Sarah Norman

Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars

Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell

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I read this book in part I admit because I have always thought it had a cool title. And I guess George Orwell has a track record, 1984, ANIMAL FARM, etc.

What I really admired about this book was it's clarity. It was just in such good taste, so clearl...more I read this book in part I admit because I have always thought it had a cool title. And I guess George Orwell has a track record, 1984, ANIMAL FARM, etc.

What I really admired about this book was it's clarity. It was just in such good taste, so clearly and unpretentiously written. I have been reading a lot of development research at the moment (votes: should I blog about this? I know this blog is supposed to be about everything I read in 2010, but are you really tough enough for posts on such gems as IMPLEMENTING THE SADC PROTOCOL AGAINST CORRUPTION: RECOMMENDATIONS AND DRAFT RULES OF PROCEDURE? Suspect not) and this research is just so jargon laden, and overwritten as shit. I suspect it's because they've nothing real to say and need to cover that up.

The bio is hilarious, wait, let me quote: “He served in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel BURMESE DAYS. Several years of poverty followed.” I don't know if they mean it to be funny, but it is. Ah, the arts and how they don't pay anything. So this book follows those years of poverty in Paris and London, where Orwell is homeless and near homeless. This must have been an experience and a half for an old Etonian, but we don't learn much about him – it's not autobiographical in that sense – it's more about the people and places he ecountered, and the difficulties of living on little money and food.

At one point, when he hasn't eaten in three days, he gets a job as a plongeur, which is I guess some kind of dishwasher at fancy Parisien hotels. This is a dreadful job, apparently, with 17 hour days being quite routine. Unsurprisingly, he is pretty big on the subject of how fancy hotels are useless, and has a lot to say on what's wrong with a world in which people can be enslaved for the useless purpose of fanciness.

He ends with what he's learnt: “I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning”

It's an interesting picture of poverty in any period, and an interesting picture of its time in particular – for example, men with shell shock are a routine problem, as they keep people awake in the paupers' dorms with their screaming. It's also of its time in being rather anti-semitic, misogynist, and homophobic. But there you go, you can't have everything.

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Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
by Paul Collier

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Subtitled: Why the Poorest Counties are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Basically, this guy thinks that most peoples' lives in the developing world are getting better (eg Brazil etc). However, there are about a billion people in the poorest coun...more Subtitled: Why the Poorest Counties are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Basically, this guy thinks that most peoples' lives in the developing world are getting better (eg Brazil etc). However, there are about a billion people in the poorest countries whose lives are not improving at all and show no signs of improving. He thinks aid etc should be focused almost entirely on this relatively small group of countries, and its a matter of habit/culture that development assistance is not focused that way.

He argues that these countries are stuck in poverty because of one of more of these traps: conflict, massive natural resources, being landlocked with bad neighbours, and bad governance. He suggests various measures which include assisting elites in these countries to turn things around (by for example producing model charters that can be easily adapted), military intervention (eg Sierra Leone, which was a huge success for British military intervention – saved many lives – and never gets talked about), and removing trade barriers.

He has some amusing things to say about the current state of aid work, pointing out that one reason for the focus outside the bottom billion is that everyone would rather be posted to Rio than Bangui. He spends quite a lot of time bashing on Bangui (extra points if you know where that's the capital of?). Apparently the World Bank doesn't have a single person stationed there, though it's one of the poorest countries in Africa (little clue there for you).

His arguments seem to have plenty of merit, but it's hard to tell, as I know very little about eg. international trade law, and he doesnt really present the other side of the question at all. Which makes one a little dubious. One feels even more dubious when he declares that the economics department of one university is either niave or 'has been infiltrated by Marxists.' What the hell does that mean? 'Infiltrate' is quite sort of emotionally laden and Cold War, but it's better than Marxist! Who even uses that word any more? Why doesn't he just say . . . has a generally leftist view' or something.

He tells some sad stories. In 2004, a study was done to see how money was spent in rural clinics in Chad. What the study found was, don't worry about how it's spent, less than 1% of it even gets to the clinics in Chad – the rest is pilfered by various officials as it leaves central government. Nice.

