The Sunday Salon: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers bu Loung Ung

I haven't posted a book review on here in ages - I seem to be distracted lately when reading or I'm too busy to actually get to a book. This is the first nook I have finished in a while, but I have a poetry collection and another non-ficion half read so they should be coming up for review shortly.

I picked this book about Cambodia off of the shelves as I'm planning on travelling there next summer (5 weeks to explore Cambodia, Laos and south Vietnam - I've done the north already and loved it) and also my ex is there at the moment and he has been raving about it in his emails.
First The Killed My Father is a memoir, Loung Ung was just 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Penh causing thousands to escape from the city in search of safety. Coming from a rich family bacame both a danger but also a blessing as this family went on the run. Escaping first to families homes and then to distant villages they had to be careful at every moment to hide the father's past work with the old government. The Khmer Rouge a Communist Extremist group forced families to live in camps on meager rations, for children to work in rice fields and vegetable patches to help feed the armies. Her brother is forced to face bullying by the generals children as a means of keeping the family alive with a few extra scraps of food each night. As Loung gets older she witness the death of her sister and the disappearance of her father. She then is sent to a Children's Camp where the kids are taught how to attack the 'enemy' with the tools they use in their jobs.
The stories of what the families went through and the seperation of the families is harrowing, the political side of things is very sketchy so I'll be searching out a few non-fiction texts to find out more about the place before I go - the ex has already recommended one, which I'll borrow when he arrives back in the UK.

Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
A-Z (Author)
In Their Shoes

Two Non-Fiction Books

I seem to be soaking up my Non-Fiction at the momnet, and I even read one which wasn't a memoir!

Normal by Amy Bloom
Eva of The Striped Armchair wrote a fantastic review of this a few weeks back, if it hadn't been for her review I wouldn't ever have thought to read a book like this.
Normal is a collection of essays written by Amy Bloom, I couldn't believe how readable they were, and how interesting.
The first chapter focuses on transexuals, particularly male to female transexuals. It discusses the details and forms of surgery and hormonal treatment available, and boy does it sound painful. Alongside this Amy Bloom speaks to many people who are either in the process of or have had some form of surgery to change their appearance to a person of the opposite gender. As well as the stories of these men Bloom is open with us about the way she is looking at people trying to figure out if they had had a sex change or not.
The second section is about crossdressing men and their wives. She describes the men's need to dress as woman as a compulsion, something they absolutely have to do and have no control of. As she talks to the men they all come across as really conservative, they have socially upstanding jobs like Ministers and Managers, they have families and strong moral values. Many of the wives, presented in the book, don't find out abaout their husbands until way down the line and when they do they feel they have to stay and be supportive.
The third chapter about Hermaphrodites was fair more descriptive of the surgery and didn't have the same level of personal stories in it, as a result I wasn't as interested in this chapter. I had studied hermaphrodites as part of my sociology course in uni so I knew about some of the stuff which was discussed.
Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
Non-Fiction 5
999 Non-Fiction




Night by Elie Wiesel

I had this on audiobook to listen to, it is one of the 1001 books to read before you die so when I saw the audiobook was part of a bookring I snapped it up.
Night is a memoir about Elie Wiessel experienced in the concentration camps.
As a young boy he is an extremely devout Jew, he visits the synagoge every day and begs a neighbour to educate him about his religion as his father refuses to.
As the war looms the town are warned by a local man of the persecution of the Jewish, but they refuse to listen to him. Snatched away during the night they soon find that his unbelieveable story was all true. 15 year old Elie is seperated from his mother and sister and goes with his father into the male side of the camp. For a long time they are not called to work or moved to other camps because they claim they are unskilled labourers. When they finally get chosen to move to another camp they know that their time is running out.
Elie's father is hospitalised in the final days of the war, begging for hos sons help in his final moments, Elie finds he is unable o help his father, he has to help himself instead.
The book is very short and very powerful, however as I'd read Primo Levi's If This is a Man many years ago I wasn't as shocked by the memoir as I may have been, the story is very similar to that of Levi, and tells of less shocking details in the camps.
Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
Non-Fiction 5
In Their Shoes
999 (Non Fiction)

My Thoughts: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

This book was doing the blogsphere rounds last year when I signed up to recieve it as part of a bookcrossing bookring, the copy visited many people in many coutries before it arrived here with me, I'll be sending it off to the next person this weekend so it can carry on its travels.

Greg Mortenson was a mountainer who whilst attempting to climb K2 become horribly lost and stranded, he was rescued by his untrained Pakistani carrier and led safely back down the mountain. He stumbled across an tiny village in Baltisan, a place where white men never visited as it was too far off the beaten track. Whilst there Greg was nursed back to health and made to feel welcome by all. He was shocked into admiration when he saw the local boys and girls trying to educate themselves on a patch of land - they had access to a teacher just once a week, the rest of the time they taught each other. Greg, touched by this promised to build the village a school.
Back in America Greg sent out letters asking for the $12,000 he needed to build a school, no replies came back, so he set about working to save the money himself. Luckily a doner was found and Greg ploughed himself into buidling this school, he faced many problems with stolen goods, travel issues, the weather and numerous others.
Greg soon realised that this village was not the only one to need help, his doner created a charity for his as a way that Greg could create schools across the region. Greg's main focus was on educating girls as they had a greater impact on the wealth and wellbeing of a village. He also set up community working areas for women so they could create goods to trade using the skills of their communities.
And his story goes on. It was particularly moving reading about the rebuilding of schools in Afgahnistan after hearing the news of the bombings in Kabul this last few days.

