Erik's Book Club: April Selections

Wasn't able to keep up quite the same pace in April as in March and was only able to read four books instead of five.

My favorite of the month was The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson.  What a fun, madcap journey through history.  It's a novel about a brilliant orphan from Soweto, South Africa who is stuck cleaning latrines as a young Black girl during the worst of the Apartheid era. The novel chronicles her wild adventure where she eventually acquires one of South Africa's atomic bombs by accident, is hounded for years by Mossad agents, and ends up in Sweden as a refugee and, as the title suggests, she does indeed save the King of Sweden. It's an implausible and wild dash through history (Jimmy Carter and P.W Botha are among those who make cameo appearances), but one I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.

Of course, I read two works of Japanese literature.  The first, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi was a runaway Japanese bestseller about a coffee shop where, if you follow the intricate set of rules, you can go back into the past, perhaps to encounter a lost love or relative who has died.  It's a bit of a sentimental read and examines themes that have been overexplored in book and film. Yes, most of us have regrets about the past or have a lost love or family member we wish we could have communicated something to, but I found it a bit formulaic and unless you truly enjoy this theme, I wouldn't invest my time with this. Also, the book was adapted from a four-act play and it does feel as though you are reading a novel that was a play at one time, which also makes for reading moments that feel staged.

The other Japanese work I read is a novella by Hiroko Oyamada entitled The Factory.  This is a fascinating little book exploring the absurdities that three workers encounter while working in a Japanese factory. It is a surreal work, very Kafkaesque in theme and even in its structure. Maybe it was because I worked in a Japanese office for a year, but I found this novella to be incredibly fascinating and an insightful look at the meaninglessness of the modern workplace. By the end of the novel the reader feels almost as entangled in this crazed world as the characters. A classic novella, in my opinion.

Not pictured here is my fourth book, which was an IBook I read on my computer, It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens.  Stevens was a Republican political operative who created the media campaigns for dozens of prominent Republicans.  Stevens became so disillusioned by the Trump era and the lies of all Republicans that have been concocted over the years, many amplified by Stevens himself, that he left the Republican party.  It is an incredible indictment of the gigantic structure of falsehoods erected by Republicans over the past 40 years.  The average Trumpist would cover their eyes and yell "fake news" if encountering this book, but the argument Stevens creates is meticulously footnoted and documented, supplemented by his account of his own responsibility in creating our current dysfunctional political system, and would be enlightening and persuasive to anyone who isn't a Trumpist cult member.

I've already started my first May book, so see you at the end of the next month with more books for you to consider.