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Sarah Norman rated a book 5 of 5 stars

Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage: Barchester Chronicles, Volume 1 (BBC) (BBC Radio Presents)
by Anthony Trollope

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Oh yes we are back on the Trollope. Book 4 or something or the Barchester series. I woke up at 2.30am the other day, and it was not a good night, so I decided to read and it kept me going till 4.30.

This parson agrees to provide security for an appare...more

Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars

Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris

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Now as I've told you before, I almost never buy books. Partly because I'm too cheap, and partly because I only really like owning books I really like. But I'm off to Zimbabwe for three months, where good books are hard to come by, so I gave in and sp...more

Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars

The Savage Garden
by Mark Mills

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Well, this is one of those books that makes me feel like I better become an author. Seriously, can any old crap become a bestseller? If so, let me start writing. That's a bit mean, but DUDE. It was a bit rubbish.

It tells the story of a young man who...more

Sarah Norman rated a book 5 of 5 stars

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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This is a famous book that one keeps meaning to read, so one has decided to read it. I bought it on Amazon, where the customer reviews are the sort of mouth-frothingly eager ones that make one feel all the more required to read it. Check it out. Char...more This is a famous book that one keeps meaning to read, so one has decided to read it. I bought it on Amazon, where the customer reviews are the sort of mouth-frothingly eager ones that make one feel all the more required to read it. Check it out. Charmingly, it comes to me in Zimbabwe as a discarded book from a library in small town Arkansas, complete with index card sleeve.

It's not really the sort of book that one can call 'good,' because that seems sort of disrespectful. Quality terms don't really apply to this sort of book.

Basically, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a hard labour camp under Stalin. He actually got off lightly, as typical setences were ten to twenty five years. He was jailed for being a literary person, but you needn't think you actually needed to be guilty to go to the Gulag. Essentially, areas had quotas, both for jailings and executions, so anyone and everyone could be arrested quite randomly, and thousands and thousands of people were. They really wanted 'confessions' and lists of 'co-conspirators' (ie, your acquaintances, to make arrests less effort). So there was a lot of torture, stomach-churningly described. Incredibly, to me, lots of individuals refused to sign anything, or give up any names, and so as Sozhenitsyn puts it about one case, 'died a victor in his cell.'

It actually boggles the mind. You can't believe it really happened. They also sent whole groups - like millions of people - to exile in Siberia, where many died. Just twelve years after the Russian Revolution had divided up the land fairly, some people were already doing slightly better than their neighbours, presumably through hard work as they had no material advantages. These 'kulaks' were viewed as class enemies and sent into exile - millions of them - which immediately caused a three year famine, in which millions more died.

Being in Zim at the moment, I'm especially struck by two things: one, how angry the author is, and two, how madly brave he is. He is naming names and ripping shit up. Like, he tells us who informed on who simply to get his girlfriend, and then tells us where he currently lives in comfort in Moscow. Madly brave.

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Sarah Norman rated a book 1 of 5 stars

The Lost Dog
by Michelle de Kretser

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So onto THE LOST DOG by Michelle de Krester. This tells the story of a man who loses his dog. He is in the middle of some kind of half hearted love affair, and we cut back and forth between the love affair and the hunt for the dog. This is one litera...more

Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars

The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa
by Ama Ata Aidoo

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These are a pair of charming little plays written by a Ghanaian woman in the 1960s. She was born into a royal (and I'm assuming wealthy) Ghanian family in 1942, and must have had some forward thinking parents, because she got a bit of formal educatio...more These are a pair of charming little plays written by a Ghanaian woman in the 1960s. She was born into a royal (and I'm assuming wealthy) Ghanian family in 1942, and must have had some forward thinking parents, because she got a bit of formal education. She was sent to a convent school, and her headmistress there gave her her first typewriter. It's interesting to see what she has to say, because there are very few people who grew up in a rural, traditional African household and were given a chance to write about it before colonialism wiped that lifestyle out.

There was a very small window between those cultures meeting the West, and being able to dialogue with the West as 'themsleves' - as it were - and the West then wiping them out. Well that sounds a bit dramatic, but you know what I mean. It's like LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD by Flora Thompson. In one of the weirder comparisons of this blog. There's lots of writing about rural English people of the 19th century, but very little of it is by rural English people of the 19th century. The number of people who actually came from those communities and had the time, interest and access to write is tiny. By the time a large number had been sent to school, and learned to think about writing as a job (as opposed to digging potatoes or whatever) the rural community was gone, as they'd all been sent to school and were planning on being writers.

