TABOO by Jorgen Ruud is an excellent book about Malagache culture. It is the result of twenty years spent living in the country amongst various tribes. I am surprised by the Christian influence I see here, because it was avoided in the book.
The Prodigal Son is a story about a professor who responded to the call of a painting by helping mentally disabled people. It pronounces each of us to reflect both sons and the father. It is important to me because the calling of the painting reminds me of my path to Madagascar.
Maverick in Madagascar is about a man who walks down the northern half of the west coast of the country in search of information about Vazimba. According to legend, they are pygmies. This book details some typical interactions for a vazaha; they are valuable to me because the author is an experienced traveler.
A Place on Earth, by Wendyl Berry is a book about a fictional town in Kentucky at the end of the second world war. Young people die, old people grow. One point made at the end of the book is that everyone goes through enough to kill them.
Blindness, by Jose Saramago, is a book depicting an epidemic in which people are only able to see white. The ending is not very climactic: I am unsure, after finishing the book, why the blindness struck.
Meanings in Madagascar, by Oyvind Daal, is an adaptation of a doctoral thesis on the language and culture of the Merina people around Tana. The author spent almost two decades in Madagascar. He uses an analytical tool that his father created to study the difference between frames of reference. The presentation is very good. There are many proverbs in this book. One is, "When walking, be like a chameleon: keep one eye on what you face and the other on what you passed."
Oranges are not the Only Fruit, by Jeannette Winterton, is about a girl adopted by an evangelical who wants the girl to become a missionary. The girl is a lesbian. Exorcisms are attempted but she is strong. Her story is woven with short fairy tales. My favorite line of the book says that changing things that are not understood is the true nature of evil.
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a romance novel set in High bury, England. There was no allusion to a war and they use horse drawn carriages. Emma changes from wanting never to marry to appease her widower father to wanting to marry a close family friend dear to both her and her father. She does this by experimenting with the love life of Miss Smith, who is of lower society than she. When Emma finally convinced Harriet she can look to higher society for marriage than that into which she was born, Smith chose the family friend of the Woodhouse family of Emma. After this, Emma realized she loves that man, her Mentor, Mr. Knightly.
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, is a book about a young boy who commits crimes and listens to classical music. He is betrayed by his gang and sent to jail. After resuming his mischief in jail hen is selected for a program that associates negative feelings with violence. He is let out of jail into a world where police beat people. An author whose wife his gang killed takes care of him until he tries to use him as a political pawn to subvert the corrupt government. He tries to commit suicide when he finds that even classical music give him bad sensations. While hospitalized, a governmental figure plays the same game with him as the author. The trauma rids him of the association between sickness and both crime and classical music. He resumes his life of crime as a young adult until it gets boring for him.
CONVERSATIONS WITH Myself, is a book about Nelson Mandela that gives a personal perspective on the giant of activism. His discipline is admirable and his routine is encouraging. He always says something good about the conversation topic.
The Nature of Psychotherapy, by Karl Jaspers, is a short book urging those administering care to mentally ill patients to distinguish traditional therapeutics, such as hypnosis and association, from philosophic engagement. The book was nice to read, and but the distinction is silly. In the latter, the doctor acknowledges as a thinking human being while challenging core principle of the patient and bringing those of the doctor up for discussion. To a certain extant, all therapeutics must acknowledge the patient and offer a method of living other than the one by which the patient lives. The book was nice because he suggests that when giving care, the doctor must be objective to the patient while acknowledging that the process is changing both doctor and patient. I said it before, but it made me think that all therapy should be conducted in a classroom, where the teacher is the primary caregiver. This way, there is a standard with which to modulate the doctor patient relationship: the opinion of the class.
A Case of Curiosities, by Allen Kurzweil, is a novel about a boy who is recognized by an Abby for his drawing skill. The boy is put to work under the Abby as an enameler. He becomes an inventor, relating mechanics to art. There is a lot of misery and art of comedy throughout the book.
The Book of Five Rings is a book by Musashi Miyamoto. It describes the way to strategize as a method of winning that is not dependent on one technique or another but on overpowering the spirit of an enemy. It was very vivid to me in the opening. As the book drew on, I became a bit bored by the frustrations of the writer.
