal umbrage against even trivial shows of political dissent, and this signals the predictable, bloody, course so many dictatorships seem to take. He begins to suspect his erstwhile college friends, Chris and Ikem, as “threats to the state” and investigate their movements. As is typical of Achebe’s other work, each of his narrators come across as well-developed, believable characters. Chris, Beatrice, and Ikem each speak as if Achebe were recording three people, not penning three characters. This is what always impresses me about Achebe’s writing; you don’t have a protagonist and the supporting cast, but rather a whole crew of “real” people.

Ikem, like Achebe early in his career, works for the nation’s media, and is an author of some renown. Through Ikem, Achebe recasts some of his earlier essay, “The Novelist as Teacher” and launches some searing critiques of the modern African nation-state, neocolonial interference with African politics and economies by America, and the shortcomings of civil society (such as university students and unions) to break free of the cycles of violence and poverty that nations such as Nigeria have faced in spite of breaking free of their colonial yokes. Although written in 1987, much of Achebe’s overarching critique remains relevant as we become an increasingly globalized world.

Not to make a mountain of Anthills, but this is a really good book. (that is the only pun I could come up with over ten minutes of concerted effort, so that’s as good as it’s getting for now).

Availability: SMCM Library, USMAI
Review Submitted by:  Shane D. Hall
Rating: Recommended

In this third installment of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Douglas Adams delivers yet another interesting novel about familiar characters Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Slartibartfast, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox and their adventures in space. After having wrapped up many plot lines in the last novel, Adams introduces a new conflict as unhappy inhabitants of the planet Krikkit plan to destroy the entire universe and only a few people have the power to stop them. However, it felt as if the more unwilling certain characters were to save the universe the more unwilling I was to continue reading the book.

I will say that in parts this novel was certainly entertaining and clever, but altogether not much different from the past two Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books; I would even go so far as to say it was lacking a certain spark for adventure the other two books possessed. It is true that there is a new, more serious conflict for the characters to combat in this novel, but as a whole it did not further develop the series in any way, nor did the characters themselves seem to develop much throughout their adventure. I would still recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the last two novels in the series because of this novel’s very close resemblance to them, though one should not expect very much.

Availability: SMCM Library, USMAI and COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Brianna Glase
Rating: Recommended with Reservations

How curious–Though this book was published in 1996, the plot and characters weren’t dated or annoying. I love Scottline’s wit and often caustic characters; Running from the Law doesn’t disappoint in either category. Though I don’t often quote USA Today, they called it “a good, twisty plot” and that sums it up. One twist after another kept this reader’s interest and the main character was strong without being stupid. The good guy always wins with Scottoline, but the reader gets to enjoy a bumpy ride to the end.

Availability:  COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Highly Recommended

If you were alive at the turn of the century, you quietly paid witness to an inconspicuous but momentous moment in human history: sometime in the early aughties the majority of all human beings living on earth resided in urban areas. This shift, from rural to urban, argues Mike Davis, denotes significant impacts on the world’s economy, ecology, and social relations.

At the heart of Davis’ survey of the “prevalence of slums” across the planet, from Karachi to Kampala, Los Angeles to Luanda, or Buenos Aires to Beijing, is an argument against what he characterizes as dated narratives of global urbanization. Instead of seeing newly bustling megacities (think Seoul, Shanghai, Mexico City, or Kinshasa) as logical “next steps” of developing nations marching to the same drum as that which the United States and Western Europe danced to in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the growth of cities today is driven more by neoliberal land-grabs via World Bank and IMF imposed structural adjustment programs than by rural people freely seeking “modern life” and jobs in the metropole. In each chapter, Davis takes a survey approach to a different topic concerning the recent explosion of urbanization: Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), population growth, etc. What this approach does well is sketch major patterns over time and space. But the lack of helpful context around each example takes away from the potency of each example.

Overall, I would recommend this as an interesting look at urban spaces the world over.

Rating: Don’t be a SAP, go read this book.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Shane D. Hall
Rating: Recommended

As Bokonon, narrator Jonah, and their puppet master himself, Kurt Vonnegut, I will warn the reader: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” In the precise terminology of Bokonon, founder of a false religion, these are “foma.”

I first read Cat’s Cradle at the beach during the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, instantly making me a disciple of Vonnegut’s wry, humane, somewhat-repetitive oeuvre. Cat’s Cradle is hilarious, apocalyptic, trenchant, and irreverent. If there is only one Vonnegut novel you read, undoubtedly this should be the one (ok, well you’d better also read Slaughterhouse Five). Yesterday’s re-read was my fourth or fifth time through this book in ten years, and I was pleased to find that it still makes me laugh, and think, and shudder. It’s simply one of my favorite books and picking it up again was a perfect way to start a summer vacation.