DILEMMA OF A GHOST is about a man whose Ghanaian family has scraped and saved to send him to University in the US. He returns with an African American wife, and neither wife nor family are happy. ANOWA tells the story - I think traditional - of a woman who rebelled against her family, and chose her own husband; and then, when her husband to everyone's surprise became successful, rebelled against him too. Both plays have strong central female characters, which is interesting, and unusual, and probably tells us a good deal about Aidoo. Both also have a good line in comedy, with the gossipy older ladies being particularly successful. Both set up strong and interesting oppositions. In DILEMMA, who will win our young man's soul? In ANOWA,what is wrong with Anowa? Both plays could be really great! But - you knew there was a but, huh? - both seem to go horribly wrong about three quarters in.

The big reveal in DILEMMA, which shocks and apparently (?) reconciles the family to the newcomer is that she is not barren, but simply waiting to choose when she will have children. And the big reveal in ANOWA is that her husband has become impotent. They both kills themselves upon hearing this news. I can only say: ?

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Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars

The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai

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This was a fantastic book. Hilariously, I've been studiously avoiding it up till now, when my boyfriend got it out the Library for me randomly. I avoided it because a) I see she has a mother who is a successful author (3 times nominated for the Booke...more

Sarah Norman rated a book 3 of 5 stars

Starlings Laughing A Memoir Of Africa
by June Vendall Clark

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I've had this in my bookcase for a while; it belonged to a friend of my father's, who was forced to leave Zimbabwe during the Gukurahundi (if you don't know what this is you really ought to Google it), lived in Darfur for a while, setting up schools...more I've had this in my bookcase for a while; it belonged to a friend of my father's, who was forced to leave Zimbabwe during the Gukurahundi (if you don't know what this is you really ought to Google it), lived in Darfur for a while, setting up schools (most of which were burnt down in the recent events there - definitely Google that if you don't know what that's about) and then had to move to London as he badly needed the NHS, due to an incident with a stomach virus and some vets. He spent the rest of his life in a tiny flat, a fine example of living in a way above and beyond your circumstances: books, newspapers, music, his flat was as big as the world mentally, for sure.

ANYWAY. I still didn't really want to read this soppy "Memoir of Africa," (that's it's very dodgy subtitle). I just had it because it had his name in it in his rather charming old school hand. Anyway, I was too hungry to lug my ass to the Library, so I needed someething to read and had a look through the bookcase. I thought it would probably be kind of racist, and full of weird issues about being 'British' in this exotic land, even though she's lived in Africa since she was four, so how it's exotic I'm not clear. So I thought that was how it would be and I wouldn't like it, but what do you know, that is how it is and I kind of like it!

Actually, it's not very racist; it's problematic by our standards, but it's very clear from her description of her life that she was far more liberal than anyone she knew. She was in Bulawayo from the age of four, and we learn all about her WWI veteran father, and her parents' horribly bad marriage, and her weird childhood; she wasn't allowed to play with white children in case she lost her upper class accent. She got pregnant at 16 by the first man she kissed. This being the 1940s, she had to marry him and went on to have 25 years of misery. They founded a farm in Matopos, and have moved to camp in the middle of the Okavango Delta - that's where I am now.

The book is firstly interesting, and quite charming, for her clear love of the African landscape, and, in a strange and mixed up way, her love of African people. It's full of vervet monkeys getting into the chicken coop and throwing eggs at each other and at the chickens, of chats that fly into her bedroom in the morning and wait to have some of her toast, of sunset over the granite hills and so on. She spoke fluent Ndebele, and knew a great deal of the culture and wife of life of these people - she even knew a man who'd fought in Lobengula's impi (Google also).

It's also interesting as a view into her community and the ideals of her time. She's totally not bothered to tell us she never got on with her mother: no remorse, no bitterness, and even better, no psychologising. Very not modern. I love it. Apparently once her mother was moaning about something, and our author told her not to, and the mother replied, with pride "But I've always been a grouser. I've always been a moaner." This is too much for our author.

