the book bum

Featuring the random electric outlet in my dorm hall      I'm back with another graphic novel!  And this one isn't about zombies - it's about Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Che Guevara.  This beautiful, color-illustrated comic book is a biography of the revolutionary figure, from the famous motorcycle trip he took through Argentina partway through medical school, to his success as an Argentinean communist fighting for Fidel Castro in Cuba, to his capture by government soldiers while aiding rebels in Bolivia, and subsequent execution without trial.      A good fourteen pages of the novel are spent describing in brief the history of every country in South America.  I admit that I found this section boring at first.  But honestly I benefited from it, first of all because in high school I learned very little about South American history.  World Wars I and II got a lot of attention in my history classes, but the r...

     I love the cover of this book.  Look closely - it's a little skeleton man clasping his hands over a cup of black coffee.  I don't know what it means, but it's delightful.      Anyway, I read this collection of short stories in Spanish - El cuento hispanoamericano - for a class I am taking this semester, but it is also available in English.  According to my professor, it's a unique book in that it offers the best representation of Latin American short stories throughout modern history, with details about literary movements and authors as well.  I liked some stories better than others - "The Tree" by Maria Luisa Bombal and "The Ruby" by Ruben Dario were my favorites - but even the ones I disliked, such as "Secret Love" by Manuel Payno, were included because they were representative of a certain movement or regional style that was worth acknowledging.        My only issue with this book ...

     When I finished this novel, I wondered, as I always do when I finish a Toni Morrison novel, why I ever read anything else.  I read it over break, and after months of reading for school rather than pleasure, it was a relief to bury myself in beautiful writing.      Love follows the Cosey family through three generations, from the start to the end of the twentieth century.  The Coseys are a wealthy black family whose wealth comes from a beachfront hotel owned by Mr. Cosey, the grandfather and patriarch.  The story has various narrators, including the women who lived under his roof and his influence - his daughter, granddaughter, cook, and young wife, as well as the unstable teenage girl who feels his presence in the house long after his death.      That detail particularly struck me as I was reading - the apparent immortality of his influence.  Mr. Cosey was a great man - a Black American who enriched hi...