The Bad-A** Librarians of Timbuktu And Their Race To Save the World's Precious Manuscripts

I thought this was going to be an epic non-fiction piece like Before and After, but after the first five or six chapters, I struggled so hard. I just couldn't finish it. 

 This story is about how a librarian named Abdel Kader Haidara who worked all throughout the 80's and 90's to gather as many ancient documents and manuscripts from around Mali and its surrounding countries and gathered many of them in Timbuktu and his own collections. He preserved and restored many of them. They were gorgeous pieces of literature, Qurans embossed in gold, mercantile documents, and so much more. Though as the political scene in Africa during the late 90's and early 00's got more and more violent with Al-Qaida becoming more prevalent, foreigners getting kidnapped and murdered, and religious/historical everything getting destroyed, Haidara and others like him worked to get the many thousands of manuscripts out of Timbuktu to safe places where these historical documents from the 15th Century . 

I was really excited to learn about these librarians who worked so hard to save these documents of such historical significant that showed how Africa isn't just a bunch of desert and bush, but that they had thriving communities of intellectual and tolerance. The beginning and Haidara's story was engaging. But after a while that story telling became very dry. Names were thrown all over the place and I didn't know who they were even through the are of modern historical significance. I, personally, wasn't around for the 80's and was only a little kid in the 90's so many of the names were vaguely familiar, but I didn't know what they had done. I became very bogged down. If I had more basic information about what Al-Qaida was doing I might have been able to understand it more. 

I, sadly, didn't finish it. It was an audiobook, so it made it really hard to skim through the parts to get to the other parts I was more engaged in, and then had to return it. I tried. Four or five extra chapters. But I felt like I was just more lost. The reader could have been better too. 

I still want to know more about it and thankfully there is actually a TedTalk by the author Joshua Hammer talking about it and what Haidara did which I will be diving into. Here is a link to the TedTalk as well as (1 a five minute clip, (2 A BBC documentary, (3 an Extra History presentation on the Empire of Mali links for documentaries about it. It is very fascinating and learning more in a different format is probably what will be best for me.  

Read on. Find out more. 

See How They Run

The second book in the Embassy Row series by Ally Carter starts up exactly where the first one left off.

Grace, who has just learned something even more tragic about her dead mother, still suffers from PTSD from the incident. But now more is on her and she's gotten to the point that she wishes she didn't know the truth. At times she tries to run away from it all, force it behind her and in the past but the past keeps catching up with her. Now her brother Jamie is back on Embassy Row and brought an army buddy along with him. Not even a few nights on Embassy Row and Jamie's friend is found dead on the beach. Who would want to kill Spence? And now Alexie is somehow to blame merely because he is "the Russian." Politics and conspiracy and secret societies are everywhere. Grace cannot catch a break.

There will be some who are still very upset that Grace sticks to this PTSD thing and the death of her mother weighs very heavily on her character. If you are upset by that, I hope you don't meet a vet or go through anything traumatic because you won't cope well. Her PTSD, which it's never actually called that in the story, is part of who she is. So much of it, because it is so fresh, still claws at her mind and it's nails haven't been dulled yet. In the book, because her brother also has to deal with some things, she's able to start to cope and begins to mend. I think that seeing her brother going through the same thing lets her drop her walls more than anything else has it seems. Knowing the truth has also helped as well, I think. It appears she begins to mend and isn't as angry and willing to jump off a cliff as she was before. Steps forward. Good job Grace. It hasn't stopped completely, obviously, and there are still flashes especially around fire, but she seems less dark and hidden than in the first book. Grace is true to her character. She doesn't flip flop on being the pretty princess then suddenly go tom-boy. She's freaked out and while there are moments of pause, she's still broken and it's not an easy fix. Ally Carter gives us that; she lets us see that this is hard. None of us want to be in her shoes and we feel sorry for her and reading on in hopes that she gets better and finds her own peace. Well done, Ally. Well done.

I really like Embassy Row and the idea of so many countries sharing fences. Being able to hide in a dilapidated Iran Embassy while walking past Israel, Russia, Brazil, and other countries on your way back to the U.S. of A. is a fun little concept. Ally Carter worked this one well and had fun with it.

This one is more focused on Grace's relationships with her brother and Alexie. There is a skuffle when the new Alpha-Boy comes into town, which is kind of fun to have your brother defend you, willing to knock the guys out. I do wish there was more of Rosie and Noah and the rest, but there just wasn't. While the first book had a taste of the Heist Society where the kids were the masterminds behind gathering information and being all sneaky and spy-like, that wasn't here, which was good because then it didn't feel like a copy of the first book.

I think that this series could have worked will as a combination of them all. Obviously I haven't read the last book yet, but it feels like they could have been presented in the same novel. Grace didn't make a whole lot of internal progress in the first book and made major steps forward in this one and I predict that there will be even more leaps in the next book. The first book had a good climax and this one felt lacking that intense feel. I felt the build up to it but then it didn't quiet come or more like the climax hasn't had the opportunity to resolve itself. They get away and are getting help, but not much more than that. The resolve will probably be in the beginning of the third book, but I want it at the end here. It's missing.

Alcatraz Verses the Evil Librarians

The book Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians was a very fun read. Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite writers and I'm close to reading everything that he has written. This edition of Alcatraz will soon be re-published by Tor (I believe) and will soon be giving out the last book in the series which readers have been waiting years for because of complications with Scholastic Publishing.

Like I said, it is a very funny read that gives us the definition of breaking the fourth wall. This book is the autobiography of Alcatraz Smebry. He is trying to correct some of the wrong information that has been presented about himself in the Hushlands (the US, Europe, and Australia) and the Free Kingdoms (the places of the world that the Evil Librarians haven't taken over). The Evil Librarians have taken control of a vast amount of the Earth and has changed the history of the world. What we of the Hushlands believe to be history is actually a fabrication that the Librarians have employed in order to keep order. Their belief is "Ignorance is Bliss." Most of the ruling governments don't even know they are being manipulated.

Alcatraz is introduced to this world after he sets fire to the kitchen of his 27th foster families house--he has a Talent for breaking things you see. He gets a package in the mail full of sand with a note saying that it is his inheritance. It ends up getting stolen and his quirky and rather ridiculous Grandfather who has a Talent of being late for everything comes to save the day. They end up having to infiltrate a library to keep both worlds--Hushlands and Free Kingdoms--safe. Here we learn many new things about how the world really is, like the dinosaurs are actually not extinct, there are continents we don't know about, etc.

The autobiography of Alcatraz has many of different quirky things that happens that were entertaining, yet sometimes annoying. He breaks into the middle of the action, often, to explain things or to simply be obnoxious--he is a thirteen year old kid so what can you expect. At the end of chapters there is always a cliffhanger that makes you want to read more, but then he goes on dialogues with you, the reader. He also calls you out on little things that readers often do such as reading the very last page first, or skipping a head when you should (at which point in Chapter 15 he calls you a Moron--but not really).

These can be fun if you read it in as few settings as possible, if it takes you too long to read the book it can start to get daunting and somewhat annoying.

I found this very enjoyable probably mostly because I am a Librarian. I hope I'm not evil, but there are moments that are were extremely funny because of my current employment. At one point he mentions, while breaking the fourth wall, that you are probably reading the book in a variety of locations, one of which was the library. At which point I almost burst out laughing because I was at work in a library reading the book. The irony was sweet.

Overall, I would recommend this book as a light hearted read. Brandon Sanderson is an excellent writer who knows what he's doing. Sanderson comes up with the most amazing and different ideas that really haven't been done before--which is extremely refreshing. I can't wait for the next few to come in at my local library so I can continue the series.