I was reading a friend's year in books post and he wrote, "if it is worth reading, it's worth jotting down at least 100 words about it" about his decision to start writing at least something short about every book he read last year. I think this is a really good point and, further, I feel like it's a good idea to help process a book upon finishing it. I find my mind swims a little just after I finish a book and I sort of stare off into space and then I start thinking about what I should read next. It's probably not a bad idea for me to spend a little more time with whatever it is I have just read. I decided, however, that I don't want to write reviews, per se, so I'm going to write instead about whatever it is I liked most in the book.
I have just finished reading The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa. (I can now check off Peru in my books of the world list.) A friend of mind loaned me (a different copy of) this book nearly 20 years ago, but I never read it at the time. When Vargas Llosa won the Nobel, I kept thinking I really should read him; I really should already have read him. I'm glad I finally got around to it. (I still want to read Conversation in a Cathedral.) Anyway, the thing I liked most in The Storyteller is the idea of walking as a way of life. The book is about a writer's fascination with the Machiguenga indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon. The mythologies as presented in the book provide cosmological explanations of why the Machiguenga must always be moving, but what appealed to me was the idea of continuous movement as the preferred and natural state. Any time the people are lulled into complacency and start to settle down, bad things begin to happen. This is a reminder that they shouldn't stop walking. It's a subtle distinction, but something about the idea of continuing to walk to preserve peace or balance or what-have-you, versus being forced to move on because of conditions where you have settled, was really moving for me, even though the effect was the same.
So, this has been the first edition of "What I Liked Most About the Book." I hope there will be many more this year!
