![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
String of bad books...
Jun. 29th, 2011 09:04 amI've decided I will no longer force myself to finish every book that I start. I used to make myself to finish books I wasn't enjoying in hopes that they would get better, but I decided my reading time is limited enough I won't waste it. Since then, I've started and given up on two books (that one by the Toothless guy and that Tomorrow When the War Began one). Then I got to Slave: My True Story, the first nonfiction book I've read in many, many years.
How could a nonfiction book be unbelievable? It tells the story of an African girl who, at the age of 12, is taken by Arab raiders and made into a slave. If this book were to be believed, her life pre-capture was idyllic. Perfection. Best place on Earth to live. (Nevermind they lived in the mountains of Sudan where people regularly died from snake bite, where a woman's first child was expected to die soon after birth, where they practice female circumcision.) Even when someone died, a couple days later everything returned to perfection. Days after the main character was circumcised, her mother outright lying to her face to trick her into going to the place to have it done, her mother and other female siblings holding her down by force and holding her still to have it done, she loved everyone again.
That's not even the worst of it. She spent about ten years as a slave. She described herself as beautiful. Men stared at her wherever she went. Men tried to get her alone all that time. She was a slave and yet was never once raped? In ten years, she was only touched sexually once (on the day of her capture, at age 12). This beautiful, owned woman somehow got through it all without even being groped? (Some of the other kids captured at the same time were raped multiple times that first day, so it's not that the book just didn't touch on sexual issues.)
I guess it's possible she didn't want to write about that, but this book was intended to show people what is going on in that part of the world, what modern day slavery is like, so why not? Or at least mention it and say she won't go into details?
The whole book was just so unsatisfying*. The first third was about the perfection of her childhood, the last third was about what happened to her post-slavery (amazingly boring, I skimmed through it), leaving only the middle third about the slavery itself. And the only thing that slavery involved? Housekeeping. She cooked, cleaned, babysat the kids. Now and then she was beaten with a shoe, now and then she was yelled at, and of course she wasn't paid, but it was hardly a shocking story that made me want to go out and CHANGE THINGS RIGHT NOW THIS VERY INSTANT. (Yes, of course slavery is bad and wrong and shouldn't happen ever to anyone... but it just didn't make for a good book in this case.)
*I worry about the use of "unsatisfying" there, especially after talking about rape. I mean, as a whole, the book was boring. I wasn't looking for racy, juicy, fanfic rapefic, but a book should be enjoyable, it should tell a good story, if it's trying to put forth some cause, it should make people feel for it. This book did not.
How could a nonfiction book be unbelievable? It tells the story of an African girl who, at the age of 12, is taken by Arab raiders and made into a slave. If this book were to be believed, her life pre-capture was idyllic. Perfection. Best place on Earth to live. (Nevermind they lived in the mountains of Sudan where people regularly died from snake bite, where a woman's first child was expected to die soon after birth, where they practice female circumcision.) Even when someone died, a couple days later everything returned to perfection. Days after the main character was circumcised, her mother outright lying to her face to trick her into going to the place to have it done, her mother and other female siblings holding her down by force and holding her still to have it done, she loved everyone again.
That's not even the worst of it. She spent about ten years as a slave. She described herself as beautiful. Men stared at her wherever she went. Men tried to get her alone all that time. She was a slave and yet was never once raped? In ten years, she was only touched sexually once (on the day of her capture, at age 12). This beautiful, owned woman somehow got through it all without even being groped? (Some of the other kids captured at the same time were raped multiple times that first day, so it's not that the book just didn't touch on sexual issues.)
I guess it's possible she didn't want to write about that, but this book was intended to show people what is going on in that part of the world, what modern day slavery is like, so why not? Or at least mention it and say she won't go into details?
The whole book was just so unsatisfying*. The first third was about the perfection of her childhood, the last third was about what happened to her post-slavery (amazingly boring, I skimmed through it), leaving only the middle third about the slavery itself. And the only thing that slavery involved? Housekeeping. She cooked, cleaned, babysat the kids. Now and then she was beaten with a shoe, now and then she was yelled at, and of course she wasn't paid, but it was hardly a shocking story that made me want to go out and CHANGE THINGS RIGHT NOW THIS VERY INSTANT. (Yes, of course slavery is bad and wrong and shouldn't happen ever to anyone... but it just didn't make for a good book in this case.)
*I worry about the use of "unsatisfying" there, especially after talking about rape. I mean, as a whole, the book was boring. I wasn't looking for racy, juicy, fanfic rapefic, but a book should be enjoyable, it should tell a good story, if it's trying to put forth some cause, it should make people feel for it. This book did not.