It's more or less a biography, but fabulously also she spends little time on her children. Love it. You certainly get the impression that the farm and the landscape were of far more interest to her than her children, and, incredibly interstingly, she feels no societal pressure to pretend it isn't so. She gets pregnant for the third time, and is with good reason too scared to get a backstreet abortion, so goes through with it, and refers to it quite frankly as a little wretch.

Also, there's lot of sex and naked dinner parties, which goes very oddly with the fact that she felt she couldn't get a divorce.

After the acrimoious divorce, she keeps bleating about wanting to go back home to England. Bizarre, as this was a place that by my calculations she'd maybe spent 6 months in her whole life in. I guess as all the cultural life came from there, she felt that - despite it having nothing to do with her actual real life - that was home. Interesting that culture is actually a stronger predictor of 'home' than mere circumstance. ANYWAY. I just want to say, she moved to Norwich. This is a woman who used to chew up and spit up ground up doves for her orphan civet cat. Whole doves. With their feathers on. Yup. Her pet lion once mauled her son and she cheerily pumped him with the vet's antibiotics. NORWICH.

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Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I read this book in part I admit because I have always thought it had a cool title. And I guess George Orwell has a track record, 1984, ANIMAL FARM, etc. What I really admired about this book was it's clarity. It was just in such good taste, so clearl...more
Feb 16, 2011 05:09am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Subtitled: Why the Poorest Counties are Failing and What Can Be Done About It Basically, this guy thinks that most peoples' lives in the developing world are getting better (eg Brazil etc). However, there are about a billion people in the poorest coun...more
Feb 16, 2011 05:08am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 5 of 5 stars Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage: Barchester Chronicles, Volume 1 (BBC) (BBC Radio Presents) by Anthony Trollope	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oh yes we are back on the Trollope. Book 4 or something or the Barchester series. I woke up at 2.30am the other day, and it was not a good night, so I decided to read and it kept me going till 4.30. This parson agrees to provide security for an appare...more
Feb 16, 2011 05:07am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Now as I've told you before, I almost never buy books. Partly because I'm too cheap, and partly because I only really like owning books I really like. But I'm off to Zimbabwe for three months, where good books are hard to come by, so I gave in and sp...more
Feb 16, 2011 05:02am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars The Savage Garden by Mark Mills	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Well, this is one of those books that makes me feel like I better become an author. Seriously, can any old crap become a bestseller? If so, let me start writing. That's a bit mean, but DUDE. It was a bit rubbish. It tells the story of a young man who...more
Feb 16, 2011 05:01am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 5 of 5 stars The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a famous book that one keeps meaning to read, so one has decided to read it. I bought it on Amazon, where the customer reviews are the sort of mouth-frothingly eager ones that make one feel all the more required to read it. Check it out. Char...more
Feb 16, 2011 04:59am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 1 of 5 stars The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
So onto THE LOST DOG by Michelle de Krester. This tells the story of a man who loses his dog. He is in the middle of some kind of half hearted love affair, and we cut back and forth between the love affair and the hunt for the dog. This is one litera...more
Feb 15, 2011 07:18am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 2 of 5 stars The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa by Ama Ata Aidoo	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
These are a pair of charming little plays written by a Ghanaian woman in the 1960s. She was born into a royal (and I'm assuming wealthy) Ghanian family in 1942, and must have had some forward thinking parents, because she got a bit of formal educatio...more
Feb 15, 2011 07:17am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 4 of 5 stars The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This was a fantastic book. Hilariously, I've been studiously avoiding it up till now, when my boyfriend got it out the Library for me randomly. I avoided it because a) I see she has a mother who is a successful author (3 times nominated for the Booke...more
Feb 15, 2011 07:15am · see review
Sarah Norman rated a book 3 of 5 stars Starlings Laughing A Memoir Of Africa by June Vendall Clark	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I've had this in my bookcase for a while; it belonged to a friend of my father's, who was forced to leave Zimbabwe during the Gukurahundi (if you don't know what this is you really ought to Google it), lived in Darfur for a while, setting up schools...more
Feb 15, 2011 07:13am · see review

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