This was an extremely moving book, and very open minded. The issues in Pakistan where highlighted truthfully - the warring between people to gain American help, but also the desperate need to educate these children and the rights of every child to gain an education. I would love to give a copy of this to the disengaged bright kids at school to show them what they are freely given and take for granted, and the worth that others put to it.
If ou haven't read it you should. I'll certainly be getting my own copy and lending it out, and copying sections for use in school.

Challenges:
Non-fiction 5
World Citizen Challenge
Olympic Challenge
In their shoes.

My Thought: Mendel's Daughter by Martin Lemelman

Well I haven't posted in a while, I'm in the middle of reading 3 books and listening to 2 audiobooks and not getting anywhere, this is mainly due to revision. I sat my exam yesterday (blah!) so now I can try and catch up with everything I need to read - I have a stack of library books and bookcrossing bookrings that have to be read asap, plus lots of challenges that need tackling.
Today I thought I'd tick a library book off the list, so I started with this Graphic Novel Memoir, which is a subgenre I've discovered in the last year and really enjoyed.

Mendel's Daughter is written and illustrated by Martin Lemelman. When his mother was nearing the end of her life he asked her to talk about her experiences of life as a Jewish person during the war, he recorded her thoughts. He created this graphic novel using those thoughts, his illustrations and family photographs.
The mother's tale is intimate and allows the reader to get a glimse at life at this time. The illustrations are lovingly produced and the use of family photographs is a touching addition. I tried to find some images from the book to share but no luck, you'll just have to go borrow a copy from the library ;)
Challenges:
A-Z (Title)
In Their Shoes 4/4
Orbis Terrarum (Poland) 10/12
999 (Non-Fiction) 33/81
Non-Fiction Five 1/5
Graphic Novel Challenge 7/12

My Thoughts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave

I've been listening to this audiobook on my iPod for the last month, this is my first full length audiobook, I'm finally catching up with technology! I'll have a Kindle in about 20years time.

The title of Narrative ...... speaks for itself. The book starts from Frederick's young life when he explains how slave owners separated children from their mothers in order to stop bonding among slaves. As he grows older and is placed in different slave owners homes, he chances to have a mistress who had never owned a slave before. She teaches him the rudiments of reading, before being discovered and being informed that slaves should be left illiterate. However her lessons had stuck and Fredrick teaches himself gradually how to become a more accomplished reader and then how to write.
As he moves to different slave ownerd he is mistreated and whipped untill one day he holds his own, this event then changes the whole off his life and his views on his oppressors until he finally finds a way to escape and live the life of a free man in New York.

Challenges:
999 (Non-fiction)
A-Z (Title)
The Well Seasoned Reader
In Their Shoes

Two so-so books that others have rated highly...

Ever pick up a book that others have said is 'great' a 'must-read' and just gone 'err?' I read two books like that so far this week.
The first is the graphic novel Pyongyang by Guy Delise. The French animator is placed in North Korea for a 2 month stint in which he has to check editions of cartoons for French TV. The graphic novel is sold as 'a journey through North Korea' but is actually a single-minded mans view of a small part of North Korea. Now, I'm not saying that North Korea is amazing or politically correct, in fact I know so little about the place that I couldn't make an educated comment on the country, but I can say that Delise is negative about the place from the opening to the end of the book. He never says a single positive thing about the country or the people that he meets, instead he mocks their views, behaviour and culture. Surely if you visit a country you must find something nice to say. Anyone else read this? Have a different opinion?

Challenges:
Graphic Novel Challenge 3/12
A-Z (Title)
In Their Shoes 2/4
Lost in Translation 2/6
The Well Seasoned Reader
My Year of Reading Dangerously 1/12 (Banned

The second disappointing book is sold as 'an American Classic'. The Wonderful O is an extremely short book, which is considered to be one of the 1001 books to read before you die. The simple story is about a pirate who hates the letter O, he travels to a small island where he decides to ban the letter O and all things with that letter in its name. I liked the concept of this but never understood why the people so willingly let this stranger change their world, smash up and ruin their belongings. I liked the rhyming sentences and the amazing amount of things he could ban, and also he ludicrous ways of getting around things ie, you don't have to destroy Cows if they are part of a herd, but it was never gripping and I was happy when it was over.
Challenges
A-Z (Title)
1001 BTRBYD
999 (1001)
Decades Challenge (1950s)
Genre Challenge (Adventure)