Book #4 of 2014: Exiled: Memoirs of a Camel
Exiled: Memoirs of a Camel by Kathleen Karr
Rating: 3/okay (1-5/hated-loved)
I should have hated this book. There were so many reasons for me to not finish it:
1) It was religious. So very very religious. A book written from a camel's point of view still mentioned the Quran and Allah more than once a page. The camels were all religious. It boggled me. If it had been any other religion, I would have tossed the book out, but I know so little about this one that learning new things kept me reading.
2) I love talking animal stories, however I like my animals to be animals, not people in animal shape. These camels might as well have been human. (Did I mention they were religious?)
3) The book did something I hate to see in animal stories: Impossibly, knowledge passed between animals and humans. The main character camel was born wild, his mother named him Ali. When they were caught by humans, somehow they knew his name was Ali -- he kept that name though the whole book, no matter how many times he changed hands with no communication between people.
4) Ali spends the first half of the book in love with a female camel. Finally she chooses him, they're in love, have babies, escape and live happily in the wild, blah blah. She dies and it's addressed with no more than a sentence, something like "Because of Allah's will, she was taken.". There's ZERO reaction from Ali, nothing, no more mention of it than that sentence, no reaction from him, nothing. The whole darned plot of the book was about him loving her and wanting her, then she dies and NOTHING?
So why did I keep reading it? I don't know. I was sure when I hit the halfway mark I would stop, but when I did I figured I could just read a little more... then I hit the 75% mark and figured I'd finish it. I really don't know why I didn't hate it, I really should have. The writing was technically fine. The story could have been really interesting (it was based on real history "in the 1850s the U.S. army shipped camels from Egypt and tried to train them in the Texas desert"). I don't know.
Next up: Treasure Planet (Man-Kzin Wars). I read some of the Man-Kzin Wars books as a kid, so I thought it would be interesting to see what I think of them now. So far, so good!
Rating: 3/okay (1-5/hated-loved)
I should have hated this book. There were so many reasons for me to not finish it:
1) It was religious. So very very religious. A book written from a camel's point of view still mentioned the Quran and Allah more than once a page. The camels were all religious. It boggled me. If it had been any other religion, I would have tossed the book out, but I know so little about this one that learning new things kept me reading.
2) I love talking animal stories, however I like my animals to be animals, not people in animal shape. These camels might as well have been human. (Did I mention they were religious?)
3) The book did something I hate to see in animal stories: Impossibly, knowledge passed between animals and humans. The main character camel was born wild, his mother named him Ali. When they were caught by humans, somehow they knew his name was Ali -- he kept that name though the whole book, no matter how many times he changed hands with no communication between people.
4) Ali spends the first half of the book in love with a female camel. Finally she chooses him, they're in love, have babies, escape and live happily in the wild, blah blah. She dies and it's addressed with no more than a sentence, something like "Because of Allah's will, she was taken.". There's ZERO reaction from Ali, nothing, no more mention of it than that sentence, no reaction from him, nothing. The whole darned plot of the book was about him loving her and wanting her, then she dies and NOTHING?
So why did I keep reading it? I don't know. I was sure when I hit the halfway mark I would stop, but when I did I figured I could just read a little more... then I hit the 75% mark and figured I'd finish it. I really don't know why I didn't hate it, I really should have. The writing was technically fine. The story could have been really interesting (it was based on real history "in the 1850s the U.S. army shipped camels from Egypt and tried to train them in the Texas desert"). I don't know.
Next up: Treasure Planet (Man-Kzin Wars). I read some of the Man-Kzin Wars books as a kid, so I thought it would be interesting to see what I think of them now. So far, so good!