Angela Ambroz

A long, funny, fascinating and intimate selection of “the nice one”'s personal diaries. Hidden beneath these rather quotidian observations on restaurant meals, meetings with producers, trips up to the family, and occasional writing sessions with Terry Jones or the rest of the Pythons, is the remarkableness of Michael Palin himself. Remarkable because he seems to have been mind-bogglingly prolific: these diaries, already at 600+ pages, are only 20% of the total diaries he kept for himself. In one section (perhaps 1977 or so?), he decides to write a novel. It takes him two months. He writes scripts, hosts Saturday Night Live, becomes a Board Member of the Shepperton Studios, and does this all with ample time to spare. In fact, you start thinking Palin led a really relaxed, charmed life in the 1970s - until you look at the amazing output.

As a diarist, he was also remarkably observant: tending more towards lush physical descriptions of the places he visits, the food he eats, the people he meets. It's very light on any discussion on feelings or emotions or speculations: Palin seems to be very firmly on the ground with both feet, and he seems to trouble himself mostly with what is actually happening (not what he wants or thinks or whatever). This makes him a unique diarist as well. (Of course, all the inner monologues about feelings may have just been left out of publication.)

Of especial interest are also the context of 1970s Britain (the IRA terrorism was especially fascinating, and horrifying - I had no idea Lord Mountbatten's death was so grisly), the low-level famousness of London glitterati (Derek Jacobi! oh, I love him), Palin's homeowner-ness in Camden (the Resident's Association meetings! ha), and the occasional insights into the other Pythons. I already knew that John Cleese was “the angry one”, Graham Chapman suffered from alcoholism, and so on. But it was amazing how, well, real that all was.

I'm not sure this book will be of great interest to people who don't already know Palin and his work. I was a huge Python fan in school, and gobbled up much of the Python spin-offs too: Terry Gilliam's films (Time Bandits, Jabberwocky). The Palin/Jones team always wrote my favorite material. Sure, the Cleese/Chapman stuff sometimes had me LOLing very hard, but the Palin/Jones stuff filled me more often with delight.

Looking forward to tackling the next tome - on the 1980s - though I may give myself a bit of a breather first.

Rushdie is dense; and, I discovered, if you don't know enough about South Indian culture (traditional and pop), he can be impossibly obtuse.

Thankfully, I read Satanic Verses after binging on Amitabh Bachchan movies; so Gibreel Farishta, apparently modeled on early 80s Bachchan, was immediately familiar. The Hindi puns; the digs at Indira Gandhi; etc. - all became clear(er, at least).

Anyway: this is one of those Big Famous magic(al) realist novels, and rightly so. Vast, richly imagined and, best of all, funny. My favorite Rushdie.

Pretty standard YA Cory Doctorow. Which is to say, I was inspired to do everything in this book: build a frankenlaptop running Linux, visit cyberpunk hackerspaces on the weekend, fight for digital civil liberties, read Aaron Swartz (RIP) and Larry Lessig, go to Burning Man with a 3D solar-powerered laser printer, and drink tons and tons of cold brew. Cory, man. He always GETS ME GOIN. I'm just like, LEAD ON, LEADER, THAT ALL SOUNDS GREAT.

His books are always wonderfully imbued with anarchic resourcefulness, programming, art, civic engagement, and hackering. And an abiding adoration of the pre-venture capital, pre-capitalist distortion San Francisco scene. It's great. So good.

That said: book-wise, it's not as well-put together as the prequel, Little Brother. Cory can be kinda hit and miss: some of his books hit the mark SO WELL (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, that one short story about future advertising, Little Brother, In Real Life), and others are just meh fine (For the Win, Pirate Cinema, Rapture of the Nerds). That said, the meh ones are never terrible, they're just kinda clunky in their pedantry. But fine! I still like to learn. Now that I think of it, he's like a young person's Neal Stephenson. Sort of. I like Cory more. Cory is just so much more ENGAGED.

Anyway. Yeah. I mean, Cory Doctorow has deeply influenced my life for the past ~10 years - much of my computer-related opinions are derived from his books, talks, BoingBoing (pre that awful store). This book felt - meh - fine. The narrative arc felt super contrived. Everyone also felt a little one-dimensional. And Marcus Yallow AKA M1k3y is a Mary Sue/Marty Stu. Fine. I can't stay mad achoo. I'm so pumped for Walkaway (his first non-YA book in a loong while).

I'm a pretty easy sell on thoughtful graphic novels (see my star-blitzes on Y: The Last Man, or the Buddha series). As Woody Allen would say, I don't just love this genre. I loaf it. I lub it.

Anyway, The Burma Chronicles struck an extra-tender chord, since it realistically portrays the Expat Life (oh, expat life). Author Guy Delisle accompanies his wife, who works for Doctors Without Borders, to Burma. Along the way, he plays stay-at-home dad to their adorable, peanut-head-shaped baby son, he teaches an informal animation class to some Burmese comic artists, and we learn a LOT about the regime.

The book is divided into ultra-short vignettes, often not lasting more than a page or two. These vignettes illuminate one specific part of life there: the AC/heat, Aung Sun Suu Kyi (who pops up again and again), the Australian Club, and so on. Delisle's voice (and drawing style) is straightforward, honest, acerbic and deft. He brings out illuminating details, such as... well, I can't think of one right now (I'm not having a very deft moment!). But just trust me.

As such, it's a quick read that brings your blood to a low simmer from time to time. I already imagined Burma as a place whose beauty and charms were still masking a brutal regime, and Delisle confirms that. But he reminds us again and again that we can't forget about the regime because of the charms.

Devastating. Should be required reading. Some of the incidents described made me feel sick. And the chapter on the “great forgetting” - and the fact that, indeed, I had almost no idea about the extent of colonial cruelty in the Congo; that, indeed, I was another American high school student who read Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” as if it was ahistorical... Really horrible stuff. Indeed, the post-colonial stuff - the murder of Patrice Lumumba by CIA-funded agents, the subsequent Leopold-esque reign of Mobutu - it's just miserable. I guess I knew this stuff in a very peripheral, superficial way; I had never thought about it or investigated it. Now that I have... damn. As I said, should be required reading.

Edited to add: On a somewhat lighter note, this book is begging to be made into a film. Michael Sheen was BORN to play Stanley, in all his insecure exuberance and cruelty. They're both even Welsh! Perhaps Clive Owen as E.D. Morel? Stephen Fry as Sir Roger Casement? Denzel Washington as William Henry Sheppard? Ian McKellan as Leopold? I'm only half-joking - cinema is one of the most powerful ways to tell history, and the fact that this book is, yes, a bestseller, but not part of high school history curricula is something that HAS to change.