The World is Not Enough
Whew! I just got back from a week in 12th century France, courtesy of my friend Zoe Olderbourg. (slaps a flea biting her arm) I bought this book, The World is Not Enough, a while back, and have tried to read it several times, but couldn’t get into it. This time, man, I got into it and couldn’t put it down!
We enter at the wedding of Alis to Ansiau, she (slapping the flea on my neck) the 14 year old daughter of Joceran of Puiseaux, Ansiau the son of Ansiau the Elder, castellan of Linnieres, who knows he is dying and wants to see his line continue before he goes.
“The two of them, standing there, were moved, as two children must be who have just been washed, dressed, lectured and left at teh altar by their parents in front of all the guests, their brothers, their sisters, their uncles, their playmates. They were so little alike. He was a boy and she a girl.”
Alis and Ansiau marry and fall quickly in love. (checking the bedding for fleas) They hunt, they go to tournements, Ansiau goes off on Crusade to the Holy Land – twice. Alis runs the daily life of the castle, has twenty pregnancies, 12 children who live. Ansiau has a mid-life crisis. In their late 50’s, we leave them, scratching one another’s flea bites and looking off into the sunset.
Reading this book, you are totally immersed in the daily life of the nobility. The nobility, as it turns out, are the original credit-crazy spenders – they borrowed against their inheiritance, they borrowed against their lands, they borrowed against their doweries. They were constantly short funds, and constantly mortgaging their future for a few baubles today.
The “castle” had a great hall downstairs, where most of the men slept and where cows and horses and chickens and sheep were brought if it got too cold in the stables in the winter, and up a laddar, one great room where there was one big bed for the king and queen and whoever else they invited to sleep there, and a couple other beds, mostly shared by four or five people. This was where ladies slept, and hung out, and embroidered, and (scratching at a fleabite on the ankle) exchanged gossip.
It was a fascinating visit into a world with no running water, no heat, no air conditioning, where babies died at birth as often as not. It was a world where people caught smallpox, and the lucky ones, those who survived, lived the rest of their lives with pock marks like craters on their faces. It was a world where the nobility didn’t read, and there were no books except in the monasteries. Only priests were authorized to read and explain scripture. It was a world where wolves and bear still roamed the forests of France.
The book is set near Troyes and Langres, in the Champagne area of France. Zoe Oldenburg captures the poverty and brutality suffered by the majority of people, rich and poor alike, without sacrificing the human joys and kindnesses which brightened the world, and made life worth living. The book is so realistic and richly detailed that you will be looking for flea bites when you finish!
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and more
If you enjoyed the trip through Botswana and would like to read more about Botswana, if you think you might go there someday, or if you think you might never go there – you need to read a wonderful series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.
The first book is The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. You meet the main character, and heroine, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the founder and owner of the only women’s detective agency in Botswana, and her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi (who can’t resist a handsome pair of shoes), and the love of her Mma Ramotswe’s life, Mr. J. L. B. Matekone. Mma Ramotswe describes herself as “a woman of traditional build” and drives a very old, small white truck. She has a way of looking at things differently – and she solves her mysteries in ways you or I wouldn’t think of.
The books are short, and deceptively simple. They are “feel good” books, giving you smiles and warming your heart as you read. At the same time, you find yourself thinking back to these books, some of the issues, some of the characters, some of the plots – long after you have finished the book. That’s a sign of a good read!
As different as the thinking and culture is, the books are so full of grace and good humor and tolerance and forgiveness that when the book finishes, you can hardly wait to start the next one. You feel like Precious is your sister, a very smart sister, not without her flaws, but a woman to be respected, a woman of good character and who can make tough decisions.
She also makes mistakes, and has to live with the consequences. You will find the books addictive. The entire series is:
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Blue Shoes and Happiness
Jeffrey Deaver’s mysteries, on the other hand, are intricate and woven through with arcane information, but you always learn something. He has a series about a quadriplegic, Lincoln Rymes, a criminologist, who solves cases in a very Sherlock Holmes kind of way, by thinking about the evidence and the patterns that it presents. He has a girlfriend, Amelia, who is a policewoman, and works with him on many of the cases. The books that have these two characters are:
The Bone Collector
The Coffin Dancer
The Empty Chair
The Stone Monkey
The Vanished Man
The Twelfth Card
Last – and least, for The Devil Wears Prada crowd is Linda Fairstein, who almost always has a book on the New York Times best seller list. Her heroine is Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor (District Attorney) Alexandra Cooper, whose dad made a fortune on an artificial heart device, allowing her to work in the public service sector and still wear fabulous clothes, have weekly manicures and hair stylings at the best salons and eat at the coolest restaurants in town, and she tells you all about them.
They make great airplane reading for the trendy. The plots are formulaic – an astounding, mysterious crime is committed, Alexandra gets involved, along with her detective side-kicks, the criminal involved somehow focuses on Alexandra and she has to spend the night at her friends’ houses. You don’t read these mysteries for the astounding plots, you read them because they are funny and superficial and a quick read that doesn’t require much thinking.
Happy reading!
Chicken Nuggets and Big Macs
Brava, Chicken Nuggets, you have taken what was apparently meant to be an insult, and turned it into a badge of honor. And well you should.
Kuwaiti has been a major trading crossroad for centuries. It would follow that there has been a lot of mixing, as traders pass through, people travel to foreign lands, historically, as well as now. As genetic testing becomes more acceptable, we are all bound to discover that we are much more mixed, and much more alike, than we ever knew. And, there are bound to be surprises, as men and women don’t always fertilize within acceptable societal boundaries.
When you walk around, you see Kuwaitis with the faces of India, Iran, Iraq, Africa, even possibly faces from the earliest adventures of Alexander the Greek. This is a good thing, the intermingling of cultures and bloodlines build strength, resilience and flexibility.
There is a wonderful book you will enjoy reading –
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Third Culture Kids
by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken. While the focus is on young people raised outside their own culture – diplomat kids, oil kids, missionary kids, international business kids – the findings apply to all those who learn to function in more than one culture. You learn that feeling alien and weird is NORMAL for TCK’s during adolescence, and well into their 20’s and even their 30’s.
At some point, however, you realize that every culture you understand, every additional language you master, every new experience brings a whole new tool chest to your life, new perspectives and additional ways of thinking through life problems.
You, dear ones, are the hope of tomorrow. You are international citizens, having a larger world view because of your mixed upbringing. You have MORE THAN double the advantages (culture 1 + culture 2) you have the additional advantage of the (C1xC2) blend. (Hearing strains of “We are Nuggets; hear us roar in numbers too big to ignore . . !”)
. . . . So. . . if you are (golden, delicious, juicy) little chicken nuggets, what are the men of mixed Kuwaiti and western heritage – Big Macs?? Burger Kings?? (cracking myself up)
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