Cat’s Cradle is narrated by John, who prefers that you call him “Jonah.” Jonah is a freelance writer piecing together, in abortive fits and starts, a book about the creation of the atom bomb and what its creators did on August 6, 1945 when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He focuses his research on the eccentric, “pure-research” scientist, Felix Hoenikker, credited as “the father” of the bomb (not in real life, but in the book). Hoenikker, unencumbered by any ethical considerations, playfully creates trinkets and weapons in a “pure research” lab that then patents and sells the weapons to the US military. Jonah learns that before his death, Hoenikker may have worked on a weapon far more potent than a hydrogen bomb. Felix is survived by three oddball children.

Far away from the New York research facility, the Republic of the Island of San Lorenzo lies in the balmy Caribbean. The island has been much colonized and oppressed under successive regimes of the Spanish, the Catholic Church, Big American Sugar, and petty dictators. Everyone on San Lorenzo follows a fake religion, called Bokonism, which admits that it is completely made-up. The message of Bokonism, the fate of Jonah, and indeed the world, lie unexpectedly on this unassuming island. Read the book, and you’ll make it to that island, after a few laughs and seeming-detours through Cold War America.

Published in 1963, Cat’s Cradle is a strong indictment of the suicidal madness of Cold War geopolitics and the only-slightly-less insane foreign policy of the US and its Third World puppet-states during the long standoff with the Soviet Union. It is also a powerful meditation on social and environmental interconnectedness and complexity. Here too is a critique of “Science” (capital S) as rationalism capable of completely describing (capital T) Truth.

This books make you laugh your way to the end of the world.

Rating: “See the cat? See the cradle?” Yes. I give this book an (Ice) 9 out of 10. You’ll get that shameful pun after you read it.

Availability: SMCM Library, USMAI
Review Submitted by:  Shane D. Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended

Reading a book that was published over a decade ago, but that takes place nearly 3 decades ago, can really stretch one’s patience. Pay phones? Records searches? I can’t imagine what Kinsey Millhone would do in the world of cell phones and the Internet. But the author has said she wants to move through time in a linear fashion, so will never catch up with real time, and I respect that. So, pretend that you’re just reading a cold case murder mystery and appreciate how painful information gathering was pre-Internet. All of the alphabet books make for good reading; just be aware that technology will be frozen in the dim past (but motives and evil remain current…)

Availability:  COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Recommended

I’ve read a number or Robin Cook’s books over the years. This one is the second one, that I’ve read, with the same set of characters revolving around the NYPD and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. It’s a relatively easy read with several storylines intertwined until the culmination of the murder investigation. Having just returned from northern NJ, very near some of the locations in the book, I could relate better being able to envision scenery. A nice summer read!

Availability:  COSMOS and USMAI
Review Submitted by: James Tyler Bell
Rating:  Recommended

If you are a fan of foodie mysteries, this is right up your (g)alley! Goldie Schultz is a caterer that seems to frequently stumble upon murders. Fun and easy read and includes recipes!

Availability:  COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Michelle Vandergrift
Rating: Recommended

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have nothing on this modern retelling of the story of Jesus Christ written by his childhood friend Levi, who is called Biff. In this humorous account, Biff primarily fills in the gaps left by the other evangelists from Jesus birth to the start of his ministry. The novel is told in parallel narratives between Biff’s experience writing the gospel in the 21st century and Biff’s experience being Jesus’s constant companion from his childhood up to his crucifixion.

The novel starts out slow, talking about Jesus and Biff’s childhood in Nazareth, showing the contrasts between Jewish culture and Roman culture. The novel picks up when Jesus and Biff reach adolescence; none of the authors of the gospels cover this part of Jesus’s life in detail, so the author had a lot of liberty with this portion of the narrative, and what he produced was extremely captivating and interesting. During this part of the novel, Jesus and Biff journey to find the three wise men who came to Jesus’s birth, and on their journey learn important lessons from older faiths and philosophies — including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism — that Jesus later incorporates into his own teachings. After Jesus and Biff return home, the novel chronicles Jesus’s ministry, highlighting many familiar biblical characters including John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and the twelve apostles, and culminating in Jesus’s trial and crucifixion.

This novel was brilliantly imaginative and clever, especially the part dedicated to Jesus and Biff’s quest to find the three wise men. Biff’s voice as a narrator was sometimes crude but always hilarious, sarcastic, and unique. Seeing Jesus’s life from his best friend’s point of view made it simple to see Jesus’s humanity in his younger years and how he grew into his role as Son of God. Though it is unnecessary to be a well-learned Christian to enjoy Lamb, I found it was easier to understand much of the humor and foreshadowing having some knowledge of Christian teachings. I would recommend this novel to anyone who can laugh about their religion a bit or anyone who enjoys an offbeat twist on a well-known story.

Availability: USMAI and COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Brianna Glase
Rating: Highly Recommended